#thewaythingswere

[niyw]

[ajjunop]

Frustrated With the Universe: Part 2. #thewaythingswere (at Kelowna, British Columbia)

[taracraig]

Everyone is so complicated. I just wish we could pass judgment like we used to.

bnormann

[sansmiracle]

Great Gatsby, The, p. 130

     They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.

     "He isn't causing a row," Daisy looked desperately from one to the other. "You're causing a row. Please have a little self-control."

     "Self-control!" repeated Tom incredulously. "I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the idea you can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white."

     Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.

[sansmiracle]

There & Then, p. 152 (Immortal Days)

     This is the country where Oscar Wilde once toured, standing on the opera house stages in a velvet suit and reading The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini to the miners. They were more impressed by his ability to drink them under the table. They wanted him to come back next year and bring Cellini with him. He couldn't, Wilde explained, Cellini was dead.

     "Who shot him?" they wanted to know.

[sansmiracle]

There & Then, p. 143 (Europe's Longest Run)

     Klosters has changed, of course. It's no longer the unspoiled village, two hours from Zurich and buried in snow, that Irwin Shaw found when he first drove down from Paris one winter in the 1950s. That paradise with its farmers, open fields and jewel of a hotel has almost disappeared. Its perfection doomed it. The crowds arrived. Buildings sprang up. But the skiing is still excellent, some of the best in Switzerland; the small hotel has lost none of its charm; there is at least one restaurant that deserves a couple of stars and from the highest summit you can still ski a long, beautiful run, the longest in Europe.

[sansmiracle]

There & Then, p. 138 (Classic Tyrol)

     It would be perfect if it were not for the crowds but except in cross-country skiing, these you find everywhere now and with them the cars that choke all civilization. The days of meeting woodcutters in mountain towns and staying at undiscovered hotels for the winter are over; the disillusioned, less prosperous Europe of between the wars will not come back. Filled with people as it is, the Tyrol still has three great virtues: It is beautiful, friendly, and cheap. Rooms, meals, lift tickets, discothèques all cost about half of what they are in the States.

[sansmiracle]

There & Then, p. 131 (The Skiing Life)

     And so it seems—the years cannot touch you, the disasters roll past. Jack Nicholson reigns in the Jerome Bar wearing a baseball cap and an uncynical smile. He is king of the place and even the town, a new king, everyone around eager to be touched by his existence, young men in cowboy hats, doe-eyed girls. A page had been turned; new people are coming, the terrifying young, splendid in their clothes, men in their twenties with their hair gathered tight in back, girls like addicts. I think back to the casual days. On a bulletin board outside a place called the Mineshaft I once saw a piece of paper pinned among the FOR SALES that said, WANTED, RIDE TO THE EAST, TWO GIRLS, WILL TRADE ASS FOR GAS.