Starting from Eastwood

To get ready for this latest trip, I've been reading Walt Whitman. He saved my life once and I feel that, now that things have settled down for me a bit in my autumn years, I owe it to him to pay a little more attention to what the chap was saying.

I've been studying Song of Myself lately, for reasons I'll reveal to my friends and fam eventually, comparing the edits and emendations between the 1855 and 1892 versions of his biggest, famousest, second-most-autobiographical poem--and note that the 1892 version is really the 1881 version because that is when he quit fiddling on it--and there's a painful evolution of the man, despite the career-length timelessness he aspired to.

But for the purposes of setting out on another road trip to find America (and I swear I left it around here somewhere) it's probably more fitting that I spend a moment on Starting From Paumanok, his opening ode, written long after his fertilest years, about setting out on the road to find his country, by which Whitman meant himself.

And finding Whitman is a convoluted process because Walt Whitman was a convoluted dude--despite all his efforts to self-protray as a simple, sweaty workingman's American poet. He wasn't that simple. Being American is a complex job. One has to embody contradictions.

I contradict myself?
Very well then . . . . I contradict myself;
I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.

Tell it, bruh. Tell it.

He wants to tell us being American is just hard work, but only about the sweat part of hard work--not the thinky kind of existential, root-troubling, overcoming self doubt kind of hard work. Look at this ditty (as usual, all Whitman poetry must be shouted out loud to the breezy clouds):

I HEAR AMERICA SINGING
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

If only that were it. If only we could just go back to working all sweaty with earth-wrenching, metal-forging honest labor. America sings now of the office drone, typing in her cubicle, the data analyst's eyes stinging red from staring at a computer screen all day, and the middle manager keeping his resume polished from the insecurity of his job. We feel like we've lost something. We haven't. The carpenter, the mason, the boatman, and the shoemaker all had to struggle for the next job and face the dislocation of the turbulent, plow-jogging American economy--even then.

But it feels good. It feels right to imagine they didn't have to worry about job security back in some golden age, some sweaty 19th century mechanic's job or some assembly line grinder from the 1950s. The past has always been golden. What I like about Whitman is he sees the future is golden too, and the present.

I wanna see the future and the present all golden again too. I want to climb out of this swampy Houston for a fortnight, see some mountains, see some different people, fall in love with ordinary Americans again instead of seeing them as blue and red and yellow statistics on a political approval rating chart. I'm tired of seeing them as white and black and brown culture blocs that only exist in some dry academic rhetoric or the panicky gunsites of a trigger happy cop. I want to see my people in all their hues and all their blues and all their intermittent smiles. I want to see past the grumbling suspicions of television eyes and internet arguments and weavy traffic snarls and credit rating scores and blinking rules rules rules about where you can go and what grass you can't step on.

I'm tired of my country. I want to see my nation again. I want to walk on the grass.

And so, starting out from my personal Paumanok, Eastwood Houston, I strike up for a New World; the only New World there ever is. The part of the world I haven't been to yet.