Life keeps hurtling forward, bursting forth. It’s spring in California, the jasmine’s come in and the streaky roses. It’s been raining hard all morning; just now it stopped abruptly. Lyn writes in My Life, “she observed that detail minutely, as if it were botanical. As if words could unite an ardent intellect with the external material world.” This is Lyn, vitally observing, drawing it all into relation, the mind and the world, botanical, passionate. Making words hold life, making words as life. “Such that art is inseparable from the search for reality,” she writes.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, / Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd
Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river, and the bright flow, I was refreshed
I went for a walk to the banks of the Hudson, where 225 years ago George Washington bid a hasty nighttime retreat over these waters after the stunning upset in the Battle of Brooklyn.
We have our own Battle of Brooklyn now. And a battle for America.
I was heartened to see the Bridge, in all its glory, Mannahatta rising up behind, and in the distance (we're not there yet) the Statue of Liberty.
I thought of Hart Crane (of course!):
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited
in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone