Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
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.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
Gerard Van der Leun
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Just another day at the office….. Awesome !!
Awesome video! What does he keep looking at to his left? Can you imagine how much you would miss that kind of flying after you get discharged? – there is no civilian equivalent!
When I was young I was going to get my degree in physics, join the Navy and fly like this guy and then become an astronaut. I was a young kid living on Merritt Island, FL and everything around me was about space.
Well, that didn’t work out so well. I didn’t finish my physics degree, didn’t join the Air Force or the Navy and didn’t apply to NASA to be an astronaut (though I did work at KSC for 27 years as a contractor on computers). I finished my degree in forestry and really loved that.
Some years later I took private flying lessons and learned the main reason why I should never have been the pilot of a fighter jet. Besides being just a little bit chicken, I barely had the awareness and coordination to fly a Cessna. I soloed twice and that was it. I’ve met and known some men who have flown these jets and helicopters. They are better men than I.
Balls of steel.
I’m no jet pilot but that looked virtually flawless – not a wasted or uncertain motion.
What a rush.
God, please let the men of this ilk be the leaders of tomorrow. This country won’t survive otherwise (assuming it survives the Chinese virus).
Oh, and Chuck Schumer is still a heaping pile of cow excrement.
This proves what jerks aviators are. Like the cable brake jerk; get it? I always thought aviators were primadonnas when I was an infantryman, and all of my encounters with them usually proved it. Then again, I’m a bit of an ass myself.
Actually, that was exciting and it does get your blood moving to just watch. I think he was looking at the carrier over his left shoulder.
Awesome. He’s turning left and he’s looking to see if another plane is coming up on him in the turn.
@Wayne “…What does he keep looking at to his left? Can you imagine how much you would miss that kind of flying after you get discharged? – there is no civilian equivalent!”
I’m guessing that the pilot (who looks to me to be a man, but could be a woman) is looking back towards the left at the carrier. He’s gauging his spacing so that he has enough room to complete the turn to what we in the Air Force called “final”, and to place himself on “final” at an appropriate distance from the carrier.
And yes, when you leave it, you do miss this type of flying. I flew T38s and C130s a
mumble-mumblemillion years ago, and I do miss both. There were many weekends when as a 24 year-old young stud, I was given the keys to a supersonic jet (That’s a joke. Military planes need no keys.), with orders no more stringent than to “bring it back by Sunday afternoon and don’t bend anything.” It was simultaneously more fun than anything you can do with your pants on, an awesome responsibility, and an awesome privilege.And now as a guy 2 years away from my mandatory retirement as an airline pilot, there are things about this job that I’ll miss too. Everyone loves a nice sunset, but what I’ll miss are the sunrises from 30,000 feet. Of course the next 2 years to 65 presumes that there is an industry for me to work in, which at this point isn’t an easy question to answer. We’ll see, and I can never not give thanks for the blessings that I do have, first and foremost, a terrific family.
Are there any adults on the payroll over at Wiki?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Modly
In case it gets wiped:
Thomas B. Modly is an American businessman and government official who has served as Acting United States Secretary of the Navy since November 24, 2019. [Modly is actually a spineless con artist, who shamelessly caved to the demands of the incompetent, corrupt, criminal Trump administration—when they ordered him to close ranks & stop all criticism, no matter how appropriate that criticism might be.]
Modly, who was confirmed as the United States Under Secretary of the Navy on December 4, 2017, performed the duties of the Secretary of the Navy while Richard V. Spencer was Acting Secretary of Defense and Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense from July 15, 2019, to July 31, 2019.[1]
I just checked. The landing speed of the F18 on a carrier is 250 knots, which is just under 290 mph. If he went from that speed to zero in 3 seconds, he was pulling about 4 and a half Gs on that stop.
That the landing speed on a carrier is that high (I’m just guessing here, but in the neighborhood of 100+ knots higher than a landing on a runway), has got to do with the need to have enough speed to fly if he misses the cables. FWIW, 4 1/2 g’s is very common in a fighter-type aircraft.
I agree, pilot is looking to the left often to spot possible traffic.