Notations from The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham

What I thought, when I’d only reached page four of the text, might leave me for a shitty distasteful feeling that I would wish to scrub from my mind and body as one would a rape–should I continue to read. I took a great amount of time, even in my sleep, considering the context of this book, that had a copy date of 1926. I decided to be amazed to wonder over how the writer thought and how much I will never know if he wrote with the view and influence of humans present in his social grouping at the time. I wonder, even, if he might have been considered a rogue, bluntly writing as he willed his hand to do.

“…They learn little on their wanderings beyond how to cadge, how to steal, how to avoid dogs and the police. They are not pilgrims but outlaws, and many would be highway robbers had they the vitality and the pluck necessary to hold up wayfarers. Most of them are but poor walkers, so that the word tramp is often misapplied to them….”

Later, on page 29, he writes, “…Class is the most disgusting institution of civilization, because it puts barriers between man and man….”

The remaining notes, from my best recollection, are simply things that struck me.

“So when we look on a river we are affected by its hidden relationship to our own life. The river interprets our mood. The road suggests God as a taskmaster who would have us work; the river suggests Him as a poet who would have us live in poetry. The Creator must be a poet–not a General or a Judge or a Master Builder; there is so much of pure poetry in His creation….”

“What is a tramping day if it does not liberate a voice, so that you can sing out your soul to the free sky.”

“The heart can be lifted up by poetry even more than by song. And the inner meaning and the sense of a poem becomes one’s own on the march when it lends it rhythms and verbal emotions to express the hidden yearnings of one’s own being.”

“The life opens us with its very breadth. Is your friend too thin; do not diet him under a white ceiling, but give him air. Air will fill him. It is not the air alone that cures and fills, but what you breathe in with the air. You breathe in the spirit of the open. You breathe in the wideness of the sky; you reach out to the free horizon. It makes a man big, it builds a man within.”

“In the long halt, therefore, one has not stopped living, because one has ceased going onward. You get poised on your center. You feel the origins of joy and pain–deep down at the heart’s core, the place from which something in you is welling up all the while, welling up and overflowing, flowing away in waves and tides, to break on a mystical shore.”

“Self-expression is life. What gives more satisfaction to one’s being than to have expressed oneself.”

“Each day Nature puts her magic mirror in our hands. ‘Oh child, do you see yourself today?'”

Morning Trip (15)

“One of the most difficult things to learn is that mindfulness is not dependent on any emotional or mental state. We have certain images of meditation. Meditation is something done in quiet caves by tranquil people who move slowly. Those are training conditions. They are set up to foster concentration and to learn the skill of mindfulness. Once you have learned that skill, however, you can dispense with the training restrictions, and you should. You don’t need to move at a snail’s pace to be mindful. You don’t even need to be calm. You can be mindful while solving problems in intensive calculus. You can be mindful in the middle of a football scrimmage. You can even be mindful in the midst of a raging fury.”
Mindfulness Versus Concentration
– Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness in Plain English
and/or
Mindfulness in Plain English

Inside Upside Down and Backward Blog (6)

“So don’t ask yourself what people want. Ask instead, What is true? What really inspires me, excites me? What will really help people and take away their confusion and suffering? It’s sort of a funny, crazy way to go, but I think it’s the only way to bring water to the wasteland Joseph Campbell described. When I read something truthful, something real, I breathe a deep sigh and say, “Fantastic – I wasn’t mad or alone in thinking that, after all!” So often we are left to our own devices, struggling in the dark with this external and internal propaganda system. At that point, for someone to tell us the truth is a gift. In a world where people all around us are lying and confusing us, to be honest is a great kindness.”
– David Edwards
Nothing to Lose but our Illusion

Pondering, thinking, creating, imagination…(all right, delusion also fits in somewhere)

Which is which? Are you sure? OOOOooooo ooooooo!! I know! ASK SOMEONE, RIGHT??

NO!!! Definately not!!

What sort of mixed messages are humans moving about like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to please? AND, why oh WHYyyyyyyy do they think this groupie glue is important? Who cares what people want, unless one is trying to sell something? In trying to sell a thing, asking what will ‘help’ and ‘take away’, only grabs onto their desires and pleases them, like candy for a baby. The baby doesn’t need to have the skills to think or to ponder, only to express gimme-gotcha and throw a little tantrum, et voila!!!

Since when did truth mean identification? A wife-beater can identify with the rage expressed in an abuser sharing and thus validate and justify that it is ok to beat…not because it is a true, but because the wife-beater simply doesn’t know any better, OR even worse, is mentally ill and will glom on to the closest rationalization of inappropriate behavior because denial is a happy friend.

Being kind, isn’t always honest. Feeling ‘nice’ and escaping reality and labeling it truth in order to placate a human’s insides, when simply directing them to take care of their own side of the street, is a disservice to the human race. People still lock people up for avoiding reality…and yet the current self-help, gimme-gotcha trend does just that, avoids reality!

(sits waiting for the, “But ELISAAAAAAA!!! You mean imagination is BAD?!? You blah, negative, unlearned person you–the books told you to label me this, as a defense to your ability of hearing your inner spirit agreeing with me!)

Noooooooooooo!! A healthy imagination is simply an amaaaaaaaaaaazing human gift. When utilized and then expressed, explosions of creativity grow joyfully!! A healthy imagination is the inner flame dancing inside of each moment. It is healthy thinking and processing of reactions, the inner decider of actions. The place to sit right at work(as opposed to escaping) stick your pen into someone’s thigh, catch it with mind, laugh and provide the ‘offender’ with a hug oh gram, a balloon bouquet, and birds flying in joyful expression to assist them with whatever pen-stabbing they were contemplating before you encountered them!

When you are tired at work, think exhilaration!!! Think of scaling Mt. Everest, in brilliant swim trunks, feel the sharp intake of cool air into your lungs, take that feeling and register the brilliant sky and the sun hitting the mind across the peak…raise your hands in triumph–at the same time plant those feet apart on the floor and streeeeeeeetch those arms above your head and wooooohoooooooooo recharged!

You could also recall the York Peppermint Patty commercials, if that helps. Engagement, instead of withdrawal!

Dunno about you, but conversion is MY FRIEND!!
Happy Energy!
😉
(someone said somewhere that emoticons ought not be used…should i worry? lol)