live life please...

I read the poem at the end today and it stirred up my spirit the way only a poem can.  It speaks specifically of September time but I think it is quite appropriate for June 1, 2008.  Oh friends, this is quite cliche to say for the Spring and Summer seasons but please, live life to its fullest...don't be boring.  The world is so big and beautiful with such fascinating people.  We are so fortunate as Americans to have such a diverse geography surrounding us just in this country.  But so few people take advantage of it and experience the parts of this country that make it unique.  One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs speaks directly of this... 

Let me drink from the waters where the mountain streams flood
Let me smell of wildflowers flow free through my blood
Let me sleep in your meadows with the green grassy leaves
Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace.
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.

Go out in your country where the land meets the sun
See the craters and the canyons where the waterfalls run
Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho
Let every state in this union seep in your souls.
And you'll die in your footsteps
Before you go down under the ground.

So save up some money and do one of the following...

1.  go on a road trip this summer throughout America and read Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums

2.  go to www.ricksteves.com and plan a trip to Italy in the Fall

3.  go to the most wide open land closest to you and sleep outside under the stars and read Gary Snyder's Turtle Island by headlamp/flashlight/campfire 

  

For All

by Gary Snyder

Ah to be alive
      on a mid-September morn
      fording a stream
      barefoot, pants rolled up,
      holding boots, pack on,
      sunshine, ice in the shallows,
      northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
      cold nose dripping
      singing inside
      creek music, heart music,
      smell of sun on gravel.

      I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
      of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
      one ecosystem
      in diversity
      under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.