America Is Very Good at That
That Saturday morning, as I lay there waiting, the house was empty and had been for a while, apart from my inflato-mattress and the furniture the buyers had bought. I rather liked it. It made me feel monkish. I live in such a clutter of books and things in San Francisco. I would be pleased to live like this, here, through the winter. I would be pleased simply to live here, simply. Or not simply. No one need know I’m here. I’d keep the lights off but for a small reading lamp. I could slip out to the 24-hour A&P up by the high school in the middle of the night. I like 24-hour supermarkets at 3 a.m. I like them more than museums. America is very good at that sort of thing.
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How America Can
Here is the sort of thing you notice anew after being in India or China, the two rising powers of the day: there is still so much nature, and so much space, available for each person on American soil. Room on the streets and sidewalks, big lawns around the houses, trees to walk under, wildflowers at the edge of town—yes, despite the sprawl and overbuilding. A few days after moving from our apartment in Beijing, I awoke to find a mother deer and two fawns in the front yard of our house in Washington, barely three miles from the White House. I know that deer are a modern pest, but the contrast with blighted urban China, in which even pigeons are scarce, was difficult to ignore.
-- James Fallows, "How America Can Rise Again," The Atlantic, January/February 2010
Rigoletto
Detti e il Duca, che, in assisa di semplice ufficiale di cavalleria, entra nella
sala terrena per una porta a sinistra.
GILDA: (trasalendo)
Ah padre mio!
DUCA: (a Sparafucile)
Due cose, e tosto...
SPARAFUCILE:
Quali?
DUCA:
Una stanza e del vino...
RIGOLETTO:
Son questi i suoi costumi!
SPARAFUCILE:
Oh il bel zerbino!
(entra nell'interno)
DUCA:
La donna è mobile
qual piuma al vento,
muta d'accento e di pensiero.
Sempre un amabile
leggiadro viso,
in pianto o in riso, è menzognero.
È sempre misero
chi a lei s'affida,
chi le confida mal cauto il core!
Pur mai non sentesi
felice appieno
chi su quel seno non liba amore!
(Sparafucile rientra con una bottiglia di vino e due bicchieri che depone
sulla tavola, quindi batte col pomo della sua lunga spada due colpi al soffitto.
A quel segnale una ridente giovane, in costume di zingara, scende a salti la
scala. Il Duca corre per abbracciarla, ma ella gli sfugge. Frattanto Sparafucile,
uscito sulla via, dice a parte a Rigoletto)
SPARAFUCILE:
È là il vostr'uomo... viver dee o morire?
RIGOLETTO:
Più tardi tornerò l'opra a compire.
(Sparafucile si allontana dietro la casa lungo il fiume)