Where pretty dreams go when they die.
The Bubble
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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.
The best sort of humor — allowing some of us to laugh at themselves, while others laugh at them.
Start a go fund me; I’ll contribute. Seattle, Portland, San Jose, Santa Fe, Detroit, baltimore. Bubble wrap the whole magilla.
Funny, but also sad to watch. A brief glimpse of when SNL wasn’t all straight Left propaganda.
Actually, funny but also astonishing to watch. “The last time SNL wasn’t all straight Left propaganda” was well over 20 years ago.
This vid, IIRC, is from last year. It’s almost like the writers noticed something outside their bubble.
Never felt I had missed anything by never having seen even a snippet of Saturday Night Live (which I presume this is). Watched a minute or so of that video. Still don’t feel I’ve missed missed anything by never having seen even a snippet of Saturday Night Live (until now).
Once in a while, BillH, they have a moment. This video is one of them.
Casey, Santa Fe . . . Well, yeah. But it’s one of those places where the worlds collide, too. I was doing a job there a couple of years ago in a hardware store. In the parking lot was a shack, about 8 x 8. It had electricity, but not water; that was hauled in and out. Inside was a grandmother who made burritos. The menu was in Spanish, she didn’t speak English, but I speak burrito, so we communicated. It was made from parts of the cow most people don’t think about, delicious and cost $3.50. A few hours later, about 5 p.m., I was unloading the car in the hotel parking lot. A coyote trotted by, five feet from me, giving me a “How you doin'” look.