“We are not what we might be; what we are / Outlaws all extrapolation / Beyond the interval of now and here: / White whales are gone with the white ocean.”

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath - “We are not what we might be; what we are...” 1

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“The difference between a criminal and an outlaw is that while criminals frequently are victims, outlaws never are. Indeed, the first step toward becoming a true outlaw is the refusal to be victimized. All people who live subject to other people's laws are victims. People who break laws out of greed, frustration, or vengeance are victims. People who overturn laws in order to replace them with their own laws are victims. ( I am speaking here of revolutionaries.) We outlaws, however, live beyond the law. We don't merely live beyond the letter of the law-many businessmen, most politicians, and all cops do that-we live beyond the spirit of the law. In a sense, then, we live beyond society. Have we a common goal, that goal is to turn the tables on the 'nature' of society. When we succeed, we raise the exhilaration content of the universe. We even raise it a little bit when we fail.When war turns whole populations into sleepwalkers, outlaws don't join forces with alarm clocks. Outlaws, like poets, rearrange the nightmare.The trite mythos of the outlaw; the self-conscious romanticism of the outlaw; the black wardrobe of the outlaw; the fey smile of the outlaw; the tequila of the outlaw and the beans of the outlaw; respectable men sneer and say 'outlaw'; young women palpitate and say 'outlaw'. The outlaw boat sails against the flow; outlaws toilet where badgers toilet. All outlaws are photogenic. 'When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.' There are outlaw maps that lead to outlaw treasures. Unwilling to wait for mankind to improve, the outlaw lives as if that day were here. Outlaws are can openers in the supermarket of life.”

Tom Robbins
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“I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.”

Herman Melville
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“Wonderland is here now.Don’t know what we might see.Yesterday’s gone forever.But my future’s up to me.What a future it will be….”

Lisa Schroeder
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“If we could live all our lives in the present, with no recourse to what has gone before or what might yet be, we would be so much the simpler for it. But in fact the here and now of life is all too often the least considered, while thoughts of the past and expectations of the future conspire to tangle our minds with irreconcilable regrets and hopes.""The Hole”

Guy Burt
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“Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,Glimmered the white moonshine.[...]Day after day, day after day,We stuck, nor breath nor motion;As idle as a painted shipUpon a painted ocean.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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