Should I?

by Arthur Freed

Should I reveal exactly how I feel?
Should I confess I love you?
Should I recite beneath the pale moonlight?
And swear by the stars above you?

Could I repeat the sweetest story told?
Could I entreat? Would it be too bold?
Should I reveal exactly how I feel?
Should I confess I love you?

Speed Trap Town

by Jason Isbell

She said, 'It's none of my business, but it breaks my heart'
Dropped a dozen cheap roses in my shopping cart
Made it out to the truck without breaking down
Everybody knows you in a speed trap town

It's a Thursday night, but there's a high school game
Sneak a bottle up the bleachers and forget my name
These 5A bastards run a shallow cross
It's a boy's last dream and a man's first loss

And it never did occur to me to leave 'til tonight
And there's no one left to ask if I'm alright
I'll sleep until I'm straight enough to drive, then decide
If there's anything that can't be left behind

The doctor said Daddy wouldn't make it a year
But the holidays are over, and he's still here
How long can they keep you in the ICU?
Veins through the skin like a faded tattoo

Was a tough state trooper 'til a decade back
When that girl who wasn't Mama caused his heart attack
He didn't care about us when he was walking around
Just pulling women over in a speed trap town

But it never did occur to me to leave 'til tonight
When I realized he'll never be alright
Sign my name and say my last goodbye, then decide
That there's nothing here that can't be left behind

The road got blurry when the sun came up
So I slept a couple hours in the pickup truck
Drank a cup of coffee by an Indian mound
A thousand miles away from that speed trap town

from Manhattan

by Woody Allen

Chapter one. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion.

Uh, no. Make that: He romanticized it all out of proportion. Better.

To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.

Uh... no. Let me start this over.

Chapter one. He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle-bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles.

Ah no, corny. Too corny for a man of my taste. Let me try and make it more profound.

Chapter one. He adored New York City. To him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams...

No, it's gonna be too preachy. I mean, you know, let's face it, I want to sell some books here.

Chapter one. He adored New York City, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage...

Too angry. I don't wanna be angry.

Chapter one. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.

I love this.

New York was his town and it always would be.

from Perelandra

by C.S. Lewis

from Chapter Four

[Editor's Note: I find this illustration by C.S. Lewis of God's providence and human response to be particularly insightful.

As a matter of context, for better understanding the passage, this is from the second book in Lewis' 'Space Trilogy'. Ransom has been sent from Earth to Venus (called Perelandra) for an unknown purpose. When he arrives he finds a world analogous to Eden before the Fall, complete with Adam and Eve personae (here called the King and the Lady; Maledil is their name for God). Lady is an especially curious person, eager to learn from Ransom. This passage proceeds from a discussion where Ransom refused to explain the meaning of death.]

'You could never understand, Lady,' [Ransom] replied. 'But in our world not all events are pleasing or welcome. There may be such a thing that you would cut off both your arms and your legs to prevent it happening—and yet it happens: with us.'

'But how can one wish any of those waves not to reach us which Maledil is rolling towards us?'

Against his better judgment Ransom found himself goaded into argument.

'But even you,' he said, 'when you first saw me, I know now you were expecting and hoping that I was the King. When you found I was not, your face changed. Was that event not unwelcome? Did you not wish it to be otherwise?'

'Oh,' said the Lady. She turned aside with her head bowed and her hands clasped in an intensity of thought.

[....]

'What you have made me see,' answered the Lady, 'is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before—that the very moment of the finding is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.'

Ransom interrputed. 'That is hardly the same thing as finding a stranger when you wanted your husband.'

'Oh, that is how I came to understand the whole thing. You and the King differ more than two kinds of fruit. The joy of finding him again and the joy of all the new knowledge I have had from you are more unlike than two tastes; and when the difference is as great as that, and each of the two things so great, then the first picture does stay in the mind quite a long time—many beats of the heart—after the other good has come. And this, O Piebald, is the glory and wonder you have made me see; that it is I, I myself, who turn from the good expected to the given good. Out of my own heart I do it. One can conceive a heart which did not: which clung to the good it had first thought of and turned the good which was given it into no good.'

[....]

'And have you no fear,' said Ransom, 'that it will ever be hard to turn your heart from the thing you wanted to the thing Maledil sends?'

'I see,' said the Lady presently. 'The wave you plunge into may be very swift and great. You may need all your force to swim into it. You mean, He might send me a good like that?'

'Yes—or like a wave so swift and great that all your force was too little.'

'It often happens that way in swimming,' said the Lady. 'Is not that part of the delight?'

'But are you happy without the King? Do you not want the King?'

'Want him?' she said. 'How could there be anything I did not want?'

There was something in her replies that began to repel Ransom.

'You can't want him very much if you are happy without him,' he said: and was immediately surprised at the sulkiness of his own voice.

'Why?' asked the Lady.

Airplanes

by Bobby Ray

Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky
Are like shooting stars?
I could really use a wish right now

I could use a dream or a genie or a wish
To go back to a place much simpler than this
'Cause after all the partying, the smashing, and crashing
And all the glitz and the glam and the fashion
And all the pandemonium and all the madness
There comes a time when you fade to the blackness
And when you're staring at that phone in your lap
And hoping, but the people never call you back

But that's just how the story unfolds
You get another hand soon after you fold
And when your plans unravel in the sand
What would you wish for if you had one chance?
So airplanes, airplanes, sorry I'm late
I'm on my way, so don't close that gate
If I don't make that, then I switch my flight
And I'll be right back at it by the end of the night

Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky
Are like shooting stars?
I could really use a wish right now

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Masterplan

by Noel Gallagher

Take the time to make some sense
Of what you want to say
And cast your words away upon the waves
Sail them home with Acquiesce
On a ship of hope today
And as they land upon the shore
Tell them not to fear no more
Say it loud and sing it proud today

Dance if you want to dance
Please, brother, take a chance
You know they're gonna go
Which way they wanna go
All we know is that we don't know
How it's gonna be
Please brother let it be
Life on the other hand
Won't make us understand
We're all part of the masterplan

I'm not saying right is wrong
It's up to us to make
The best of all the things that come our way
'Cause everything that's been has passed
The answer's in the looking-glass
There's four-and-twenty million doors
On life's endless corridor
Say it loud and sing it proud today