Home > Topic > the lumps
1 " From the will of a freedom-fighter, Farzad Kamangar:" Is it possible to be a teacher and not show the path to the sea to the little fish of the country? Is it possible to carry the heavy burden of being a teacher and be responsible for spreading the seeds of knowledge and still be silent? Is it possible to see the lumps in the throats of the students and witness their thin and malnourished faces and keep quiet? … I cannot imagine witnessing the pain and poverty of the people of this land and fail to give our hearts to the river and the sea, to the roar and the flood. "
2 " Sometimes a strikeout means that the slugger’s girlfriend just ran off with the UPS driver. Sometimes a muffed ground ball means that the shortstop’s baby daughter has a pain in her head that won’t go away. And handicapping is for amateur golfers, not ballplayers. Pitchers don’t ease off on the cleanup hitter because of the lumps just discovered in his wife’s breast. Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake. Perhaps they are. I cherish a theory I once heard propounded by G.Q. Durham that professional baseball is inherently antiwar. The most overlooked cause of war, his theory runs, is that it’s so damned interesting. It takes hard effort, skill, love and a little luck to make times of peace consistently interesting. About all it takes to make war interesting is a life. The appeal of trying to kill others without being killed yourself, according to Gale, is that it brings suspense, terror, honor, disgrace, rage, tragedy, treachery and occasionally even heroism within range of guys who, in times of peace, might lead lives of unmitigated blandness. But baseball, he says, is one activity that is able to generate suspense and excitement on a national scale, just like war. And baseball can only be played in peace. Hence G.Q.’s thesis that pro ball-players—little as some of them may want to hear it—are basically just a bunch of unusually well-coordinated guys working hard and artfully to prevent wars, by making peace more interesting. "
― David James Duncan
3 " The memories were strange clingy things like burrs knotted in his hair. He could choose to let them be, he only felt them when he pulled them, and he could pretend they weren't there like positioning his head on a pillow so as not to notice the lumps against his scalp. But amidst the commotion of the parade—a strange cocoon—he recalled things sharply. He had a part in Dam leaving the palace, and ever since that point, his best friend was headed down a dangerous path. "
― Andrew J. Peters , The Seventh Pleiade
4 " It is the lumps and trialsThat tell us whether we shall be knownAnd whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star. "
― John Ashbery , Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror