This Continent, An Open Palm

Some People Get Where They Hope To In This World. Most Of Us Don't.

It Is Clear Enough By Now To Most People That The Camera Never Lies Is A Foolish Saying. Yet It Is Doubtful Whether Most People Realize How Extraordinarily Slippery A Liar The Camera Is.

...but You Are Too Much For Them: The Weak In Courage Are Strong In Cunning; And One By One, You Have Absorbed And Have Captured And Dishonored, And Have Distilled Of Your Deliverers The Most Ruinous Of All Poisons; People Hear Beethoven In Concert Halls, Or Over A Bridge Game, Or To Relax; Cézannes Are Hung On Walls, Reproduced, In Natural Wood Frames; Van Gogh Is The Man Who Cut Off His Ear And Whose Yellows Became Recently Popular In Window Decoration.

You've Got To Bear It In Mind That Nobody That Ever Lived Is Specially Privileged; The Axe Can Fall At Any Moment, On Any Neck, Without Any Warning Or Any Regard For Justice. You've Got To Keep Your Mind Off Pitying Your Own Rotten Luck And Setting Up Any Kind Of A Howl About It. You've Got To Remember That Things As Bad As This And A Hell Of A Lot Worse Have Happened To Millions Of People Before And That They've Come Through It And That You Will Too.

By Some Chance, Here They Are, All On This Earth; And Who Shall Ever Tell The Sorrow Of Being On This Earth, Lying, On Quilts, On The Grass In A Summer Evening, Among The Sounds Of The Night. May God Bless My People, My Uncle, My Aunt, My Mother, My Good Father, Oh, Remember Them Kindly In Their Time Of Trouble; And In The Hour Of Their Taking Away.