Thursday, July 1, 2010

Maud tells the truth - the song and dance of duty

Duke analyzes life from behind the fence - "A Southern Green Gables" - New Bern, NC

"And no one would realize the bone-weariness she suffered as she did what duty demanded.  One part of her enjoyed it;  one part resented its intrusions.  She would write: "Sometimes I get so sick of them (mission bands, missionary auxiliaries, ladies' aids, Women's Institutes, Sunday School teachers' meetings, etc., etc., etc.) that I could hang myself on the handiest gooseberry bush rather than go to another.  And yet--it's odd--it's always in prospect only that I hate them.  When I go to them I find myself really quite enjoying them.  I like 'making things go,' having, so I have been told, a 'gift' that way.  It is really only because of the inroads they make on my time that I rise up and howl occasionally."  Yet she could write, "I have lost the art of living entirely...It isn't right.  We weren't meant to live like that."  Separately, she could have enjoyed any of her current activities.  All together, crammed into one life, they were too much." 

The Wheel of Things, A Biography of LM Montgomery, Mollie Gillen, p. 129   
______________________________________
"I've got an idea that a lot of work in this world gets done by lazy people.  That's the reason they work--because thy're so lazy...You work because you have to drive yourself to such a fury to begin. It's so hard to get started that once you do you're afraid of slipping back.  You'd rather do anything than go through all that agony again...Then people say you're a glutton for work, but it isn't so.   It's laziness--just plain, damned, simple laziness, that's all."

Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

No comments: