Whitman is reminiscing in this entry. He takes out everything he has done and meshes it all together. I imagine him just surrounded by papers, writings and scraps looking at them all fondly knowing they make up the big picture. He realizes though he has so much representing certain times, that not every moment can be documented and later looked at.I like the last line of his entry,
"Probably another point too, how we give long preparations for some object, planning and delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared,"
All this memorabilia he is looking at gets him to one thought and another and in the end realizes that though we can plan and prepare for something, when the actual event comes up we can still be quite unprepared.
Whitman's Song of myself seems to me like a lot of observations put togother in an eloquent wheel, when i read this line,
"May-be, if I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed."
I thought of Leaves of Grass. Not that it is not well planned or thoughtful but in the sense that it has a beautiful array of what life is or was to him. It's an example of what life and own's thoughts should be like; spontaneous and wayward, fragmented but eloquent. You can look at all the fragmented pieces later.
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