“It’s probably nothing….”
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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
Gerard Van der Leun
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Awww, man.
That just makes me want to move right back to L.A.! (Just kidding)
I spent 28 years in L.A. county, from 1977 to 2005, and watched it decline from what used to be a literal paradise into a 3rd world sh*thole.
As a General Contractor, it was once a gold mine- race riots, wildfires, earthquakes, mudslides, tenants who demolish units before they moved out, and older homes falling into disrepair from negligence.
Riding a motorcycle there (especially on the 405, 110, 134, 10, and 5 freeways) was considered suicidal, yet I somehow always survived the (literally) worst drivers in the entire USA. Even riding the great biking roads like PCH and Mullholland was still pretty life-threatening if you strayed near a BMW or yuppie-driven Porsche.
I have a lot of good memories of L.A., like the Sunset Strip clubs, dating a lot of hot “actress wanna-bees,” and meeting & working for a lot of “Hollywood types.”
But those days, and the good times there are long gone, never to happen again.
Glad I got in and out before it turned into a living hell.
Hey, remember this song?- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcADqxnQA_4
Hmm. So the federal government fails in its duty to defend our borders and does not enforce our laws, so it’s Californian’s fault. Yeah sure. See also Prop 187 – cancelled by a federal judge. How ’bout we don’t give away free stuff to illegal aliens and their crimmigrant babies don’t get to be US citizens by birth?
My 18 year old daughter has been with the fam to Cali and SoCal at least 3 times, I guess. She wants to take a trip back there with her cohort of friends, but I told her today that the LA she enjoyed a few years ago (3 or 4?) is gone. It’s a homeless encampment.
If they don’t vote Newsom out, just imagine the next strange administration to come. You thought Blade Runner was a dystopian fantasy? Guess what? It was prophecy.
It’s a damn shame.
I lived there 40 years ago, it was nice.
Glad I was there then, not now.
Memories is cool.
Still have friends there, I’ll never go back.
I remember Randy Newman, but I remember Guy Clark better, may he and Susan rest in peace:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpa5mOg3Fjs
I don’t watch the news much, but last I heard, we now got the former Mister Jenner running for governess.
*Sigh* It just won’t stop…
JWM
If given a few years, most of the crap that begins on the West coast will ooze all of the way to the East coast and most certainly to the Deep South.
But here in the DS we have lived for innumerable decades with, and I suppose we will eternally endure, a pox that some of us refer to as the Black Death. Those infected by it are everywhere, raping and murdering, drunk and yelling about inequities, buying, selling and using all manner of pharmaceuticals, popping out kids like they are food stamps, spreading STDs, robbing and stealing, embracing insanity and insane rages and shooting and killing each other over anything.
I won’t be here to watch the merging of the illegals with the mighty forces of the Black Death but I know that it will be grand. Two like minded giants who contribute nothing to life except violence and millions of mouths to feed, going at it with unmitigated rage for as long as it is possible to keep swinging. And then, there are all of the other psychotic hoards that exist beyond the boundaries and purview of the illegals and the Black Death. Should make for an interesting future.
Being a Prune picker, “ native born Californian” , I drove thru LA once. Was a shit show even then
Village Idiot
Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered. Matthew 21:18-19
BTW, if you haven’t already watched the series, The Chosen, I highly recommend.
https://thechosen.link/5B2HM