do you guys think I'd be good at electricity?

 Like do you think I have what it takes? Do you see the potential inside my spirit? Like when you first saw me, in your initial impression did the thought, 'oh yeah he could be good at electricity' cross your mind?'

Scenario: we are in a group and lost and also trapped and everyone's phones are dead. Could I be the guy to shepherd the latent electrons in the atmosphere like some sort of hound beset with a selective genetic sense of duty into everyone's phones to charge them so we can call for help and take selfies with our captors who we definitely hate but if things worked out differently we could have been friends with? Do you think I'd be good at that or just sort of mess everything up?

the best part of being awake

 the best part of being awake is seeing people you are excited to see and they are excited to see you too! the second best part is eating.

the aim was song by robert frost

This is 'The Aim Was Song' by Robert Frost with some thoughts at the end

Before man came to blow it right

     The wind once blew itself untaught,

And did its loudest day and night

     In any rough place where it caught.

 

Man came to tell it what was wrong:

     It hadn’t found the place to blow;

It blew too hard—the aim was song.

     And listen—how it ought to go!

 

He took a little in his mouth,

     And held it long enough for north

To be converted into south,

     And then by measure blew it forth.

 

By measure. It was word and note,

     The wind the wind had meant to be—

A little through the lips and throat.

     The aim was song—the wind could see.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Let me start off by saying that I consider myself a fan of Mr. Frost. I know he's a pretty mainstream pick. An old dead white guy to be sure but the man had some chops. I'll give him that. And I don't like to be negative. There's no shortage of negativity. I'd prefer to highlight something positive but well, here we are.

I was looking through a list of Robert's poems on the trusty poetryfoundation.org and the title 'The Aim Was Song' jumped out at me. This looks good, I thought. Maybe it'll be a poem about how people toil their lives away over serious matters and we should aim to experience life like a song, a time well spent.

But instead we get the GALL and AUDACITY of capital-M MAN telling the WIND how to BLOW! Man telling the wind how to do its job?!?! Mr. Frost you should be ashamed. 

And I did think to myself, wait is there some subtle irony here that I'm not picking up? So I did the due diligence of a google about the themes and NO IRONY WAS FOUND!

I would not expect the keen eye and sharp wit of Bobert T. Frost to succumb to such enlightenment-era man is a rational creature PROPAGANDA! 

Gross. Gross Gross Gross.

A man showing the wind what a song is. This is poisonous drivel through and through. I'm beside myself with rage at this poem. There must be sarcasm somewhere in it. 

I just--there's a very long but straight line you could draw between the ideas in this poem and all of the evils of modern society that is destroying the world we need to survive while also making it increasingly miserable. Man telling the wind how to make a song. Oh yeah while I'm at it let me tell all the coal and oil how to not be in the ground. And let me tell all the forests and fields and meadows how to stop not being parking lots. And let me tell all the lithium at the bottom of the ocean how to--um--let me kill all the cool snails at the bottom of the ocean to get at that yummy yummy lithium for the doom rectangles.

I guess ol' Robert was really feeling his oats that day. I guess Mr. Frost was on a tear that season. Batting 1,000. He must've felt like he was physically incapable of missing. The Lebron James of quatrains.

Yeah I'll write a poem, he screamed to the roaring wind. I'll write a poem about telling you how to do your job! How do you like that huh?! He's on top of a cliff screaming into the wind as a storm rolls in. I'm ROBERT LEE FROST BUDDY! I DECIDE WHOSE DOES WHAT AND WHERE THEY DO IT AT! I MAKE THE MONEY, MAN! I ROLL THE NICKELS! THE GAME IS MINE!!

That is, um, how I imagine Robert Frost was when he wrote this poem. Thank you and goodnight. 

 in sixth grade we read this book called Freak the Mighty and the thing I remember most about it was this line about, "you can remember anything" and I think there was a second part to it like, "you can remember anything, even something that didn't happen to you." Or something like that.

And one time in my sophomore year of college someone said they liked cloudy days because they felt like the clouds were giving the earth a hug. I'll never ever forget that.

Ok, I looked it up and the line is, "remembering is a great invention of the mind, and if you try hard enough you can remember anything, whether it really happened or not."

me applying for the job of being in charge of myself

Here's the thing, right? We're eating like, mostly apples and whatever. PLANTS. And apples basically come out of the dirt. An apple is enhanced dirt. You follow? So we eat the apple, turn it into more of us and doodoo until we're done living and then we fall down in the dirt and get turned into that. You see what I'm saying? It's the worms that make the ever-loving world go round, babe. It's the wriggly bois and squiggly gorls underneath that are putting the paint on the canvas. And then we go up there and kinda smear it around a little. Right? Underneath every human is an untold amount of worms at all times day and night. So, big picture--I'm talking really big picture here. We gotta invest heavily in the worm route. Decomposing. Aerating. Munching. Hydraulic movement. This is the moneyball approach to self-actualization. When the game is moving dirt around, the best seat to be in is the dirt-mover seat.

I AM RENEWED!

 I AM REVIVED!

IT WAS WARM ENOUGH TO LEAVE MY WINDOWS OPEN ALL DAY AND WHEN I RETURNED HOME THE SICK AIR OF THE COLD TIMES THAT HAD BEEN LINGERING FOR WEEKS AND MONTHS WAS GONE AND REPLACED WITH THE FRESH CLEAN AIR OF A WARM DAY IN JANUARY. YEARS HAVE BEEN ADDED BACK ON TO MY LIFE! I SMELLED SMELLS AGAIN! THE CONGESTION THAT HAD BEEN LINGERING HAS BEEN BANISHED ONCE MORE!

HAIL THE SUN! HAIL THE WARM AIR! HAIL EVERYTHING TODAY! TODAY IS TRULY A TODAY!

Blast! magazine

BLAST!

This 32 year old guy in London in 1914 named Wyndham Lewis made this literary magazine called BLAST to promote this new movement called Vorticism. All the cool kids of the literary art world were in on it. A lot of the magazine is dedicated to BLASTING or BLESSING things.

I don't know. They were definitely writing their little burn book for a specific time and place but the style of it is pretty cool and interesting. 

I like the manifesto part:

1. Beyond Action and Reaction we would establish ourselves.

2. We start from opposite statements of a chosen world. Set up violent structure of adolescent clearness between two extremes.

3. We discharge ourselves on both sides.

4. We fight first on one side, then on the other, but always for the SAME cause, which is neither side or both sides and ours.

5. Mercenaries were always the best troops.

6. We are primitive Mercenaries in the Modern World.

7. Our Cause is NO-MAN'S.

8. We set Humour at Humour's throat. Stir up Civil War among peaceful apes.

9. We only want Humour if it has fought like Tragedy.

10. We only want Tragedy if it can clench its side-muscles like hands on its belly, and bring to the surface a laugh like a bomb.

----------------------------------------------------------------

 unclogged a toilet today at the gym. felt like a hero.

The Next Three Stanzas of Black Earth by Marianne Moore

In view was a

Renaissance; shall I say

         The contrary?  The sediment of the river which

         Encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used

To it, it may

Remain there; do away

         With it and I am myself done away with, for the

         Patina of circumstance can but enrich what was

There to begin

With.  This elephant skin

         Which I inhabit, fibered over like the shell of

         The coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sediment of the river which encrusts my joints. I mean, that's fire. The word 'encrusts'? Incredible. Whenever my knees or shoulders or hips pop now I'm going to think about the sediment of the river which encrusts my joints. 

The poem seems to be about growing older. This also gives me more reason to talk about my cyst. Sorry not sorry if you're not a fan of Snacks. I really like the phrase, 'it may remain there;'. Aging is inevitable but the speaker is so accepting of it that they are giving permission for it to occur. 

And then the incredible line, 'for the patina of circumstance can but enrich what was there to begin with.'

A patina is like when copper turns green. Some metals get this film on them that is synonymous with age and whatnot. And the poem is saying that these signs of age are NOT a subtraction from some ideal of youth or perfection but the things that happen to you over the course of your life and blemishes and cysts and turning gray and having bad toenails can ONLY enrich what was there to begin with. 

Your true essence and self is drawn out in its fullest form by time spent living and being part of the world. 

The line that's split between this section of the poem and previous one is 

the blemishes stand up and shout when the object

In view was a

Renaissance; shall I say

         The contrary?

I think renaissance is referring to a classical kind of marble statue pristine beauty and the poem is saying when you look at something like that then all of the imperfections immediately jump out at you. But then the line, 'shall I say the contrary?' so the poem is going to refute that idea and say why the blemishes ARE the beauty. 

The thing that really stands out to me is the strong sense of self and ownership of the self. It's a powerful 'I'. A reverent 'I'. Marianne Moore is really really cool.

The First Two Stanzas of Black Earth by Marianne Moore

Openly, yes,

         With the naturalness

         Of the hippopotamus or the alligator

When it climbs out on the bank to experience the

Sun, I do these

Things which I do, which please

         No one but myself.  Now I breathe and now I am sub-

         Merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do these things which I do, which please no one but myself. So good. These are how my best days go. No commitments. No rush. A hippo or alligator climbing onto a bank to experience the Sun. I'm about it. I'm here for it. It me.

You could talk about the structure of the stanzas and how the lines run into each other but who needs to worry about that when the face value is already perfect. You were ahead of your time, Marianne Moore. The young people of the day call out to you in memes and tweets and text posts.

Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens

 I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

Guy puts a jar down somewhere and recontextualizes that place. Now it's a place where a jar is in contrast to the wilderness. 

Isn't this fascinating? Isn't this great stuff? A 106 year old poem about a guy who put a jar somewhere and then thought about it. I'm not being sarcastic and I'm not being serious. I'm being some other third thing.

No I do think it's kinda neat. I remember in college we read this poem and discussed it in class and the thing I never liked about classes was that the discussions were always this very performative thing to look smart in front of the professor and in front of everyone else and I didn't find it fun or interesting. 

It feels like a very personal and idiosyncratic thing to go put a jar down somewhere and write about it and it's something I'd like to talk about and maybe discuss it with some close friends or people I enjoy talking to. Not some strangers at 9:30 AM on a Tuesday.

Anyway the poem goes on:

The wilderness rose up to it,

 And sprawled around, no longer wild.

 The jar was round upon the ground

 And tall and of a port in air.

Dude can't get over how round this jar is. He's like interrupting himself to remind you that this jar--this jar right here--oh baby, she is round. I'm talking 365 degrees. I'm talking the circumference divided by the diameter is pi my guy. It goes so crazy. The roundness.

No I think he likes the sound of the round upon the ground that the wilderness surrounds. And again the wilderness is changed by the presence of the jar. I guess the roundness and regularity of the shape of the jar is in contrast to the sprawling wilderness. 

Why is the wilderness no longer wild when it sprawls around a jar? Does it say something about the nature of true wilderness? Does it say something about any sort of order in the presence of chaos?

 It took dominion everywhere.

 The jar was gray and bare.

 It did not give of bird or bush,

 Like nothing else in Tennessee.

The last stanza is kinda ominous. This alien object which is defined by its emptiness has seemingly taken over this land that it has nothing in common with. 

The poem makes me think about the idea of naming and defining places. The opening line is I placed a jar in Tennessee. What is Tennessee? I'm really not trying to be pretentious--obviously naming places is a useful practical convention so people can have shared reference points but the whole freaking point of poetry is to allow yourself a little bit of time and space to think about things that are fun and interesting to think about. Gosh, heaven forbid anyone try to enjoy thinking about basic concepts from a different perspective. What was I saying?

I feel like there's a parallel between giving a place a name and sticking a jar in it. Both are relatively arbitrary inventions that add nothing to the physical nature of what they come to define. I feel like Wallace Stevens is saying the things we focus on and the things we call places are NOT the places themselves. They have nothing to do with the places themselves.

We can't see a place or know a place without giving it a name. We can't process raw wilderness as a 'thing'. As soon as you put a jar in it, it is forever the place with the jar. Something related is the idea of trying to give directions to someone walking in the woods with no trail. If you really knew your plants and geographic features you could do it but even then there's a lot of ambiguity and things that we don't process that well. We'd quickly say we're lost. Or maybe that's true of people in our modern and post-modern and post-post-modern world.

At the end of A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg says,

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

I feel like anytime the river Lethe is mentioned it's a shorthand for forgetting and forgotten things. I think Allen and Wallace are talking about the feeling of something lost. Some sort of truer connection to a place being lost. 

I don't know. Here's my version it's called Anecdote of the American Spirits Outside my Door

I opened my door and my good for nothing neighbor left his stupid pack of cigarettes on my doormat

And he is gross

And the week of Thanksgiving he got super drunk

and I could hear him singing Pearl Jam's Alive super loud at like 11pm

So anyway I put the pack of cigarettes

over on his side of the patio space

now they're just sitting there on the ground in front of his door

an ugly yellow cardboard box

and it catches my eye every time I go outside

I would've just thrown it away

but it still had some unsmoked smokes in it

and I'm the good neighbor

A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

         In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

         What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

-------------------------------------------

It's a poem about reading a poem and going out into the world and seeing it through the poem's (Walt Whitman's) perspective.

He's thinking about the long sections of Walt Whitman listing everything. 

Garcia Lorca is a poet who wrote, among other things, City That Does Not Sleep which is quoted by Speed Levitch in one of my favorite movies, Waking Life.

-----------------------------------------------------------

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.

The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,

and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner

the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no idea what Lorca is talking about. I don't know why living iguanas would bite men who do not dream. I guess I know something about the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars. 

You go outside on certain nights and look up and you can feel that. Never been bit by no iguana before though.

I'm reading the poem more and it's pretty dark...

Let there be a landscape of open eyes

and bitter wounds on fire.

No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.

I have said it before.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know. I lost the thread on this one. Allen Ginsberg is an absolute rascal and that's all I gotta say about that. Walt Whitman is a dude who said,

I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,

And Lorca is a dude who needed a nap.

freaking providence, bro

 providence. the protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power. that's so sick. sign me up.

Millenials crave providence. It's the thing we all secretly and openly want.

"What about my ganglion cyst?"

"Don't worry, bro. Providence."

"You're so right. I am at ease."

here's what I do

 I open up the blogger post page and then I stare at it. And then I open up Song of Myself and I just scroll. Don't sit down and read the dang thing from the start to the finish. The start is really good though. Read the start. But I don't think it's very fun to read Walt Whitman line by line. There's a lot going on in this thing. But also there's nuggets. I just look for nuggets. 

Here's a nugget:

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;

How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

Incredible. Incredible line. How many of the Walt Whitman Big 4 do you possess? 

Hankering. Gross. Mystical. Nude. 

At my peak. At my absolute peak. Like a handful of times in my whole life I've been all 4 at once.

Usually I'm hovering at around one. 

And then the follow up line? How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

To be clear this is the whole stanza. These two lines. A perfectly self-contained gem of the written word.

I need to meditate on these lines and will report back later.

Snacks is doing fine. Same size. No pain.

I'm tired like a zombie

 I'm tired like a fiendish ghoul. I'm tired like an undead thral in a dingy yard. I'm tired like bones. I'm tired like purposefully empty vessels of flesh. I'm tired like--I'm so tired- I'm tired in the way I imagine skeletons are tired because their mitochondria are in their cells but like a prison cell and the bones are the bars and the jailors are their former eyes turned against them the way our eyes are always trying to do. Vision is the greatest trap of all.

I'm tired like if you took the backs of two spoons and rubbed them together all night instead of sleeping. 

I'm tired like an old pile of wet socks and the seepage...and the SEEPAGE is bottomless. It will never dry but also can never die.

I'm tired like the opposite of ants. I think ants have a thing where they can never get tired. Let me be the first to put that out there. 

I'm tired...here's what I'll say. Rearrange the the letters of the word "tried" and you can almost get to the word 'detritus' which is a fancy word for dirt and if you rearrange the letters in dirt and add an e you get 'tired'.

I guess the experiment to test if ants get tired would be to like time them on certain tasks and then if they slow down you could say they get 'tired' but if you think our simple human science experiments can unpack the infinite cosmos that is ant wisdom then I'm sorry to tell you but you're a lil dummy head.

Snacks update: Snacks is fine. Same size. No pain.

ganglion cyst

 I got out of the shower today and saw a lump on the inside of my wrist on my right hand. I did a google and found out it's a ganglion cyst. I've had them before. One time I got one because I was trying to teach myself how to do a handstand and was bad at it. It went away on its own. I think I know how I got this one.

It's a sign of my long dormant mutant powers finally emerging at the age of 32 like I always knew they would. So far the only power is 'has lump' but I'm sure it will expand into other things like 'web powers', 'elemental powers', 'telecommunications', and being able to talk to plants. Or it's like an egg and in my moment of need a dragon will hatch and belittle my foes. I have decided to name the dragon Snacks and we will be chums.

Y'all stay posted now for continuing updates on my rise to power.

cave of wonder

puddle of mystery

culvert of a good times boy

sinkhole of gratitude

ledge of humility

berm of resplendence

the grotto of worrisome favor

the plateau of the devil's own one-bristle toothbrush

the windy afternoon of having an itchy sternum

the basketball court of infinite sorrow

mesa of normalitude

the rickety bridge of unfounded consternation

the lagoon of trying again but doing even worse the second time

uncle sweet beau hal's discount great value jerked everything emporium of regret

the most amazing thing that you didn't of think of it because if you had you would've wound up on a train straight to beauty town but now you're stuck here feeling sorry for yourself in trouble-burg

the archipelago of giggles

the great great great great great great big ol cob

the streak made it 20 weeks

 20 weeks of 66 miles. I was bummed when I got sick and couldn't run but I don't think streaks are too important. They're nice but too many times I've made bad decisions because I didn't want to take a rest day or let my progress be interrupted. 

The big bummer was the fact that I was only on the second week of really trying to push and work hard. That's the risk you run though. Reset and have a great week this week. One good week and everything is back.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that 

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,

Now I wash the gum from your eyes,

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.

I Sing the Body Electric

there's this part at the end of I Sing the Body Electric where Walt Whitman just names every part of the body he can think of. He starts at the top of the head and works his way down to the heel and there's no metaphors or imagery it's just a list

Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails,

It's pretty exhausting and I skimmed over it but I think the point DubDub is getting at is that the earthly, bodily, mundane, concrete and the heavenly, eternal, spiritual are the same. 

He says at the end

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

O I say now these are the soul!

He also has this part earlier on where he's talking about men and women being sold at auctions and he basically says that any body is a link in this process that stretches all the way back to the creation of the universe and is a part of the history of all living organisms AND is a part of all life and everything that will ever be. 

To reject or dismiss any part or person is to deny everything that was, is, and will ever be. It's like the Dr. Bronner's soap bottle says: ALL ONE OR NONE!

He has another part where he's talking about just watching a healthy person walk by and he says

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The thing that comes through for me is how much love the poem has for everything. It's this overwhelming all-encompassing fascination and desire for everything and anything. It also has this sense of fullness that I think comes from embracing all these seeming contradictions at once- the mundane and the extraordinary, the body and the soul, the present and all of eternity, even the idea of a poem describing something beyond the reach of poetry. 

The poem holds it all up at once and is madly in love with it. That's true consciousness, that's awakening, that's enlightenment. S'pretty neat.

I'm gonna list out everything that's on this table right now

 ready go. little snapshot in time. a little verbal memento. a lil scribby dibby. a lil paint with the words. a lil picasso-shakespeare-put-em-in-a-blender-and-see-who-wins, a lil slice of life pie

-laptop. a chromebook I bought a few years ago because my really old chromebook was getting too slow

-two glass jars on either side of the laptop. the left one has water the right one has a smoothie I just made

-two wadded up pieces of toilet paper because I've had a runny nose all day and one thing my dad did growing up was take two pieces of toilet paper or tissue and just stuff em up both nostrils

-my light phone. a phone I bought in the summer because I sat on my old phone while kayaking and decided I wanted to try having a dumb phone. I'm not really sold on it either way. 

this is taking too long

-a bunch of different color muji pens

-two yellow notepads

-a ceramic vase/bowl thing I took from the last house I lived in

-a little bluetooth speaker

-a lamp

-a homestarrunner coaster

-a coaster with a drawing on it that someone gave me for an art trade

-this little carved dome/ball thing with elephants on it and you put a candle inside it

-a small box of matches

-an empty spray bottle

-a ceramic pitcher

-a metal watering can

-an aloe plant in a ceramic pot that I took from the first house I ever lived in in cville

-a piece of fabric that I dyed and drew on at a arts and crafts festival in town by the river

-a handkerchief that I dyed and drew on at some point I don't remember

-my keys

-my earplugs

-the mask I wore at the gym today

THAT'S EVERYTHING

It's a big table.

there are two kinds of worlds

 there is stick-and-glue world and then there's twig-and-paste world. I don't know how to explain it any more than that.

I live firmly in stick-and-glue world but any time I catch a glimpse of twig-and-paste world I'm like "oh that seems really nice."

Sticky is also in stick world, obviously. And then tacky is in twig world.

But tacky in the sense of poor fashion is in stick world and garish is in twig world.

I guess one is more elevated speech but maybe that's just from my position in stick-and-glue world. 

I don't know. Needs more study but there's something there. 

I do like yogurt

 as a species we really knocked it out of the park with yogurt. great job, everyone. yogurt will always be the food of the future. Google says the first appearance of yogurt is in the Neolithic period, over 7,000 years ago and I'm sure back then it was the food of the future too. Even lactose intolerant people can tolerate yogurt better than any other dairy probably. 

In the far off futuristic space age year of 2007 they will even have yogurt and it will be prepared by yobots and ingested through the usb ports in our chrome plated space gullets

 

 I don't like this part of youtube music where it says "forgotten favorites" and then shows me songs I haven't listened to in over a year because I feel guilt for not listening to the songs. I guess this feeling is intentional on youtube's part but it makes me feel TOO BAD and then I still don't listen to the song anyway because I hopped on there with a plan to begin with so stop it youtube music!

lucid spiraling

I put powdered sweet tea in my smoothie last night

and the caffeine kept me up late and woke me up early

and in the morning outside it was pouring freezing rain

and I heard a man shouting "HEY! HEY!"

so I looked out my window and he was banging on the door of an empty building

across the parking lot from my apartment

so I moved a chair over to the window to watch him more

he was very angry

and very yelly

I guess he found keys to open the door because he stormed into the building still yelling

"HEY! HEY! HEY!"

and even when I couldn't see him anymore I could still hear him yelling from the other building

then I got worried that he would somehow notice me watching him and come up to my apartment

and want to yell "hey!" at me too

and it's my rest day so that wouldn't work at all

so I stopped watching him

but throughout the day I would hear him yelling again

never anything coherent

and no one ever responding

and then later I checked the window and a man was working at a computer in the office

on the top floor of the building the man had entered

I used to see him working in there all the time but then he disappeared for months

Walt Whitman would say

I am the man yelling in the freezing rain

I am the man working at the computer

and I am the one watching them both from the opposite window

I am large. I contain multitudes.

walt whitman

"I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,

I laugh at what you call dissolution,

And I know the amplitude of time.

I am the poet of the body,

And I am the poet of the soul.

The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,

The first I graft and increase upon myself . . . . the latter I translate into a new

tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,

And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,

And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

I chant a new chant of dilation or pride,

We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,

I show that size is only development."

------------------------------------------------------------

You ever think about how Walt Whitman knew the amplitude of time in 1855? 

You ever think about how Walt Whitman grafted the pleasures of heaven onto himself?

You ever think about how Walt Whitman sat content if no one knew he existed and if everyone knew he existed?

Walt Whitman said,

Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me . . . . I stand indifferent,

My gait is no faultfinder's or rejecter's gait,

I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

I moisten the roots of all that has grown

You ever think about how Walt Whitman moistened the roots of all that has grown?

He's so real for that.

 this is the poem I memorized

and something or other a mention of eyes

and blah blah blah clear blue skies

it goes like this and then a reprise

this is the poem I memorized

that's not true

 "be yourself, everyone else is taken."

False. Find someone with a successful personality and then steal it and make it better with your superior intelligence.

A DH Lawrence Poem

 well it happened. my goal of 2024 finally reached on the third day. what luck! I was asked about DH Lawrence! To celebrate, here's a poem I don't remember reading by DH Lawrence. It's about fruit!

Pomegranate

You tell me I am wrong.

Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong?

I am not wrong.

Brilliant opening stanza. I'm going to start saying this all the time. Classic DH. Immediately on the defensive. Putting the reader in their place from the jump. 

In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek women,

No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate-trees in flower,

Oh so red, and such a lot of them.

I don't know what he's talking about here. Syracuse is the main city in Sicily and apparently it was really important and stuff. I guess DH (the D stands for David) I guess ol Dave didn't like Greek women. If I had to guess I'd say the poem is generally talking about things that society tries to hide and ignore. Ol' Dave Herbert loved to talk about death and ~romance~ and how the two are intertwined. You can tell the poem has big feelings about the redness and bountiful nature of these trees in flower. Nature is so abundant and flagrant in a way that people of manners of civilization can't stand. That's what I think he's referring to by the "Rock left bare". Imagine parking lots and development but the ancient world version.

Whereas at Venice

Abhorrent, green, slippery city

Whose Doges were old, and had ancient eyes,

In the dense foliage of the inner garden

Pomegranates like bright green stone,

And barbed, barbed with a crown.

Oh, crown of spiked green metal

Actually growing!

He doesn't like Venice either! Too wet and slimy for the D man. What's a Doge? Turns out a Doge was someone of the highest authority in Venice. So it seems like green pomegranates are hidden in these secret gardens that only those at the very top have access to. A crown of spiked green metal. So in this case nature and all its associations has not been wiped out but it's this guarded, twisted sort of thing. Personally, I like how he's mad. He starts off insulting the reader, he dunks on greek women, he dunks on this slippery city. Dude is cranky.

Now in Tuscany,

Pomegranates to warm your hands at;

And crowns, kingly, generous, tilting crowns

Over the left eyebrow.

Apparently he loves Tuscany! I don't know what over the left eyebrow means but it sounds very suggestive and winky winky like. It seems like Tuscany by contrast is open and generous and the pomegranates are there for the picking!

And, if you dare, the fissure!

Do you mean to tell me you will see no fissure?

Do you prefer to look on the plain side?

Now he's talking about the fruit itself. An open pomegranate. Things are heating up and getting a little tawdry and baudy. It reads like he was beating around the bush a little just to get to this part. Like he was sort of making conversation about 'oh you know how in Venice they're like this and in Syracuse they're such and such" and now that he's sort of won you over by talking about how Tuscany has it figured out he's like 'bro I gotta admit I'm super into the inside of fruit.' And then he imagines you sort of turn away and he's like 'dude I thought you were cool like that! I trusted you dude! Don't tell me you're a prude! Like c'mon man you know you've thought about it, don't lie to me! Don't do this to me!"

It's very fun. I'm having fun. 

For all that, the setting suns are open.

The end cracks open with the beginning:

Rosy, tender, glittering within the fissure.

Now he really lets loose. All the feelings come out. He's saying the beauty of the open pomegranate is a universal beauty. DH Lawrence is really interested in how the inevitability of death and the drive for all of nature to reproduce feed into one another. He's saying this stuff is as obvious as a sunset, it's right there for all to see. 

Do you mean to tell me there should be no fissure?

No glittering, compact drops of dawn?

Do you mean it is wrong, the gold-filmed skin, integument, shown ruptured?

And so we find out the thing that is bugging him is that people don't like when he talks about this stuff. No no no no you can't talk about death. No no no no you can't talk about ~intimate relations~. That's all very impolite and uncivil and indecent. You won't get anywhere prattling on about this nonsense that everyone wants to sweep under the rug. Fun fact: integument is the rough outer layer of an animal or plant.

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.

It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.

And then Davey Herb hits us with this excellent final stanza. He's like 'I don't care. I'm gonna be a sad boi. I'm gonna think about all this stuff and pomegranates because I think it's super neat and really pretty. Kaleidoscopic even. You dumb little babies can all just hang out with your heads in the dirt because these cool fruit innards are way better than hanging out with you guys anyway!

Great poem. 10/10. Love the message. Love the words. DHL delivers once again.

Build-Up to C10M

First workout of the block. Goal was to run 4 miles hard at riverview around 5:25 pace.

Ran 5:27, 5:37, 5:32, 5:21. 21:57 for 4 and about 5:29 average. It's an out and back trail with the first and last miles on the same stretch and the middle miles on the same part. Those middle miles seem to run slow for some reason. The trail is a little more windy (windy like winding not like wind like breezy but also it kind of was) and hilly I guess. 

But it was good. I'd give it a B+. I was at a 9/10 effort level in the last mile which isn't really a tempo effort but I wanted to practice pushing and redlining a bit. The theme of the block is working hard and SQUEEZING THE JUICE!

My one sandbag is that my hammies and glutes are still sore from lifting Sunday. I didn't feel it while running at all but I definitely notice them just moving around. But my body felt good and the weather was nearly perfect so I can't really complain. Once that torso twist fitness takes hold I'm gonna be on a rocket to the moon for sure.

TORSO ROTATION

 Huge potential breakthrough today. Only one day into the year and already the dawn of a new era. 

At Thanksgiving and Christmas my sister watched this video called "Unlocking Full Mobility (if you can survive this one routine...)" and then it became this running joke of "oh I'm busy unlocking full body mobility" or like my shoulder would pop really loudly and that was the full body mobility I was unlocking. Are you gonna unlock full body mobility later? You get the idea.

But anyway while I was unlocking full body mobility there were certain parts of the routine where you had to rotate your torso and I said afterwards to my sister that I hate rotating my torso. Always have. It feels bad and I'm bad at it. Way back in high school we had to do lunges with torso twists and I always hated it. I told my sister, "That's not my plane of movement! I'm all forward and back! No side to side!"

But today I was messing around with torso twists and saw how much my knee was buckling and my ankles were unstable and instead of thinking about how bad I was I thought, "what if I get good at this and then all of my dreams come true!?!" Right? What is weakness if not an opportunity for explosive and gratuitous growth?!

So all day I've been messing around with torso twists. If I'm bored I'll just start doing them. I'll get in a deep lunge or I'll put one foot up and bend the front foot and do them. Slow. Fast. With weight. Whatever. Just spamming torso twists. It doesn't seem to strain any particular muscles but there's an awful lot of wobbling going on. And running doesn't have much torso twisting action but there is some and what if every step I take I'm doing these micro-wobbles and robbing myself of precious precious speed? Right? 

So I'm just gonna keep doing torso twists every day and see if I can turn my suspension into a highly responsive well-calibrated system. 

Could be something. 

HORSE STANCE AND TORSO TWISTS!

2023 recap and 2024 goals

 THE BIG 4! RUN CLIMB CAMP ART!

Run: It was a mixed bag but we're optimistic! My big goal was to run 3,000 miles and I did that! So, that's good. I ran a lot of slow miles in January and February and I realized it set me up for a disappointing 10 miler but I couldn't feel too bad because I did what I said I was going to do and I learned from it. I had a really good April and May and then cratered going into the summer, which happens way too often :( I was pretty miserable running in June and swore that I would take June 2024 entirely off from running. The thing that kept me going was reaching the 3k goal. Anyway, the summer happened and then, similar to 2022, I got in good shape in the Fall. I've talked enough about running on here.

In 2024: I've written out my twelve weeks of training leading up the 10 miler. I'm excited about that. The areas I'm really excited about improving are my overall strength and stability (squats, deadlifts, hip strengthening stuff). I think instead of not running at all in June, I'll focus on sprints and maybe just some really short faster runs along with lifting. Tentatively in the Spring I'll try to get in some kind of mile/middle distance shape. We'll see. The big focus is the 10 miler for now.

Climb: Overall positive! I was really disappointed by the one competition I did, the rumble in the spring but I had a lot of big improvements. I sent an orange tape (v6/v7). I did a pull-up with 89lbs +bodyweight. I started hangboarding and hung 45lbs for 10 seconds and 50lbs for 6 seconds. I learned how to lead climb and belay! Lead my first outdoor climb and belayed indoors. On the whole I made steady progress.

In 2024: It's not quite a plateau in the v5/v6 grade but it's a pretty gradual incline and I'd like to make a more dramatic improvement. I'm starting this year with a focus on finger strength and I'd hope to end the year consistently climbing orange tapes. The main things I would like to work on are explosive power, finger strength and lock off strength.

Camp: A great year! The Costa Rica trip was a real highlight. One of the most profound trips I've ever been on. The summer was another great summer. There were no big new challenges but we did some new programs like Democracy week and Sedan Chair racing. I also become kayak certified which I think helped the quality of those trips a lot. I retooled the cabin time at the overnights and that was really successful. The tattoos were also a lot of fun. I like camp because it's much less performance-based and more about spontaneous moments of connection and that definitely happened so I can only be grateful.

In 2024: We're doing camp poplar. Ahhhh! That will be the highlight of the summer for sure. The other thing I'd like to do is have more of a focus on counselor growth and reflection. There's plans for a new overnight ritual that should make that happen.

Art: I've been more creatively productive in past years and making things was my 4th priority in 2023 but I'm okay with that. I'm not going to stress about it. When I have the time and energy to make things, I make things and that's how it should be. Yeah!

I'm also incredibly thankful for my family and my friends. I've said this already but I really feel a sense of community at the climbing gym and camp, of course. I'm really glad I got to spend time with my parents and sister at the end of the year and I feel renewed and ready to achieve my goals in 2024!

Also I eat better now. I got better at that. Getting stronggggggg