Back where we started.
***
Page 12, Paragraph 6:
My people say that there's no good in making markings. Markings take their shape from trees and dogs and so forth and say, "This is 'tree'", "This is 'dog'", yet they're nothing but markings.* If a man looks at them his thoughs all become crazy, so that he can't understand what's real and what's a marking. I've heard it said that many markings are so old that they were made by Urks and people of that kind back in the Ice Age. Now the Urk-kine are no longer in the world, yet many say their descendants** are below [at the bottom of?] the hills, deep in their caves, where they hide to catch those of us above. It's not good to look on markings.
Page 13, Paragraph 1:
I close my eyes and take another way around the open grass and the stone. I trip on a root and scratch my face on briars, but I don't open my eyes until the stone is far behind me.
Paragraph 2:
I come out of the trees, and walking up a hill with the sun like fire behind it, I see the pigs, and I run down now and the pigs become logs, and here I am now, sitting on them, with no other times to think of.
Paragraph 3:
I scratch the scab on my knee and look up in the sky. Night is coming as I sit thinking, so I can't see the sky-beasts now, yet I can see their little eyes, bright up there in the dark. I'm cold all over, and I lie behind the log, out of the wind. I shut my eyes, so that the darkness will come to me as it has come in the world.
*Ceci n'est pas une pipe, anyone?
**I think this is what he means by "little people"
Showing posts with label page 12. Show all posts
Showing posts with label page 12. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Page 12, Paragraphs 2 - 5; Notes
Curiouser and curiouser.
***
Page 12, Paragraph 2:
The men look at one another, and now Little-Dick bends over to grab a spear. "Here's something", he says. "How'd you like this in your belly?" The other man picks up a stone, which he throws hard at me. The stone hits my leg, and the edge of it tears the skin below my knee and it starts bleeding. I make a noise and fall down; my leg hurts really bad. The man picks up another stone and says, "Go away, Shit-Ass. I don't want to smell you around here anymore". The man with the big belly lifts up his spear to throw it at me.
Paragraph 3:
Now I stand up with pain in my leg and walk awkwardly down the hill like a sick dog. Behind me, the man throws his other stone but misses me, with the stone falling quietly on the grass. I walk as quickly as I can and don't look back, and that's it - that's the whole story of my time with the settlers.
Paragraph 4:
I walk on slowly, dragging my foot behind me. When nightfall comes, I find a pear* tree. The pears are still hard, and I can only eat a little bit of them. I look at the injury on my leg and see that the blood is dried with grey dirt and shit, and that it's stopped bleeding; that's good. I lie by the tree and shut my eyes so that nothing can see me.** I think of nothing.
Paragraph 5:
Sunrise comes - time to walk. My leg's now healed enough to walk on but it still has a prickling pain in it. I walk on and on, and now around noon I come to a bunch of white wood trees around a circle of grass. Standing out from the grass is a big old stone with markings that look like worms and spiders scratched on it.*** I shut my eyes and am so scared I can't breathe.
*Sorry, but this is the best I can do with "titty-apple", although I did find this while searching the net; it seems to be the solution until you find out it only grows in the tropics. : /
**This seems to indicate an inability to grasp the concept of object permanence, which gives you a pretty good indication of where our narrator's at developmentally.
***I read this and immediately thought of that part of TARZAN OF THE APES where Burroughs talks about letters looking like "little bugs" I wonder if Moore didn't put that in here as a sort of hommage?
***
Page 12, Paragraph 2:
The men look at one another, and now Little-Dick bends over to grab a spear. "Here's something", he says. "How'd you like this in your belly?" The other man picks up a stone, which he throws hard at me. The stone hits my leg, and the edge of it tears the skin below my knee and it starts bleeding. I make a noise and fall down; my leg hurts really bad. The man picks up another stone and says, "Go away, Shit-Ass. I don't want to smell you around here anymore". The man with the big belly lifts up his spear to throw it at me.
Paragraph 3:
Now I stand up with pain in my leg and walk awkwardly down the hill like a sick dog. Behind me, the man throws his other stone but misses me, with the stone falling quietly on the grass. I walk as quickly as I can and don't look back, and that's it - that's the whole story of my time with the settlers.
Paragraph 4:
I walk on slowly, dragging my foot behind me. When nightfall comes, I find a pear* tree. The pears are still hard, and I can only eat a little bit of them. I look at the injury on my leg and see that the blood is dried with grey dirt and shit, and that it's stopped bleeding; that's good. I lie by the tree and shut my eyes so that nothing can see me.** I think of nothing.
Paragraph 5:
Sunrise comes - time to walk. My leg's now healed enough to walk on but it still has a prickling pain in it. I walk on and on, and now around noon I come to a bunch of white wood trees around a circle of grass. Standing out from the grass is a big old stone with markings that look like worms and spiders scratched on it.*** I shut my eyes and am so scared I can't breathe.
*Sorry, but this is the best I can do with "titty-apple", although I did find this while searching the net; it seems to be the solution until you find out it only grows in the tropics. : /
**This seems to indicate an inability to grasp the concept of object permanence, which gives you a pretty good indication of where our narrator's at developmentally.
***I read this and immediately thought of that part of TARZAN OF THE APES where Burroughs talks about letters looking like "little bugs" I wonder if Moore didn't put that in here as a sort of hommage?
Page 11, Paragraphs 7-9; Page 12, Paragraph 1
Back to work.
Page 11, Paragraph 7:
Through many winters now, my people say, there's been little food for us to forage, that times are hard for those of us who walk and that they're going to get harder yet. After each winter there are more settlers and fewer nomadic peoples, so that there aren't many of us now. For someone all alone like me, it's an empty belly - there's no helping it.
Paragraph 8:
Once I came upon settlers in my travels, with their pointed-top huts of hides on branches sitting high on a hill. There were less than 5 huts. I smell their fire and the meat they have cooking on it, which makes me hungry.
Paragraph 9 (ends on the top of page 12):
I walk up the hill, and a little way up I see a man on top of it, and he sees me with puke and blood on my face and shit on my legs. He says, "You look like a pig's ass. What do you want here?", and so forth. His way of speaking is strange, with many sayings I don't understand. Another man with a big belly comes to the top of the hill for a look at me. Below his belly he has a little penis, like a baby's.
Page 12, Paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):
Now I tell them that my mother is dead and that I've been cast out by my people. I say, "I just want a little something in my belly."
Page 11, Paragraph 7:
Through many winters now, my people say, there's been little food for us to forage, that times are hard for those of us who walk and that they're going to get harder yet. After each winter there are more settlers and fewer nomadic peoples, so that there aren't many of us now. For someone all alone like me, it's an empty belly - there's no helping it.
Paragraph 8:
Once I came upon settlers in my travels, with their pointed-top huts of hides on branches sitting high on a hill. There were less than 5 huts. I smell their fire and the meat they have cooking on it, which makes me hungry.
Paragraph 9 (ends on the top of page 12):
I walk up the hill, and a little way up I see a man on top of it, and he sees me with puke and blood on my face and shit on my legs. He says, "You look like a pig's ass. What do you want here?", and so forth. His way of speaking is strange, with many sayings I don't understand. Another man with a big belly comes to the top of the hill for a look at me. Below his belly he has a little penis, like a baby's.
Page 12, Paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):
Now I tell them that my mother is dead and that I've been cast out by my people. I say, "I just want a little something in my belly."
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