“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
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.
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.