Just touch your face
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
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.
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
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
Comments on this entry are closed.
The song, “can’t touch this!” is rolling around in my empty skull. I appreciate her sense of irony very much.
For my part, I trend towards even darker humor. Like the NBA player touching mics and then coming down with the Coronavirus. You cannot write irony this rich.
Paging Mr Rudy Gobert. Your Darwin Award is ready for pick up. Mr Gobert…
(I hope Karma has a sense of humor)
This lady makes a lot more sense than 95% of the blathering buffoons on the lobotomy box…
Were it not for my bride’s weakened state, sardonic misanthropic shit that I am, I would be enjoying all this a lot more than I am. As it is, I am thankful indeed that you kind folks were so generous as to provide me quite a few weeks of schools on making do in a contaminated world. The WuFlu will burn itself out in good time, but it won’t be our last plague, so to the already planned spring rebuild of my deck I am adding a fully plumbed decon station.
Got any plans for such, ghostrider?
The list is long, Cap’n, as it is every year. And every year all of it does NOT get done. That’s what next year is for. I too have a deck that needs some attention, on 2 different levels. In about a month my new wood lathe from Grizzly will be delivered and all bets are off on whether anything else gets done as lathes have a tendency to addict all they come in contact with. We’ll see. I’ve had a smaller lathe since 2010 with it I have created 600+ pens unlike any ever seen anywhere and sold all of them. I have also created 300+ wooden bowls and have sold about 250 of them – the others have been in a variety of art galleries. I have also created several hundred other items on that small lathe and have sold most of them too. I likes doing some lathe work.
Thinking about taking the bed off my 1991 Chevy S10 and replacing it with a home made aluminum camper. I’ve designed it in 3d in autocad and have most of the aluminum tubing on hand and I have access to a welder.
But back to the decks. We have about 1000 sq ft of deck on the first floor and about 400′ on the 2nd floor and I need to strip all of it with the pressure washer down to bare wood, then paint all the railings and stain all the decking. There is also a 32′ bridge linking the house with my office in that mess too. I need spring to start last week.
Obama virus cure here:
https://youtu.be/C1GpWOdj2e0?list=RDC1GpWOdj2e0
No evil goons. One million girls cannot be anything but fun, fun, fun.
Southern wit & wisdom;thank you ma’am,that was delightful.
Casey’s right,someone notify MC Hammer.This lady’s rant would make a great remix of “Can’t Touch This”.
It’s official,Arizonans are in panic hoard mode. Stopped at Wally World today for a couple gallons of spring water I use for coffee. Surprisingly,they still had it,but the toilet paper aisle was wiped out. (Sorry) Seriously,not one pkg left. Hand sanitizers disappeared 2 weeks ago,along with Clorox-type wipes.
The ramen noodle section,normally crammed full,had 2 pkgs of chili flavor left. Disappointing. I had hoped to add to my stock of “oriental” flavor,which has recently been changed to “soy” flavor,presumably to stop offending oriental snow blossoms.
Apparently the Coronavirus apocalypse will have Corona beer;that case was well-stocked.
Is that Mummy Pig or is it Daddy Pig?
Elvin Bishop! Yes sir!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MCLPtTKKgQ
“Man, you should have seen,
That little juke joint jump”
https://youtu.be/WtwhkS6-QHY
As always, the Muslims have the most senselessable response to plague. Blame infidels in musical form. Try not to look away.
I totally love this woman’s response! She speaks for many of us as we witness the unfolding insanity.