The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
Another new feature - diary extracts. Not sure how many I will put up.
3 September 1998 Drive to Stratford [Gippsland] at 10am. Dreadful bare hills on Cooma-Monaro always fill my soul with despair. I decide there should be a war crimes tribunal to prosecute for crimes against the environment. Finally back into trees with a sense of relief. Nearing Cann River a huge column of black smoke and I think it is burning-off and get angry. But getting closer it is too black and I turn a corner to find a semi has gone off a bridge and burst into flame. Many cars and trucks pulled up so I keep going. The heat from the flames is strong on my cheek, and small black pieces of something are floating in the air. A little further and a feral black cat heads into the forest, further still and dark coloured wallabies, as always, are dead beside the road. Further still there is smoke from forest burning-off. Masses of logs in tumbled mess from floods at Cann River and further on. Graders repairing river banks and road edges. I see, with pleasure, a wombat feeding near edge of highway, but pay for the pleasure a little further where there is a dead one beside the road. Signs of the floods everywhere. Does no one connect this with the clearing up on the hills by the 'Timber Town' people? Yes, later John, amazingly, comments along those lines.
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)