WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
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.
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
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Dang. Got something in my eye.
If that don’t put a lump in your throat you’re in the wrong country and just need to get the hell out.
That was a touching advertisement and a prime example of the intersection-gack, that word!-of patriotism and consumerism.
“This is the postmodern desert inhabited by people who are, in effect, consuming themselves in the form of images and abstractions through which their desires, sense of identity, and memories are replicated and then sold back to them as products.”
― Larry McCaffrey
Wasn’t Jeep purchased by Fiat and produced only in the U.S. until 2014, not that there’s anything wrong with that? I feel a Menckenesque moment coming on.
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/chrysler/2015/03/02/jeep-fiat-chrysler-brazil-italy-china-italy/24234759/
I once saw an interview with Ryan Tedder the lead singer of OneRepublic. He came across as a well grounded individual.
Good for Jeep. I also watched Gladys Knight sing the NA.
I stand when I hear the anthem, even when it’s on the screen. Why? Because some kid in a dark blue uniform once ran the flag forward in close combat to rally his unit in the Civil War. Because my dad served under that flag when he exchanged direct cannon fire with the Germans in Italy.
I don’t need anymore reason than that.
JEEP! Ya done GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.