It seems that the world flows...


"The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

 
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
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-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.


Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?


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 your self. "

- Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

WHEN SOMETHING IS IN MOTION, there is resistance elsewhere, but entailed in that resistance is motion in itself. We are all moving forwards at out own pace, some gentle and some wild like the rougher parts of rivers carving out their image in the rocks. But the gentler kind that appear in small rivulets and wind narrowly at the tops of mountain, never spilling over and wet with clarity; they have a place as well. And it is no small matter that I can write again because when I am not writing it feels as though my gentle stream is caught up in a whirlpool of circular motion, and the only resistance is towards myself; a frustrating matter for one who seeks to flow and clarify as he makes his soft motion down this eternal valley. Solace is to be found, but also wildness, and the clarity and open space speaks to the wild and raucous and can appreciate that its nature also bears a certain purpose. Even at muddy bottom, when all reaches the silt and the crust where things are even more unpredictable there is a motion which holds all together.


I should hope that the reader agrees: nature is a wonderful metaphor and in itself.

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