the weather

the weather seems to be fairly sunny today. A little breezy, and the plants look better from the recent rainy. Apartment owners are out fixing up their apartments for the deluge of college students. The quiet summer was quite nice, but the reality is that this is a college town, and that's not a bad thing to be, in the larger scheme of things. It's better than being, say, and oil refinery town, for example.
Anyway, the weather was nice, and I was reminded of a few lines from walt whitman:

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current
and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms.

What a nice thought, to not accept anything which anyone can not have as a counterpart on their own terms. I'm not sure what it means, but it must mean something, and to me it has to do with being sincere and not too proud....and open to the ideas that might come up in the course of the day.

And of course, who can forget these lines?

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the
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.

A pismire is an ant. This somehow reminds me of Thoreau's poem:

What is a railroad to me?
Something to set the blackberries a'growing.

There was more to it than that, but that is all I can remember.

A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I would guess that Whitman was a precursor to the nature enthusiasts such as John Muir and just about everybody these days.