More relevant (I think) for the purposes here, though, is looking at the influences of what I read on what I wirte and create.   The two bodies, obviously, are inextricably complementary, but that's not a new event.  I remember, clearly, trying several times when I was in Junior High to read King's The Stand, but never finished until I was in high school.  I very specifically recall, though, writing a short story in Junior High with  a character named Larry Underwood.   When I went back to reading the King novel, I rediscovered a main character named Larry Underwood.  The novel had subconsciously worked itself into my brain; I think the same thing has happened here, 20 years later with the freewrite from class and Walt Whitman's poem "City of Orgies."  When I read "City of Orgies" in Leaves of Grassin Summer 2007, it immediately stuck with me.  If you read it, and the freewrite from class, I think you'll see absolute influence.   I did.

City of Orgies, walks and joys,

City whom that I have lived and sung in yoru midst will one day make you illustrious,

Not tthe pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your spectacles, repay me,

Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves,

Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with goods in them,

nor to converse with learn'd persons, or bear my share in the soiree or feast;

Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift flash of eyes offering me love,

Offereing response to my own--these repay me,

Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.

I also want to so some stuff from Ginsberg's "Howl."  Will post tomorrow.

p.s.-  Ever typed "City of Orgies" into a search engine at a public school?   I think the server actually exploded.

What’s struck me the most so far is this one little poem:

To the States

To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever
afterward resumes its liberty.

Throughout the surrounding poems in Book I, there is a sense of jubilance at the constant decay of all things [e.g. “Ever the mutable / Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering”].

Yet this little “To the States,” poem calls for a resistance to entropy: “Resist much, obey little.” I like that line.

There’s potentially a tension between celebrating decay and fighting against it—but the resolution, I think, lies somewhere in the fact that Whitman’s persona desires simply a response. Be it sadness, be it joy, be it celebration, be it resistance—Whitman’s persona wants the reader to participate, to feel—to react.

Perhaps, it’s a fight against passivity. A way of preserving self. And I find that comforting.

They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear,
Well-possess’d of themselves.

~ “A Woman Waits for Me.”

I never see her until I get in the shower. Then she walks across the ceiling and waves at me. I kid you not. Every day.

Of course I wave back, usually getting shampoo in my eyes which makes her laugh. It’s this thing we do.

She’s really quite amazing and not the least bit scary.

I was going to call her Mommy Long Legs, but it seemed rude to presume. Instead, I call her Cyd Charisse.

My Cyd Charisse doesn’t dance backwards in high heels, but she does walk upside down which I bet you can’t do. Plus, she has terrific gams.

After I rub the shampoo from my eyes, I watch her. She moves so elegantly, gliding and hovering on the ceiling. She’s a tad longer than an inch, covered with velvety henna hairs.

Oscar S. Cisneros says …

"Poor spider - its grace and delicacy lost on a society too brutish to see its eight-legged beauty."

Don Tidwell had a visiting bathroom spider too …

"He crawled around his universe
Inspecting every tile,
Then climbed upon his special perch
To watch me for awhile."

And Walt Whitman loved a nice quiet spider …
"A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul."

I recited the Whitman poem to Cyd Charisse, but just to be clear, I changed the ending.

"Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
But if you drop into my hair, you’ll fling into the bowl."

It’s not great poetry, but she understood.

Do you like spiders? Ever have one move in with you?

There's this one lady who reads my blog pretty regularly. She doesn't blog herself, but sends me little notes and exclamations about my misspellings. She likes short sentences. She questions my content, but always with a warm heart.

For that I am thankful. It keeps me in check.

Ruby has a cornucopia of personal qualities. She has quite a colorful personality, and quite a history to tell. She's a artist, a terpsicorian, a counselor and a Universalist, She's an actress and a certified clown. She is a very spiritual person but doesn't wear it on her shoulder, and is a terrific social mixer. She is my only reader that is an ice skater on the pond of life.

She's okay by me, and I have alot to thank her for. With her I get the real deal.

"Nothing endures, but personal qualities." - "Walt Whitman

Some people call her Mary.

Thanks, Mom. And thanks for the Mohead.

We have to sail according with the wind, for the next weeks, months or I don't know till when. It's not depending to the change of season, or to the so called autumnal melancholy ( actually, I like Autumn); it's up to several troublesome situations I'm involved, more or less.

All in all, everything is about us, "miserable" human beings, so that you just have to find the right point of view for things, between a bloody hell and another one:-) Or so I think. It's what people keep on saying from ages. This way people hold out. This way people do find the necessary strenght.

Otherwise, one has to live a life of "Quiet Desperation", as wisely noted H.D.Thoreau.

Beyond the great Thoreau, there's another "good fella" that I especially like: Walt Whitman. You can read any edition of "Leaves of Grass" and  you'll be suddenly launched in a natural and stunning world, while you jump here and there in circle with an idiot smile on your face, just enjoying the pleasure. It gives severe addiction, yes... Just a bite of pure beauty:

"Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the body and the soul, dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic, and what you effuse may then return as the seasons return, and may be just as much as the seasons" from "On Journeys through the States"

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" from "To You"

It would take too much time to write down all the gorgeous phrases by Whitman, at least the ones from "Leaves of Grass"...Whitman has the power to be simple, incredible, partisan, charming. Especially now that I need it the most. Thank you Walt!

B.

            I’ve read a lot of extra Whitman this quarter, for fun.  I’ve also come across a lot of different critiques of his work.  I’m so in love with him; some of the critiques make me uncomfortable.  I have several books that discuss how Walt Whitman created himself—and I want so much for everything he said and wrote to be authentic and true.  He is a mystic, to me—and I really want to believe he had an experience that provoked him to write Leaves of Grass.  That foreground that Emerson spoke of---I’ve read many Whitman books, and nothing I’ve seen or heard has suggested any sort of magnificent poet in the making.  He was an awful writer until Leaves of Grass.  Ok, maybe not awful, but certainly not a poet or philosopher.  He was a journalist—not a mystic poet. 

            However, there is evidence that he did, in fact, create a persona.  I cannot ignore the facts on that one.  You know that iconic picture of him, sitting in a chair with a butterfly on his finger?  Yeah.  That’s not a real butterfly.  It’s cardboard L.  More than anything I wanted it to be real—more than anything, I wanted Leaves of Grass to be addressed to me. 

            So, if Walt Whitman is a fraud—what am I left with?  You know—now that I’m on the subject of Walt being a fraud—this whole persona making is awfully American, you know?  It reminds me of Poor Richard, Dietrich Knickerbocker, and Farmer James.  These darned Americans and their fabricated legends, myths, and historians.  How else can you gain credibility if you don’t pretend to be someone with credentials?  Innocence, one of the Adamic qualities, seems to be just as much a curse as it was a blessing.  With innocence comes unwavering optimism—but innocence also means no one takes you seriously.  Who are you going to take advice from, your four year old brother or your 80 year old uncle?  Well, of course the 80 year old…he has HISTORY to glean knowledge and wisdom from J. 

            Ok—anyway, back to “if Walt was a fraud, what am I left with?”  What in the world was he trying to accomplish?  Well, I think he was picking up where Emerson left off.  I found this really fantastic article called, “From Spears to Leaves:  Walt Whitman’s Theory of Nature in ‘Song of Myself,’” by Diane Kepner.  I picked up this essay after a conversation with Steve.  I made a passing comment that had Transcendentalism and Whitman in the same sentence and Steve said, “He wasn’t a Transcendental, was he?”  And I told him, “Of course he was.”  But then, I really didn’t have anything to back it up with.  I began thinking, Well, Whitman isn’t exactly down with Emerson—and Emerson IS Transcendentalism..so if Whitman misses the mark on a couple different points, does that exclude him from the club?  While I was researching, I came across one critique that said if Whitman had graduated from Harvard and lived in Concord, there’d have been no doubt that he was Transcendental.  After reading that, I spent much time looking for a good definition of Transcendentalism—one that didn’t start with “a philosophic and literary movement…Concord…blablabla…” Most definitions were just that.  So, instead of looking and getting more frustrated, I asked myself what Transcendentalism was.  And I said many things—but the two most important things I said were:

1.     Transcendentalism’s foundation in a belief in a priori knowledge inherent in all people—recalled through Nature and channeled by the Oversoul.

2.     Transcendentalism places emphasis on the metaphysical over the physical.

Satisfied with those two tenets, I went through “Nature” and “Song of Myself” with a fine toothed comb—looking for differences and similarities.  I looked for four main categories: the purpose/nature of Nature, man’s relationship to man, man’s relationship to the divine, and the epistemology found in both pieces. 

            The overall feeling I got from “Nature” was that Emerson viewed it as a means to Man’s end.  Nearly every sentence that mentions Nature reminds the reader that it was created for Man’s use.  Emerson explains:

Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result.  All the parts incessantly work into each others’ hands for the profit of man…thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man.

He also says, “Nature is mad to conspire with Spirit to emancipate us.”  “Nature” is filled with things like this.  I then turned to “Song of Myself.”  After rereading that piece, I came to the conclusion that Whitman believed that Nature was cyclical and replenishing. He also believed that Nature is something that connects us to the Divine because we intuit its Creator.  Whitman says:

A child said What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands…I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.  Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord / A scented remembrance designedly dropped, / Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark and say Whose?

This passage alone explains a great deal of what Whitman believed the purpose of Nature to be.  It’s also very telling that he uses the metaphor of handkerchief.  A handkerchief is created, obviously, for one purpose.  It’s not a calling card.  But God uses Nature for multiple purposes—not just as a means to our end.  This is far different than what Emerson believed.

            Then, I looked for passages that discussed Man’s relationship to Man in both pieces.  Throughout all of Emerson’s work, he stresses that Man can achieve perfection.  Emerson, as I mentioned earlier,  fused spirituality with the Enlightenment ideals.  In “Nature” it was obvious to me that Emerson stressed self-perfection over all else.  He writes, “The wise man shows wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits, is as wide as nature.  The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man.”  When one’s goal in life is to better oneself—to become all-knowing, perfect, etc.—a certain hierarchy is going to develop among people of different developments. Whitman, on the other hand, is purely inclusive in his spiritual philosophy and perfectly democratic.  Whitman is concerned with his fellow man above all—even above his direct pursuit of God.  It doesn’t get more inclusive than, “I celebrate myself and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for very atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”  He also says, “I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself.” 

            Next, I looked for discussion of Man’s relationship to the Divine in both pieces.  In “Nature,”  Emerson’s concept of the Divine is positive and optimistic, however when compared to Whitman, sort of abstract and detached.  Emerson says, “We are as much strangers in nature as we are aliens from God.”  Whitman would completely disagree with that statement because he believed that God, Man, and Nature are so interconnected. Whitman’s God was found in himself, in his fellow people, and in Nature.  You cannot get a more personal God than that.  Whitman writes, “And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, for I who am curious about each am not curious about God…I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.” Whitman doesn’t believe in contemplating God for its own sake.  He loves his fellow Man—and that’s enough for him—that’s as close to Divinity as he will ever reach.

            Lastly, I looked for differences in their beliefs about epistemology.  Emerson believed that man ought to be actively pursuing knowledge through the faculty, Intuition (Reason), by studying and contemplating Nature, channeled through the Oversoul.  He believed in everyone’s a priori knowledge—however, he felt that people needed to work to access it—through fine honing, contemplation, and spiritual work—as well as reflecting on Nature and tapping into the Oversoul.  Whitman, on the other hand, has a more laid back approach to the acquisition of a priori knowledge.  He believes that just BEING is enough to remember what we used to know.  Smelling armpits, contemplating spears of grass, and looking into a mirror are enough to tap into metaphysical truths.  He says, “There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me…I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid, it is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.” 

            As you can see, there are huge differences between Whitman’s philosophy and Emerson’s philosophy.  I think that Whitman, as I said early, is trying to pick up where Emerson left off.  Emerson is concerned only with the metaphysical—whereas Whitman is concerned with the physical as well. That has been one of the arguments as to whether or not Whitman is truly Transcendental.  At one point, Whitman actual says he’s a materialist.  But doesn’t he also says he sets out to contradict himself?  Whitman’s “Song of Myself” has tons of philosophic and metaphysical language—and that language is juxtaposed with perfectly material and scientific terms—because he is trying to reconcile the natural world with the spiritual world.  Whitman believes that if we see the perfect unity between all objects—natural and inanimate, then we will not only understand out place in the Universe, but understand all there is to understand.  He believes this acknowledgement of oneness with all things will give us more answers than scientists, philosophers of the spirit, or clergy.  He explains, “Logic and sermons never convince, / The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.” 

The author of the piece I mentioned earlier, Diane Kepner, explains,

Materialists stress particularity, diversity, flux, the atomic properties of matter, body, existence as real.  Idealists stress universality, unit, changelessness, God, soul, essence.  Whitman believes that the truth of Being—and thus ourselves—lies in the fusion of both: that while everything is always changing, nothing ever really changes.

Emerson is merely a poet of the Soul—whereas:

“[Whitman is] the poet of the Body and … the poet of the Soul.”

 "Self-Reliance"

Oh, Waldo—I never run out of things to say about you.  J

This essay’s foundation is this: every man is capable of achieving perfection.  Every man has the capability to arrive at Truth.  How democratic, I know.  But the problem with this essay lies in the fact that unless you subscribe to Waldo’s ENTIRE philosophy, you ought not subscribe to self-reliance.  Taken out of context, one could justify just about any action with this essay. In the first paragraph he says, “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,--that is genius” (Emerson 539).  Taken out of context that sentence could justify anything.  I thought it bared repeating. Again, on the next page he says, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string” (Emerson 540).  Gosh, doesn’t that sound nice?  It really does—and truly, I believe in the common goodness people share.  The fact is, though—most people don’t know and don’t care about goodness.  Emerson wanted people to strive for greatness—perfection—however, most people are striving for money and private property.  This is why, taken out of context, “Self-Reliance” is pretty dangerous.

Ok, perhaps I am done being critical—for now.  There’s a lovely passage that Whitman borrowed and stuck into “Song of Myself.”  Emerson writes:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.  He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.. . speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day…To be great is to be misunderstood. (Emerson 544)

            That’s nearly identical to Whitman’s, “Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am large.  I contain multitudes.”  Ok, it’s beautiful when Whitman says it—but I feel another critique coming on.  Emerson, if people were plugged into the Oversoul correctly, receiving Universal Truth—why should we be contradictory? Why would Ultimate Truth change daily?  That doesn’t make much sense.  Or at least—if you’re unsure of the veracity of your thoughts, feelings, etc—shouldn’t you keep them to yourself, lest you lead others astray?  And then Emerson said that it was great to be misunderstood—and he uses Jesus as an example.  Jesus was misunderstood not because of the content that came out of his mouth—he was misunderstood because of the ears the content fell upon. To be fair and not lazy in my thinking and explaining, I suppose, on surface level, much of what Jesus said could be interpreted as contradictory.  With proper interpretation, however, he was found to be consistent in his mystical truths and parables. 

Emerson/Transcendentalism = (Enlightenment + Spirituality)-Materialism

                                   OR

(Romanticism + Enlightenment) à Emerson/Transcendentalism

Emerson was fixated on attaining perfection through spiritual means.  Enlightenment thinkers were fixated on attaining perfection through intellectual means. The foundation of both philosophies is epistemological.  The Enlightenment thinkers were materialists and empiricists—Transcendentals were spiritual.  Both of the philosophies were aimed at perfection of the SELF.  Both philosophies claim to be democratic.  E.T. believe that all men are equally rational—and therefore all men are equal.  T.T. believe that all men have equal capacity to utilize their Intuition—and therefore all men are equal.   And I ask myself:  how can you have democracy when perfection of the SELF is the end in itself?  The definition of democracy is:  sovereignty of a nation is vested in the collective of citizens.  So, how can democracy and individualism be compatible?  And how did these two ideologies immerge from the same philosophical premises?

A democracy of individuals is not a democracy at all—because each person is casting a vote that only takes themselves into consideration.

The only way for individualistic Transcendentalism AND democracy to coexist is if all people have reached the state of perfection alluded to in Emersonian philosophy.  Unless the nation is composed of perfect Transcendentalist Eyeballs, democratically enacted laws are at least as likely to lead away from Truth than towards it.

So, we see Thoreau, an imperfect person, attempting to live Emerson’s contradictory philosophy—and by modern terms, he is considered a Libertarian.  He became individualistic enough to believe that if your internal conception of absolute truth is violated by even democratically enacted laws, you have an obligation to civilly disobey—seclude oneself, avoid paying taxes, move, etc.  In other words, Thoreau believed that you should do what you believe is right, completely regardless of democracy and democratic processes.

 If you are as optimistic about human nature as Emerson, who believed that man was good—then I suppose that his contradictory philosophy could be universalizable.  But at the end of the day, it’s going to take more than optimism and belief in a philosophy to make it realistic. 

*****

“The American Scholar”

This piece has been called the “Intellectual Declaration of Independence” or the “Literary Declaration of Independence.”  This description alone is bothersome after reading so much about the Adamic American—who, like Adam, has no history—because nothing preceded him.  Ok, well, that’s obviously not true of Americans—but America, yes.  Before America, nothing of the like existed in the Old World consciousness.  The idea was archetypal—but there was nothing concrete about it until America was colonized.  That being said—with so much spoken about the Adamic American with no history…what does this Adamic American have to declare itself from?  You have to be attached to something before you gain independence from it.  This American ideal frustrates me because they had no history—but yearned for national legends and myths—needed them so much they made them up!  And now—Emerson is declaring independence from something, he claims, has no influence over America.  Seriously, I will always think of America as a teenager, and not an Adam.  Adam was kicked out of the Garden—teenagers leave because their parents, “don’t understand me!  You don’t know what it’s like!  I’m leaving!  I can take care of myself!”  And once they’re out of the house, it’s pretty sweet for awhile.  Freedom!  They over-indulge in it—are gluttons for freedom, private property, etc.  After awhile, after the gorging and Dionysian bull-shit, they are wishing and hoping for a national literature, a national legend to give them roots and credibility. 

Wow. That was scathing.  Yes.  Americans are like the Prodigal Son who, instead of coming home, made up a new home because they were too proud.

            If we’re not retrospective, how can we learn from our mistakes?  Everything wrong we do , then is in vain and serves no purpose.  I think that reflecting on mistakes and our personal or national history teaches us—and to not learn from the mistakes of others is not optimistic. 

So to kick off Banned Books Week at this blog, I'll be talking about one of my all-time favorite books in the history of time, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  There were six distinct American editions printed between 1855 and 1892.  Leaves of Grass is Whitman's only poetry collection; he just revised it a number of times over the course of his life.  Compare, for example, the 1855 (first) edition and the 1891-1892 (deathbed) edition. 

The 1881 edition was banned in 1882 by Oliver Stevens, the district attorney of Boston, for "explicit" language, although it was published elsewhere in Philadelphia.  The "obscene" nature of Leaves of Grass was problematic elsewhere as well - Whitman was fired by various employers over the content of the book.  Looking at the poems, they're hardly erotica; they're pretty G-rated compared to our standards today.  But Whitman embraced all forms of sexuality, and that celebration is evident in his works.  In addition, Whitman was gay, and you can see that in his works as well.  But not a cuss word in sight; no euphemisms.  Leaves of Grass is upfront about human sexuality in all forms, and that's what scared people.

Whitman's poetry is some of the most uplifting I have ever known.  The quintessential "Song of Myself" beings:

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I first discovered Whitman in high school, and I needed that opening back then.  When you're an adolescent, you're dealing with body image issues and an eating disorder, and you can't get along with anyone in your peer group, the idea of singing oneself and celebrating onself is almost radical.  That opening line is for anyone who is having trouble with their identity - whether you hate your body, don't know how to tell people you're gay, are struggling with your religious beliefs, or wondering if you are a feminist.  No matter what you are, regardless of whether you don't fit in or not, you are special, wonderful, deserving of celebration.

And of course, there's a special place my heart for this passage:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I am a feminist, but sometimes I laugh at sexist things or ignore sexist comments.  But that doesn't mean I'm a bad feminist.  I might have contradicted myself when I saw Tropic Thunder this weekend, but after the film my partner and I had a great critical discussion of the film, in which we talked about the ableist aspect, as well as the lack of women in anything but "support" roles.  I can laugh at the humor and then dissect it afterwards.

Whitman was criticized for obscenity, but his work is a celebration of life in all its forms.  And while it might not be a "feminist" work, there are feminist parts to it, and I think that Whitman was a feminist in some sense.

In speaking of life, I'd like to conclude with the final section of "Song of Myself."  Knowing I'm going to die someday, I've done some thinking about the end of my life, and decided that this poem should be read at my funeral.  Because what else could be so perfect for someone who is not religious, who has loved life, but who also does not fear death?

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my          gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd          wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

P.S. - I know money is tight for everyone right now, but if you have the cash, please suppor the Walt Whitman Archive.

— Walt Whitman

by Walt Whitman

"Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,

For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet

needed most, I bring,

Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,

A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,

But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."

I Believe this poem is talking about how again, yes i have said this before but it rings through in this poem. This poem is about Not taking anything in your life for granted. Not only that but being yourself. Why should you be anyone else but yourself? Why change for someone?

It's kind of self explanatory here:

"Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,

For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet

needed most, I bring,"

It's also about growing up in a way. Keep things that mean the most to you close. As you grow, you grow apart from your past intellect at the age you were at. Every year we all get more mature and learn lessons and this is crucial to our development.

In this last stanza, the very last line, like, seriously gives me the best inspiration:

"But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."

Everyday, is unplanned, something new and exciting will pop up, you're not sure yet as to what will happen but when it does, whatever happens good or bad it's something you can take with you in your life that will make you and mold you into the person you will become, and a more stronger and mature individual.

]]> http://jeffreypillow.wordpress.com/?p=48 Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:14:33 +0000 Jeffrey Pillow http://jeffreypillow.it.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/if-sal-paradise-were-born-in-1980-book-review/

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN 11 JULY 2008 EDITION OF THE LYNCHBURG LEDGER

Gas prices have you down? Can’t afford to fill up the tank with $4.00/gallon unleaded?

With this year’s family vacation threatened (or at least reduced somewhat in the mileage department) by rising fuel costs, a good number of Americans have been left to scrape for pennies and flip couch cushions for spare change. Or maybe that’s just me. I was recently disheartened to find that a twenty-five cents pack of gum now costs thirty cents. Woe is me, speaketh the fragile and frail U.S. economy.

However, a little road trip of the mind may be just what the American consumer needs this July and August. As one of the greatest authors of the 20^th century said once upon a time, his pen name, Dr. Seuss, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you’ll go.”

From Jefferson, Douglass, and Whitman to Jack Kerouac and Cormac McCarthy, the road narrative has become a staple in American literary history, in film, music, and in the culture itself. The desire to see and explore new lands and have one’s eyes glare across a distant horizon didn’t end with the pilgrims or Lewis and Clark. Nor did it descend into the airy abyss with Thelma and Louise when they edged off the Grand Canyon. It continues today. The need to experience a world beyond our own backyards lives on. It’s in our bones. Not the yellow and red stuff. That’s marrow.

New to this list of page turning road narratives is the Los Angeles Times best-selling novel Attention.Deficit.Disorder by Brad Listi. The wildly entertaining yet stirringly staid narrative follows Wayne Fencer, a recent film school grad that has flown in to San Francisco to attend the funeral of his ex-college girlfriend, Amanda, who has just committed suicide. The night following the funeral, Wayne is told by two of Amanda’s closest friends and confidants that prior to their breakup and unbeknownst to Wayne, Amanda had been pregnant with his child.

In dismay at the news, Wayne Fencer embarks on a quest for truth that leads him from the West Coast in California to the Appalachian Trail on the east, and beyond. His travels bring him in close contact with everyone from Gregorio Fuentes, Ernest Hemingway’s old fishing guide in Havana, Cuba, and also inspiration for The Old Man and the Sea, to a former college buddy, Henry Long, an idiosyncratic and absorbingly contagious personality and documentarian who has been recording himself everyday on a digital video camera for the past six years. By foot, RV, in the city, and in the wild, Wayne Fencer goeth.

And though Wayne may not be the contemporary equivalent of Siddhartha Gautama, his quest for peace of mind and the meaning of life in the modern world is nevertheless one for the X and Y generations of American readers. The narrative is painted with a vividly bright cast of characters, in what could be, but isn’t, an otherwise ominous milieu, that of coming to terms with death, life, and what could have been.

Listi infuses Attention.Deficit.Disorder with square bracket observations, OED defined terminology, and other interrelated bits and pieces of informational non-fiction, yet still maintains a page-turning, free flowing writing style that would make Jack Kerouac proud and Charles Bukowski reach in the upper pocket of his shirt for a pack of cigarettes.

Truth is, this book is not for everyone. The target audience is undoubtedly for those aged 18-40, give or take a year or two. But I loved it. It’s rowdily hilarious and literally had me almost in tears with laughter at various points.

The memories accompanying Listi’s story will last much longer than the comparable three gallons of gas you will otherwise spend at the pump. Buy this book. It didn’t make the L.A. Times Bestseller list without reason. If my name was Ebert, I would give this novel two thumbs up.

Attention.Deficit.Disorder: A Novel by Brad Listi (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, Jan. 2007, Trade paperback, 356 pgs. ISBN ISBN-10: 1-4169-1236-3, ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-1236-1), $12.95. Available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Powell’s, and simonsays.com. Also available in hardcover or ebook.

Augustine:
I asked the earth, and it answered me, “I am not He”;
and whatsoever are in it confessed the same.

Walt Whitman:
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
None has ever yet adored or worship’d half enough.

Augustine:
I asked the sea, and the depths, and the living creeping things,
and they answered, “We are not thy God, seek above us”;

Walt Whitman:
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow;
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

Augustine:
I asked the moving air; and the whole air with his inhabitants answered,
“Anaximenes was deceived, I am not God”;

Walt Whitman:
The universe is a procession, with measured and beautiful motion.

Augustine:
I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars,
“Nor (say they) are we the God whom thou seeks.”

Walt Whitman:
The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail.
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,

Augustine:
And I replied unto all things, which encompass the door of my flesh:
“you have told me of my God, that you are not He:
tell me something of Him.”

Found this sweet site called Crab Fu and now I'm all stoked about building RC controlled robots. Looking up the parts on ebay and I figure I'll need at least 130 bucks for all the parts, the servos, controller, battery receivers, LED lights for eyes, and the miscellaneous crap I'm going to need to design the exterior. Paying back my cousin and getting the eeepc is first priority though, I should be able to afford it by the end of this month. 

Been reading a lot. Started on Whitman for the umpteenth time the other night and stumbled across this passage among the many I've really taken to heart:

"Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? / Well I have .... for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has. 

Do you take it I would astonish? / Does the daylight astonish? or the early redstart twittering through the woods? / Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence, / I might not tell everybody but i will tell you."

There's one particular part I want to see tattooed on me sometime in the future (also something on my to do list) but I'll save it for then. i recently finished a collection of Thomas Pynchon's short stories. One passage stuck out too me in "The Secret Integration", that feeling of being lost I'd almost forgotten:

"Silence fell on the line and it was right around then that Tim's foot felt the edge of a certain abyss which he had been walking close to - for who knew how long? - without knowing. He looked over it, got afraid, and shied away, but not before learning something unpleasant about the night: that it was night here, and in New York, and probably on whatever coast the man was talking about, one single night over the entire land, making people, already so tiny in iit, invisible too in the dark; and how hard it would be, how hopeless, to really find a person you needed suddenly, unless you lived all your life in a house like he did, with a mother and father. He turned to look at the man on the bed and there came to him a hint then of how lost Mr. McAfee really was. What would he do if they couldn't find this girl?"

Went through my old email today to see whether or not I'd signed up for an ebay account, I'd been fairly sure I'd done so some time ago but I couldn't find the confirmation email. I found this instead:

Heh. I love college.

Got work next week, can't wait. Sharan's coming back to LA on Saturday. Seems like everyone's handling their separate scandals and all's right with the world.

Too many times to count, I escaped my own suicide by thinking about how much it would hurt my husband. At one point, I considered carrying out my plan in my car, in a parking lot by one of the local city parks. I didn't want him to be the one to find me. Part of what has caused me to waiver is the film Love Liza (2002), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as the bereft spouse who can't bring himself to read his wife's suicide letter. (Why do they call them "notes" anyway? The word connotes something trivial, when actually they are quite difficult to write and probably harder to read.) 

David Foster Wallace wrote brilliant, stunning prose. His most impressive work, Infinite Jest (1996), is a novel capacious in its scope, biting and darkly funny. Just last week, the husband and I were talking on our deck about whether someone could teach the novel to undergraduates during a single semester. The book's huge—some critics call it self-indulgent and poorly edited—and contains almost 100 pages of footnotes, one of DFW's characteristic writing quirks and an indication of the importance of digression in his work. (You might be able to see why I like him.) 

One of the main jokes of Infinite Jest is that, after more than 1100 pages, the novel simply ends. It doesn't even pretend to be circular, a conceit that other celebrated 20th century novels have employed (Finnegans Wake, Dhalgren, One Hundred Years of Solitude, City of Glass). Despite some readers' comparisons of the plot to a Mobiüs strip, the novel doesn't pretend that the reader could simply turn back to page 1. Instead, it pursues a wandering trajectory forward and without wrapping up any of the plotlines, just stops. Enough, he might have said. Enough.

We named one of our cats after the writer, and Dave's deep, constant purr comforts me. I suppose that other people take comfort in their children and grandchildren or in their spiritual beliefs. The closest I think I can come to that kind of comfort is in Whitman's "Song of Myself": "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

I think of these Whitman lines as well: "All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier."

DFW, the death you chose cannot repudiate what this agnostic believes: every atom comes from the stars. Although you have died, the stars continue throwing off atoms, we continue throwing off atoms, and you also. There is no stopping. And that itself may be the infinite jest.

And I am the poet of the soul

I go with the slaves of the earth equally with the masters

And I will stand between the masters and the slaves,

Entering into both so that both will understand me alike."

- Walt Whitman

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on -- have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear -- what remains? Nature remains.” - Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

El carácter y la fuerza física son las dos únicas inversiones que vale la pena explotar. (Walt Whitman)

Que la vida sin ciertas normas pierde la forma.

Que la forma no se pierde con abrirnos.

Que abrirnos no es amar indiscriminadamente.

Que no esta prohibido amar, que también se puede odiar.

Que el odio y el amor son afectos.

Que la agresión porque sí duele mucho.

Que las heridas se cierran, que las puertas no deben cerrarse.

Que la mayor puerta es el afecto.

Que los afectos nos definen.

Que definirse no es remar contra la corriente.

Que cuanto más fuete es el trazo mas se dibuja.

Que buscar un equilibrio no implica ser tibio.

Que negar palabras implica abrir distancias.

Que encontrarse es muy hermoso.

Que el sexo forma parte de lo hermoso de la vida,

Que la vida forma parte del sexo.

Que el por qué de los niños, tiene un porque.

Que el querer saber de alguien, no es sólo curiosidad.

Que el querer saber todo de todos, es curiosidad malsana,

Que nunca está de más agradecer.

Que autodeterminación, no es hacer las cosas solo.

Que nadie quiere estar solo.

Que para no estar solo hay que dar,

Que para dar debemos recibir antes.

Que para que nos den también hay que saber pedir

Que saber pedir no es regalarse.

Que regalarse en definitiva es no quererse.

Que para que nos quieran, debemos demostrar qué somos.

Que para que alguien sea, hay que ayudarlo.

Que ayudar es poder alentar y apoyar.

Que adular no es apoyar,

Que adular es tan pernicioso como dar vuelta la cara.

Que las cosas cara a cara son más honestas,

Que nadie es más honesto porque no roba.

Que quien roba, no es ladrón por placer.

Que cuando no hay placer en las cosas, no se está viviendo

Que para sentir la vida, no hay que olvidarse que existe la muerte.

Que se puede estar muerto en vida.

Que se siente con el cuerpo y con la mente.

Que con los oídos se escucha,

Que cuesta ser sensibles, y no herirse

Que herirse no es desangrarse

Que para no ser heridos, levantamos muros

Que quien siembra muros, no cosecha nada

Que casi todos somos albañiles de muros

Que sería mejor construir puentes

Que sobre ellos se va a la otra orilla, y que también se vuelve.

Que volver, no implica retroceder.

Que al retroceder, también se puede avanzar.

Que no por mucho avanzar, se amanece más cerca del sol

¡Cómo hacerte saber que nadie establece normas, salvo la vida!

Walt Whitman.

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the star

Conversations with my mother take one of two inevitable turns these days - either general fluff about how much fun the family has when I'm not there (since I left for college, they've gone on 4 vacations, bought 2 new cars for themselves, sold mine, and purchased a new house) or towards this ever looming question of what I'm going "to do" after I finish college.

I suppose the arrival of my junior year is an indicator that I should start giving the topic some thought myself. After all, I'm half done with college - I should, presumably, begin to make my way towards being half-sure what I want to do with myself.

The trouble is that I don't want to "do" anything. The general conception seems to be that life follows a pretty linear path from Pampers to Depends, interspersed with all those milepost moments that they make Hallmark cards for - birth, death, graduation, retirement. I'm not sure how everyone else feels about that, but I think that shit sucks. I'm currently contemplating ruining my saturday morning by waking up for a 3 hour session on learning not how to be an investment banker, but rather how to interview to be one. That strikes me as particularly absurd - wouldn't the time be better applied, oh I don't know, learning something real? Or maybe doing something fun? What comes before Saturday morning? Friday night. What do people do on Friday night? Forget about the miserably formulaic week that preceded it. How do you do that? Get drunk, dance on a table, and make somebody love you. Presumably part of the appeal of college is that you're surrounded by a couple thousand equally attractive too-old-to-stay-home too-young-to-have-given-up-hope fellow travelers, and at least a couple of them have yet to be broken by the societal whip. I'm not certain that I'm entirely off the mark in pointing out that sitting at a desk is the exact opposite of dancing.

Held in that regard, I am "doing" something - I'm living. I'm perfectly happy with life right now, and I think it's pretty fucked up that we live in a world where's it not possible for that to last. The trouble with capitalism is the subversion of personal skills, of being able to think and read and dream and dazzle, with the exception of this vaguely paradoxical value to them once you reach the really elite wealth-levels. Maybe that's the irony, the fatal flaw that gives the lie to the whole enterprise: Since the beginning of time, the skills possessed by the very top have never varied - effete remains effete, the wealthiest have remained the wealthiest, with relatively static positions as the world itself floats from monarchy to feudalism to socialism to capitalism. Rich people indicate that they are rich people by breezily discussing the opera and effortlessly colonizing the third world; no one has ever asked Donald Trump to prepare an actuarial report, but I bet he attends a lot of cocktail parties. From that perspective, I suppose Jay-Z is an encouraging step forward. People who question the traditional organization of wealth and power within a society are doing a good thing. People who get rich telling rich people to go fuck themselves are doing a good thing, even if they later become those same people. It's not so bad to be The Man, as long as you make clear that The Man is an inherently flexible and imminently vulnerable position.

So what am I going to do after college? Burn down as many branches of Men's Wearhouse as possible. If we all stopped believing that you had to give up "all that kid stuff" and enter the "real world" (do you see the spittle flying from my mouth as I write this?), people wouldn't be nearly as shocked to find out that you don't watch the news, that you would rather read a book than go to work, that you think "childish" isnt' really an epithet. I consider it a compliment of the highest form that Pat Buchanan loathes Walt Whitman.

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, 
And what I assume you shall assume, 
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, 
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, 
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their 
parents the same, 
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, 
Hoping to cease not till death.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the 
earth much? 
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? 
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the 
beginning and the end, 
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now, 
Nor any more youth or age than there is now, 
And will never be any more perfection than there is now, 
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Baseball is as American as American can be.  Teams such as the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox instantly evoke the great cities of New York, Los Angeles and Boston.
 
The American poet Walt Whitman once said: "It's our game; that's the chief fact in connection with it; America's game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions; fits into them as significantly as our Constitution's laws; is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."
 
But instead of hotdogs and Bud Light at the ball park, think meat pies and Bass Pale Ale.  Out of left field comes the news that the game was in fact invented in England. 
 
A diary found by a local historian in a shed near Guilford, Surrey, provides evidence of the game being played in 1755.  Previously it had been thought the game originated in America in 1790.
 
The entry in the diary of lawyer William Bray documents a game with friends, when he was still a teenager. 

It reads: "Easter Monday 31 March, 1755.  Went to Stoke Ch. this morning.  After dinner went to Miss Jeale's to play Base Ball with her, the 3 Miss Whiteheads, Miss Billinghurst, Miss Molly Flutter, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Ford & H. Parsons & Jelly.  Drank tea and …"
 
The entry has been verified by Julian Pooley, manager of the Surrey History Center in Woking and an expert on Bray.
 
The Major Baseball League was notified of the find by Surrey County Council and accepted that the diary did contain the earliest known reference to baseball.
 
Helyn Clack, an elected member of Surrey County Council, said:  "Baseball is an integral part of American life and this news about a national obsession in the U.S., where home-grown sports have traditionally dominated, will reverberate far and wide.
 
"It is a game steeped in history and now Surrey County Council's History Center and an inquisitive local historian have provided the earliest manuscript proof that the game the Americans gave to the world came from England."
 
The first recorded competitive baseball game took place in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1846.

[Based on reports in The Daily Telegraph, the San Francisco Chronicle and BBC News.]

This is my first September 11 as a New Yorker and it is becoming clear that the wounds from that horrible attack are still tender.  There was a service of remembrance at the World Trade Center site this morning; around the city I have seen gatherings at fire departments and other civic buildings.  Of course the media are covering it extensively and newspaper headlines on the sidewalk are yet another reminder.

This Sunday, our congregation will offer a Litany of Peace and sing the hymn “This Is My Song”.  It has quickly become my favorite patriotic hymn, quite simply because it is does not have a flag-raising, us-over-all sentiment.  (In other words, it probably wouldn’t have been sung at the Republican convention a few weeks back.  Sorry for delving into politics (not the intention of this blog) but every time the crowd broke into that "USA” chant I wanted to cry.)  Instead this hymn helps us to remember that others love their country as much as we do ours, and we are called to pray for peace!  I’m including the words of the hymn below, which is so effective sung to the tune, Finlandia, drawn from Jean Sibelius’ gorgeous tone poem of the same name.

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
this is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;
may peace abound where strife has raged so long;
that each may seek to love and build together,
a world united, righting every wrong;
a world united in its love for freedom,
proclaiming peace together in one song.

This evening I also have the honor of being part of a Concert for Peace at Merkin Hall sponsored by Musicians for Harmony. On the first anniversary of September 11, this talented group of musicians offered a concert to promote peace, unity, and cross-cultural dialogue. It was such a successful and healing experience that they have continued annually. A small group of actors and instrumentalists from Compagnia Colombari are performing excerpts from Walt Whitman’s epic poem “Song of Myself”. It is a thrilling combination of spoken and sung text that lifts up Whitman’s expansive vision of a what it means to be an American. My friend and the director of the project, Karin Coonrod, calls his poem a declaration of interdependence.  In Whitman’s poetic imagination, all of humanity is connected and thrives on the unending diversity that is around us.

One particular excerpt from the piece touched me in rehearsal this afternoon so I’m posting it. The last line is especially poignant when connected to the image of the collapsing towers. I don't mean to offer some sort of cheap reflection but I almost hear Whitman encouraging us to move beyond that day, as painful and staggering as it was, onward and outward into widening circles of connection, trust, and love for all of humanity.

A child said, What is the grass?
Fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?....
I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child.....
the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is the uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means,
Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,
I give them the same,
I receive the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and from
offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward...and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

15

With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.

For your life adhere to me,

(I may have to be persuaded many times before    [I consent to give

     myself really to you, but what of that?

Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

No daint dolce affettuoso I,

Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I [have arrived,

To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid [prizes of the universe,

For such I afford whoever can persevere [to win them.

(Walt Whitman)

Words Chosen From a Phone Book, Placed at Random with a First-Person Narrative and a Scratched-Up Horoscope

Standing at the edge of orange-peel-lined Salinger
and the seeping concrete of a
Marriott hotel pool,
I noticed that I’ve returned to the Confessional,
back to Plath and all those other poets I’d never even read.
I guess first person’s always been waiting,
shelled under ripped-open fruit rinds
and cheap ways to make a living.

I felt like stewing in the
carbonated water,
watching my once-gaunt shoulders as they
sloped gently to my elbows—
to the bent pinky
that once filled a dimestore ring
and the hands that’ve always gripped
pens too stale to last too long.

And as I held the uninflated bars
of a red-striped raft,
my mind flashed to black-on-black appliances,
sophomore poets reading Shakespeare
while hiding in freezers,
the sound that pencils make
when they’re in love. 
 
My mind sobered as I watched the radial of the poolside clock,
wondered when it’d tick past six
and I’d find my way back
into page-a-minute PJs and
that age-old practice
of reading between the lines
of shopping mall fortune cookies.   

Only sauna heat and
hair still wet from New York hail
could make me drop haiku and
quotes and notes and other ways I found of
avoiding letting my life seep into stanzas. 

The visions of absurd smoke metaphor and
raw ink sex
left my eyes numb and wandering,
straddling Burroughs’s binding and
somehow managing
to break my way into motorcycle maintenance. 

But none were subtle as the late-night,
pretzel-filled concoctions
that would later lace my pillow:

Oh Ginsberg!—I dreamt of you trailing Whitman,
of me watching you thru
peep-eyed binoculars as you
Howled at the square black moon,
mumbling anthems to the
cataclysmic carnivals of
carnal America.

Oh—stand still kaleidoscope!

The glass pieces of pocket poetry
are now gathering lint in the beaten holes
of my leftover jeans. 
June blazes like a balloon on the horizon.
High tide’s almost reached the shores of my Golden Age:
Miranda’s elevator doors are closing,
Bobby’s sine waves
have almost collapsed to zero,
and Charlanne’s lips are
no longer chapped,
but wetted with wine and
buttoned-down allusion. 

Forty days from now,
I’ll be smothered in swollen portfolios,
rattled by the tar-heeled threat
of a pickled summer vacation:
solemn days spent not with poets,
but with chaise loungers and
dime-sized squirts of suntan lotion.

And yet—

Somehow, I’ll still be looking forward to
metaphoric Mondays and right-aligning,
watching television like it’s a
Dada canvas and
holding my pencil to my chin
like I know half of what I’m seeing.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul. -- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, section 3

End of day two of the 2008-2009 academic year. Yesterday almost proved too much for me. The Thursday schedule is brutal in the morning, and there was the added layer of stress getting out the first issue of the school paper. We were having problems with page exports, and it did turn out that there was a problem with a linked jpg file that was crashing Acrobat and InDesign. But I did my very best Lady Macbeth imitations, getting crazier as the day went on.

A sample of my email to techhelp:

at 10:22 We are having export difficulties with the Weekly - We are currently logged in in my class, but I'm teaching until 11:15. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobe...

At 11:16 Adobe Error

[caption id="attachment_103" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Can you read my mind??"][/caption]

At 1:19 Arrgh!! Now as I have waited (im)patiently for the log in to scan in my room I have the finder problem that we were having with my log in so I can't get to the group shared folder (or any finder window).

at 1:42 - Export failed on my log in: I have to go eat something before I eat the computer - but it failed on my log in. I'm stumped!

I did not eat the computer, and I did finally figure out what the problem was (this morning) after a good night's sleep and thinking aloud to my favorite Mac man.

Clear and sweet was the arrival this afternoon of the school paper. A back to school issue out the first week of class for the first time in years. We are posting to moodle now as well, and it is so satisfying to see it in color on-line (we print black & white on newsprint.)**

Clear and sweet were also my students. We started with Chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter today (all page and a half of it), and looked at Hawthorne's naked themes that he tosses out without any apology (nature, decay, artifice, edifice, death and punishment, youth, age, weeds and flowers). Fifteen students - three girls and a dozen boys thinking about shame and sex and ratting out your friends. For all that is clear and sweet as well.

Time for the weekend.

**I have to shout out to my printer, the able folks at the Law Bulletin who take our pdf by 9:00 AM and deliver printed folded newspapers by 1:00 PM. Astounding, and they make me look good!