"The man with the pinto pony had come through the neighborhood selling rides for a quarter, or as he said, 'two bits,' and it was that 'two bits' even more than the pony that led the children to believe he was a real cowboy and therefore heroic. He was a trainer of falcons, scornful of hunting dogs."
This excerpt is a memory of the time a vendor came through offering pony rides. All the little girls were entranced with his speech and dress and became convinced that he was a legitimate cowboy from the old days. While they were wrong, the girls had fun with their contrived story, more fun than they would have from learning the man's true identity.
"What one passes in the Plymouth. It is the wind slamming the doors. All that is nearly incommunicable to my friends. Velocity and throat verisimilitude. Were we seeing a pattern or merely an appearance of small white sailboats on the bay, floating at such a distance from the hill that they appeared to be making no progress."
Young Hejinian is an avid practitioner of science, but she finds this passion difficult to communicate to her friends. She puzzles over how perception changes when she's in a moving vehicle. She's making observations about patterns of movement and trying to find the language to communicate, but she hasn't learned the terms yet.
"But, already, words. Can there be laughter without comparisons. The tongue lisps in its hilarious panic. If, for example, you say, 'I always prefer being by myself,' and, then, one afternoon, you want to telephone a friend, maybe you feel you have betrayed your ideals."
In this passage, Hejinian is musing about the shortcomings of language itself. She tries to communicate something sacred to her experience of self, and it comes out as an absolute which causes future angst. This is not a deception, but her ability to communicate through language cannot match the speed at which she experiences things she wants to communicate.
"Let the traffic pass. They were on vacation and therefore bored. Someone wanted to go away from everywhere forever but jumped into the bay. We were warned such accidents happen while mothers talk on phones."
Once young Hejinian heard about a suicide in the bay. She recalls how the story she was fed was that someone just desperately needed a vacation from everything. Strange how even as a child, she could recognize that boredom was related to this issue. She knows that adults don't vacation very well, so perhaps there is more to the story than first appears.
