Something in the Air

[Image: at left, all the Earth’s water collected into a single ball, about 865 miles in diameter; at right, all the Earth’s atmosphere in a single ball, about 1240 miles in diameter, assuming sea-level pressure. (source)]

From whiskey river:

One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast… a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.

(Edward Abbey [source])

…and:

All beings are encompassed within one all-encompassing great energy: So I understood from the coolness of this morning’s passing breeze.

(Mumon Ekai [source])

…and:

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.

(Yamamoto Tsunetomo [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Green Pear Tree in September

On a hill overlooking the Rock River
my father’s pear tree shimmers,
in perfect peace,
covered with hundreds of ripe pears
with pert tops, plump bottoms,
and long curved leaves.
Until the green-haloed tree
rose up and sang hello,
I had forgotten…
He planted it twelve years ago,
when he was seventy-three,
so that in September
he could stroll down
with the sound of the crickets
rising and falling around him,
and stand, naked to the waist,
slightly bent, sucking juice
from a ripe pear.

(Freya Manfred [source])

…and:

An uncanny fog that morning lay all along the route across the northern New Jersey marshes to New York City. It was an impossibly comprehensive fog, a fog to embarrass any meteorologist who might have predicted mere everyday fog; a fog to gauze a landscape somewhere else in the world, at some other time, but not here and at this point in history, which required mountainous grey entities to be angular and solid and above all man-made; a fog that roiled across the marsh grass beneath the elevated roadbed of the Amtrak rails, roiled further across the Hudson and collided with a similar fog spreading into Manhattan from the East River, piling up in a thick granite bedrock of fog from which the upper stories of skyscrapers protruded like stalagmites; a fog grey as the name of a familiar object suddenly lost to forgetfulness, impenetrable as an experience never even imagined, much less prepared for. Even as Larry watched from the window of the train, the fog seemed to mount higher and higher as though reaching up with a sword-swallower’s grey lips to gulp the uppermost tips of the city. Then with a roar and a flash of darkness it all disappeared as the train plunged into the tunnel beneath the river.

(JES, Seems to Fit)

…and:

Astronomy Lesson

The two boys lean out on the railing
of the front porch, looking up.
Behind them they can hear their mother
in one room watching “Name That Tune,”
their father in another watching
a Walter Cronkite Special, the TVs
turned up high and higher till they
each can’t hear the other’s show.
The older boy is saying that no matter
how many stars you counted there were
always more stars beyond them
and beyond the stars black space
going on forever in all directions,
so that even if you flew up
millions and millions of years
you’d be no closer to the end
of it than they were now
here on the porch on Tuesday night
in the middle of summer.
The younger boy can think somehow
only of his mother’s closet,
how he likes to crawl in back
behind the heavy drapery
of shirts, nightgowns and dresses,
into the sheer black where
no matter how close he holds
his hand up to his face
there’s no hand ever, no
face to hold it to.

A woman from another street
is calling to her stray cat or dog,
clapping and whistling it in,
and farther away deep in the city
sirens now and again
veer in and out of hearing.

The boys edge closer, shoulder
to shoulder now, sad Ptolemies,
the older looking up, the younger
as he thinks back straight ahead
into the black leaves of the maple
where the street lights flicker
like another watery skein of stars.
“Name That Tune” and Walter Cronkite
struggle like rough water
to rise above each other.
And the woman now comes walking
in a nightgown down the middle
of the street, clapping and
whistling, while the older boy
goes on about what light years
are, and solar winds, black holes,
and how the sun is cooling
and what will happen to
them all when it is cold.

(Alan Shapiro [source])

In the picture at right, Russian-born, Israeli-raised, Canadian chanteuse Sophie Milman lounges back-to-back with herself (click that photo for a larger version). In the song below (from 2007’s Make Someone Happy), she regards the space between two people and finds it not at all empty:

Lyrics:

Something in the Air Between Us
(by Marc Jordan; performance by Sophie Milman)

Sand and stars
The secret life of planet Mars
Somewhere I can feel the sun
There’s something in the air between us

Let it rain
Nothing ever stays the same
Your tears are falling in my dreams
There’s something in the air between us

I’ve been soaring like a cloud
I call your name out loud
In taxis and in towns
And I have walked upon the beach
A rainbow within reach
The borderlines of love are gone

Drive me home
The night is burning gypsy red
I hear your voice inside my head
There’s something in the air between us

In my room
The algebra of loving you
Is measured out in coffee spoons
There’s something in the air between us

And when the night plays your guitar
I want to be with you
No matter where you are
And when the cars and lights go by
I’ll shine there in your eyes
Until the moon and stars collide

And when the night plays your guitar
I want to be with you
No matter where you are
And when the cars and lights go by
I’ll shine there in your eyes
Until the moon and stars collide

Something in the air between us
Something in the air between us
Something in the air between us…