WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
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
Comments on this entry are closed.
Cool! Science!!!
It just takes everything I have to “tolerate” the voice and inflections of the Modern “Man” narating this….GAWD how it feels like a bad rash in my ears….and soul.
That was the first thing that came to my mind, as well. They all sound the same. Always the same lilt (is that a word?) and cadence. NPR, PSB, Discovery (not that I watch or listen to these). I guess it’s mimicry. They only listen to each other so how would they know how stupid they sound?
I wish I knew enough chemistry to poke holes in this ball thing, because I’ll bet a few years down the line we’ll be hearing about some cockamamy scheme to fix whatever the experts didn’t fully appreciate about their solution at the time.
As a kid, we fished the resovoirs around San Diego county. Those lakes were the main source of water for the city.
I wonder if there are fish in that impoundment and how they feel about their light being blocked out.
Why didn’t they relocate the filtration system to the other side of the system, between the reservoir and the distribution point?
Pretty cool solution.
Lot’s of ponds and lakes around here, we don’t have one, wish we did. The folks across the road have a pond, about 150’x150′, I’m gonna suggest they put a couple hundred thousand black balls in it. The grey herons will like em, so will the fishes.
Plastic comes from oil. In nature all things go back to what they were eventually.
Every plastic ball has a seam. They are black, which means they absorb heat from the sun. So half of each ball will be warming, softening, and expanding in the sunlight while the bottom half of the ball remains cool from the water. Sooner or later they will crack, leak, and begin taking on water. Sooner or later someone is going to have to dredge out the reservoir.
JWM
Interesting, the first use of black spheres floating on the top of the water was (I believe) was for making the movie “The Abyss (1989)”. They needed to create an Stygian darkness as would exist a mile deep in the ocean. No light source other than the observable lights on the vessels or held by the actors/divers. For safety reasons simply covering the tank with solid sheet of black plastic wasn’t allowed. But a diver could surface into the black balls and breath.
First use I’ve heard of since then.
These people make a mess of EVERYTHING. Then they celebrate their mess with a film narrated by a soulless, feminine-sounding man who condescends to explain to us, the idiots, why the mess is beautiful and good for humanity. And there is nothing you can do to stop them.
I don’t care how annoying the presenter is.
It is a neat solution. It solves several problems at once. It is a passive system, and it works for about ten years; and then you just fish out the old balls and dump new ones. (Preferably before they split.) And it is even scenic, in its own strange way.