Let’s go surfing now / Everybody’s learning how / Come on a safari with me:
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Gerard Van der Leun
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Stupid government bureaucracy!
I’ve been watching the Facebarf posts on this. The Fox News feed comments are overwhelming horror at people not “social distancing”, “they’re all gonna get sick and die, and they deserve it”, “selfish people not thinking of others” “Idiots not following THE RULES” “Who do these people think they are to want to WALK ON THE FUCKING BEACH?”
… repeat until you want to puke your guts out.
These far outnumber those comments in support of quaint concepts like freedom.
Weeks of being forced indoors staring at the fear mongering coming across the TV set has done what a foreign army could never accomplish. The masses are conquered. They’re terrified sheep, bleating out what their TV masters have told them to. The police obey the commander who obeys the commie puke in Sacramento. See them on their horses and motorcycles standing just like the goddamn gestapo in the face of citizens who want to commit the crime of walking on the beach.
I fear we are well and truly fucked as a culture, fucked as a people, fucked as a nation. And we have been for a very long time. This just ripped the mask off it.
This is now post-America. Your country ain’t coming back.
JWM
Cowards using horses on the hot asphalt to do their blockade dirty work. Time for God t9 clean house.
My sister rants for me.
https://www.facebook.com/malindamchenry1/videos/10158555247984155/
It’s a 26 minute rant about the governor of Kansas extending the lock down of businesses that are not essential. Malinda is in fine form. She can shoot lasers from her eyes, she’s so mad. She’s a nonessential business. She said, “I am OPENING my business on Monday, May 4th, and here is the address, and you can come and try to arrest me.”
New post on this topic in City Journal titled “The Trust Deficit”: “Faced with disaster, authorities often worry more about an unruly public than about the crisis at hand.” The author uses the term elite panic “to describe cases where distrust of the public leads authorities to enact heavy-handed measures during crises.”
As Gerard would say, RTWT.
https://www.city-journal.org/disasters-authorities-trust-deficit
Jewel:
That was epic! I shared it on my own timeline.
JWM
While the trust deficit article that PA Cat links to is interesting, the “unruly public,” is, at this time, I think, a minority amongst minorities. Case in point. I’m in Michigan, and while there have been rallies against Half-Whitmer’s fascist executive orders, I was just out and about at a liquor store (a man cannot be without bourbon), a garden center, a Lowe’s, and a local chain grocery store. Ninety percent of the individuals out buying things I saw were wearing masks. This fact does not indicate an “unruly public,” but just the opposite. Certainly, I think, people are getting restless in regards to the lockdowns inflicted on them, but in large part, the spoon fed uncertainties still being thrown around in the MSM, abetted by the likes of Fauci and the WHO regarding the Chinese bat flu, are maintaining a sheeple response from the public. Is there a chance for an unruly public? Maybe, but I do not see it changing from a minority of individuals, to a majority of individuals being unruly. I think the majority of people are such cowed sheeple they will bow down to the state’s rules until such time they are given an all clear signal.
I find it interesting that a headline talking about experts predicting a possible worst case scenario gets turned into “there WILL be a worse case scenario” in people’s brains, so that not only do they accept any and all limitations on their freedom, but they want to call the police on any obvious anarchist leaving home without a face mask and a tape measure to enforce social distancing. The journalists are aware of this phenomenon, and they keep feeding it.
Planning my trip to HB next. Where is Eric von Zipper? Buddy Hackett? Better yet, Gidget?
@Casey: RatRod Riders B/C is the closest you’ll find. I got Von Zipper’s role down cold. Next Saturday we ride down there come hell or whatever.
JWM