A Child Goes Forth

Everything you see each day,

each sound you hear, each thing you do

is filed somewhere in your brain

and thus, becomes a part of you

That’s a little something I wrote just now which was very much inspired by a poem I read today by Walt Whitman, called “A Child  Goes Forth.”  I’ve been reading 19th century Americans lately, specifically  Thoreau and Whitman, mostly because they were free downloads on Kindle, but that’s not a reason not to read them, now, is it?

Walt Whitman

Anyway, I’m not  quite as knocked out by either of them as I was when I was 18, although they are both brilliant in their own way.

I’m impressed with what Thoreau did but what I realize now is that that’s something I would never be interested in doing, not in the slightest.  A cabin by the lake would be lovely, of course, but I would like  one  with  a well stocked fridge (the romance of living  on bread and an  occasional fish is lost on me), and a speedy internet  connection.

Also, I was quite amused at one point where he said, quite nonchalantly, something about how something was harder than trying to teach an Irishman.  Standards of the times, I suppose.

Whitman, of course, was a bit of a madman.  He strikes me as sort of an  American William Blake, seeing God in everything, in the leaves, in  the trees, in the  birds and the buildings and  the women and the men and things even less specific.  Again, though, the whole standards  of the times  thing kicks in.  In the poems “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” he waxes totally rhapsodic about joyously  raping  the landscape.   Back then, people thought  that was just great, that was the point.  Also, although he writes  very sadly about the Civil War at the end, at the beginning  of it he’s straight up jingoist patriotic.

If they  were alive  today, Thoreau would probably be more disappointed with humankind than ever, but he would still be  able to find a pond to live by and he could live on bread and fish and wild strawberries just as well now as then.

Walt Whitman would probably fit right in, and be pleased with the fancy drugs.