Incredible imagery of the room getting darker, the threatening outline of the furniture, the white of the bed alone visible. And you feel his life draining out slowly You feel his end, his solitude, the sadness of it all.

So depressing, but a great warning, too. I’m reminded of Stoner’s death in his room watching the young people cross the lawn. The books are similar, too.

Beautiful scene when he stops to look at the sleeping baby, but so sad, too.

The avalanche in the mountains, the falling rocks, represent his decay. Even the mountains are dying, just much more slowly.

He is now Ortiz, he had traded places and has seen he’s wasted his life thinking that road would bring something to him. But it didn’t. Of course he could go see where the road goes, but he won’t. He’ll think duty is more important even though nobody else cares about it.

no longer taking the stairs two at a time is how he relizes his youth is over. It ended on the stairs, but he doesn’t remember the first time he stopped taking them two at a time, it just happened one day like any other, except it wasn’t.

Drogo waited 15 years!

Was the order to stop looking through the telescope meant for him? Simeoni now has nothing to do with the idea of a road being built, and he’s cold to Drogo.

Do they really see something, is a road really bring built, or is it just their remaining hope someone will come to them, rescue them, without them having to go to it? And Ortiz is like a monk with no religion or belief, he just wants less and less.

Ortiz tells him the truth in that sad hallway where their voices re-echoed.

Salvation does not come to those who just wait for it

He does seem quite eager to transfer and seems quite dejected that he probably won’t now. He was not told of the force reduction and so a score of his fellows put in formally. He’s done nothing except believe time served alone would grant him favor. He’s not very bright (he doesn’t even know what’s going on).

It’s almost like he’s an addict who has had a brief moment of sobriety but is still hazy and can’t quite come back to the real world and longs for a needle.

This is much sadder than just “you can never go home”, he’s changed because he’s not changed. Everyone else is always moving on except him. He stands still while everyone else funnels on around him. And it’s his fault because he doesn’t want change, he wants what he used to have and he thinks it will come again. But it won’t.

Bastiani : is this a play on bastion?

dfn: a place or system in which something (such as an old-fashioned idea) continues to survive.

I like the image of how the trees, once alive and budding in spring, still recall in a “weaker pulse” that spring, as if they yearn to still grow. There is life yet still. Yet But still.

“the soldiers caught themselves singing as they had not done for months.” A happy image, implying they’ve sung before and coupled with spring, the melting snow (change) we get something hopeful. And the Fort creaks and cracks like it’s talking, like the ice melting in the mountains. And the language sounds like gunfire.

Drogo (and the others) stay because they “hope for better things.” But there is no better thing coming. Is this how we fool ourselves, to put ourselves in a position to hope for something that won’t come so we don’t have to struggle for real attainment?

Dying happens on a day like any other for those not concerned with whom is dying.

Drogo had been our main character but we’ve pulled away from him to follow the others and now that we’re back to Drogo it does feel as of substantial time has passed (slipped away)

Angustina died for nothing. His last words are fitting though, “tomorrow we should…” Yes, they should, thru should do something anything, other than what they’re stuck doing.

They could easily die up there in the mountains but instead they’re playing cards to make light of their plight. Meanwhile two ropes await their rescue if they would just climb them and not stand on dignity.

This determination of Angustina to keep pace even though his boots are killing his feet is typical of the military, too press and kill yourself for no reason more than to not complain about how you made a mistake.

Fillmore could feel that tugging to go along with the prevailing passion that war was upon them even though he was sure it wasn’t. He was wise to not rush to judgment, but it was mostly out of a lack of self confidence because he thought something as glorious as a battle could never happen to him. He’s lost the fire of youth

Colonel Fillmore thinks if he acknowledges the thing he wants exists then if will dissppear. The older we get the less able we are to reach out for something we’re not sure we can grasp, we tend to become conservative, play it safe and not get hurt, or leave our comfort.

There really is something awful in the image of Lazzari laying face down with enough light to just reflect off the white of his half opened eyes. Tronk seems thrown off by this, has he changed? And now to reward the shooter, Moretto. Crazy.

They were all trying to convince themselves it was nothing, but it was a horse. And now they’re all on edge and Lazzari dies needlessly because of orders and military strictness.

You get the feeling the Tarters are winning the war just by letting these people man their forts in Solitude. While the Tarters roam free, Drogo is tied to eternal watch, to fantasize about a battle that will never come. There is a war and he’s losing badly.

Reminds me of the SpongeBob gif of the fish in his car, at his window, and at the office. Over and over the same.

The steppe which had mystery but no meaning.

Beautiful dream scene with Angustina as a child whom the phantoms take away. Is he dead in real life? A premonition?

The singing is not human but the water dripping down the mountain. Sad but beautiful. Is this all language is? Ice and stone?

“How much time there was before him!”, “… death, which everyone knows about but which is quite absurd and cannot possibly concern them.”

“Four months passing with the monotonous rhythm of routine duties had been enough to entrammel him.”

So he’s seen something out the doctors window and now wants to stay at the Fort. But what? He imagines his city as being dull but here there is “destiny”. Maybe he imagines that there just must be something here. There has to be. And the thought of leaving what is growing comfortable is hard to argue with.

It’s as if the tailors uniforms hanging on the walls were ghosts, or vessels ready to imprison another soldier, Drogo, for example.

About as depressing as Pink Floyd’s song Time. I wonder if people on other planets feel life is sort of absurd, too? Living on a giant oblate spheroid means you never really can get to anywhere, everywhere and nowhere is here.

At a distance he can’t tell his mother how he feels. And this is the lie we all tell, “How are you today?”, terrible, sick, “I’m fine. You?” How much of the world has been made in only the image we think others think it is and want it to be?

Humanissimi Viri Francesci Angloisi virtutibus. I can’t translate this but maybe something like civilized men with the power of angels?

A fake Sabre carved into the wall.

I love the image, “He put out the lamp; little by little the pale rectangle of the window emerged from the dark and Drogo saw the stars shining.”

It’s sort of Dr Strangelove the way the password system works, but without the humor.

Fort Bastiani

Of course he’s pretty much free to go, just a few minor inconveniences is all that stand in his way, just a vague notion others will be disappointed in him And he feels a draw to what lay beyond.

“… an extremely stupid landscape. “

“A slight breath of wind made a flag, which before had hung limply entangled with the flagstaff, billow out over the Fort.” Everything is lethargic but maybe there is at least a breeze? The soldiers walking the ramparts seem like mechanical toys

Many things when seen up close are not very impressive, especially in the military. But is that because so many things are fake or because we take them for granted?

“Now they say the frontier is dead – they forget that the frontier is always the frontier and one never knows.” For most of human history it was not unusual for suddenly an immense army of thousands to suddenly appear out of nowhere and rain destruction. And these armies represented nations of perhaps a million people totally unheard of.

Seingority is counted double here, as if time moves differently here.

You really get a feeling of how small they are against these mountains. It’s like a Roerich painting.

This is like The Castle that you can’t reach

“From time to time the horse pawed the ground with its hooves in a strange, disturbing manner.”

“The two roads became one.” he’s crossed over now. But to what?

The captain does not know him. Not surprising

I like how he thinks about his room being shut up, with only dust and the streaks of light getting in. As if this would await a happy return. It’s just stillness. Everything changes, he’s an officer, his best friend is now fat.

Shift in POV : we get a someone telling us to look at Drogo, not the usual 3rd person. We are told how small he appears against the mountains. Shadows chase him.

What city? It’s unspecified. It doesn’t really matter.

I like how he looks annoyed at himself in the mirror, having giving up so many of his youthful years for something he now can’t define how he feels about it..

Quiet, tired, deserted… then ‘miraculous birth of the sun.’ everyone is to preoccupied to see how beautiful the world is