2 unrelated items
first another photo:
this is in a mask workshop i half-took at the AIN conference back in October. it was highly informative.+++++++
secondly, here is part of a poem i'm reading very slowly. most of the poems are hard to decipher and require several reads. these two are right next to each other and of the easier ones to figure out. i really relate to these as a traveler of our grand countryside.
excerpt of Starting from Paumanok from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass
14.
Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.
Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
Toward the male of The States, and toward the female of The States,
Exulting words, words to Democracy's lands.
Interlink’d, food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and grape!
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those sweet-air’d interminable plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and where the southwest Colorado winds!
Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and Connecticut!
Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!
Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen’s land!
Inextricable lands! the clutch’d together! the passionate ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb’d!
The great women’s land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters!
Far breath’d land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez’d! the diverse! the compact!
The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate include you all with perfect love!
I cannot be discharged from you! not from one, any sooner than another!
O Death! O for all that, I am yet of you, unseen, this hour, with irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok’s sands,
Crossing the prairies—dwelling again in Chicago—dwelling in every town,
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls,
Of and through The States, as during life—each man and woman my neighbor,
The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,
The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me—and I yet with any of them;
Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river—yet in my house of adobie,
Yet returning eastward—yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland,
Yet Kanadian, cheerily braving the winter—the snow and ice welcome to me,
Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State, or of the Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State;
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same—yet welcoming every new brother;
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with the old ones;
Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal—coming personally to you now;
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.
15.
With me, with firm holding—yet haste, haste on.
For your life, adhere to me,
I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself really to you—but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?
No dainty dolce affettuoso I;
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck’d, forbidding, I have arrived,
To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe;
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.
---------------
And what of this Texas, this land which you did not go to and therefore have none herein to write?
What of it Walt? Whereunto whither and without it, you have withered, Walt!
You have withered! Yet I remain to tout for it tit for tat!
b
