“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” ― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
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.
Welp, that’s quick. Hell, would have taken me four days and change in my FSS (Fast Sealift Ship), and that would have needed circa 700k gallons of dino juice to go up the stacks. Of course, there would have been tens of thousands of tons of tanks, trucks, helos, humvees, and boxes aboard, so there’s that.
Quite the machine, Comanche; impressive what a tenth of a billion gets you occasionally.
A boat is a hole in the water you throw your money into.
The 2 best days in a boat owners life are the day he bought it and the day he sold it.
The trick is to crew on somebody else’s boat.
I owned a 27′ +/- Pearson sloop for several years and loved sailing that babe even, occasionally, when the wind was blustering at around 20-25 kph. Don’t think that’s tough for a single hander, give it a shot and see.
But, even in my wildest dreams would I have gone out in that kind of blow. No way, Jose, even as a trained crewman. That voyage is long and hard and requires a little bit of different breed with a whole lot of crazy.
¿QUIÉN ES MÁS PROBABLE QUE QUIERA UN BEBÉ?MIS PASTELITOS
Still own three sail boats, sold my ocean Boat last year. We beer can race wed nights here on Klamath lake. Was racing a Santana 25, Refered to as a 525, older boat sails well. I ripped the keel about off last year tackling to port, for final approach the start line, for the evening race.
Hit a submerged rock at roughly 10/12 knots. The danger Bouy was a full 100 yards off. Hit so hard I pushed the front of the keel driving the rear of the keel thru the boats hull. We race the a class stayed with everybody but the boat kept “rounding up” becoming over powered, causing loss of directional control.
Lost by four boat lengths. At me slip, the foredeck crew guy opened the hatch, laughed and asked if the foot and a half of water inside the cabin was ok? Dam near sunk her right their. Was able to rock to boat to the crane, where she was lifted out for repairs. The keel isn’t back on yet, had three discs removed in my spine, Dr’s haven’t released me yet.
Also own a Hunter 25 cruiser and a 27 ft Oday, imrebuilding. I sold my Halberg Rase 35 two years ago.. I really dig sailing, more to the point I really enjoy making any sailboat push the envelope of speed in any wind!.
Dirk