Why

Ask yourself the questions
Listen to your answers

"And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable, older than men or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made himself. One needed either wisdom or tree-bark insensitivity to confront such a fearsome freedom. Realizing now that I lacked both, I let myself long for company. Unashamed, I let my heart ache for someone more substantial than my shadow, someone less hidden than the Queen, someone willing to share jokes and junk food."



"So, Mr. Soul or Mr. Essence, wherever you are: I may not be much of a god but I must be a hell of a soul-pole! And whatever the metaphysical version of fishing is, I know you couldn't do it without me! And even though I'm kind of a dumb rod blank next to you and owe you everything I've got, you have more fun with me than you had without me!"



"But before I reached the door I heard whistling. I stopped to listen: it was a slow, melnocholic air, simple, repetitive, haunting. Bill Bob was the whistler. I snuck up to listen. There was something odd in his song: after a while I realized this was the first time I had heard him in a minor key. It made him seem old; it made me feel sad. And it made me feel good. Because sometimes happy songs will make sad people miserable, because they feel guilty that they aren't happy, on top of the sadness. But a sad song talks to the part that hurts, says Yeah I know, Yeah it's bad, Yeah it hurts: but I'm with you. I feel it too."



"But the sun soon vanished. A cold gust and a shadow passed over me. And I was suddenly afraid, suddenly aware that I stood outside an open door. Back through the door was everything familiar to me - this creek, my parent's house, the self-conjured fisherman's world I'd grown up in. But here before me were the swirling greens and grays of a wide, unresting river, and beyond the river a wide and ancient and unknown world that I must now enter. The time had come to close the door..."

(all quoted excerpts are from "The River Why" by David James Duncan, see follow up post)