Goldberg Street Read Free Page B

you must, as there is the one ticket, you must present it together.
    M.C.: . . . at the . . .
    Assistant: . . . at . . .
    M.C.: . . . at the Gate.
    Assistant: At the gate. Yes.
    M.C.: Now: We:
    Assistant: One more.
    M.C.: I'm sorry.
    Assistant: We've been given an opportunity to buy . . . you
    saw the list on the board . . . many items of surplus from Bartell.
    He's giving us twenty percent off—the list price is on the board. You have ‘til the first, and I urge you, if you've looked at the list, take advantage of this, it's a once-in-a-lifetime offer.
    From the floor.
    Questioner II : What's on the list?
    Assistant: The whole “K” series.
    Questioner II : And the “102"?
    Assistant: You'll have to check, but I believe it is. ( To M.C.:) Alright.
    M.C. : Did you . . . ?
    Assistant: Oh . ( Pause .) ( Checks papers .)
    The family of John Murray . . . many of you knew John. John died in South America with the Green Division last month . ( Pause. )
    Katy has asked that we, to those who knew him—we have a list of his personal effects . . . ( He refers to list. ) His battle ribbons, a . . . his Zippo lighter with a crest of the One Hundred Ninth . . . .His Browning Hi-Power . . . which I believe is the one which he carried in Africa.
    ( Pause. )
    Many of you who knew him . . . ( Pause. ) Who . . . ( Pause. ) Well. The list is on the board, the items are for sale. The proceeds go to his family. Thank you. ( He sits. )
    M.C. : To you all; thank you all. For making this the success it has been.
    Let us say, as we always say:
    Good Luck, Good Weather,
    Bright at Dawn.
    We step where those have stepped before.
    A Happy Heart.
    Strong shoulders to the wheel.
    What is the password?
    All: Answer to the Call.
    M.C.: What is the Call?
    All: Willing to serve.
    M.C. ( Arranging his papers ): Until we meet again.

The Spanish Prisoner

     

    One
    A: I have never met a beach bum who is interesting.
    Their life is devoted to rest.
    B: Nothing wrong with rest.
    A: No. There is nothing wrong with rest. And there is nothing wrong with French pâté. I do not like it. There is a time in one's life one learns to say this: balance, as a principle of nature, is attractive and we see it is essential and we see it is a primal force, that all things tend toward rest. As I get older I see also for those who cannot eschew the world another force is personality —personality, which is to say not, not those quirks, those random . . . shiftings caused by tension—not those extraneous . . . those dissipations of our energy, our silver cig, our cigarette cases, our our our our inabilities our ( Pause .) Our . . . our . . . there is a point where we cannot confront our longings—our desire turns inward, and we then begin, we, to dissimulate. Our poses with the smoke, a silken dressing gown, the smoke rising, as in a photo in the nineteen . . . there are other things; we say “genetic,” learned, I don't know . . . sages said culture is not, it is not biologically inheritable. I always thought that that was trash. I did not find it true. Today they say: perhaps it is, and a whole area . . . the whole of, say, a certain culture, or or, culture, or . . . or . . . anthropology . . . all our life we were taught to escape the teachings of our senses and accept a . . . to accept a . . . unimpassioned view of the world. ( Pause .) In which we live so short a time . . . and called this science. And we raised it. On an altar, and we died from it, while the world . . . ( Pause. ) And I was saying there is something else which I call “personality” which is the, if we say we are put here to, as bees in a hive, to build a, to cooperate . . . and if we say nature has not deserted us, and if we use our senses and look at the world, of which we are a part, and whose laws we are subject to, then we see this: that there is order; that we are a part of it—(how little and in spite of our . . .
    B: . . . our inabilities . . .
    A: . . . as little as we can discern it