Take Five Minutes. .. .

[qos]

The crush at work has abated for a while, and I'm facing what will probably be a long and boring day.

This is an invitation to take a mere five minutes and leave a comment on this entry by typing anything that occurs to you: stream of consciousness, a favorite memory, a witty or obvious observation, questions for me or for the universe, the beginning of a story, a book or movie recommendation, anything that occurs to you, so I can have something interesting, or intriguing, or amusing, or even mystifying, to read at work today.

Consider it your charitable contribution for the day. It will net you some good karma.
Really!

Comments

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well.



This is the female form;
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot;
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction!
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor—all falls aside but myself and it;
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, the atmosphere and the clouds, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed;
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it—the response likewise ungovernable;
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands, all diffused—mine too diffused;
Ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb—love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching;
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice;
Bridegroom night of love, working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn;
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This is the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, the man is born of woman;
This is the bath of birth—this is the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.

Be not ashamed, women—your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest;
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities, and tempers them—she is in her place, and moves with perfect balance;
She is all things duly veil’d—she is both passive and active;
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters. 70

As I see my soul reflected in nature;
As I see through a mist, one with inexpressible completeness and beauty,
See the bent head, and arms folded over the breast—the female I see.


-Walt Whitman

[qos.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

Whitman, who I discovered in college, was the first poet I fell in love with, and still the one who most consistently delights me.

Thanks for this.

[rocket-jockey.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I didn't know you liked Whitman - he just seemed appropriate.