The Endless Finales of Things

Emerald Isle, North Carolina, November 9, 2014

Song of Sunset by Walt Whitman

Splendor of ended day, floating and filling me!

Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past!

Inflating my throat—you, divine average!

You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.
 

Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,

Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection,

Natural life of me, faithfully praising things;

Corroborating forever the triumph of things.
 

Illustrious every one!

Illustrious what we name space—sphere of unnumber’d spirits;

Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest insect;

Illustrious the attribute of speech—the senses—the body;

Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the

 Western sky!

Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last.
 

Good in all,

In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,

In the annual return of the seasons,

In the hilarity of youth,

In the strength and flush of manhood,

In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,

In the superb vistas of Death.
 

Wonderful to depart;

Wonderful to be here!

The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!

To breathe the air, how delicious!

To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand!

To prepare for sleep, for bed—to look on my rose-color’d flesh;

To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large;

To be this incredible God I am;

To have gone forth among other Gods—these men and women I love.

Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!

How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!

How the clouds pass silently overhead!

How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on!

How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)

How the trees rise and stand up—with strong trunks—with branches and leaves!

(Surely there is something more in each of the tree—some living Soul.)

O amazement of things! even the least particle!

O spirituality of things!

O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents—now reaching me and America!

I take your strong chords—I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward.
 

I too carol the sun, usher’d, or at noon, or, as now, setting,

I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of the earth,

I too have felt the resistless call of myself.

As I sail’d down the Mississippi,

As I wander’d over the prairies,

As I have lived—As I have look’d through my windows, my eyes,

As I went forth in the morning—As I beheld the light breaking in the east;

As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea;

As I roam’d the streets of inland Chicago—whatever streets I have roam’d;

Or cities, or silent woods, or peace, or even amid the sights of war;

Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.
 

I sing the Equalities, modern or old,

I sing the endless finales of things;

I say Nature continues—Glory continues;

I praise with electric voice;

For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;

And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.

O setting sun! though the time has come,

I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.

Getting It Down

Every November I mean to take part in National Novel Writing Month (otherwise known as NaNoWriMo), but I have never managed to do so. For many people, November’s not a good month to take on such a big commitment because of preparing for the holidays while in my case there’s always a pile of freelance work to be done as well. Nevertheless, whatever the time of year, I’m greatly in favour of setting yourself a deadline during which time the writing of your novel becomes your highest priority after the basics like sleeping, eating, and earning your living. It’s all too easy to let novel writing slide down your list of priorities till it almost falls off the bottom of your to-do list. 

Naturally no one in their right mind would expect to be able to turn out a publishable, full-length novel (NaNoWriMo defines full-length as at least 50,000 words) in a mere 30 days. So the concept might more accurately be called Putting Together a Rough First Draft month or Thoroughly Revising an Existing Draft month. This is not to quibble – both of those tasks are hugely necessary and need concentrated effort.

The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it provides a collective deadline complete with support, encouragement, and online feedback.  It has a few rules but most are flexible and even meant to be broken. It’s all about getting the words from out of your head and onto the paper/screen. About kickstarting yourself into creativity. And about the first rule of writing - applying the seat of the pants to the chair.  

Telling Caroline

In honor of this day 51 years ago, here is a re-post of my essay that appeared in American Heritage Magazine in July 2006 in the My Brush with History column:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 When I was growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh in the early 1960s, the Kennedys were a vivid presence in our household. My father had AProfiles of Courage@ on the bookshelf by his special chair, and Jackie Kennedy=s outfits were featured in all my mother=s fashion magazines. Even I - a first-grader - had a Jackie and Caroline paper doll set that I played with all the time. I was fascinated by Caroline because we were almost exactly the same age - she was born a mere five days before me in late 1957.

In August 1963, my family went on vacation to Cape Cod. On the first Sunday of the vacation, my father took a detour from the route we usually took to the beach and pulled into a little parking lot just off a two-lane rural road. Another family was already parked there, and I couldn=t understand why. It seemed an unlikely place to stop. There was nothing to see but the hedge bordering the road, and nothing to hear but the faint sound of waves in the distance.

I was bored. I didn=t understand why we weren=t hightailing it straight to the beach on that fine summer morning instead of stewing in a hot car. Be patient, my father said, something exciting is going to happen, but that was hard to believe. My mother was sitting sideways in the passenger seat, using the flip-down visor mirror to put on her lipstick. My little brother dozed in his car seat. My dad was chatting with the father of the other family, leaning against the side of their car. I tried counting birds flying overhead but hardly any went by. I got out of the car and drifted around the make-shift parking lot, a mere patch of gravel carved out of a field. I began to run round the lot in ever-decreasing circles to see how dizzy I could make myself, round and round. Suddenly I realized I could heard the gathering growl of what sounded like motorbikes in the distance. Intrigued, I glanced up, still running, and caught the toe of my sneaker on something and pitched forward heavily onto the gravel. 

I can distinctly remember the sharp pain in my knees and my howl of shock and outrage. At that exact second, my father shouted, AHe=s coming!@ and my mother hooked me under the armpits and swung me like a sack to the verge of the road. Along the narrow country lane came two motorcycle outriders and then a long black limo and to my astonishment I saw at the limo=s window the unmistakable face of the President of the United States.

When John F. Kennedy caught sight of me, a tearful five-year-old with bloody knees, he said something to his driver and the long, low car slowed to a crawl. The President turned back to the window and smiled and waved - at me. AWave, wave,@ my mother urged me, her own hands still trapped under my armpits, and I did, mesmerized by the President=s dazzling sympathetic smile. At the same time, I could feel trickles of blood oozing down my legs into the elastic of my knee-socks. As the car passed us, we all piled into the road, still waving. The President turned around to look out of the limo=s back window and kept right on waving and smiling and waving and smiling until a bend in the road took him out of our sight.

Forty years later I call still feel the shock of being caught in the spotlight of that famous gaze. For days afterwards, with crisscrossed Band-Aids like a badge of honor on each knee, I basked in the glory of that moment.

What I did not know till later was that the Kennedys= newborn son Patrick had died only two days earlier. Kennedy had been to Holy Mass alone that morning as Jackie was still in the hospital at Otis Air Force Base, recovering from her ordeal. Later that day, the President took Caroline to the hospital to visit her mother for the first time since the baby=s birth and death. In the press the next day, Caroline was pictured clutching a bunch of daisies and pressing her lips to the back of her daddy=s hand. 

Three months later, I came home from school one afternoon and found my father sitting in front of the television set in tears.  I had seen his car in the garage and come running in, full of joy to have him home from work so early, but he had gotten up from his chair and gone into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He hadn=t even said hello. My mother hastened to reassure me that he wasn=t mad at me, he was just upset because something very bad had happened to President Kennedy. It took a few minutes before I fully understood that the President was dead, but when it did, my first terrible thought was that someone, somehow was going to have to break the news to Caroline.