WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Top of the Pops: I Hear America Reading
byVanderleunonFebruary 22, 2018
Right now on Amazon these three titles pretty much sum up the major political predilections of America. I’m reading Number 2 and I could have written number 3. As for Number 1, I’m hoping to meet Michael Wolff so I can turn him into compost.
#2 Jordan Peterson is a giant plus to the human race. It is difficult for me to fathom that he is a Canadian.
#3 I have not read the book but will do so. The title is a description of what I am.
Rob De WittFebruary 23, 2018, 9:39 AM
I just got Peterson’s book as a Valentine’s Day gift – and anybody our age who’s been through “feminism,” multiple divorces, the loss of children, breakdowns and The Age of Obama learned about not giving a fuck loooong ago.
Still here.
TenFebruary 23, 2018, 1:19 PM
#1, Utter delusion, the national pastime.
#2, Traditional reason, the national squandering.
#3, Apathy, the national undercurrent.
#4 is probably an advisory on not playing in freeways in order to remain living.
Give a nation everything and then watch it throw it all away.
EskymanFebruary 24, 2018, 3:07 PM
I now have Jordan Peterson’s book; I’ve only just begun it, but it’s already blowing my mind. Powerful, well-written, and to the point.
The first book I don’t need to buy, it’s been read almost cover to cover, on-air, by CNN & MSNBC, where it has replaced the Bible. The third book I’ve already pretty well mastered.
Highly recommended: this conversation between Peterson and Camille Paglia. It made me feel like I’ve sipped through a very small straw at a Niagra of knowledge, and is far too short. If anyone could forbid Paglia from saying the word “okay,” though- she would be unable to speak! See if I’m wrong:
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
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
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.
#2 Jordan Peterson is a giant plus to the human race. It is difficult for me to fathom that he is a Canadian.
#3 I have not read the book but will do so. The title is a description of what I am.
I just got Peterson’s book as a Valentine’s Day gift – and anybody our age who’s been through “feminism,” multiple divorces, the loss of children, breakdowns and The Age of Obama learned about not giving a fuck loooong ago.
Still here.
#1, Utter delusion, the national pastime.
#2, Traditional reason, the national squandering.
#3, Apathy, the national undercurrent.
#4 is probably an advisory on not playing in freeways in order to remain living.
Give a nation everything and then watch it throw it all away.
I now have Jordan Peterson’s book; I’ve only just begun it, but it’s already blowing my mind. Powerful, well-written, and to the point.
The first book I don’t need to buy, it’s been read almost cover to cover, on-air, by CNN & MSNBC, where it has replaced the Bible. The third book I’ve already pretty well mastered.
Highly recommended: this conversation between Peterson and Camille Paglia. It made me feel like I’ve sipped through a very small straw at a Niagra of knowledge, and is far too short. If anyone could forbid Paglia from saying the word “okay,” though- she would be unable to speak! See if I’m wrong:
https://youtu.be/v-hIVnmUdXM
An admirable ambition, he would make good compost.