This evening, my attention returns to the Walk Whitman course. The video I listened to, today, talks about Whitman’s place in the burgeoning cities of the nineteenth century. I pause to think about the places we live in today; from the cities of the industrial revolution to the global villages of the information age, transcending time and place.

I glance at Open Culture, bringing me videos from the sixties and seventies. I glance at Global Voices, bringing me stories from around the world. I glance at the daily office, connecting me to ancient stories.

What does it all mean, this moment in time in the twenty-first century? How do I process all of this without burning out, without future shock, without becoming numb, just another consumer of content?

Ideas continue to percolate, but I don’t have the time or energy right now to bring them together into a more complete collection of thoughts.

I return to the class and read Whitman's "To a Stranger" and then respond in the forum with my reaction to the poem when asked about the urban context and why Whitman addresses a stranger:

Not to foreshadow a coming poem, but here we are, over a hundred years hence. The urban context is being replaced with a global village context that transcends time and place. Camus wrote of the stranger. I am the stranger. You are the stranger. There are so many people in this class that are strangers to me, whose gender I do not know.

Yet when I think of the stranger, I think of the child muse, still undiscovered. Giving us hints of what is to come, but not full fledged inspiration. More like the fairy child that visited Babbitt in his dreams.

And as we walk the city streets, we catch a fleeting glimpse of the stranger. Pink Floyd caught that glimpse as well, but turned to look at it was gone.

May none of us lose that hope of inspiration.