#333 Taped to the Sky- Luis Alberto Urrea

#333 Taped to the Sky- Luis Alberto Urrea

Hubbard is in a bad way. His wife, the woman he bought a car and an education for, the woman he just helped get through an AA program, left with her sponsor. He decided to take the car back and drive his troubles away.

South to Louisiana, West to Texas, North to Colorado, etc…“This whole chunk of the map was written in poems and liquor bottle labels.”

His grief subsided with each state, each dumb roadside attraction, each violence run-in with the local drunks. As the sky got bigger, his head got clearer:

“There were patterns moving across the sky, high, where small scallops of cloud shimmered like mother-of-pearl. He felt a part of the great becoming, the revelation of the West.”

Sometimes when you feel abandoned, maybe you’ve really been set free. Sometimes, you still need to be taught a lesson.

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total= 31

#313 The Marchers- Henry Dumas

#313 The Marchers- Henry Dumas

As always, Dumas delivers a powerful piece, this one a parable about power, protest, and freedom. As marchers gather, and speakers speak, a prisoner is roused from servitude, and darkness and despair.

“In the dome the silence was stirred by the sound of legions of feet marching. The rumble sifted through the years. The prisoner heard…and waited.”

“Outside, the cheers grew louder. The dome trembled. Specks of dust leaped up from centuries of rest and wandered like souls in limbo. Suddenly a passion seized the prisoner.”

“From the ground he came up slowly, as if he were a lost seed in a sunless cave, a seed that had sprouted into a pale limp stalk trying to suck a bit of precious sunlight into its impoverished leaves.”

“Today was a great day. Freedom had come to them…at least for a while…the marching of their feet was the song of their freedom.”

But the story comes with a warning, that all freedom doesn’t last as long as its only in a march. Shackles aren’t actually broken and centuries of oppression aren’t wiped away because of one day of exuberance. As hope fades, the prisoner falls back into darkness.

Rating: 9-9-10-8 Total= 36

#154 The Ring- Isak Dinesen

#154 The Ring- Isak Dinesen

Lise and Sigismund are newlyweds, married juts a week ago. He is a sheep farmer and takes Lise out around his farm to show her the sheep. They seem happy and content.

“The landscape around her was still, as if full of promise, and it was hers. Even the swallows cruising in the air was hers, for they belonged to him, and he was hers.”

When it is discovered that there is a sheep thief about, Lise is ordered by her new husband to follow the path back home. She obeys, she says she likes to obey (I can’t tell how much of her thoughts are ironic).

She plans a little game of hiding for her husband as she walks back and walks quietly to a secluded spot where she runs into an unkempt, knife-wielding man. They have several unspoken meaningful moments. She offers him, her ring, he kicks it away, then leaves. Something has changed inside of Lise.

“The movement was definitive and unconditional. In this one motion, he did what she had begged him to do: he vanished and was gone. She was free.”

She doesn’t retrieve the ring and pretends not to know where it fell off. Perhaps the thief has stolen one more sheep.

“With this lost ring she had wedded herself to something. To what? To poverty, persecution, total loneliness. To the sorrows and sinfulness of this earth.”

Notable Passage: “Their distant paradise had descended to earth and had proved, surprisingly, to be filled with the things of everyday life.”

Rating: 7-6-7-7 Total= 27