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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.
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
Gerard Van der Leun
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Gerard, thank you for the fertilizer with which to help cultivate, as the gentleman speaking notes must be done daily, this day.
Yes, Gerard, more more more please. Is there any more? I could spend my whole life (what’s left of it) listening and being inspired…..
Cryogenics, I hear they have had some success.
excellent – my thanks
Beautiful! Thank you!
You’re too much man. That was fabulous.
Every night I thank…whomever, for the gift I was given. Every morning I do the same for getting another chance to put my feet on the ground. It’s so beautiful here on earth. I’ll miss it but for now, you haven’t caught me sitting in front of a TV for 30 years-except when there’s a Grand Slam! Hell no one is perfect, who needs that?
Open your heart to the world, to your fellow man, to your fellow human beings.
The cost of growing older, is to grow more cynical, less trusting in others. You’ve been betrayed, you’ve been hurt by someone else, by many others, by the world. You’re not going to be taken advantage of again, I’m not that naive. Won’t get fooled again!
Yet, to open your heart to the world and to each other, is to truly live. It is just today, that’s all we have. Next week is just a promise, and last week is just a memory. Close your heart to the world, and begin dying inside.
“Go, thoughts, on wings of gold.
Go, settle on slopes and hills of Earth
where warm and soft and fragrant are
the breezes of our sweet land of birth.”
h/t Giuseppe Verdi’s opera ‘Nabucco’
Most excellent as always.
Wonderful
Gerard — that young RFD girl I was trying to describe to you? You found her — she’s at the beginning of the video. Something more “beautiful-er.”