leaves of grass

 
at jackie blue's house, sunday morning on the banks of the manatee river, july 2008

"This is what you shall do: love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and your labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body..."

Walt Whitman, 1855, from "Leaves of Grass"

I did something brave and principled yesterday,and last night I couldn't sleep, thinking "I'll be fired for this."

This morning I am thinking about Walt Whitman,love, duty, integrity, and eternity, and the California Supreme Court's ridiculous ruling today.

Whitman was fired from his job at the Department of the Interior when "Leaves of Grass" was first published and his boss, the Secretary of the Interior read it. Ralph Waldo Emerson read it and called the book "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed."

Dammit. It's a tough job being a New England Transcendentalist writer, but somebody's gotta do it.


breakfast at jackie blue's; on the manatee river, july 2008