The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Sing the Susan Constant, that carried us to shore
To the great unfolding emptiness of land;
teeming, full, and perfect;

All things crafted then were crafted well;
The land gave forth its fruit;
The people, strange people, noble, lived with and within the land;
They were healthy and few, strong, true;

Never having lain down with dogs;
Never having walked with cattle;
Following after the squawk of chickens;
Not packed in rotten wooden cageworlds;
Or cold stone mounds with waxen light;
And the strange thin icons of a dark strange dying man
called Jew, called Carpenter, called God.

He still hangs, they whisper, as they board the Susan Constant.

To the ends of the earth they’ve teemed;
Despairing, despairing, despairing;
Trust in me, says men in gold,
as their children sick and die–

He goes to the bosom, they say then–

She goes to the bosom, they say then-

Even as they think on how the chair cut up for firewood
has lost all of what it meant to be a chair-

He still bleeds, they whisper, as they board the Susan Constant.
John the Joiner, carpenter like He, built the Susan Constant
Nurtured in his mind’s eye,
And then hewed from wood and water,
Built on land, on the last edge of the westerlands,
To sail beyond the sunset

To sail beyond the sunset,
In the Susan Constant

To new life;
Where life is still young;
and not at the end and extremity of our suffering,
but here, and now, while our patterns undeniably are

Here. Is. Heavy. 

Feel not the lightness of being but the heaviness of it now, you real incarnated soul, as you sit and read, whether by the shores of the Tookany, or of the Long Island Sound, or the River Delaware, or anywhere in this New Found Land

Here, not there. To begin again.
The Susan Constant.

Wonderful and sad. Let his nose lead me.

What are these strange small oceans we lay beside? Dark, unknowable, deep. We sit beside them, gazing into the depths, swimming, not swimming –

Burn the whole thing down — secret wish of everyone for the apocalypse, for the great revolution, the great dying, in which the multiples screaming will finally be quiet. Be quiet! They say. Be quiet! As glass breaks. As the youth, eighteen, the only ones who will legitimately live into the 2070s look at what that world will be and despair

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

https://practicalspactical.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/the-snake-charmer/

I have been a tree in winter, bare and naked, naked and cold.
And I have been a tree in summer, green and brilliant, bright;

Now I am a tree in August; Now I am a tree in fall;
My leaves fall off; I grow new leaves; My leaves fall off;
I am not my leaves, my green appendages
I am not my naked branches,
I am roots, and inner sap,
and the sleeping dreams that all trees dream
when they are a tree in winter

I once tried to remember my earliest memories when I was two. Here, today, sitting on this case, and looking at things that happened 10 years ago, I realize it is equally difficult to even remember what was happening ten years ago. What was happening?

Finishing Freshman year of college. Rushed a frat. By myself. Doing shots. Two story beer bong. Did not partake of that. Nevertheless, got to the frat house, and was sitting on a couch talking to a blond girl when I excused myself to throw up. Did so, in the bathroom, and sort of hung out there for a bit, sort of passed out, until Jay found me, and put me in a cab — came with me. A good friend, that time. Slept for about a day. Did not get into the frat. No worries. They were a little too rich for my blood anyway.

And then on the final day of school, G made brownies and we finished class and ate them and then we must have walked around campus, and had some fun and good adventure. It was all sunlight. No worries there.

And went to visit Jay in Memphis, and talked to some girls there, and splashed in Jay’s pool and played music in his annex, and we went to the Peabody Hotel but not Graceland, because Jay had just gone to Graceland and almost died there with George in the car. But we went to Jillians and Hot Topic and I bought a Led Zeppelin Icarus shirt.

And went back and went to camp, and I think that was the summer that the girl counselor Nicole, attractive, quit on the second day, because I wasn’t nice to her, or one of the kids called her fat, and I thought she was superhot, and thought it was funny or something, and then had to be a counselor all by myself, and we got another counselor but I let him take breaks a lot and I did the whole thing myself and didn’t like it or have any fun because my mom was an authoritarian director and I worked for her.

But nevertheless, had great fun hanging with the high school kids who had returned to Philadelphia after their own first years of college, or even just the Philadelphia ones, ML, I’d say, and EB, and A, and I saw Trey Anastasio for the first time at the Mann Music Center and they bought mushrooms but I did not and their mushrooms didn’t work and lost their pipe to ninjas but I enjoyed Trey, I did, and the people gathered there on the lawn for a beautiful experience and there it was a beautiful religious experience —

And went and saw Phil and Friends as well and was complimented on my air guitar skills by ML and Phil played Watchtower and I saw Warren Haynes for the first time and slide guitar for the first time and it was good —

And were there any girls that summer, any girls to break up the monotony — did Jaimie Gaeman work for my mother that summer, I don’t think so, I don’t, I don’t know who was there, A/M, maybe – still young, unmothered;

That spring I had briefly gotten a huge crush on Ms. BC — the living together effect — or the way I fall every so often for the sweetest girl in the room — sweet like flowers —

Here’s what this says:

Aug 2, 2001 – Trey Anastasio @ the Mann Music Center; And Bela Fleck maybe right after?

And some disagreement about whether to go one way or another and we said lets go see Bela Fleck and did, ZIR and me, and there were balloons in the parking lot –

DFW, Broom of the System = 155,079

Franzen, The 27th City = 180,882

Bellow, the Dangling Man = 51,127

Kerouac = Town & City = 197,148

RJ, Eye of the World = 305k

Tolkien = Fellowship, 187k

Prince of Nothing = 175k

DFW, Infinite Jest = 575k

Ulysses = 264k

The second rule is love your neighbor as your self.

The first rule is love yourself.