Walt+Jache=_______

she told me, among other things, that she had been considering rubbing garlic paste on her foot. but this is beside the point.

the point is that somehow our conversation

(and those that came before)
(and those that are yet to come)

sent me back to Uncle Walt, and an afternoon i spent with Jache, watching him annotate "Song of Myself" and explain that Whitman was my "150 year old queer Brooklyn Angel." an excerpt:


I have heard what the talkers were talking,
the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance,
always substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction,
always a breed of life.

To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights,
well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul,
and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

...

well put.