Ambulance Processions

The capacity for human compassion is quite interesting, how we have this ability to feel physical affliction at the sight of those who are wounded or deceased.  And yet, we contradict ourselves by inflicting the wounds or fatal blows to those victims.  How strange that some are willing to be the cause of lives cut short while at the same time others are willing to cry endlessly for those same lives.  I'll never understand the concept, the complexity of the human condition can be quite unsettling.  That we can inflict pain while our hearts have the ability to bleed unhinges me.

How horrific it must have been to witness such a devastating war in your own backyard.  And I think we too often forget that this is a reality for many people.  Civil wars are not just a thing of the past, there is someone out there right now that is experiencing exactly what Whitman was.  It's terrible how we choose to ignore it because we all are capable of giving a shit and doing something.  Why do we choose to embrace the worst human qualities rather than the phenomenal ones that make us unique from our barbaric great ape relatives?

What a grave paragraph.

My non-consecutive quotes:

  "All goes onward and outward...and nothing collapses," (5)

  "If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me." (18)

  "All these I feel or am." (27)


I appreciate these subtle motifs of perpetuation/projection and how they accentuate the major themes found in the poem.  Whitman saturates "Song of Myself" with themes of interconnectivity to all objects, animate or otherwise.  There's this feeling of companionship throughout the poem, a togetherness manifested on every page.  The ever-present instances of unity and the infinite really define the poem in its progressiveness.  This ideology of the reincarnate, the outward, the adjoining gives "Song of Myself" a sense of self, as far as I, the reader, am concerned.  As though it is a message to myself from the inner-self rather than an outside source.  As though I already possess this wisdom, I'm just recalling.

I was also reminded of Rumi, "do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you."  The poem integrates the reader, the speaker and all that surrounds them.  There is no isolation in Whitman's poem, there is no opportunity for it since he emphasizes the importance of continuity.  There's a comfort in these quotes which allows for reassurance throughout the poem as a whole.  Also, these quotes create a strong sense of spirituality and understanding that is a refreshing contrast to religious contexts.  I admire how Whitman can make me feel so relaxed and at ease within forty-four pages, how he reminds us to embrace everything inside and outside of us and have some relationship with something greater than ourselves.