Written With a Southern Accent

Natchez

 

“Einstein said the arrow of time flies in only one direction. Faulkner, being from Mississippi, understood the matter differently. He said the past is never dead; it’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose provenance dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

And who among us, offered the chance, would not relive the day or hour in which we first knew love, or ecstasy, or made a choice that forever altered our future, negating a life we might have had? Such chances are rarely granted. Memory and grief prove Faulkner right enough, but Einstein knew the finality of action. If I cannot change what I had for lunch yesterday, I certainly cannot unmake a marriage, erase the betrayal of a friend, or board a ship that left port twenty years ago.”
Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

 

 

 

 

 Natchez, MS photo is licensed under CC By 4.0 — linked to dallas.todaysmama.com

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About Deborah Fagan Carpenter

The creative and professional life of Deborah Fagan Carpenter has taken many directions: visual merchandiser, decorator, potter, sculptor, modern expressionist painter, photographer, and freelance feature writer. As Contributing Editor at PorchScene, her contributions are fueled by her love of all things beautiful, interesting, edible, and Southern.
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3 Responses to Written With a Southern Accent

  1. Susan Keatley says:

    Deborah, I really enjoyed this piece. So true and to Jimmy’s comment…..AMEN

  2. jimmy crosthwait says:

    we’re all “doing time”… here on “the rock”… each of us serving his or her life sentence… without the possibility of parole. try to make good use of the time. try to love one another… it’s the only thing that makes prison life bearable.

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