Orwell published "1984" in 1949. Years later, some of Orwell's predictions have come true.
Our digital privacy is constantly under attack. BIG BROTHER IS INDEED WATCHING
Which leads me to wonder, how many of Zager & Evans' predictions will come true from their song "In the Year "2525" Remember, that cool song?
A Non-Chocolate Whitman's Sampler...
With Valentine’s day right around the corner, this is my less fattening Whitman's sampler contribution to the day.
I really love this excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself"
“My respiration and inspiration…the beating of my heart.......
The passing of blood and air through my lungs,....
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and....
Dark colored sea rocks, and of hay in the barn…....
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields....
And hillsides,....
The feeling of health…the full moon trill…the song of me....
rising from bed and meeting the sun....."
In some ways, we have lost our ability to feel wonder about the magic of our beating hearts, the blood coursing through our veins, the simple joy of just being out & about in nature. With spring fast approaching, Whitman’s words strike a special chord with my soul. I remember in my youth, the feeling that spring engendered in me. The inexhaustible energy of that youth…railing against Nixon and his duplicitous bombing of Cambodia. The eventual killing of students at Kent State in the spring of 1970. I remember the incredible surge of my own respiration & inspiration when I first heard Neil Young’s “Ohio”. Even now, I can still feel that surge whenever I hear :
"Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio"
Walt lived through the turmoil of the Civil War which claimed thousands of young lives. He saw horrible carnage as a volunteer nurse and wrote the beautiful poetry collection “Leaves of Grass” which at the time was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
Nixon caused thousands of deaths, issued forth no beautiful or inspirational words and yet what he did at the time was not considered obscene.
Anyway, I’m careening all over the road today in my thoughts. I want to get back to my main point. It feels damn good to be alive. When I help friends of mine load hay for their barns, I get to “sniff” Whitman’s hay in the barn. When I feel the warmth of the sun on my body, I feel the essence of Whitman’s “song of me”. Whitman’s rush of the streets reminds me of people watching at Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade with my older daughter several years ago. Classical guitar players, magicians, clowns, lounge singers, aging & ageless hippies. What a feast for the eyes in the rush of that street.
I’ll think I’ll end this with a little help from some C S N & Y lyrics & Monsieur Whitman….Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice but to carry on the song of ourselves...
I will share with you a very small piece that I wrote in December and subsequently emailed to friends & family as a kind of 2018 Happy New Year's card.
I devised the title of this small piece from Thoreau's edict of non-conformity..."hearing the BEAT of a different drummer" and Tom Robbins' mystical red BEET properties.
Hearing the red “beet” of a different drummer….
For nigh on one score & 7 seven years, I inserted "drop dead gorgeous" quotes into a dog-eared journal that I kept haphazardly updated. These quotes often appeared on the printed page of a favored author, knocked me sockless & then I was left with no other choice but to scrawl them onto my tattered journal. Unfortunately, I haven't been engaging in this quote gathering process for quite a few years. Why do we quit doing things that seem so essential to us?
Anyway…occasionally, I will re-read them to see if they are still as spellbinding as they were "way back when". I am happy to report that they usually hold up very well. The following is an example of such an excerpt with genuine staying power. This excerpt is from "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins and it concerns non-conformity/individuality.
"The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The onion has as many pages as War & Peace, every one of which is poignant enough to make a strong man weep, but the various ivory parchments of the onion & the stinging green bookmark of the onion are quickly charred by belly juice & bowel bacteria. Only the beet departs the body the same way as it went in. Beets consumed at dinner will, come morning, stock a toilet bowl with crimson fish, their hue attesting to beet's chromatic immunity to the powerful digestive acids & thorough going microbes that can turn the reddest pimento, the orangest carrot, the yellowish squash into a single disgusting shade of brown."
"At birth we are red-faced, round, intense & pure. The crimson fire of universal consciousness burns in us. Gradually however, we are devoured by parents, gulped by schools, chewed up by peers, swallowed by social institutions, wolfed by bad habits & gnawed by age; and by the time we have been digested, cow style in those 6 stomachs, we emerge a single disgusting shade of brown. THE LESSON OF THE BEET THEN, IS THIS, HOLD ON TO YOUR DIVINE BLUSH, YOUR INNATE ROSY MAGIC, OR END UP BROWN."
My challenge to you in 2018 is to stay divinely blushed and AVOID BROWN at all costs. So I exhort you to BLUSH ON……..THUS SPAKETH me, myself and I
We all want to look back on our lives and say that we’ve had a good run, a good “go at it”.
*Has my allotted time been squandered needlessly on meretricious empty things?
*Have I read enough great books?
*Have I saved enough damsels in distress?
Reportedly, Robert Kennedy listened to Shakespeare recordings while shaving. Now, that’s creative time usage non pareil.
Analyzing the stewardship of our paltry finite time raises such questions as :
*Did I make the right career or job choice?
*Did I eat the right foods and use alcohol in a judicious manner?
*Did I cherish my friends & family ?
*Did I rail against injustice when I saw it?
*Did I take the time to view spectacular sunrises & sunsets?
*Did I have the courage to take chances?
These are but a few of the things to ponder as you examine your life and take stock of who you are. Simple math tells me that at age 58, if I take half of my age 29, and add it to 58…that leaves me with the astonishing number of 87. WHOA..NELLY} Do they, whoever they are, still say that? Are they the same guys who relentlessly chased Butch & Sundance {Newman & Redford}…as in “Who are those guys”? Maybe those guys are time itself.I am {we all are} inexorably marching towards our expiration date at breakneck speed and with rather used body parts. The elusive life well-lived continues to shadow & mock me.So I will valiantly strive to live my life via Shakespeare’s lofty line, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it”. Or like Kerouac’s quote in “On the Road”
"But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
I love this quote from Aleksandar Hemon
"All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.
This CS site applies to the quote. The endless possibilities of connecting with people all around the globe....but alas..alack..most people we will never know.
TUPLDRF Blog (5)