“We gotta go and never stop going till we get there.”
“Where we going, man?”
“I don’t know but we gotta go.”— Jack Kerouac
Something Wonderful: Dream Rangers
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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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Lurker for a month or so, first comment.
I’ve got a custom Kawasaki 650 on my porch, I’m 72 years old, have been afraid to ride it for fear of a fall and a broken hip, but now… Thanks, man! This bike has been from northern Alaska to Ushuaia at the the tip of South America, I’ve got an Iron Butt thousand-mile patch siting on my bookcase but never sewn on to the ol’ leather jacket, but my kids keep telling me to grow up, I’m a geez, good for nuthin’ except baby-sitting and providing an inheritance and all of a sudden…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egMWlD3fLJ8
Thanks so much for this site!
I sometimes tease my wife that when I retire, I’m going to buy matching Harleys and we’ll go touring around. She’ll hear nothing of it, and frankly I’m not into bikes at all….I’m just teasing her. But I have heard that riding a bike offers the same feeling of complete freedom as flying a small plane does, only without leaving the ground.
Perhaps off topic, but I think I’ve seen this movie before…….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSvwmgWCJ2s
I tear up every time this video comes around.
My husband made the same joke about buying Harleys.
Very inspiring and I think about doing this kind of thing all the time but my wife will leave me if I do. Says she doesn’t intend to spend the remainder of my life doctoring road rash or pouring soup into my mouth as I drool my life away after a motorcycle wreck.
So, I have a small two seater convertible with 4 wheels vs two.
Turning 80 the first of October, bought a 1974 Balboa 26 sail boat this summer. Should have it ocean worthy before I hit 82.
A run from Prince William Sound to Japan’s Seto Inland Sea crossed my mind, but naw, I wouldn’t even have tried that when I was 20….
-or on second thought, I probably was dumb enough to back then.
What is it about driving motorcylces and cars into salt water? It’s not a good idea. The salt and sand will wreck your gear. Sheesh.