I Have Found It (or Maybe I Haven’t)

[For more about the video, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Discovering the selfless nature doesn’t have a monumental “Eureka!” quality. It is more like being continually perplexed, the way we feel when we’re looking for the car keys we’re so sure are in our pocket, or when the supermarket’s being renovated and what we need has moved to a different aisle each time we go shopping. That experience of being somewhat dumbfounded is the beginning of wisdom. We’re beginning to see through our ignorance — the everyday vigil we sustain to confirm that we exist in some permanent way. We look at our mind and see that it is a fluid situation, and we look at the world and see that it is a fluid situation. Our expectation of permanence is confounded.

(Sakyong Mipham [source])

…and:

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

(Mary Oliver [source])

Not from whiskey river:

How Baseball Saved My Marriage

One happy hour drink in Orono and now I’m driving
up the Penobscot just for kicks, past the bridge to Indian Island,
past the just-closed Georgia Pacific plant, tidy yards
of Milford, “Place of a Million Parts” junkyard,
the drink still warm in my belly, the strong, true edge of things

glowing with rich clarity in the late summer, late afternoon light.
Dylan’s tangled up in blue on the radio, dozens of migrating
nighthawks flit over fields along the river, crickets shrill
in tall grass, window draft tickles my tan shoulders.
Later tonight, the Red Sox will win with another Big Papi

walk-off homer that will make me whoop to myself in the car.
But for now, I’m moving through Olamon, Passadumkeag,
away from the river, into the woods. It’s the end of a long day,
but there still seems to be plenty of time and road ahead.
Something about the light, the beauty of the sky, makes me think
I should keep going right on to northern Maine, all the way
to Canada. I could just keep driving all night, potato fields
north of Houlton balancing the dark outside my car windows,
lights across the St. John beckoning me over the border.
I’ve got a full tank of gas, credit cards in my wallet. I could

drive all the way to Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island,
stay in some quaint inn on a craggy coast, walk low beaches
in search of sandpipers heading south from the Arctic.
How far north do roads go? But it grows late, shadows deepen,
and so far from home, I realize I don’t know the station

broadcasting tonight’s game. So it’s finally baseball
that curbs my sudden wanderlust. It’s the simple pleasure
of a good game coming up that makes me turn around
to re-enter the bubble of radio reception, to start
the long drive back to everything familiar and well-loved.

(Kristen Lindquist [source])

…and (in response to an interviewer’s question, “Even though you’re not on the stage, do you enjoy that audience feedback?”):

I do. I mean, when it works, it’s great. When a production goes wrong, it is hell. It’s really hell, it’s so painful. That’s the other thing. I mean, so you write an article and people don’t like it. Or you write an article and they never call you again and they don’t publish it. It’s not the same pain, it’s really not. From the word go, from the no actors are available to the director doesn’t show up, to the show doesn’t work and no one’s laughing, to you pick up some terrible review — I mean, all of that is devastating. It’s just terrible. It’s enough to give you a sense of humor.

(playwright Wendy Wasserstein [source])

…and:

Jane: Well, a few days ago I woke up and I heard this voice saying, “It wasn’t enough.”

Summers [her psychologist]: Did you recognize the voice?

Jane: Not at first. But then it started to come back to me. When I was eight years old, someone brought me to a theatre with lots of other children. We had come to see a production of Peter Pan. And I remember something seemed wrong with the whole production, odd things kept happening. Like when the children would fly, the ropes would keep breaking and the actors would come thumping to the ground and they’d have to be carried off by the stagehands. There seemed to be an unlimited supply of understudies to take the children’s places, and then they’d fall to the ground. And then the crocodile that chases Captain Hook seemed to be a real crocodile, it wasn’t an actor, and at one point it fell off the stage, crushing several children in the front row.

Summers: What happened to the children?

Jane: Several understudies came and took their places in the audience. And from scene to scene Wendy seemed to get fatter and fatter until by the second act she was immobile and had to be moved with a cart.

Summers: Where does the voice fit in?

Jane: The voice belonged to the actress playing Peter Pan. You remember how in the second act Tinkerbell drinks some poison that Peter’s about to drink, in order to save him? And then Peter turns to the audience and he says that Tinkerbell’s going to die because not enough people believe in fairies, but that if everybody in the audience claps real hard to show that they do believe in fairies, then maybe Tinkerbell won’t die. And so then all the children started to clap. We clapped very hard and very long. My palms hurt and even started to bleed I clapped so hard. Then suddenly the actress playing Peter Pan turned to the audience and she said, “That wasn’t enough. You didn’t clap hard enough. Tinkerbell’s dead.” Uh… well, and… and then everyone started to cry. The actress stalked offstage and refused to continue with the play, and they finally had to bring down the curtain. No one could see anyting through all the tears, and the ushers had to come help the children up the aisles and out into the street. I don’t think any of us were ever the same after that experience.

Summers: How do you think this affected you?

Jane: Well it certainly turned me against theatre.

(Christopher Durang. Identity Crisis [source])

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About the video: “Vilnius Temperature” is a video project organized by architecture student/video artist Saulius Baradinskas of Vilnius, Lithuania. The project introduces local bands performing in settings around Vilnius; each video is keyed to various temperatures on the Celsius scale. This one, “Realize Things,” by a band called Freaks on Floor, is the 5° C (41° F) entry. (I think the temperatures included in each video title may indicate the ambient temperature at the time of recording.) It’s also a lovely bit of music — and yes, rather cool, weaving artfully among several genres — in its own right.

For more about the Vilnius Temperature project, see Baradinskas’s talk at TEDxVilnius 2011; all the project’s videos can be found on Vimeo.