Well, they git caught at some kind a radical meetin’ but they ain’t radicals. They jes’ happen to be there.
An’ they don’t each one wanta marry fur money, ya see.
So the sons-of-bitches start lyin’ to each other right off.
Well, in the pitcher it was like they was doin’ good.
They’re nice to people, you see.
I was to a show oncet that was me, an’ more’n me; an’ my life, an’ more’n my life, so ever’thing was bigger.
Well, I git enough sorrow.
I like to git away from it.
Sure—if you can believe it.
So they got married, an’ then they foun’ out, an’ all them people that’s treated ’em mean.
They was a fella had been uppity, an’ he nearly fainted when this fella come in with a plug hat on. Jes’ nearly fainted.
An’ they was a newsreel with them German soldiers kickin’ up their feet—funny as hell.
And always, if he had a little money, a man could get drunk.
The hard edges gone, and the warmth.
Then there was no loneliness, for a man could people his brain with friends, and he could find his enemies and destroy them.
Sitting in a ditch, the earth grew soft under him.
Failures dulled and the future was no threat.
And hunger did not skulk about, but the world was soft and easy, and a man could reach the place he started for.
The stars came down wonderfully close and the sky was soft.
Death was a friend, and sleep was death’s brother.
The old times came back—a girl with pretty feet, who danced one time at home—a horse—a long time ago. A horse and a saddle.
And the leather was carved.
When was that?
Ought to find a girl to talk to.
That’s nice.
Might lay with her, too.
But warm here.
And the stars down so close, and sadness and pleasure so close together, really the same thing.
Like to stay drunk all the time.
Who says it’s bad? Who dares to say it’s bad?
Preachers—but they got their own kinda drunkenness.
Thin, barren women, but they’re too miserable to know.
Reformers—but they don’t bite deep enough into living to know.
No—the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds.
And everything’s holy—everything, even me.
A harmonica is easy to carry.
Take it out of your hip pocket, knock it against your palm to shake out the dirt and pocket fuzz and bits of tobacco. Now it’s ready.
You can do anything with a harmonica: thin reedy single tone, or chords, or melody with rhythm chords.
You can mold the music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like bagpipes, making it full and round like an organ, making it as sharp and bitter as the reed pipes of the hills.
And you can play and put it back in your pocket.
It is always with you, always in your pocket.
And as you play, you learn new tricks, new ways to mold the tone with your hands, to pinch the tone with your lips, and no one teaches you.
You feel around—sometimes alone in the shade at noon, sometimes in the tent door after supper when the women are washing up.
Your foot taps gently on the ground.
Your eyebrows rise and fall in rhythm.
And if you lose it or break it, why, it’s no great loss.
You can buy another for a quarter.
A guitar is more precious.
Must learn this thing.
Fingers of the left hand must have callus caps.