Whitman and Twain

Two men I respect for their writing abilities are Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. I am not a master of words, so I am always taken with people who speak, or write, with so much eloquence. One thing I abhor is indifference. Not in the sense that I would never say "oh it doesn't matter" (this is an especially common saying for me when the question: Where would you like to eat? is posed. Because I do not care. Ever.). I mean real indifference, to things that matter. I am not a poetry person, but I believe this poem of Whitman's best captures the true danger found in indifference... 

I Sit and Look Out - Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass: By the Roadside)

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done,

I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate,

I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women,

I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth,

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners,

I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;

All these -- all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,

See, hear, and am silent.

He truly is a master of words. My other favorite writer is also a favorite figure of mine, Mark Twain. He was a man of great humor, great character, and great pain. Ken Burns (the PBS documentary guy) has a phenomenal biography about Twain. He has too many good quotes to choose from, but here is one of my favorites:

"I was made merely in the image of God, but not otherwise resembling Him enough to be mistaken for Him by anybody, but a very near sighted person." - Mark Twain

So funny and so true of us all.