Murray > Recent Status Updates

Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life. I had thought I loved Mildrith, but that was lust. Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there.

A feast was served by Saxon women slaves - ale, mead, birch wine, pork, beef, duck, dried cod and haddock, eels, crabs and goose, bread, cheese, honey and butter.

Father Willibald feared the food might be poisoned.

I ate a leg of goose. ‘There,’ I said, ‘I’m still alive.’

‘Praise God,’ Willibald said, still watching me anxiously.

‘Praise Thor,’ I said, ‘this is his hill.’

Water dripped from oar-blades, spreading ripples in a sea that was shining slabs of light that slowly shifted and parted, joined and slid. Our ship was poised on that shifting light, silent. The sky to the east was molten gold pouring around a bank of sun-drenched cloud, while the rest was blue. Pale blue to the east and dark blue to the west where night fled towards the unknown lands beyond the distant ocean

‘Their god does seem to have power,’ Erik said. I slid Serpent-Breath into her scabbard and Erik saw the silver cross that decorated her pommel. ‘You must think so too?’ ‘That was a gift,’ I said, ‘from a woman. A lover. Then the Christian god took hold of her and she loves men no more.’ Erik reached out and touched the cross tentatively. ‘You don’t think it gives the blade power?’ he asked.

It is strange what men talk about before battle. Anything except what faces them. I have stood in a shield wall, staring at an enemy bright with blades and dark with menace, and heard two of my men argue furiously about which tavern brewed the best ale. Fear hovers in the air like a cloud and we talk of nothing to pretend that the cloud is not there.

Because fate cannot be cheated, it governs us, and we are all its slaves.

⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️

Mary Magdalene’s toe ring was there, and what remained of the feather from the dove that Noah had released from the ark. There was Saint Kenelm’s horn spoon, a flask of dust from Saint Hedda’s tomb, and a hoof from the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem. The cloth with which Mary Magdalene had washed Jesus’s feet was encased in a great golden chest.

Day 5 Story 3

14th century soaps & romcoms really

Fleeing with Agnolella, Pietro Boccamazza runs into a gang of thieves, and while the girl escapes through a forest and is led to a castle, Pietro is captured by them. He manages to get out of their clutches, however, and after one or two more adventures, he happens upon the castle where Agnolella is staying, gets married to her, and returns with her to Roma.

These fragile bodies of touch and taste
This vibrant skin, this hair like lace
Spirits open to the thrust of grace
Never a breath you can afford to waste

Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight

When you're lovers in a dangerous time

“I know I’ve given you a bad afternoon. For ten seconds there I was ready to try and seduce you, I don’t know what it means myself. I’ve never seduced anyone and I’ve never been seduced, but I’ve always liked the word. I thought if I was ever going to find out what it meant it had better be now.”

Ruth, 40 years old

Day 5 Story 2

Thinking her lover dead, a young woman sets sail without a crew expecting to be capsized or dashed upon the rocks. Instead the ship comes ashore near Tunis where in fact her lover is living. They meet, reunite, and are married.

“When the girl saw him, she almost died of happiness. Overcome by her emotions, she ran right up to him, flung her arms about his neck, and embraced him.”

The Snow Man
~ Wallace Stevens ~
excerpt

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted

… and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener ..
Nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Meanwhile back in 2000:

It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive

It's my life
My heart is like the open highway
Like Frankie said, "I did it my way"
I just want to live while I'm alive
It's my life

❤️
Bon Jovi

Billy was no talker, but he was company, and with nobody at all on the road or in the cab Sonny sometimes got the funny feeling that he was driving the old truck around and around in a completely empty place.

This is the third and last novel in the Thalia or Texas Trilogy. The first is Horseman, Pass By and the second Leaving Cheyenne. I’ve seen the movie of The Last Picture Show with Cybill Shepherd which is done in black and white but I can’t say I recall a lot about it except the ending and the two friends always fighting over her. As always I look forward to McMurtry’s prose most of all ✍🏻

He went to a dead, tearing run, till he was stretched out low to the ground, with his red legs blurred. I couldn’t see for the wind tears in my eyes, and I was afraid I’d fall off. But I had been waiting a week for the thrill and excitement of his speed. We went over the gray-brown grass like it was a race track, Stranger running for all he was worth and me leaning over his neck hanging on to his flying mane.

Granddad squatted down beside him. He had taken out his pocketknife and was whittling on the dry stem of a ragweed, shaving off the thin brittle bark. The lines in his face were deep, like ruts in road, his whiskers snow white against his brown face. He looked at the heifer curiously, but he didn’t seem too disturbed. He had lost a lot of cattle at one time or another in his life.

This is a reread which I’m looking forward to very much.

This novel was the basis for the classic film Hud with Paul Newman. The movie won three Academy Awards.

However my interest is less in the film or book or plot or even the story itself.

I want to read McMurtry’s incredible writing again and savor it like a good meal and a good strong drink.

I would never be able to bring the men who had killed my daughters to justice. I did not know their names, and no matter how many Nazis I killed, there would always be more who were involved in the wholesale murder machine that had claimed my daughters, along with so many others. Full vengeance was impossible.

By the time I crushed out the stub of my cigarette, dawn was beginning to paint the sky gray.

The nightmare was gone, but it had left its mark.

The memories were there, just below consciousness, trying to dig through like burrowing beasts and infest my mind.

I had to work hard to keep them away, where they couldn't hurt me.

If you feel pain you are alive.

If you feel other people’s pain you are a human being.

Leo Tolstoy

“Why did you marry that sorry bastard you married?” Gid had been wanting to say it 20 years. “Why didn’t you marry me? It’s just about ruined my life, Molly!”

It had just about ruined his life. I was to blame. Jimmy’s too. And Gid was going to quit me. That was the way.

“I wish I knew what all was involved in this loving somebody,” he said. “Mostly a lot of damn heartbreak, I know that.”

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,

That Time will come and take my love away.

SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 64

She swung her head to get her hair out of her eyes and it fell all over my face. I lay for a hour smelling her and listening to her breath. She was a mystery to me, but I was glad I had finally pleased her someway. After that the sunlight came right on the bed, so we were lying in a shaft of it, with a million little dustmotes in the air above us. Things looked lovely and funny for a change.

I was beginning to get a little excited from her walking so close to me that way. I never could understand how a little thing like Mabel could get me so excited, but she sure could. She was so thin you wouldn’t even notice her if she was standing sideways to you, but once she got near you she sure did make herself felt.

DAD WAS STANDING BY THE BED SHAKING my foot. I opened my eyes, but he never stopped shaking it. He shook it like it was a fence post and he was testing it to see if it was in the ground solid enough. All my life that’s the way he’d wake me up—I hated it like poison. Once I offered to set a glass of water by the bed, so he could pour that over me in the mornings and wake me up, but Dad wouldn’t do it.

She gave me the cross and our fingers touched and I looked into her eyes and she snatched her hand away. She blushed, though, and she looked up at me through half-lowered lids. For a heartbeat I saw the old Hild, the fragile, beautiful Hild, but then she composed her face and tried to look stern. ‘Now you can go to Gisela,’ she said.

I was reading over the highlights I’d selected from this novel a while back and omg Larry’s writing was so damn fine I said bro y’all gotta ride this horse again. So I am 🐎

She said, don't bother comin' home
By time you get here I'll be long gone
There's somebody new and he sure ain't no rodeo man
He said, I'm sorry it's come down to this
There's so much about you that I'm gonna miss
But it's alright baby
If I hurry I can still make Cheyenne
Gotta go now baby
If I hurry I can still make Cheyenne

Songwriters: Aaron Gayle Barker / Ervine Woolsey

As soon as I’m finally making headway catching up with others’ reads and comments, GR accuses me of spamming and shuts me down for a few hours. I suppose if I moved as slowly as Methuselah - if indeed he did move slowly - then I’d be ok? 🤷‍♂️