I Think I'll Call It America

I was riding on the Mayflower
when I thought I spied some land
I yelled for Captain Arab
I'll have you understand
who came running to the deck
said boys, forget the whale
we're going over yonder
cut the engines
change the sail
"haul on the bowline"
we sang that melody
like all tough sailors do
when they're far away at sea

I think I'll call it America
I said as we hit land
I took a deep breath
I fell down, I could not stand
Captain Arab he started
writing up some deeds
he said let's set up a fort
and start buying
the place with beads
just then this cop
comes down the street
crazy as a loon
and throws us all in jail
for carrying harpoons

ah me, I busted out
don't even ask me how
I went to get some help
I walked by a guernsey cow
who directed me down
to the Bowery slums
where people carried signs around
saying ban the bums
I jumped right into line
saying I hope that I'm not late
when I realized I hadn't eaten
for five days straight

I went into a restaurant
looking for the cook
I told him I was the editor
of a famous etiquette book
the waitress he was handsome
he wore a powder blue cape
I ordered some suzette, I said
could you please make that crepe
just then the whole kitchen
exploded from boiling fat
food was flying everywhere
I left without my hat

I didn't mean to be nosy
but I went into a bank
to get some bail for Arab
and all the boys back in the tank
they asked me for some collateral
and I pulled down my pants
they threw me in the alley
when up comes
this girl from France
who invited me to her house
I went but she had a friend
who knocked me out
and robbed my boots
and I was on the street again

well I rapped upon a house
with the US flag upon display
I said could you help me out
I got some friends down the way
the man says get out of here
I'll tear you limb from limb
I said you know
they refused Jesus, too
he said you're not him
get out of here
before I break your bones
I ain't your pop
I decided to have him arrested
and I went looking for a cop

I ran right outside
and I hopped inside a cab
I went out the other door
this Englishman said fab
as he saw me leap
a hotdog stand
and a chariot that stood
parked across from a building
advertising brotherhood
I ran right through
the front door
like a hobo sailor does
but it was just
a funeral parlor
and the man
asked me who I was

I repeated that my friends
were all in jail, with a sigh
he gave me his card
he said call me if they die
I shook his hand
and said goodbye
ran out to the street
when a bowling ball
came down the road
and knocked me off my feet
a pay phone was ringing
it just about blew my mind
when I picked it up
and said hello
this foot came through the line

well, by this time I was fed up
at trying to make a stab
at bringing back any help
for my friends
and Captain Arab
I decided to flip a coin
like either heads or tails
would let me know
if I should go
back to the ship
or back to jail
so I hocked my sailor suit
and I got a coin to flip
it came up tails
it rhymed with sails
so I made it back to the ship

I got back and took
the parking ticket off the mast
I was ripping it to shreds
when this coastguard boat
went past
they asked me my name
and I said Captain Kidd
they believed me but
they wanted to know
what exactly that I did
I said for the Pope of Eruke
I was employed
they let me go right away
they were very paranoid

well, the last I heard of Arab
he was stuck on a whale
that was married to
the deputy sheriff of the jail
but the funniest thing was
when I was leaving the bay
I saw three ships a-sailing
they were all heading my way
I asked the captain
what his name was
and how come
he didn't drive a truck
he said his name was Columbus
I just said good luck

You Learn To Dance When You Live With A Dancer

And those who were seen dancing
were thought to be insane
by those who could not hear the music.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Poisoned Red Berries: Blanco

all the questions
he could
never answer
the nights
she slept
and he stayed
wide awake

you learn
to dance
when you live
with a dancer
you learn
to give
and then you
learn to take

--doug lang
blanco

Searching For My Lost Shaker Of Salt

We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they're watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So, they're not seeing you and me. They're watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs--people who don't know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that's quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin "Dear Sire," and congratulate us on the handsomness of our horses and our mastery of whale oil. Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us.
--Bill Bryson
A Short History of Nearly Everything

OUTSIDE CLEAR CREEK CANYON
ELVIS ABOVE BRIGHT ANGEL CANYON
ISIS AND BUDDHA TEMPLES
UNKNOWN TROUBADOR AT REDWALL CAVERN

And There I Will Become Light

Grateful Dead: Eyes of the World...6/8/77

In the end,
I'm only going
next door.
To the end
of the corridor,
into my favorite room.
And from there,
out into the garden.
And there I will
become light
and go wherever I want.

--Nina George
The Little Paris Bookshop

All Things Changing Through Time

I think of two landscapes---one outside the self, the other within.
The external landscape is the one we see---not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology---If you walk up, say, a dry arroyo in the Sonoran Desert you will feel a mounding and rolling of sand and silt beneath your foot that is distinctive. You will anticipate the crumbling of the sedimentary earth in the arroyo bank as your hand reaches out, and in that tangible evidence you will sense the history of water in the region. Perhaps a black-throated sparrow lands in a paloverde bush...the smell of the creosote bush...all elements of the land, and what I mean by the landscape.

The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape. Relationships in the exterior landscape include those that are named and discernible, such as the nitrogen cycle, or a vertical sequence of Ordovician limestone, and others that are uncodified or ineffable, such as winter light falling on a particular kind of granite, or the effect of humidity on the frequency of a blackpoll warbler’s burst of song...the shape and character of these relationships in a person’s thinking, I believe, are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature---the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf, are known. These thoughts are arranged, further, according to the thread of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual development. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes.

Among the Navajo,
the land is thought to
exhibit sacred order...
each individual
undertakes to order
his interior landscape
according to
the exterior landscape.
To succeed in this means
to achieve a balanced state
of mental health...
Among the various
sung ceremonies
of this people---
Enemyway, Coyoteway,
Uglyway---
there is one called Beautyway.
It is, in part,
a spiritual invocation
of the order of
the exterior universe, that irreducible, holy complexity that manifests itself as all things changing through time (a Navajo definition of beauty).

--Barry López
Crossing Open Ground

Go That Way

Once, there was an old city, with many winding roads. In the center of the city stood a Great Tower, which could be seen for miles around. It was said that this tower contained ancient wonders, and many wished to see inside.

One day,
five travelers approached
the outskirts of the city.
They were faced
with a problem:
How would they navigate
the winding streets
of the old city,
in order to reach
the tower at its center?

The first traveler said
The best way
is to always turn left.
So he entered the city,
and turned left
at his first opportunity.
He turned left again,
and again.
In time, he had
left the city entirely.
He never reached the Tower.

The second traveler said See, our friend who turned left has failed. If I am to succeed, I must do the opposite as him. So this traveler decided to always turn right, instead of left. He entered the city, and turned right at his first opportunity. He turned right again, and again. In time, he had left the city entirely. He never reached the Tower.

The third traveler said
See, the first two travelers
were both wrong.
The solution is
to take the middle path,
splitting the difference
between them.
So he entered the city,
and he never turned
right or left,
but instead
he always marched forward.
But in time he reached
a solid wall,
and he could not advance.
He was forced to turn back.
He never reached the Tower.


The fourth traveler said These fools don't know what they're doing. The solution is not to go left or right or straight. The solution is to do each of these things in sequence, at the appropriate time. He took a scroll from his coat. On the scroll was a series of instructions, written by an earlier traveler who had reached the Tower successfully. If I follow this scroll, said the fourth traveler, I will surely reach the Tower. So he entered the city, following the directions as they were written. Sometimes he turned right, sometimes he turned left, and sometimes he went straight ahead. He made good progress. But there came a time when the scroll told him to go across a bridge, and he found to his surprise that the bridge had been destroyed by an earthquake. The scroll was suddenly useless, and he was forced to return the way he had come. He never reached the Tower.

The fifth traveler
pondered over
what he should do.
Then, to his good fortune,
he saw that the Teacher
was approaching.
He said to the Teacher,
I am trying
to reach the Tower,
but all my friends
have failed.
Whether they turned
left or right,
or walked straight forward,
or even followed
the directions of those
who have gone before,
all of them have
failed to reach their goal.
What must I do?

The Teacher said Can you see the Tower?

Yes, said the traveler.

The Teacher replied Go that way.

Doubtless There Are Other Roads

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
Ha, he said,
I see that none has passed here
In a long time.
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
Well, he mumbled at last,
Doubtless there are other roads.
--Stephen Crane
(1871--1900)

Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.
One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. You have come a long way to visit me, he told the prowler, and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. Poor fellow, he mused,
I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.

A Flaming Star Over My Shoulder

Elvis Presley: Flaming Star

We mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on,
inert or burning,
and I was discovering,
naming all these things:
it was my destiny
to love and say goodbye.
--Pablo Neruda

Shining In The End

He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end.
--Jack Kerouac

The Invigorating Air Of Their Valleys

Anyone who has
chanced like me
to roam through
desolate mountains
and studied at length
their fantastic shapes
and drunk
the invigorating air
of their valleys
can understand
why I wish
to describe
and depict
these magic scenes
for others.
--Mikhail Lermontov