“There is the world dimensional for
those untwisted by the love of things
irreconcilable…”
“Meanwhile life outside goes on all around you…”
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
Gerard Van der Leun
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
Comments on this entry are closed.
Nobody goes to nuclear submarines anymore. They’re too crowded.
Rimshot!
Hm. Imagine a boomer crew (ahem, us former Air Force weather people can say boomer crew, ‘cuz I flew across the Atlantic with a crew once) that’s just resurfacing after a 90-day cruise. What was going on when they went under? Covid was a thing, but the big shutdown had not happened, and certainly we had not had riots. It would have to be a bit of a whiplash.
Fake. Just like the moon landing, and the 1900 plus “ieds” that Were set off starting in 1972_ish.
Walt Disney was the imaginer that did that shit. Nobody talks about that commie bastard.
Goofy was the distraction.
What a relief and comfort it is to see our splendid ultra-hi-tech Armed Forces joining with academia and foreign countries to keep law & order on an desolate Arctic frikking ice floe while police and the National Guard take a knee as they watch our cities burn under the insurrectionists’ torches and the Generals of the Pentagon treacherously stab our President in his back.
Though I spent my share of time in the Bering Sea, or places thereabouts while on the USS Los Angeles (SSN688), I did not get to experience surfacing through the ice in the Arctic. Looks cold. As for boarding a sub, wouldn’t one prefer boarding a sub in the tropical breezes blowing across Pearl Harbor? I know I appreciated that.
I bit & clicked it, sound muted as always. After a few seconds of what looked like interesting scenery, a basement dweller appeared yapping and waving his hands. I moved on.
Too bad you didn’t get beyond the basement intro into the real world at the Pole. Sad really. Protip: You do realize that by clicking along the bottom of the YouTube you can move along to other points in the video,
According to the handy-dandy ALCOM FORM 13a dated AUG 67 that the Yankee War Department issued me at Fort Wainwright many, many years ago, at 30 below zero, exposed flesh “may” freeze in 30 seconds in calm conditions and raising the wind speed to 10 miles per hour provides a wind chill temperature of negative 60. The charts may have been revised since then but probably this one is near enough.
Protip #1, while we’re giving them: Pretty much, you just as well change that “may freeze” to “will” if that time I frostbit my snout and the medic said “Holy shit, you’re gonna lose that thing” was any indication. That’ll get your attention.
Protip #2: If you want to know what the Arctic can be like without a massive support system, or even with one if you’re foolish, Jack London can tell the tale as well as anybody:
https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Jack_London/To_Build_a_Fire/To_Build_a_Fire_p1.html