From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
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The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of the day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre for your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.
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And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheefully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait... And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)
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If I should die, I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.
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I am here because there is no refuge, Finally, from myself, Until I confront myself in the eyes And hearts of others, I am running. Until I suffer them to share my secrets, I have no safety from them. Afraid to be known, I can know neither myself Nor any others; I will be alone. Where else but on this common ground, Can I find such a mirror? Here, together, I can at last appear Clearly to myself, Not as the giant of my dreams, Not the dwarf of my fears, But as a person, part of a whole, With my share in its purpose. In this ground, I can take root and grow. Not alone anymore, as in death, But alive, to my self and to others.
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I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
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I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say:”We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.... But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.
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In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
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Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
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I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.
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I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
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The mystic prophets of the absolute cannot save us. Sustained by our history and traditions, we must save ourselves, at whatever risk of heresy or blasphemy. We can find solace in the memorable representation of the human struggle against the absolute in the finest scene in the greatest of American novels. I refer of course to the scene when Huckleberry Finn decides that the '' plain hand of Providence '' requires him to tell Miss Watson where her runaway slave Jim is to be found. Huck writes his letter of betrayal to Miss Watson and feels '' all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. '' He sits there for a while thinking '' how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell .'' Then Huck begins to think about Jim and the rush of the great river and the talking and the singing and the laughing and friendship. '' Then I happened to look around and see that paper. . . . I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' - and tore it up .''
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LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given. The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe! Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves --as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure of an angel, which remains to this day.
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I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.
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I self destruct every relationship so that i don't get hurt... but in truth i just hurt myself worse in the long run..
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Do I contradict myself Very well then I contradict myself,
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Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.
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It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believe in myself.
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You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen - on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become accquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. To the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But in this separation, I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm. Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.
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In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself astray in a dark wood where the straight road had been lost sight of.
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But words came halting forth, wanting Inventions stayInvention, Natures child, fled step-dame Studys blows...Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,Fool, said my Muse to me look in thy heart and write.
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Frank Well, uh I guess I, deep down, am feeling a little confused. I mean, suddenly, you get married, and you're supposed to be this entirely different guy. I don't feel different. I mean, take yesterday for example. We were out at the Olive Garden for dinner, which was lovely. And uh, I happen to look over at a certain point during the meal and see a waitress taking an order, and I found myself wondering what color her underpants might be. Her panties. Uh, odds are they are probably basic white, cotton, underpants. But I sort of think well maybe they're silk panties, maybe it's a thong. Maybe it's something really cool that I don't even know about. You know, and uh, and I started feeling... what what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not
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At six I lived in a graveyard full of dolls, avoiding myself, my body, the suspect in its grotesque house.
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Why shouldn't I work for the NSA? That's a tough one. But I'll take a shot. Say I'm workin' at the NSA and somebody puts a code on my desk, somethin' no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it and I'm real happy with myself cause I did my job well, but maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East and once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels are hiding, fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with get killed.
Now the politicains are sayin' 'Oh send in the marines to secure the area, cause they don't give a shit, won't be their kid over there gettin' shot just like it wasn't them when their number got called cause they were all pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southy over there takin' shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at, got exported to the country he just got back from, and the guy that put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job cause he'll work for 15 cents a day and no bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile, he realises the only reason he was over there in the first place was so that we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price, and ofcourse the oil companies use a little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices, a cute little ancilliary benefit for them, but it ain't helpin' my buddy at 2.50 a gallon. Their takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course maybe they even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martini's and fuckin' play slolum with the icebergs. It ain't to long til he hits one, spills the oil, and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic... so now my buddy's out of work, he can't afford to drive, so he's walkin' to the fuckin' job interviews which sucks cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him cronic hemroids and meanwhile, he's starvin' cause everytime he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special their serving is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State....
so what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while Im at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe, and join the National Guard. I could be elected President.
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For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
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A tide began to surge beneath the calm surface of Stephen's friendliness. This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am. Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. In your heart you are an Irishman but your pride is too powerful. My ancestors threw off their language and took another, Stephen said. They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy that I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made? What for? For our freedom, said Davin. No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his life and his youth and his affections from the days of Wolfe Tone to those of Parnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I'd see you damned first. They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will come yet, believe me. Stephen, following his own thought, was silent for an instant... When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets ... Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
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I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps 'Oh look at that!' Then - whoosh, I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again... and they won't be able to forget me - ever.
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I certainly do not consider myself permanently dedicated to a crusade for peace and I am beginning to see the uselessness and absurdity of getting too involved in a 'peace movement.' The chief reason why I have spoken out was that I felt I owed it to my conscience to do so. There are certain things that have to be clearly stated. I had in mind particularly the danger arising from the fact that some of the most belligerent people in this country are Christians, on the one hand fundamentalist Protestants and on the other certain Catholics. They both tend to appeal to the bomb to do a 'holy' work of destruction in the name of Christ and Christian truth. This is completely intolerable and the truth has to be stated. I cannot in conscience remain indifferent.
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I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
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