I'm always wondering where and when I'll run into Walt Whitman, I think of him as the spiritual father of Brooklyn although I know there are many I don't know about and never will.
I was heaving my way back from Manhattan when I came across a box filled with books about photography. One of them was Reading American Photographs, which I snagged. In it are amazing photographs of Shoshone Falls and many other astonishing images. I found this daguerreotype of Whitman known as "The Christ Likeness." There is this look of love in his eyes, perhaps that's where the name comes from. If someone wrote something today called "Song of Myself" would they be accused of premium narcissism? How can you love yourself without being full of yourself? I guess by loving the world as much, as his lines in "Song of Myself" attest:
I believe a leaf of grass in no less than the journey-work of stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
How lovely to love the world that much, even the hinge in one's hand. Many blame God for all that's wrong in the world, but it rather seems that God has given us ample gifts that we somehow manage to ruin or dismiss in pursuit of those things we think we need. (I am speaking for myself here).
Come hither love.
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