If you are aware of a state called is, or reality, or life, this implies a state called isn’t. Or illusion, or unreality, or nothingness or death. You can’t know one without the other. And so as to make life poignant, it’s always going to come to an end, that is don’t you see what makes it lively. Liveliness is change it is motion, and motion is going to fall out and be gone. You see, you are always at the place you always are..[Laughs] Except it keeps appearing to change. And you think wowie we’ll get that thing. I hope we don’t go further down so that we don’t lose what we have. But that’s built into every creature’s situation or matter how high or how low. So is this sense, all places are the same place. And the only time you ever notice any difference is the moment of transition. When you go up a bit you gain, when you go down a bit you feel disappointed, gloom, lost. You can go all the way down to death. Somehow, there seems to be a difficultly getting up. Death sees so final. Nothing seems so very very very irrevocable and permanent.
Then if it is, what about the nothingness before you started. So don’t you see, what we’ve left out of out logic and this is part of the game rule to the game we are playing. The way we hoodwink ourselves is by attributing powerlessness with nothingness.
We don’t realize that is a complete logical fallacy. It takes nothing to have something. You wouldn’t know something without nothing. You wouldn’t know what the form is, without the background space. You would’t be able to see anything unless there was nothing behind your eyes. Now imagine yourself with an anestical eye, and you can see all round. Now whats in the middle? Even if I have all this behind me within view suddenly I will find there is something in the middle of it all and there is a hole of reality. Like now there seems to be wall, not so much a whole, but you see if I was an animal that had eyes in the back of its head. You could feel the sensation I’m describing.
Now you may say to me, now that’s all a bunch of wishful thinking, because when your dead your dead! Now wait a minute, what is that state of consciousness that talks that way? This is somebody saying something that wants to make a point, but what kind of point are they trying to make? When your dead your dead see.Well that’s one of the people that want to rule the world.That’s what frightening about death. Death is real. No indulge in wishful thinking, all you people who dream of an afterlife, and heavens and gods and mystical experiences, and eternity. You are just wishy washy people, you don’t face the facts!
What facts? How can I face the fact of nothing. Which is by definition not a fact. All this is toddle whatever way you look at it. So if you really go the how way and see how you feel at the prospect of vanishing forever. Of all your efforts, and all your achievements, and all your attainments turning into dust and nothingness. What is the feeling? What happens to you?
Is a curious thing, that in the world’s poetry, this is a very common theme. “The earthly hopes men set their hearts upon turns ashes, and or it prospers, a non like snow settles on the desert dusty face lighting an hour or two and is gone” All kinds of poetry emphasize the theme of transcendence. There is a kind of nostalgic beauty to it. "The Banquet Hall deserted, after the revelry, all the guests had left and gone on their ways. The table with overturned glasses, crumbled napkins, bread crumbs , and dirty knives and forks lies empty. And the laughter echoes only in one’s mind. And then the echo goes, the memory, the traces are all gone. That’s the end you see."
Do you see in a way, how that is saying the most real state is the state of nothing? That’s what it’s all going to come to. With these physicists who think of the energy of the universe as running down dissipating into radiation, and gradually and gradually, and gradually, gradually, until there is nothing left.
And for some reason, we are suppose to find that depressing. But if somebody is going to argue that the basic reality is nothingness. Where does all this come from? Obviously from nothingness. Once again you get how this looks behind your eyes. So cheer up you see, this is what is meant in Buddhist philosophy by saying ‘we are all basically nothing.’
When the Six Patriarch says “the essence of your mind is intrinsically pure”. The pure doesn’t mean a ‘non dirty story state of mind’ as is it apt to mean in the word Puritan. Pure means “clear “ void. So you know the story when the Six Patriarch was given his office to his successor. Because he was truly enlightened. There was a Poetry contest. And the losing one wrote the idea that the mind, the consciousness was like a mirror.
So I’m detached, calm, and pure headed. Buddha-ed. But the one who won the contest said there is no mirror, and the nature of mind is intrinsically void. So where is there anywhere for dust to collect? See so in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it’s your reality. Then how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of being scared, and it’s nothing it just a dream. Because your really nothing. But this is most incredible nothing. All the Six Patriarch went on to contrast that emptiness of indifference. Which is sort of blind emptiness. See if you think of this idea of nothingness as blankness, and you hold onto this idea of blankness then kind of grizzly about it, you haven’t understood it. Nothingness is really like the nothingness of space, which contains the whole universe. All the sun and the stars and mountains, and rivers, and goodmen and bad men, and the animals, and insects, and the whole bit. All are contained in void. So out of this void comes everything and you it. What else could you be?
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle—when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
Caution: The following post contains logic not suitable or comprehensible to certain ideals. Viewer discretion is advised. You’re kind of a hopeless idealist to expect everybody else to alter their speech patterns to suit your preference. Sure, it’d be nice of them to do so, but attempting to make it a matter of obligation isn’t winning that battle for anyone— specifically you guys. 50 years ago, feminism was about women fighting for the rights of women; genuine advocates of human rights who weren't interested in supremacy nor hatred. Modern feminists however, are gung-ho on their belief that society is built upon a hetero-sexist male supremacist patriarchy, as if there aren't plenty of respectable and admirable female figures in society, and radically challenge all western foundations.
The United States and allies are preparing for a possibly imminent
series of limited military strikes against Syria, the first direct U.S.
intervention in the two-year civil war, in retaliation for President
Bashar al-Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.
If you found the above sentence kind of confusing, or aren't exactly
sure why Syria is fighting a civil war, or even where Syria is located,
then this is the article for you. What's happening in Syria is really
important, but it can also be confusing and difficult to follow even for
those of us glued to it.
Here, then, are the most basic answers to your most basic questions.
First, a disclaimer: Syria and its history are really complicated; this
is not an exhaustive or definitive account of that entire story, just
some background, written so that anyone can understand it.
1. What is Syria?
Syria is a country in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the
Mediterranean Sea. It's about the same size as Washington state with a
population a little over three times as large – 22 million. Syria is
very diverse, ethnically and religiously, but most Syrians are ethnic
Arab and follow the Sunni branch of Islam. Civilization in Syria goes
back thousands of years, but the country as it exists today is very
young. Its borders were drawn by European colonial powers in the 1920s.
Syria is in the middle of an extremely violent civil war. Fighting
between government forces and rebels has killed more 100,000 and created
2 million refugees, half of them children.
2. Why are people in Syria killing each other?
The killing started in April 2011, when peaceful protests inspired by
earlier revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia rose up to challenge the
dictatorship running the country. The government responded -- there is
no getting around this -- like monsters. First, security forces quietly
killed activists. Then they started kidnapping, raping, torturing and
killing activists and their family members, including a lot of children,
dumping their mutilated bodies by the sides of roads. Then troops began
simply opening fire on protests. Eventually, civilians started shooting
back.
Fighting escalated from there until it was a civil war. Armed
civilians organized into rebel groups. The army deployed across the
country, shelling and bombing whole neighborhoods and towns, trying to
terrorize people into submission. They've also allegedly used chemical
weapons, which is a big deal for reasons I'll address below. Volunteers
from other countries joined the rebels, either because they wanted
freedom and democracy for Syria or, more likely, because they are
jihadists who hate Syria's secular government. The rebels were gaining
ground for a while and now it looks like Assad is coming back. There is
no end in sight.
3. That's horrible. But there are protests lots of places.
How did it all go so wrong in Syria? And, please, just give me the short
version.
That's a complicated question, and there's no single, definitive
answer. This is the shortest possible version -- stay with me, it's
worth it. You might say, broadly speaking, that there are two general
theories. Both start with the idea that Syria has been a powder keg
waiting to explode for decades and that it was set off, maybe
inevitably, by the 2011 protests and especially by the government's
overly harsh crackdown.
Before we dive into the theories, you have to understand that the
Syrian government really overreacted when peaceful protests started in
mid-2011, slaughtering civilians unapologetically, which was a big part
of how things escalated as quickly as they did. Assad learned this from
his father. In 1982, Assad's father and then-dictator Hafez al-Assad
responded to a Muslim Brotherhood-led uprising in the city of Hama by leveling entire neighborhoods.
He killed thousands of civilians, many of whom had nothing to do with
the uprising. But it worked, and it looks like the younger Assad tried
to reproduce it. His failure made the descent into chaos much worse.
Okay, now the theories for why Syria spiraled so wildly. The first is what you might call "sectarian re-balancing" or "the Fareed Zakaria case"
for why Syria is imploding (he didn’t invent this argument but is a
major proponent). Syria has artificial borders that were created by
European colonial powers, forcing together an amalgam of diverse
religious and ethnic groups. Those powers also tended to promote a
minority and rule through it, worsening preexisting sectarian tensions.
Zakaria’s argument is that what we’re seeing in Syria is in some ways
the inevitable re-balancing of power along ethnic and religious lines.
He compares it to the sectarian bloodbath in Iraq after the United
States toppled Saddam Hussein, after which a long-oppressed majority
retook power from, and violently punished, the former minority rulers.
Most Syrians are Sunni Arabs, but the country is run by members of a
minority sect known as Alawites (they're ethnic Arab but follow a
smaller branch of Islam). The Alawite government rules through a
repressive dictatorship and gives Alawites special privileges,
which makes some Sunnis and other groups hate Alawites in general,
which in turn makes Alawites fear that they'll be slaughtered en masse
if Assad loses the war. (There are other minorities as well, such as
ethnic Kurds and Christian Arabs; too much to cover in one explainer.)
Also, lots of Syrian communities are already organized into ethnic or
religious enclaves, which means that community militias are also
sectarian militias. That would explain why so much of the killing in
Syria has developed along sectarian lines. It would also suggest that
there’s not much anyone can do to end the killing because, in Zakaria's
view, this is a painful but unstoppable process of re-balancing power.
The second big theory is a bit simpler: that the Assad regime was not
a sustainable enterprise and it's clawing desperately on its way down.
Most countries have some kind of self-sustaining political order, and it
looked for a long time like Syria was held together by a cruel and
repressive but basically stable dictatorship. But maybe it wasn't
stable; maybe it was built on quicksand. Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez
seized power in a coup in 1970 after two decades of extreme political
instability. His government was a product of Cold War meddling and a
kind of Arab political identity crisis that was sweeping the region. But
he picked the losing sides of both: the Soviet Union was his patron,
and he followed a hard-line anti-Western nationalist ideology that's now
mostly defunct. The Cold War is long over, and most of the region long
ago made peace with Israel and the United States; the Assad regime's
once-solid ideological and geopolitical identity is hopelessly outdated.
But Bashar al-Assad, who took power in 2000 when his father died, never
bothered to update it. So when things started going belly-up two years
ago, he didn't have much to fall back on except for his ability to kill
people.
4. I hear a lot about how Russia still loves Syria, though. And Iran, too. What's their deal?
Yeah, Russia is Syria's most important ally. Moscow blocks the United
Nations Security Council from passing anything that might hurt the
Assad regime, which is why the United States has to go around the United
Nations if it wants to do anything. Russia sends lots of weapons to
Syria that make it easier for Assad to keep killing civilians and will
make it much harder if the outside world ever wants to intervene.
The four big reasons that Russia wants to protect Assad, the
importance of which vary depending on whom you ask, are: (1) Russia has a
naval installation in Syria, which is strategically important and
Russia's last foreign military base
outside the former Soviet Union; (2) Russia still has a bit of a Cold
War mentality, as well as a touch of national insecurity, which makes it
care very much about maintaining one of its last military alliances;
(3) Russia also hates the idea of "international intervention" against
countries like Syria because it sees this as Cold War-style Western
imperialism and ultimately a threat to Russia; (4) Syria buys a lot of
Russian military exports, and Russia needs
the money.
Iran's thinking in supporting Assad is more straightforward. It
perceives Israel and the United States as existential threats and uses
Syria to protect itself, shipping arms through Syria to the
Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and the Gaza-based militant group
Hamas. Iran is already feeling isolated and insecure; it worries that
if Assad falls it will lose a major ally and be cut off from its
militant proxies, leaving it very vulnerable. So far, it looks like Iran is actually coming out ahead: Assad is even more reliant on Tehran than he was before the war started.
5. This is all feeling really bleak and hopeless. Can we take a music break?
Oh man, it gets so much worse. But, yeah, let's listen to some music from Syria. It's really good!
Hope you enjoyed that, because things are about to go from depressing to despondent.
6. Why hasn't the United States fixed this yet?
Because it can't. There are no viable options. Sorry.
The military options are all bad. Shipping arms to rebels, even if it
helps them topple Assad, would ultimately empower jihadists and worsen
rebel in-fighting, probably leading to lots of chaos and possibly a
second civil war (the United States made this mistake during
Afghanistan's early 1990s civil war, which helped the Taliban take power
in 1996). Taking out Assad somehow would probably do the same, opening
up a dangerous power vacuum. Launching airstrikes or a "no-fly zone"
could suck us in, possibly for years, and probably wouldn't make much
difference on the ground. An Iraq-style ground invasion would, in the
very best outcome, accelerate the killing, cost a lot of U.S. lives,
wildly exacerbate anti-Americanism in a boon to jihadists and
nationalist dictators alike, and would require the United States to
impose order for years across a country full of people trying to kill
each other. Nope.
The one political option, which the Obama administration has been
pushing for, would be for the Assad regime and the rebels to strike a
peace deal. But there's no indication that either side is interested in
that, or that there's even a viable unified rebel movement with which to
negotiate.
It's possible that there was a brief window for a Libya-style
military intervention early on in the conflict. But we'll never really
know.
7. So why would Obama bother with strikes that no one expects to actually solve anything?
Okay, you're asking here about the Obama administration's
not-so-subtle signals that it wants to launch some cruise missiles at
Syria, which would be punishment for what it says is Assad's use of
chemical weapons against civilians.
It's true that basically no one believes that this will turn the tide of the Syrian war. But this is important: it's not supposed to.
The strikes wouldn't be meant to shape the course of the war or to
topple Assad, which Obama thinks would just make things worse anyway.
They would be meant to punish Assad for (allegedly) using chemical
weapons and to deter him, or any future military leader in any future
war, from using them again.
8. Come on, what's the big deal with chemical weapons? Assad
kills 100,000 people with bullets and bombs but we're freaked out over
1,000 who maybe died from poisonous gas? That seems silly.
You're definitely not the only one who thinks the distinction is
arbitrary and artificial. But there's a good case to be made that this
is a rare opportunity, at least in theory, for the United States to make
the war a little bit less terrible -- and to make future wars less
terrible.
The whole idea that there are rules of war is a pretty new one: the
practice of war is thousands of years old, but the idea that we can
regulate war to make it less terrible has been around for less than a
century. The institutions that do this are weak and inconsistent; the
rules are frail and not very well observed. But one of the world's few
quasi-successes is the "norm" (a fancy way of saying a rule we all agree
to follow) against chemical weapons. This norm is frail enough that
Syria could drastically weaken it if we ignore Assad's use of them, but
it's also strong enough that it's worth protecting. So it's sort of a
low-hanging fruit: firing a few cruise missiles doesn't cost us much and
can maybe help preserve this really hard-won and valuable norm against
chemical weapons.
You didn't answer my question. That just tells me that we can
maybe preserve the norm against chemical weapons, not why we should.
Fair point. Here's the deal: war is going to happen. It just is. But
the reason that the world got together in 1925 for the Geneva Convention
to ban chemical weapons is because this stuff is really, really good at
killing civilians but not actually very good at the conventional aim of
warfare, which is to defeat the other side. You might say that they're
maybe 30 percent a battlefield weapon and 70 percent a tool of terror.
In a world without that norm against chemical weapons, a military might
fire off some sarin gas because it wants that battlefield advantage,
even if it ends up causing unintended and massive suffering among
civilians, maybe including its own. And if a military believes its
adversary is probably going to use chemical weapons, it has a strong
incentive to use them itself. After all, they're fighting to the death.
So both sides of any conflict, not to mention civilians everywhere,
are better off if neither of them uses chemical weapons. But that
requires believing that your opponent will never use them, no matter
what. And the only way to do that, short of removing them from the
planet entirely, is for everyone to just agree in advance to never use
them and to really mean it. That becomes much harder if the norm is
weakened because someone like Assad got away with it. It becomes a bit
easier if everyone believes using chemical weapons will cost you a few
inbound U.S. cruise missiles.
That's why the Obama administration apparently wants to fire cruise
missiles at Syria, even though it won't end the suffering, end the war
or even really hurt Assad that much.
9. Hi, there was too much text so I skipped to the bottom to find the big take-away. What's going to happen?
Short-term maybe the United States and some allies will launch some
limited, brief strikes against Syria and maybe they won't. Either way,
these things seem pretty certain in the long-term:
• The killing will continue, probably for years. There's no one to
sign a peace treaty on the rebel side, even if the regime side were
interested, and there's no foreseeable victory for either. Refugees will
continue fleeing into neighboring countries, causing instability and an
entire other humanitarian crisis as conditions in the camps worsen.
• Syria as we know it, an ancient place with a rich and celebrated
culture and history, will be a broken, failed society, probably for a
generation or more. It's very hard to see how you rebuild a functioning
state after this. Maybe worse, it's hard to see how you get back to a
working social contract where everyone agrees to get along.
• Russia will continue to block international action, the window for
which has maybe closed anyway. The United States might try to pressure,
cajole or even horse-trade Moscow into changing its mind, but there's
not much we can offer them that they care about as much as Syria.
• At some point the conflict will cool, either from a partial victory
or from exhaustion. The world could maybe send in some peacekeepers or
even broker a fragile peace between the various ethnic, religious and
political factions. Probably the best model is Lebanon, which fought a
brutal civil war that lasted 15 years from 1975 to 1990 and has been
slowly, slowly recovering ever since. It had some bombings just last week.
Rise and shine! Morning time just became your new best friend. Love it or hate it, utilizing the morning hours before work may be the key to a successful and healthy lifestyle.
That’s right, early rising is a common trait found in many CEOs,
government officials, and other influential people. Margaret Thatcher
was up every day at 5 a.m.; Frank Lloyd Wright at 4 am and Robert Iger,
the CEO of Disney wakes at 4:30am just to name a few. I know what you’re
thinking - you do your best work at night. Not so fast. According to Inc. Magazine,
morning people have been found to be more proactive and more
productive. In addition, the health benefits for those with a life
before work go on and on. Let’s explore 5 of the things successful
people do before 8 am.
1. Exercise. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again.
Most people that work out daily, work out in the morning. Whether it’s a
morning yoga session or a trip to the gym, exercising before work gives
you a boost of energy for the day and that deserved sense of
accomplishment. Anyone can tackle a pile of paperwork after 200 ab reps!
Morning workouts also eliminate the possibility of flaking out on your
cardio after a long day at work. Even if you aren’t bright eyed and
bushy tailed at the thought of a 5 am jog, try waking up 15 minutes
early for a quick bedside set of pushups or stretching. It’ll help wake
up your body, and prep you for your day. 2. Map Out Your Day. Maximize your potential by
mapping out your schedule for the day, as well as your goals and to dos.
The morning is a good time for this as it is often one of the only
quiet times a person gets throughout the day. The early hours foster
easier reflection that helps when prioritizing your activities. They
also allow for uninterrupted problem solving when trying to fit
everything into your timetable. While scheduling, don’t forget about
your mental health. Plan a 10 minute break after that stressful meeting
for a quick walk around the block or a moment of meditation at your
desk. Trying to eat healthy? Schedule a small window in the evening to
pack a few nutritious snacks to bring to work the next day. 3. Eat a Healthy Breakfast. We all know that rush
out the door with a cup of coffee and an empty stomach feeling. You sit
down at your desk, and you’re already wondering how early that taco
truck sets up camp outside your office. No good. Take that extra time in
the morning to fuel your body for the tasks ahead of it. It will help
keep you mind on what’s at hand and not your growling stomach. Not only
is breakfast good for your physical health, it is also a good time to
connect socially. Even five minutes of talking with your kids or spouse
while eating a quick bowl of oatmeal can boost your spirits before
heading out the door. 4. Visualization. These days we talk about our
physical health ad nauseam, but sometimes our mental health gets
overlooked. The morning is the perfect time to spend some quiet time
inside your mind meditating or visualizing. Take a moment to visualize
your day ahead of you, focusing on the successes you will have. Even
just a minute of visualization and positive thinking can help improve
your mood and outlook on your work load for the day. 5. Make Your Day Top Heavy. We all have that one
item on our to do list that we dread. It looms over you all day (or
week) until you finally suck it up and do it after much procrastination.
Here’s an easy tip to save yourself the stress - do that least
desirable task on your list first. Instead of anticipating the
unpleasantness of it from first coffee through your lunch break, get it
out of the way. The morning is the time when you are (generally) more
well rested and your energy level is up. Therefore, you are more well
equipped to handle more difficult projects. And look at it this way,
your day will get progressively easier, not the other way
around. By the time your work day is ending, you’re winding down with
easier to dos and heading into your free time more relaxed. Success!
J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher
in the Rye”, Pretty interesting, might hold on to the
book for a couple more days in order to jot down some quotes and re-read some
of my favorite parts and gather more final thoughts. The book tells the story
of Holden Caulfield, the narrator. Holden is 16 years old and feels rather
uncomfortable with almost everything and anything he comes in contact with. A
bit of a cynic, Holden comes from a wealthy family, and I say this because he has
attended several private schools; his parents reside in a townhouse in Fifth Avenue,
he describes many childhood memories that most middle-class or lower-class children
wouldn’t be able to relate too such as his summer house in Maine and playing
golf with his family at a country club in Long Island. Throughout the story,
Holden is constantly in a depressed mood, there are one or two instances of
happiness I can account for. He hates communicating with people, he believes he
is surrounded by “phony” people in every aspect of his life. There is this one
part where he expresses his desire to live in a cabin close to the woods and
away from everybody, another where he plans to run away from home and hitch-hike
his way out west and once he settles down, he’ll pretend to be a deaf-mute, that way, if anybody wanted to
communicate with him, they would have no alternative other than to “write stuff
down on a piece of paper”. I personally think Holden is just a spoiled brat,
for lack of a better word, who thinks he has nothing to lose and unaware of the
abundance of resources at his disposal.
BUT WAIT…
Don’t like stories revolving around spoiled brats? Hold
your horses, there’s a lesson to be learned. The most intriguing characters of
the book, besides Holden, have to be the two teachers Holden goes to seek
advice from, unintentionally or at
least subconsciously. He visits them knowing they’re going to lecture him about
the truth; the truth I’ve been
wanting to tell him myself, the truth that even he, Caulfield, knows he should
hear but doesn’t want to. The truth that he has to grow up, that he ought to be
more mature, and take advantages of the opportunities around him. He visits
them knowing those lectures will happen, knowing that certain conversation
might come about or at least with the idea of knowing that conversation might
take place but hoping it won’t, certainly a sixteen year old trait. In both
cases, he visits the teachers just before he is about to make a decision to
head off somewhere, which is pretty interesting and maybe the author did that
purpose. The first was before he was going to leave his school and head home
and the second was before he was going to leave home and head off out west. In
my opinion, these two characters, Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini and the
conversations shared with Holden defined the book for me; the author really
nailed it with that one. I think we can all relate to Holden in a way, in the
sense that we all wish things to go our way and have perfect things happen to
us but of course, we must be realistic and stop living in Disney land. There is
certainly no justification towards Holden’s behavior throughout most of the
book, though. Part of me wishes to give him the benefit of the doubt in a way,
justify his lack of maturity due to his young age but he is certainly a piece
of work. A cynic; everything affects his mood, makes him depressed and on top
of that he doesn’t want to change his behavior. After reading this book, I sort
of dislike Holden Caulfield but at the same time see why he would do or say
certain things that mixed feeling proves how brilliantly this book was written.
J.D. Salinger left me hanging by the book’s end, I didn’t know how or what to
feel. He left me to reflect, and that’s always a sign of a good piece of
writing. Although I may dislike Holden, or at least most of his attitude, I
must admit that I learned because of
him. Salinger’s use of the “ducks at central park” metaphor, in which Holden
kept pondering and asking anybody he’d have a chance to ask during a
conversation, if they knew where the ducks, that swam in a lake at central park,
went during the winter time. It must’ve been around the 3rd or 4th
time Salinger brought it up in the story that I realized why he kept mentioning
it. It occurred to me that Holden, himself, is
“the ducks” he keeps asking about and the lake, where the ducks swim in, is “home”. Holden was unintentionally or
subconsciously trying to find out where the ducks went during the wintertime
because he himself wanted to somewhere to go. He had no direction, and in some
way he wanted to know of somewhere he can leave to.
The conversation Holden had with the cab driver, is
the most accurate illustration of the metaphor, in which Holden asks Horwitz
about the ducks at central park…
Caulfield: “Hey, Horwitz,” I said. “You ever pass by
the lagoon in Central Park? Down by Central Park South?”
Horwitz: “The what?”
Caulfield: “The lagoon. That little lake, like,
there. Where the ducks are. You know.”
Horwitz: “Yeah, what about it?”
Caulfield: “Well, you know the ducks that swim
around in it? In the springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in
the wintertime, by any chance?”
Horwitz: “Where who
goes?”
Caulfield: “The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? I
mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or
do they fly away by themselves--go south or something?”
Horwitz: “How the hell should I know? How the hell
should I know a stupid thing like that?”
Caulfield: “Well, don’t get sore about it,”
Horwitz: “Who’s sore? Nobody’s sore.”
Horwitz: The fish
don’t go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the
goddam lake.”
Caulfield: “The fish—that’s different. The fish is
different. I’m talking about the ducks,”
Horwitz: “What’s different about it? Nothin’s
different about it. It’s tougher for the fish,
the winter and all, than it is for the ducks, for chrissake. Use your head, for
chrissake.”
Caulfield: “All right. What do they do, the fish and
all, when that whole little lake’s a solid block of ice, people skating on it and all?”
Horwitz: What the hell ya mean what do they do? They
stay right where they are, for chrissake.”
Caulfield: They can’t just ignore the ice. They
can’t just ignore it.”
Horwitz: “Who’s ignoring it? Nobody’s ignoring it! They live right in the goddam ice. It’s their nature,
for chrissake. They get frozen right in one position for the whole winter.”
Caulfield: “Yeah? What do they eat, then? I mean if
they’re frozen solid, they can’t swim
around looking for food and all.”
Horwitz: “Their bodies
for chrissake—what’sa matter with ya? Their bodies take in the nutrition and
all, right through the goddam seaweed and crap that’s in the ice. They got
their pores open the whole time.
That’s their nature, for chrissake.
See what I mean?”
Caulfield: “Oh… Would you care to stop off and have
a drink with me somewhere?”
Horwitz: “I ain’t got time for no liquor, bud, how
the hell old are you, anyways? Why ain’tcha home in bed?”
Caulfield: “I’m not tired.”
Moments later…
Horwitz: “Listen, if you was a fish, Mother Nature’d
take care of you, wouldn’t she?
Right? You don’t think them fish just die
when it gets to be winter, do ya?”
Caulfield: “No, but--“
Horwitz: “You’re goddam right they don’t,”
Sometimes
a pretty long book, that appears to be endless, can make up for it by having
three or four moments that make everything come together; sweet as tea. The
attention to detail, J.D. Salinger’s got enough to go around.
