Catching up, From August, 2020

I tend to write blog posts with word processors and paste into the blog. This gives me me more control over format and timing, but it also means I forget to post from time to time. Here are a few neglected posts. 
​August 19, 2020 –
            The world is changing so quickly I can almost feel my brain sprouting new synapses and altering its neural pathways to compensate. Are things changing at a quicker pace, or is my brain less able to adapt to the regular old pace of daily change?
            Today, a woman dressed for summer in shorts and a tanktop did something like a chicken dance by thrusting her knees and elbows away from her body. She did this for a long time, dancing along the path beside the river. She’d do the dance on the spot for a few beats, then continue East with the river. There was song to go with the dance. It went something like:
            What about elves and trees and lions?
            What about time and teeth and torture?
 
Underlying the chant, the woman made a constant sound of “bla:, bla:, bla:,” not like one might in dismissing a boring lecture but to sound more like rapid tapping of raindrops in a bucket of water.
            Without prompting from me, my brain redirected its body to take us away from the riverside pathway to the parking lot by the abandoned hospital where an elderly couple were helping a young woman learn to ride a red motorized bicycle. The rider took off in a straight line once I’d passed safely by, the motor making a similar plopping noise as the dancer.
           
            What about sin and sad and silk?
            What about rain and run and ruin?
            What about death and breath and bread?
            What about safe and mace and mate?

II.
 
The days are so strange, the President of the United States just “tweeted” his followers to ban a brand of American-made tire because the company won’t sell his caps, which are made in China. Let’s see the brain accommodate that one.
 
 
 
III.
 
Here is a question for Gender Studies folks. Walt Whitman portrayed himself as a lusty frontiersman and paid a fortune for photographs to back the claim, each with a slight difference in angle, in lighting, or with one more button of his cotton shirt undone. All through his life, Whitman had self portraits made to preserve his various ages. He hid his gayness behind the masculine image of his day, yet published a poem cycle called “Calamus” that could have been called “Hymn to the Phallus” and no one noticed. Even back then, no one read poetry. And, if they read it, they didn’t understand it. Yet, at the end of his life, WW redacted his diaries feminizing masculine pronouns and burning pages too committed to be changed. All because he thought his gayness would destroy his legacy.
            Whitman worried about how he’d be remembered and projected the homophobia of his age into the future.