Something Wonderful: Fly Through the Alps Like an Eagle and Ride the Wild Horses of the Camargue
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
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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Really appreciated the eagle soaring through the alps video. I have been nearly transfixed on more than one occasion watching birds riding the thermals. Something pure and honest witnessing an animal simply doing what it’s designed to do. Beauty is ubiquitous, yet seemingly it is only the vile and crude that is granted attention.
“Beauty is ubiquitous, yet seemingly it is only the vile and crude that is granted attention.”
Just so and I am always mystified by this era’s fascination for the vile.
The eagle was very cool indeed.
Watching the second video (and wondering why the girl was yelling?), I was reminded that the earliest use of stop-motion photography was to figure out what horses do with their feet when they run.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge#Stanford_and_horse_gaits
The eagle video is wonderful, but methinks the eagle sees and perceives far more than do we with our particular vision and perception, “riding” on the eagle’s back as it were. Now if we were able to “merge” with the eagle a la Carlos Castaneda and the crow…
+10 for that eagle video, really cool!