Weird and interesting to see some of my more starkly pessimistic passages culled and stacked up like that. Thank you.
Here's a nicely pessimistic passage that I came across just a week ago, rather shocklingly (at least for me), in a little self-published memoir about the way World War II fundamentally transformed my tiny rural Ozarks hometown of Cassville, Missouri. It's from the chapter relating the author's boyhood experience of the town in 1944 (narrated in the present tense, like the rest of the book):
Another town character, Guy Latham, the night watchman, is lean, tall and gangling. He stoops as if he expects to bash his head on a low ceiling. His face is deeply creased, and he has dark bags under his eyes, suggesting lack of sleep. He wears cotton twill pants and a flannel shirt. Hiding his leather neck is a blue bandanna and hiding his sweat-soaked hair is a soiled ten-gallon hat that had once been white. A hand-rolled cigarette dangles from his nicotine-stained lips. A pouch of Bull Durham tobacco protrudes from his shirt pocket. Around his waist is a heavy gun belt with bullets in every slot, and hanging from the belt is a large flashlight and a long-barreled pistol in a battered holster. Children shy away from him, and even adults are uncomfortable in his presence.
Paid by businessmen to protect their property during the nighttime hours, Guy takes his job seriously. He shows up as stores are closing and roams the streets and alleys checking doors and windows. He is so trustworthy, he is given keys to the stores he patrols. When he encounters someone while making his rounds he says "Hullo, hullo" in a deep, low voice and moves on. Because of his size, his demeanor, and his long-barreled pistol, Guy excels at his job. There are few nighttime break-ins in Cassville's business district.
Guy's favorite off-duty hangout is Oak Hill Cemetery. He says he enjoys its peace and tranquility. Daring youths who follow him up there swear that he talks to people under the tombstones. When they think they hear answering voices, they beat a hasty retreat.
Guy tells people he cries when a baby is born and laughs when someone dies. Life, he says, is a burden which only death can remove.
-- Big War, Small Town: How World War II Changed Cassville: A Personal Account (2003), by Howard Ray Rowland
My emotional response to this character portrait is surely enhanced by the fact that my maternal grandparents, my great aunt and uncle, my father, and many other family members and people I knew from my earliest childhood are buried in that same cemetery.
