I'm Gina Smith

The Natural Emergencies of the Self

by T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity.

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards.

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been, but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

The inner freedom from the practical desire,

The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded

By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving.

Erhebung without motion, concentraion

Without elimination, both a new world

And the old made explicit, understood

IN the completion of its partial ecstacy

'The resolution of its partial horror

Yet the enchainment of past and future

Woven in the eakness of the changing body,

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

Time past and time future

Allow but a little consciousness.

To be conscious is not to be in time

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,

The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,

The moment in the drafty church at smokefall

Be remembered; involved with past and future.

Only through time time is conquered.

A little Rilke for your Sunday.

I am thinking of Rilke today. I think this is my favorite Rilke poem (translated from the original German). Does anyone out there nominate a better one? Happy Sunday.

My favorite line is: May for once spring clear without my contriving.

Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Yogi Berra at his best. (Courtesy of Steve Wozniak's email list)

Yogi Berra's address at accepting an honorary degree in St. Louis. Thanks SW for passing this along. Yogi always has a way with language.

"Thank you all for being here tonight. I know this is a busy time of year, and if you weren't here, you could probably be somewhere else. I especially want to thank the administration at St. Louis University for making this day necessary. It is an honor to receive this honorary degree.

"It is wonderful to be here in St. Louis and to visit the old neighborhood. I haven't been back since the last time I was here. Everything looks the same, only different. Of course, things in the past are never as they used to be.

"Before I speak, I have something I'd like to say. As you may know, I never went to college, or high school for that matter. To be honest, I'm not much of a public speaker, so I will try to keep this short as long as I can.

"As I look out upon all of the young people here tonight, there are a number of words of wisdom I might depart. But I think the most irrelevant piece of advice I can pass along is this:

"The most important things in life are the things that are least important.

"I could have gone a number of directions in my life. Growing up on the Hill, I could have opened a restaurant or a bakery. But the more time I spent in places like that, the less time I wanted to spend there. I knew that if I wanted to play baseball, I was going to have to play baseball.

My childhood friend, Joe Garagiola, also became a big-league ballpayer, as did my son, Dale.  I think you'll find the similarities in our careers are quite different.

"You're probably wondering, how does a kid from the Hill become a New York Yankee and get in the Hall of Fame? Well, let me tell you something, if it was easy nobody would do it. Nothing is impossible until you make it possible.

"Of course, times were different. To be honest, I was born at an early age.
Things are much more confiscated now. It seems like a nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. But let me tell you, if the world was perfect, it wouldn't be. Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

"You'll make some wrong mistakes along the way, but only the wrong survive. Never put off until tomorrow what you can't do today. Denial isn't just a river in Europe .

"Strive for success and remember you won't get what you want unless you want what you get. Some will choose a different path. If they don't want to come along, you can't stop them. Remember, none are so kind as those who will not see..

"Keep the faith and follow the Commandments: Do not covet thy neighbor's wife, unless she has nothing else to wear. Treat others before you treat yourself. As Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt once said, 'The only thing you have to fear is beer itself.'

"Hold on to your integrity, ladies and gentlemen. It's the one thing you really need to have; if you don't have it, that's why you need it. Work hard to reach your goals, and if you can't reach them, use a ladder. There may come a day when you get hurt and have to miss work. Don't worry, it won't hurt to miss
work.

"Over the years, I have realized that baseball is really just a menopause for life. We all have limitations, but we also know limitation is the greatest form of flattery. Beauty is in the eyes of Jim Holder.

"Half the lies you hear won't be true, and half the things you say, you won't ever say.

"As parents you'll want to give your children all the things you didn't have. But don't buy them an encyclopedia, make them walk to school like you did. Teach them to have respect for others, especially the police. They are not here to create disorder, they are here to preserve it.

"Throughout my career, I found good things always came in pairs of three. There will be times when you are an overwhelming underdog. Give 100 percent to everything you do, and when that's not enough, give everything you have left.
'Winning isn't everything, but it's better than rheumatism.' I think Guy Lombardo said that.

"Finally, dear graduates and friends, cherish this moment; it is a memory you will never forget. You have your entire future ahead of you.

"Good luck and Bob's speed."

Song of the Open Road (Walt Whitman)

This is my friend's second favorite Walt Whitman poem, Song of the Open Road. It's long. Click here to read the whole thing. Excerpt below.

Song of the Open Road (from Leaves of Grass)

AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,	5
Strong and content, I travel the open road.

The Ballad of East and West (Rudyard Kipling)

Seems apt. Comments?

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border-side,
And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.
Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides:
"Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?"
Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar:
"If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are.
At dusk he harries the Abazai -- at dawn he is into Bonair,
But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare,
So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly,
By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai.
But if he be past the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then,
For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men.
There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen."
The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he,
With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell
and the head of the gallows-tree.
The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat --
Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat.
He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly,
Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai,
Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back,
And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack.
He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide.
"Ye shoot like a soldier," Kamal said.

The roles I've played.

The Shakespeare section beginning "All the world's a stage" that describes the many roles we play in life never hit me as hard as it did today.

In my life, I have been the single daughter of a Muslim Serbian alcoholic, a high school partier, a boarding school student, a beach rat, a competitive swimmer, a chemistry and English major, single, married (still), lived in Daytona, Miami, Boston, NYC and San Francisco. I have been a writer all along, but a tech writer, then a newspaper writer, then a magazine writer, a national radio host for 12 years, a newspaper columnist for 10 years, then a correspondent on ABC News (network, then a CEO for Larry Ellison's company, then an author of a five books (iWOZ on shelves now), now a parent, now a teetotaler, now someone who practices ahimsa, once a meat eater and now a vegan. So all those are roles.

But in a way, I feel exactly the same I felt at 14. Does that ever change? I wish Shakespeare had addressed that one. Someday, when (if I am privileged) to reach old age, I have no doubt that I will still feel 14 inside.

The one thing I feel that has changed within me, and I can't explain why, is I used to be so self-obsessed. How do I look? Do you like me? Can I get famous? Are they gossiping about me?

And now, for no reason I can think of, perhaps motherhood, I try to think little of myself and let whatever happen happen. Nothing anyone thinks of me is any of my business. I don't let resentments rent space in my head. I feel serene for the first time in my life. I read somewhere (Lincoln?) that is you do something charitable for someone every day and keep it a secret, that is is the secret to happiness. I did that today, but I won't tell you what it is.

What's happening to me? It is positive, but it is weird, because I have not had some radical supernatural experience. I just somehow changed. So now I have a lot of roles -- and one. Help any creature who needs it, even if it is not convenient.

Ahimsa, especially. Does anyone have any comments or feelings similar to this? Ahimsa mean, in Sanskrit or Pali, I think, DO NO HARM.

Enough about me. Here's my man, William Shakespeare. (who incidentally was born on my birthday!)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part.

If you need a little brightening today ... this worked for me.

In light of the histrionics and possible break with my sister and my beloved sisters, I read this Rudyard Kipling poem and thought of taking the high road. Forgive me if this is old hat -- I think I read it first in English class at Ormond Beach Junior High -- but here it is.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Someone answered my Leaves of Grass confusion.

Alan Kaufman, a friend and the author of two acclaimed books, Jew Boy and Matches, was the one who lent me the Leaves of Grass book I have been stumped by. Thank you, Alan.

Here is what he wrote when I told him I could just not made heads or tails of it, even though the words themselves are beautiful, I couldn't digest it. Is it because I am basically an atheist? That was my fear. But no, Alan had another answer.

Regarding Whitman, 'Leaves of Grass' is a religious/nationalistic vision.  Whitman's 'I' is representational of every living person, an embrace of multitudes. He wrote it at a time when
America was expanding West, under the banner of 'Manifest Destiny'.  Whitman's expansive vision of the self is a metaphor of a growing nation's sense of expanding identity.  Also, as I said, it's an authentic spiritual/ religious vision and as such, contains an ineffable, inexplicable quality; it's ultimate meaning obscured by mists. 

Trouble with Walt Whitman

Okay, so as I said yesterday, I am trying to read Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman) from front to back. I thought it would be fascinating, insightful.

But I am having trouble. It is it really just a song of himself?

I at least found, on page 46, a stanza that spoke to me.

"Do you take it that I would astonish

Does the daylight astonish?

or the early redstart twitting through the woods?

This hour I tell things in confidence.

I might not tell anyone, but I will tell you?" (Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, p. 46, stanza 385)

I Sing the Body Electric (Whitman in full)

I can't explain why, but all day I have been thinking about putting this on the blog.So here it is! Very interested in anyone's interpretations or comments or hate mail. Not really on the hate mail. I hate confrontation.

gs

I Sing the Body Electric


The bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth them,
They will not let me off nor I them till I go with them and respond to them
and love them.

Was it dreamed whether those who corrupted their own live bodies could
conceal themselves?
And whether those who defiled the living were as bad as they who defiled the
dead?

The expression of the body of man or woman balks account,
The male is perfect and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of a wellmade man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also . . . . it is curiously in the joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk . . the carriage of his neck . . the flex of his waist and
knees . . . . dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
flannel;
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem . . perhaps more,
You linger to see his back and the back of his neck and shoulderside.

The sprawl and fulness of babes . . . . the bosoms and heads of women . . .
. the folds of their dress . . . . their style as we pass in the street . .
. . the contour of their shape downwards;
The swimmer naked in the swimmingbath . . seen as he swims through the salt
transparent greenshine, or lies on his back and rolls silently with the
heave of the water;
Framers bare-armed framing a house . . hoisting the beams in their places .
. or using the mallet and mortising-chisel,

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The bending forward and backward of rowers in rowboats . . . . the horseman
in his saddle;
Girls and mothers and housekeepers in all their exquisite offices,
The group of laborers seated at noontime with their open dinnerkettles, and
their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child . . . . the farmer's daughter in the garden or
cowyard,
The woodman rapidly swinging his axe in the woods . . . . the young fellow
hoeing corn . . . . the sleighdriver guiding his six horses through the
crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers . . two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
goodnatured, nativeborn, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,
The coats vests and caps thrown down . . the embrace of love and resistance,
The upperhold and underhold -- the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes -- the play of the masculine
muscle through cleansetting trowsers and waistbands,
The slow return from the fire . . . . the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again -- the listening on the alert,
The natural perfect and varied attitudes . . . . the bent head, the curved
neck, the counting:
Suchlike I love . . . . I loosen myself and pass freely . . . . and am at
the mother's breast with the little child,
And swim with the swimmer, and wrestle with wrestlers, and march in line
with the firemen, and pause and listen and count.

I knew a man . . . . he was a common farmer . . . . he was the father of
five sons . . . and in them were the fathers of sons . . . and in them were
the fathers of sons.

This man was of wonderful vigor and calmness and beauty of person;
The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his

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manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable
meaning of his black eyes,
These I used to go and visit him to see . . . . He was wise also,
He was six feet tall . . . . he was over eighty years old . . . . his sons
were massive clean bearded tanfaced and handsome,
They and his daughters loved him . . . all who saw him loved him . . . they
did not love him by allowance . . . they loved him with personal love;
He drank water only . . . . the blood showed like scarlet through the clear
brown skin of his face;
He was a frequent gunner and fisher . . . he sailed his boat himself . . .
he had a fine one presented to him by a shipjoiner . . . . he had
fowling-pieces, presented to him by men that loved him;
When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish you would
pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him . . . . you would wish to sit by
him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them . . to touch any one . . . . to rest my arm ever so
lightly round his or her neck for a moment . . . . what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight . . . . I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them and
in the contact and odor of them that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

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I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor . . . .
all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time . . the visible and solid earth . . the
atmosphere and the fringed clouds . . what was expected of heaven or feared
of hell are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it . . the response likewise
ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands -- all diffused . .
. . mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb . . . . loveflesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous . . . . quivering jelly of
love . . . white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom-night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweetfleshed day.

This is the nucleus . . . after the child is born of woman the man is born
of woman,
This is the bath of birth . . . this is the merge of small and large and the
outlet again.

Be not ashamed women . . your privilege encloses the rest . . it is the exit
of the rest,
You are the gates of the body and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them . . . . she is in her
place . . . . she moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veiled . . . . she is both passive and active . . . .
she is to conceive daughters as well as sons and sons as well as daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in nature . . . . as I see through a mist one
with inexpressible completeness and beauty . . . . see the bent head and
arms folded over the breast . . . . the female I see,

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I see the bearer of the great fruit which is immortality . . . . the good
thereof is not tasted by roues, and never can be.

The male is not less the soul, nor more . . . . he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities . . . . he is action and power . . . . the flush of
the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well and appetite and defiance become him well,
The fiercest largest passions . . bliss that is utmost and sorrow that is
utmost become him well . . . . pride is for him,
The fullspread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul;
Knowledge becomes him . . . . he likes it always . . . . he brings
everything to the test of himself,
Whatever the survey . . whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes soundings
at last only here,
Where else does he strike soundings except here?

The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred . . . . it is no
matter who,
Is it a slave? Is it one of the dullfaced immigrants just landed on the
wharf?

Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the welloff . . . . just as
much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.

Do you know so much that you call the slave or the dullface ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight . . . and he or she has no
right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffused float, and the
soil is on the surface and water runs and vegetation sprouts for you . . and
not for him and her?


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A slave at auction!
I help the auctioneer . . . . the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this curious creature,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for him,
For him the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or
plant,
For him the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled.

In that head the allbaffling brain,
In it and below it the making of the attributes of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red black or white . . . . they are very cunning in
tendon and nerve;
They shall be stript that you may see them.

Exquisite senses, lifelit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breastmuscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby,
goodsized arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs his blood . . . . the same old blood . . the same red
running blood;
There swells and jets his heart . . . . There all passions and desires . .
all reachings and aspirations:
Do you think they are not there because they are not expressed in parlors
and lecture-rooms?

This is not only one man . . . . he is the father of those who shall be
fathers in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through
the centuries?
Who might you find you have come from yourself if you could trace back
through the centuries?


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A woman at auction,
She too is not only herself . . . . she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

Her daughters or their daughters' daughters . . who knows who shall mate
with them?
Who knows through the centuries what heroes may come from them?

In them and of them natal love . . . . in them the divine mystery . . . .
the same old beautiful mystery.

Have you ever loved a woman?
Your mother . . . . is she living? . . . . Have you been much with her? and
has she been much with you?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and
times all over the earth?

If life and the soul are sacred the human body is sacred;
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean strong firmfibred body is beautiful as the most
beautiful face.

Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that
corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

Who degrades or defiles the living human body is cursed,
Who degrades or defiles the body of the dead is not more
cursed.