Henry David Thoreau & Co: Hey Nonni Nonni!

Today's the day that Henry David Thoreau's Walden, his collection of essays was first published back in 1854, he also wrote the essay called Civil Disobedience which he started orating from podiums back in 1850. The latter an abolitionist/ question authority/anti-establishment- themed scribing that is said to have influenced the likes of Tolstoy, Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Thoreau would sometime repair to that little shack by the pond and get his thoughts together in solitude, on other occasions he'd meet with friends like Ralph Waldo Emerson to ponder the reality of their surroundings in a non-electric version of what the blogosphere promises to be today (sometimes). Maybe you've found already that though these guys had their shortcomings what they were touching on makes hella sense in the existential scheme of things or possibly you discovered a little about yourself when confronted by some of life's burning enigmas face to face in their musings...If you haven't, maybe you should take a peek at some of their stuff. Below's an excerpt from Song of Myself, featured in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, it's quite long (about 1350 lines,yo) but worth a read nonetheless...consider it..Laters...

Song of Myself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me...