"No, I said I am getting well versed in making rash decisions. Not rational."
A snippet of hurried conversation with a dear friend and neighbor when responding to why the swollen growth on my knee that was inhibiting my movement and hinging of my leg wasn't getting any of my attention.
****
Steinbeck resided in New York City the last decades of his life with regular breaks of romantic country living in Sag Harbor.
I can only think he was alluding to this grand city, although unspoken, when he wrote this passage I completely embody and empathize.
The context is the wide open silence of a country road in our beautiful nation:
"There in the quiet with the wind flicking tree's branches and distorting the water's mirror, I...could finally come to think about what I had seen and try to arrange some pattern of thought to accommodate the teeming crows of my seeing and hearing...You are so crushed with the numbers, once the might of greatness, that you go away distressed, with a feeling of constipation. And then when you are alone and remembering, the canvases sort themselves out, some are eliminated by your taste of your limitations, but others stand up clear and clean. Then you can go back to look at one thing untroubled by the shouts of the multitude."
John Steinbeck
My Travels With Charley
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