Portland Oregon. October 17, 2020. 17 days until the election.
![[UPDATED with animal identified]One Spark. Just One. And there will be a massacre in the streets.](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/1tAIGv9e.jpeg "[UPDATED with animal identified]One Spark. Just One. And there will be a massacre in the streets.")
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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
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I can’t decide if I’m supposed to take note of the “peaceful protestor” being shined by the LEO, or, the lady with the high heel shoes and short skirt, who almost gives an appearance of being a normal human, though if they are both in Portland, OR, at this stage of the game, I’d say there is something seriously wrong with both of them.
America 2020 . . . : The Three Masketeers.
It’s a great picture. It says things about society, police, old vs. young, about being glib and blithe as well as earnest and serious.
If all of our journalistic institutions hadn’t been compromised over the decades, I would have said this picture deserves a Pulitzer. But considering who wins Pulitzers…
Oooh, Auntie. God will get you for that.
“But considering who wins Pulitzers…” Yeah. The thing is, the Pulitzers are decided by a small group of people who get together in someone’s loft and they throw out names of stuff they read and liked. Or, in some cases, stuff they didn’t read, but pretended to have. That’s it.
Nobel peace prizes are awarded by a subcommittee of the Norwegian parliament. That’s about like having a subcommittee of the Minnesota House of Representatives do it. “Oh ya, sure, let’s give it to that black fellow the Americans elected. Everyone says he’s super and has nicely creased pants.”
The rest of the Nobels are done by a more rigorous process in Sweden, which of course means that they’re given by white supremacists.
Very nice gams.
Not a BIPOC among them– whatever happened to diversity and inclusion?
“She’s got legs, she knows how to use them!”
-ZZ top
I was going to offer something deep and insightful about how even in a moment when you might think that a policeman would be completely focused on his job, that we men are hard-wired to appreciate the beauty in the women we see…..
But wait! Did you see the Fire Sale girl?
Whether she being nonchalant or blasé, that’s a nice set of pins. I can only give her a 7.7 because of the coat and mask…
So what? A hooker hurrying off to her next appointment – what’s news ’bout that?