Each of us inevitable

You whoever you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!
You dim-descended, black, divine-soul'd African, large, fine-headed,
nobly-form'd, superbly destin'd, on equal terms with me!
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands! (you stock whence I
myself have descended;)
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!
You neighbor of the Danube!
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman too!
You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!
You Roman! Neapolitan! you Greek!
You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian at full speed in the saddle shooting
arrows to the mark!
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk to stand once
on Syrian ground!
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
You thoughtful Armenian pondering by some stream of the Euphrates!
you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending mount Ararat!
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets
of Mecca!
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Bab-el-mandeb ruling your
families and tribes!
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus,
or lake Tiberias!
You Thibet trader on the wide inland or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo!
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent
of place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And you of centuries hence when you listen to me!
And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same!
Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent!

Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth,
Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.

--From "Salut au Monde!", Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1855. Just an excerpt, people. There's a lot more, and a lot more exclamation points, where that came from.

"You keep your phone on, and I'll keep mine on."

Making ends meet and maintaining loyalty

I mailed in my rent money on the 5th, which is totally late, right, I recognize that, it's due on the first, you have to pay your rent, I just had a little cashflow problem waiting for my next student loan check to clear...and dude they put an eviction notice on my door on the 6th. That is harsh. Laurel and Tom found it when they stayed here last night and were like...um...Anna? Did you pay your rent? Are you evicted? Cause this letter says you are and you were supposed to be moved out by midnight three days ago.

But here I am tucked back into my apartment, against all odds, safe and sound. I flew into Austin this afternoon. It was raining and turbulent flying out of New York, bumpy enough that none of the passengers would make eye contact with each other for a few minutes, but in Texas, blue skies. The flight attendent said Hook'em Horns! at the end of each safety announcement. My property manager was lovely, as always. She did not really mean it about evicting me. We ate barbeque for dinner.

A ver, a ver, a ver.

Tengo algo para decirte, pero no se si quieras escucharlo.

Someone wrote that to me on a post-it note in a dream I had last night, and I woke up really pleased that my brain had used the subjunctive.

I also dreamed about horses, cows, and chickens in the yards of my suburban neighborhood, a contest with a tricked out pickup truck as a prize, death on a highway, floods in back country roads: my cousins and I clung to trees so we wouldn't get swept away. I remember the feeling of being engulfed in the current. I remember the monsters swimming below the surface of John Josephs Pond.

The mist has been heavy all day, and now it is raining. I have packing to do and an airport to get to tomorrow. It is hard to leave New York, since my time here has felt really good--all work and energy and rest. Alix and I walked along Prospect Park late at night coming back from a movie and all I could smell was Christmas trees--it was the mulch. All of these weeks have smelled like Irish breakfast tea, grapefruit and Christmas trees, and they've tasted like dim sum and Guiness.

I do want to hear it, whatever you have to say. Let's have 2006.