"A River Runs Through It"

Poets talk about "spots of time," but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone. I shall remember that son of a bitch forever.

If you have never seen a bear go over the mountains, you have never seen the job reduced to its essentials. Of course, deer are faster, but not going straight uphill. Not even elk have the power in their hindquarters. Deer and elk zagging and switchback and stop and pose while really catching their breath. The bear leaves the earth like a bolt of lightning retrieving itself and making its thunder backwards. 

  "Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willing and needs it badly.

     "So it is that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, 'Sorry, we are just out of that part.'"

     I told him, "You make it too tough. Help doesn't have to be anything that big."

     He asked me, "Do you think your mother helps him by buttering his roll?"

     "She might," I told him. "In fact, yes, I think she does."


  "Tell me, why is it that people who want help do better without it - at least, no worse. Actually, that's what it is, no worse. They take all the help they can get, and are just the same as they always have been."

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*Big clumsy flies bumped into my face, swarmed on my nose and wiggled in my underwear. Blundering and soft-bellied, they had been bornbefore they had brains. They had spent a year under water on legs, had crawled out on a rock, had become flies and copulated with the ninth and tenth segments of their abdomens, and then had died as the first light wind blew them into the water where the fish circled excitedly. They were a fish's dream come true - stupid, succulent, and exhausted from copulation. Still, it would be hard to know what gigantic portion of human life is spent in this same ratio of years under water on legs to one premature exhausted moment on wings. 

 "Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly."


When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say "more perfect" because she said if a thing is perfect it can't be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.

"All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible."

     "... but you can love completely without complete understanding."

     Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.
     Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

********************************************************************           These are my favorite lines in the movie, my very favorite right at the end as he is contemplating life, love, and things passed.

     Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
     I am haunted by waters.

"Still, it would be hard to know what gigantic portion of human life is spent in this same ratio of years under water on legs to one premature exhausted moment on wings". 

 

J, I am not sure I understand your comments about fish and how long we think their memory lasts......but  I got pulled into this line b/c I know that people grope around in a variety of dark rooms, and once they are out, exhausted from groping, the resovles have not built up to the challenges of living in the light, and they are devoured.

 

hmmmm, maybe he is talking about youth being wasted on the young

or, maybe he is talking about something else. 

Edited by Anomis - November 27 2007 at 12:13am