Nerve

In the next scene Walt Whitman is walking around Boston Common. He’s young. It’s winter. Emerson is there. They walk and talk for hours, or really Emerson talks. He scolds Whitman for slavering after tree knots and bobbing with the swimmer. Whitman nods but in his head he’s busy tallying his orgasms. At the carousel an ancient Puritan is passing his hat, singing, “Kill It Babe.” Dozens of geese have gathered on the frozen pond, standing on one leg, tucking the other like a dagger into their feathery centers. Well, Emerson asks the poet, what do you have to say for yourself? And Whitman, respectfully, but sure now all the way down in his bones where the deep, frontier feeling of disobedience lives, says, essentially, go fuck yourself. I’ll go my own way.