Thank you for this, Gerard. Everything has been so horribly depressing lately. Sometimes simple and sweet can hit the spot. Song made me a little misty. My wife went to a Judy Collins concert not so long ago. She said that Judy’s voice is just as clear and fine as it was when this song was recorded.
JWM
ghostsniperJune 26, 2020, 7:15 PM
Some people only see this stuff in videos.
I see it everyday with my eyeballs.
I’m richer than I seem, and know it, and appreciate it.
nunnya bidnez, jrJune 26, 2020, 7:38 PM
Oh sure, you get to see deer cavorting.. whoop-de-doo.
But have you ever seen a pack of rats running down a subway platform, fighting over a slice of Famous Ray’s pizza?? Or a flock of seagulls …real seagulls, not that whiny British synth band…
dogging the stern of the Staten Island Ferry, grabbing french fries that hoodies from Stapleton are tossing in the air??
No? Man, you haven’t seen it all.
Grinning! My day has been made, and I thank you for it!
It’s hard to appreciate just how tiny these are in real life.
JWM
DerakJune 26, 2020, 9:03 PM
Way off topic but.. Gerard, can someone reach Old Remus? He has not posted in three consecutive tuesdays. This is troubling to me. He is an anchor and if he is missing, moving, shaking, I guess for some reason I need to know.
AnneJune 26, 2020, 9:34 PM
All the mid country/fly over states are under attack. They are being invaded by groups of out of state liberals (WA State). These young people are being moved in to flood the voting process, to act as agents of change, to take jobs away from the local middle class.
Are there any R people out there acting so creatively? Or, are they just all waggin on about their guns?
VanderleunJune 26, 2020, 10:00 PM
I’ve written to Remus but have not heard back and no news is no news.
NoriJune 26, 2020, 10:57 PM
A most appropriate title,Something Wonderful:The Good Life.
Funny how the lyrics mean so much more today than they did then.
That blue camo dog at the 2.00 part is a k-9 to keep. Sweet.
ghostsniperJune 27, 2020, 4:01 AM
Rats and sea gulls eating pizza and french fries?
That’s what you’re bringing to the table?
When I was an EMT on a call to a run down urban housing development I saw a very young negro child whose fingers were chewed off by members of the rodentia class. I lived in Florida for 40 years and once saw about a hundred sea gulls devouring a beached dolphin, vulture style, and it was ghastly. So yeah, nunnya, I’m familiar with those things too. I prefer the rural wildlife.
Snakepit KansasJune 27, 2020, 6:47 AM
A good decade ago plus I was on an evening walk on the pier in Santa Cruz CA. Someone was feeding a large seal some people food. It barfed on his leg.
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
The Waking
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.
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.
from Preludes
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
ARTIST: CASEY KLAHN
Song of Myself
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
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
The scientists are in terror
Comments on this entry are closed.
If only we could give Cook County to Wisconsin.
Thank you for this, Gerard. Everything has been so horribly depressing lately. Sometimes simple and sweet can hit the spot. Song made me a little misty. My wife went to a Judy Collins concert not so long ago. She said that Judy’s voice is just as clear and fine as it was when this song was recorded.
JWM
Some people only see this stuff in videos.
I see it everyday with my eyeballs.
I’m richer than I seem, and know it, and appreciate it.
Oh sure, you get to see deer cavorting.. whoop-de-doo.
But have you ever seen a pack of rats running down a subway platform, fighting over a slice of Famous Ray’s pizza?? Or a flock of seagulls …real seagulls, not that whiny British synth band…
dogging the stern of the Staten Island Ferry, grabbing french fries that hoodies from Stapleton are tossing in the air??
No? Man, you haven’t seen it all.
Too bad we can’t post pictures. One of my lophophora flowered this morning. That is a rare sight.
JWM
So let it be written. So let it be done.
Grinning! My day has been made, and I thank you for it!
It’s hard to appreciate just how tiny these are in real life.
JWM
Way off topic but.. Gerard, can someone reach Old Remus? He has not posted in three consecutive tuesdays. This is troubling to me. He is an anchor and if he is missing, moving, shaking, I guess for some reason I need to know.
All the mid country/fly over states are under attack. They are being invaded by groups of out of state liberals (WA State). These young people are being moved in to flood the voting process, to act as agents of change, to take jobs away from the local middle class.
Here is one example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/technology/tiktok-grandma-trump-biden.html
Are there any R people out there acting so creatively? Or, are they just all waggin on about their guns?
I’ve written to Remus but have not heard back and no news is no news.
A most appropriate title,Something Wonderful:The Good Life.
Funny how the lyrics mean so much more today than they did then.
That blue camo dog at the 2.00 part is a k-9 to keep. Sweet.
Rats and sea gulls eating pizza and french fries?
That’s what you’re bringing to the table?
When I was an EMT on a call to a run down urban housing development I saw a very young negro child whose fingers were chewed off by members of the rodentia class. I lived in Florida for 40 years and once saw about a hundred sea gulls devouring a beached dolphin, vulture style, and it was ghastly. So yeah, nunnya, I’m familiar with those things too. I prefer the rural wildlife.
A good decade ago plus I was on an evening walk on the pier in Santa Cruz CA. Someone was feeding a large seal some people food. It barfed on his leg.