Whitman in Yosemite

[ambitious_wench]

I recieved a package today; A copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass".

It occurs to me that reading Whitman in Yosemite is an experience to be savored,
words tumbling from the paper-mind of the great yawping barbarian
from the past fall into my lap
tickling and delighting me like garnets poured from a seive into my palm.

"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun....there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand....nor look through the eyes of the dead nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."

"...from yourself", he said, not "for yourself".

Whitman hammered thoughts with crude and heavy words. He spoke with urgency, and chose words like a craftsman with a limited tool pouch. But he used them in urgent ways, quickly, and getting the thought finished and out into the world, his barbaric yawp sounding over the roofs below.

"Undrape....you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around tenacious acquisitive, tireless....and can never be shaken away".

How can I place his words over the modern world? Oddly, they fit.

I too hear what the talkers are talking, of beginnings and endings. I hear the lies of the walkers on the trail, how far, how far? Only another 30 minutes, and that is the same as what the previous walker said, 30 minutes ago.

I have no sense of time, and so I tell a more bitter lie; It's far, it's hot, and then a bit of truth and fact to make the lie sweet enough to swallow; The end is worth the effort in any case, the view will make you forget the trail.

Keep going. One foot in front of the other, the sun will hide behind a tree, and you can stop to rest and cool before returning to the sunwashed trail. Keep going.

Each turn of the trail, each deceitful switchback will bewilder you, and you will be wilder.

In wilderness is the preservation of the soul.

I don't have Whitman's urgency, I'm too sunstruck and bewildered to find my own words. But he pulls me along the trail of words to show me new sights behind my eyelids.

Keep going. One word in front of another, and don't worry about syntax, or punctuation. Just speak.

I'm not so good at barbaric yawps, perhaps I'll offer a primal scream instead.

Comments

[nicalycab.livejournal.com]

I picked up a copy of Leaves of Grass years ago at a small antique shop in Katonah, NY. It's bound in leather - the pages are yellow and smell of must. It's about the size of a post card. I love that book.