Lonesome Dove pt 2

I finished reading Lonesome Dove and am now watching the 10 hour miniseries. When I read books I manage to make real connections with, I like to write down passages that strike me in some way, so I'm going to include these passages here for you, my dear reader.

These are all from the novel Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.

In this passage, Dish is a cowboy with Gus and Call's outfit:
"In a flash, as he stood half-through the swinging doors, Dish's whole conception of woman changed; it was as if lightning had struck, burning his old notions to a crisp in one instant. Nothing was going to be as he had imagined it--maybe nothing ever would again. He started to go back out the door, so he could at least go off and adjust to his new life alone, but he had lingered a moment too long."

"Though the day was hot and bright, Dish felt cold and cloudy, so puzzled by the strange business called life that he couldn't think where to look, much less what to say. He took a drink an then another and then several, and, though life remained cloudy, the inside of the cloud began to be warm. By the middle of the second bottle, he had stopped worrying about Lorie and Jake Spoon and was sitting by the piano singing 'My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean,' while Lippy played."

"He had slept beside their own old milk cow on many a cold night, but he figured if he tired to lie down beside one of the animals they called cows in America the cow would be 50 miles away before he got to sleep."

"She had a beautiful face, a beautiful body, but also a distance in her such as he had never met in a woman. Certain mountains were that way, like the Bighorns. The air around them was so clear you could ride toward them for day without seeming to get any closer. And yet, if you kept riding, you would get to the mountains. He was not so sure he would ever get to Lorie. Even when she took him, there was a distance between them."

"They were friends, though, he and Newt. The boy was young an ha all his hopes, while Deets was older and had fewer. Newt sometimes asked so many questions that Deets had to laugh--he was like a cistern, from which questions flowed instead of water. Some Deets answered and some he didn't. He didn't tell Newt all he knew. He didn't tell him that even when life seemed easy, it kept getting harder. Deets like his work, like being part of the outfit and having his name on the sign; yet he often felt sad. His main happiness consisted of sitting with his back against the water tank at night, watching the sky and the changing moon.

He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men. Those feelings hadn't come to the boy yet. He was a good boy, as gentle as the gray oves that came to peck for gravel on the flats behind the barn."

"That possibility alone made his quandary more difficult. His wife had left for parts unknown, his deputy was wandering in parts unknown, and the man he was supposed to catch was in yet parts unknown. In fact, July felt he had reached a point in his life where virtually nothing was known. He and Joe were on a street in Fort Worth, and that was basically the sum of his knowledge."

"The sun soon melted the thine snow, and for the next week the days were hot again. Po Campo walked all day behind the wagon, followed by the pigs, who bored through the tall grass like moles--a sight that amused the cowboys, although Augustus worried that the pigs might stray off.

'We ought to let them ride in the wagon,' he suggested to Call.
'I don't see why.'
'Well, they've made history,' Augustus pointed out.
'When?' Call asked. 'I didn't notice.'
'Why, they're the first pigs to walk all the way from Texas to Montana,' Augustus said. 'That's quite a feat for a pig.'
'What will it get them?' Call inquired. 'Eaten by a bear if they ain't careful, or eaten by us if they are. They've had a long walk for nothing.'
'Yes, and the same's likely true for us,' Augustus said, irritated that his friend wasn't more appreciative of pigs."

And for your viewing please, if you've reached the end of this post, another clip of Lonesome Dove. (I apologize for the quality, but if you're willing to listen to what's being said, it is some highly useful advice.)