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The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me. The fullness of what I see shatters. This second of shattering is an augenblick, a particular configuration, a slant of light shot in the open eye. Goethe’s Faust risks it all if she should cry to the moment, the Augenblick, “Verweile doch!” “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? But the augenblick isn’t going to verweile. You were lucky to get it in the first place.

Explanation and Analysis:

While traveling across the state one day by car, Dillard has a moment of revelation, a moment in which she finds herself completely focused on and immersed in the present moment while she’s petting a puppy and watching the shadows of clouds fly...

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Original

Romeo

(aside) She speaks.
O, speak again, bright angel! For thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white, upturnèd, wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

Juliet

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art though Romeo?
Deny they father and refuse they name.
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Modern

Romeo

(to himself) She speaks. Speak again, bright angel! For tonight you are as glorious, there up above me, as a winged messenger of heaven who makes mortals fall onto their backs to gaze up with awestruck eyes as he strides across the lazy clouds and sails through the air.

Juliet

O Romeo, Romeo! Why must you be Romeo? Deny your father and give up your name. Or, if you won’t change your name, just swear your love to me and I’ll give up being a Capulet.

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