Ruth Bosch 2011

There is a wonderful restaurant in western Massachusetts, The Wagon Wheel. I think there's a joke there somewhere, something about biting the wheel, but I never get it quite right. Anyway, this year's quotation was left there, in one of their fascinatingly decorated bathrooms. The walls are covered with black and white family photos, nearly all in black frames. One of my favorites is of two older men, dressed like bankers, lying down on the floor and putting together the tracks of a toy train set. Another favorite is this:

Under it I put a quotation from Pilgermann. I didn't have any yellow paper but made a color quotation for a heading.

Certainly we are the slaves of that which looks out through our eyes, and it is nothing simple, that outlooker; does it want to live, does it want to die? As with my arms red up to the elbows I sew up the wounded I crave to be where the shouting is, the cries and groans, the clash of weapons. I am afraid to be there but what looks out through my eyes wants to put me there, it doesn't want to be left out of anything, it wants to be everywhere at once, it wants to be included in all matters of life and death, wants to be at the same time here in the shuddering light of the torches and there across the river in the obscurity of battle and the night.