...Was

walking around Mary’s Lake in the wind holding a copy of Leaves of Grass. At first the wind seemed too much, a nuisance, a neighbor with music up too loud too late. But of course I don’t really mind the noise, have trained myself to steady my perceptions and to love the sounds of humans living. I remembered Japan, the winds so high coming through the pass between two mountain ranges, it seemed a living creature, a will of its own, a material spirit, a constant  immaterial pressure on one side of one’s body. It caused the snow to fall from the ground up to a starless dark heaven. Here on the lake it pushed and snaked on top the waters, making waves and wild flurries that seemed alive.

I found in the distance a protrusion of rocks that seemed to offer shelter in the lee and made my way there. Sat and watched the air from the mountain press the sunlight on the surface of the lake, a little wobbly pool clinging to the stones of the slinging planet. Our world is immense. On it there are many  worlds. I sit on Mars, I breathe Jupiter, I am the moon. A pride and pleasure to be among the little furry beasts that gather round the little sustaining spaces among the rock and ice and void. A small guilt at that pride, as though I think myself above others who do not see the precarious infinite beauty of their own universe and its impermanence with and within them. Why should I compare anyone else to this experience? Cannot I simply feel blessed and happy and feel no sorrow nor superiority towards others? Nay, I am king of this moment. My bliss outshines the sea. My joy unbinds the heavens. All may find rest within me.

I sat only a little while breathing. I read from where I’d left off in Whitman, picking accidentally to read the inspiration of my tattoo, “these are the words of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me…”

…which goes on…

“This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,

This is the common air that bathes the globe,

…

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?

Well I have . . . . for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of  a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish?

Does the daylight astonish? or the early redstart twittering through the woods?

Do I astonish more than they?

…

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleyhair less,

And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

And I know I am solid and sound,

To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,

All are written to me and I must get what the writing means.

…

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,

I see that the elementary laws never apologize,

I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all.

I exist as I am, that is enough,”

I have marked my body with a reminder of all of this, curiously enough not from this book but from an essay by Jorge Luis Borges, in which he quotes the line from Whitman to build evidence (along with some Emerson also) that every poem ever written was penned by the same poet. Today was my first time reading the words in context, and it certainly has much to do with context. When we convince ourselves to be, we sound rash and omnipotent and stubborn. When we are, we see all others as they are to us, we are to ourselves, and eventually we simply are, and that is enough.