over a sea — nothing that lives is more
strong and sure than ourselves. There is
nothing in life superior to ourselves. We
are ourselves superior to nothing in life.
I have a passionate hunger to take a
bite out of the now — the present. The
now is a country to discover which, to be
the pioneer in which I would give all
thought, all memories, all hopes. My
ship has but skirted the shores of that
country. What is growing there? I would
take a bite out of the present. I would
consume it quite. I would live my life in
the present, in the now only.
For that purpose I would be ageless,
impotent, potent, swift, a sluggish slow
crawling worm, a singing rhythmical
thing beating my wings, carried along for
an instant in the flight of time. I would
myself create a lull in the storm that is
myself. I am a stream gone dry. Fill me
with living waters. There is something
stagnant in me. As I write, breathe,
move back and forth in this room life is
passing from me. Do you not see how I
pass from one present into another unknowing.
I would leave nothing unknown.
To live in the presence of the
unknown is death to me.
Memories constantly create the disease of misunderstanding.
It is the disease that shall destroy you and me.
Only in the present, the now, is there
awareness. All memories are disease.
They corrupt, pervert life. They are
clouds descended upon the clear sky.
They shut out the sun. By their presence
we are made blind.
I would testify always out of the
present and have come to realize that my
ambition is a vain thing — an impossible dream.
How often have I seen your face, a
thousand faces passing in the street, in a
street of the city of my mind. A face
came toward me. It was unconscious of
me. I was conscious of it and at the same
time unconscious. The face spoke to me
in the language of the instant, the now,
the present. Golden words fell from lips
that were ripe with life. The words were
strong arms that lifted me up. What unspoken words I have heard.
I tell you there is a language of which
it may be said that every word in it
comprehends more than all I have ever
written, thought, dreamed. There is a
country in which suns stand still. Hope is
not dead. There is something living in you, in me.
The words of those I have seen passing
through the land of the now, the present,
created as they went. They were pregnant
words throwing off children as the
sun throws off light.
In my own person, and later I began
to think, to remember. The glorious and
living present became corrupt. It passed
from me.
It is not true that God created the
world in six days, or rather perhaps he
did — a fact that would account for the
corruption of the world. Worlds should
be created as gestures of gods.
As I cannot live in the present, stay in
it, it is impossible I should approach you.
I am impotent. I cannot swim, fly,
propel myself forward swiftly enough.
Time has departed from me. What I
was I shall never be again. What I may
be today, tomorrow, cannot matter to
you. You cannot grasp me now. I cannot
lay hold of the fact of you.
We were aware but we were but half
aware. The bugle blew but we did not
arise from our sleep. Even as I write the
now, the present is passing from me. In a
moment I shall begin to think, to remember.
What is corrupt, corroding shall
enter into me. Although I have died
many times I shall in a moment and as
you stand looking repeat over again the
death scene I constantly strive to escape.
THE MAN IN THE BROWN COAT
NAPOLEON went down into a battle riding on a horse.
Alexander went down into a battle riding on a horse.
General Grant got off a horse and walked into a wood.
General Hindenburg stood on a hill. The
moon came up out of a clump of bushes.
I am writing a history of the things
men do. I have written three such histories and I am but a young man.
Already I have written three hundred, four
hundred thousand words.
My wife is somewhere in this house
where for hours I have been sitting and
writing. She is a tall woman with black
hair turning a little grey. Listen, she is
going softly up a flight of stairs. All day
she goes softly doing the housework in
our house.
I came here to this town from another
town in the state of Iowa. My father was
a house-painter. I worked my way
through college and became a historian.
We own this house in which I sit. This is
my room in which I work. Already I have
written three histories of peoples. I have
told how states were formed and battles
fought. You may see my books standing
straight up on the shelves of the libraries.
They stand up like sentries.
I am tall like my wife and my shoulders are a little stooped.
Although I write boldly I am a shy man. I like being in
this room alone at work with the door
locked. There are many books here.
Nations march back and forth in the
books. It is quiet here but in the books a
great thundering goes on.
Napoleon rides down a hill and into a battle.
General Grant walks in a wood.
Alexander rides down a hill and into a
battle. —
My wife has a serious, almost stern
look. In the afternoon she leaves our
house and goes for a walk. Sometimes
she goes to stores, sometimes to visit a
neighbor. There is a yellow house opposite our house.
My wife goes out a side
door and passes along our street between
our house and the yellow house.
The window before my desk makes a
little framed place like a picture. The
yellow house across the street makes a
solid background of yellow.
The side door of my house bangs.
There is a moment of waiting. My wife’s
face floats across the yellow background
of the picture.
General Pershing rode down a hill and
into a battle.
Alexander rode down a hill and into a battle.
Little things are growing big in my
mind. The window before my desk makes
a little framed place like a picture. Every
day I wait staring. I wait with an odd
sensation of something impending. My
hand trembles. The face that floats
through the picture does something I do
not understand. The face floats, then it
stops. It goes from the right hand side to
The face comes into my mind and goes
out. The face floats in my mind. The pen
has fallen from my fingers. The house is
silent. The eyes of the floating face are
turned away from me.
My wife is a girl who came here from
Ohio. We have a servant but she sweeps
the floors and sometimes makes the bed
in which we sleep together.
We sit together in the evening but I do not know
her. I cannot shake myself out of myself.
I wear a brown coat and I cannot
come out of my coat. I cannot come out
of myself. My wife is very silent and
speaks softly but she cannot come out of herself.
My wife has gone out of the house.
She does not know that I know every
little thought of her life. I know about
her when she was a child and walked in
the streets of an Ohio town. I have heard
the voices of her mind. I have heard the
little voices. I heard the voices crying
when she was overtaken with passion and
crawled into my arms. I heard the voices
when her lips said other words to me as
we sat together on the first evening after
we were married and moved into this house.
It would be strange if I could sit here
as I am doing now while my own face
floated across the picture made by the
yellow house and the window.
It would be strange and beautiful if I
could meet my wife, come into her
presence.
The woman whose face floated across
my picture just now knows nothing of
me. I know nothing of her. She has gone
off, along a street. The voices of her
mind are talking. I am here in this room
as alone as any man God ever made.
It would be strange and beautiful if I
could float my face across a picture. If
my floating face could come into her
presence, if it could come into the
presence of any man or any woman that
would be a strange and beautiful thing
to have happen.
* * *
Napoleon went down into a battle riding
on a horse.
General Grant went into a wood.
Alexander went down into a battle riding
on a horse. —
* * *
Some day I shall make a testament unto
myself. —
* * *
I’ll tell you sometimes the whole life
of this world floats in a human face in
my mind. The unconscious face of the
world stops and stands still before me.
Why do I not say a word out of
myself to the others? Why in all our life
together have I never been able to break
through the wall to my wife? Already I
have written three hundred, four hundred thousand words.
Are there no words
for love? Some day I shall make a testament unto myself.
Previously printed in “The Triumph of the Egg”.
ONE PUZZLED CONCERNING HIMSELF
I HAD BEEN to the flesh pots all
night — standing beside them, walking back and forth in the moonlight. I
had gorged myself. My body was distended.
I walked home to the city at dawn.
The moonlight was gone.
The streets were empty.
The voice of a drunken man shouted
from an alleyway.
I was smug brother to fat men.
I was tired but fattened.
I had been at the flesh pots.
All night the moonlight fell down like
rain on the roofs but I stayed at the pots,
gorging myself.
In the midst of the night as I walked,
feeling myself full and complete, a child
cried and its little voice, filled with
strangeness in the quiet place, ran under
the low black trees.
The voice found no empty place in me.
There was no vacant place where it could
echo and reecho.
I was full and complete.
I had been gorging myself at the flesh pots.
THE DREAMER
THE FANCY comes to me that
thoughts like layers of smoke are
lying along the street through which I
have been walking. There are always
banks of smoke hanging in the streets of
my city. There is a sensual gratification
to me in the notion that the crowds of
men and women who have just passed
me and who have gone before me have
also lost themselves in the thoughts I
have been lost in. By indirection I have
been making love to all the men and
women of a city.
I am one who has no yesterdays and
gropes dreamily toward a tomorrow. I
am like you. You are not at all the thing
you have so foolishly imagined yourself
to be. I am nothing. I believe nothing.
I would like to walk with you. If possible
I would like to imagine you beautiful
while you are in my presence.
By indirection I wish to caress you, to touch
with soft fingers the lids of your eyes, to
lie like a gem in the hollow of your hand.
For the moment that is the height of my desire.
Many people have walked before me
in the street, having as I have declared
had a sort of intercourse with me. Before
me, as I walked, in the forefront of my
fancy, went a trembling old man. Ahead
of him was a glorious woman, full breasted,
strong at the shoulders. The wind blew
her skirts and I saw that her legs were
shapely and strong. She did not know
that I knew what she was thinking about.
Before the old man and the strong
beautiful woman went many others in
the canyon of the street. They walked
like myself under the smoke pall of the
city and like myself they walked in and
out of the layers of thought. They were
all like myself fanciful folk. They were
making — each of them — designs in the
darkness. In the dark street they felt
for the threads of life with the fingers of
their hands.
How very many people going in and
out of the thoughts. I fancied that I
found a blank, a vacant place. Some
brash impertinence out of my conscious
life made me want to attempt to fill the blank.
“I will put in this blank place a thought,
a thought of my own,” I said. It will be
passed through by men, women and children.
I crept into a doorway and watched,
hoping childishly that the whole rhythm
of the universe would be changed.
Nothing happened of course, I suspect
because my act was more than half conscious.
My thought had no strength of
its own. The wind blew it away.
The streets of the city are roaring
whirling places. Shrill human cries run
like brightly colored threads through the
thoughts of every man and woman who
walks abroad. It is very foolish to try to
be definite as
I was as I attempted to lay
down the thought. Nothing is to be
achieved by being smart and definite,
and to be vague — they keep telling me —
is to be insane, a little unbalanced.
In a plow factory, in the suburbs of the
city, there are great tanks in the floor.
The tanks are kept filled with many
colored liquids. By machinery plows are
lifted from the factory floor and swung
above the tanks. They are dipped and
become instantly and completely black,
red, brown, purple, blue, grey, pink.
Can a plow be pink? I have the trick
of thinking too rapidly in color. I cannot
remember the color of the eyes of my
sister. The color of the cheeks of my
mistress I cannot remember.
An endless clanking goes on in my
head. It is the machinery of the life in
which I hang suspended. I and all the
men and women in the streets are at this
moment being dipped anew in the life of
the city. There are no yesterdays for any
of us. We hang by a hook in the present.
Whatever lies behind this second of
conscious time is a lie and I have set myself
to lie to the limit. By my lying and by
that road only will I succeed in
expressing something of the truth of the life into
which I also have been flung.
This is evidently true. Plows may not
be pink but the prevailing color of the
flesh of people is pink. We have all been
dipped in a dawn.
Had I not been betrayed by my egotism into
trying to fill the blank space in
the thought layers in the street my whole
life might have been different. But for
my act I might have found in the fane;
that had come to me the rhythm of m;
age and got fame like a great man.
I am instead a man of infinite little
ness, a maker of words, an eater of food
a weaver of the cast-off clothing of sheep
The gratification to me is that I am so
much like you. That is why I understand
and love you. I will not however attempt
to become your lover.
There is destruction in that and we are a long way from
being fit to destroy each other.
If however we find as we go along that
your insanity strikes the same chord as my own
something lovely may happen.
A VAGRANT
I AM BECOME a brightly colored insect.
I am a boy lying by a river on a summer day.
At my back is an orchard.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 325