The Brave New 1984 Expansion Pack: Love Your Servitude – Aldous Huxley & George Orwell
Next post: Better Daze
Previous post: Of a Fire in a Field
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.
I’m gonna be praying, and praying hard, that the L-rd gives every one of these demon bastards cancer of the asshole so huge that their guts fall out and drag behind them; that their every joint swells with gout and makes them scream in agony; that the blood flow to their face stops and they die with a bare skull and hanging shreds; that the little prick Jamie falls down the stairs, crushes his cervical vertebrae and lies helpless for 30 years under the care of a sadist; that every traitor, every commie, every coward, and every smug son of a bitch falls under a harrow and is dragged across the field and shredded; that they boil in burning pitch.
Pain without end, Amen.
forwarded/multiple recipients.
no one is coming to save us.
I heed the words of Orwell in that closing shot. I am not allowing it to happen. I don’t wear a mask. I go into grocery stores maskless, sometimes I’m denied entry, but very seldom. I’m often the only one wandering around amoung 500 others. I tell everyone who inquires that this flu is total bullshit. I will not respect ignorance and cowardice. I’ve lost plenty of friends since February… friends who believe the bullshit. Happy slaves… or fearful slaves… they’re all slaves.
“Mask up, Buddy”
“F*CK YOU.”
End of discussion.
JWM
We have no one to blame but ourselves!
Gary Barnett has written an item that underlines the warnings of Huxley and Orwell, namely, compliance and mindless obedience will be the suicide of everyone. Stop obeying. The first and easiest thing to do is toss the masks. Start somewhere. tinyurl.com/1oolzox0
@ Lance That my friend is one of the greatest comments I have ever read at any site. There are many great commenters here at AT.
My wife and myself are non mask, free thinkers. Dangerous to commie society. No smart phones either.
I’m with you Terry. (And the Lance of whom you speak.)
jwm:
“Mask up, Buddy”
“F*CK YOU.”
End of discussion.
Not quite. Add: “Then get the f*ck out.”
@ Fletcher…. Get the f*ck out of where? The area the believers congregate? I’m not a believer, I’m a breather. You need the vaxx, Fletcher. We all could use more parking spaces.
I don’t wear a mask. Tried it, didn’t like it.
If a place demands I wear a mask, I have a thin black balaclava (ski mask with no nose or mouth holes) that covers all the way down to the base of my neck. Smoke-lens shooting glasses go over it “to protect my eyes from airborne germs.” And usually with black leather gloves on. (for the cold weather)
I actually enjoy wearing it, as it generates some pretty hilarious reactions- people see a 6’4″, (6’5″ in work boots) 224 pound guy dressed like that, and sometimes part like the Red Sea in the Ten Commandments movie.
What good is a “pandemic” if you can’t have some fun with it?
Nothing against prayers but torches, pitchforks, tar, feathers, decorated lampposts, ……
The mask tyrants include the support of two thirds of women. As a man said, women value consensus and will close ranks to strangle dissent. It’s how they are wired biologically. Our rulers understand this very well and have organized them to respond to their malevolent plans. I don’t think we’ve seen the bottom of this. In anything.
@james wilson
Dead on. It’s also why giving women the vote was the beginning of our demise. It’s also why merely stating this fact is so swiftly and viciously attacked.
There is nothing new under the sun. Today’s nonconforming contrarians morph into tomorrow’s enforcers and the former enforcers are reduced to resentful subversives plotting to take charge. The answers to what is faced, and what has been faced for as long as mortal man has existed, is found in religion and especially in Christianity but real religion and especially Christianity are very unpopular precisely because to sincerely engage in the practice is to chafe powerfully against one’s own pride and this is both humiliating and painful when first undertaken so most don’t even try and of those who do many abandon the effort as just too hard.
Once upon a time the majority in the west proclaimed their Christian faith and even fought wars in defense of it. But the simple fact is that never at any time have actual practicing Christians constituted more than a tiny percentage of the people. Most are, most of the time, actually practicing atheists who have no intention of any will being done but their own. It has ever been thus and it will continue as such until such time as our Savior makes his second entrance into this world. Those who have accepted Him as savior and king will find forgiveness and peace. Those who do not will receive their just reward.