When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
By Walt Whitman
When I heard the
learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the
figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the
charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard
the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable
I became tired and sick,
Till rising and
gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist
night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect
silence at the stars.
I can’t recall when I first read the poem, maybe 30-ish
years ago, but what struck me was Whitman’s need to know the world,
particularly the natural world, through actual experience, beyond the symbols
and words used to describe it.
I call it the Lure of the Real, a phrase that came to me one
spring morning several years ago. I’d been sitting in the living room reading,
when I “unaccountably” got up and went to the open window, to breathe in the
sight and smell of flowers in the front garden.
But it’s not just the natural world that I need to
experience; it’s the sights and sounds that surround me on my daily walks through the city; on buses, trains, and at the grocery store; at the public
library where I go most days to write, and at my local bar where I go to watch night
games and visit with the regulars.
As I’m wandering hither and yon, observing my
surroundings, I notice all those people who are not, including those on their
“devices.” And I often wonder if over time, they will become “tired and sick” of staring
into them, scrolling endlessly through them, seemingly held hostage to the sheer number of symbols and words displayed on them.
I ask myself: What exactly is all that the lure of?
Then I wonder: Who's doing the asking? The Luddite or the Fogey? Either way, I don't want to miss one more moment of this very real, if ever shorter, life-o-mine.
Love that! Who’s asking, the Luddite or the Fogey? Stealing that!
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