Acuity in the Corner of Your Eye

[Image: Untitled photograph by Diana Eftaiha, via Flickr. Used under a
Creative Commons license.]

From whiskey river:

Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.

The idea behind Nowhere — choosing to sit still long enough to turn inward — is at heart a simple one. If your car is broken, you don’t try to find ways to repaint its chassis; most of our problems — and therefore our solutions, our peace of mind — lie within. To hurry around trying to find happiness outside ourselves makes about as much sense as the comical figure in the Sufi parable who, having lost a key in his living room, goes out into the street to look for it because there’s more light there. As Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius reminded us more than two millennia ago, it’s not our experiences that form us but the ways in which we respond to them; a hurricane sweeps through town, reducing everything to rubble, and one man sees it as a liberation, a chance to start anew, while another, perhaps even his brother, is traumatized for life. “There is nothing either good or bad,” as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.”

So much of our lives takes place in our heads — in memory or imagination, in speculation or interpretation — that sometimes I feel that I can best change my life by changing the way I look at it. As America’s wisest psychologist, William James, reminded us, “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” It’s the perspective we choose — not the places we visit — that ultimately tells us where we stand.

(Pico Iyer [source])

…and:

Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings

for Charles Fishman

Before you go further,
let me tell you what a poem brings,
first, you must know the secret, there is no poem
to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries,
yes, it is that easy, a poem, imagine me telling you this,
instead of going day by day against the razors, well,
the judgments, all the tick-tock bronze, a leather jacket
sizing you up, the fashion mall, for example, from
the outside you think you are being entertained,
when you enter, things change, you get caught by surprise,
your mouth goes sour, you get thirsty, your legs grow cold
standing still in the middle of a storm, a poem, of course,
is always open for business too, except, as you can see,
it isn’t exactly business that pulls your spirit into
the alarming waters, there you can bathe, you can play,
you can even join in on the gossip — the mist, that is,
the mist becomes central to your existence.

(Juan Felipe Herrera [source])

…and:

Perhaps I don’t know enough yet to find the right words for it, but I think I can describe it. It happened again just a moment ago. I don’t know how to put it except by saying that I see things in two different ways—everything, ideas included… It’s only if I look at them directly, in all their strangeness, that they seem impossible. But of course I may be all wrong about this, I know too little about it… No, I wasn’t wrong when I talked about things having a second, secret life that nobody takes any notice of! I—I don’t mean it literally—it’s not that things are alive… it was more as if I had a sort of second sight and saw all this not with the eyes of reason. Just as I can feel an idea coming to life in my mind, in the same way I feel something alive in me when I look at things and stop thinking. There’s something dark in me, deep under all my thoughts, something I can’t measure out with thoughts, a sort of life that can’t be expressed in words and which is my life, all the same.

(Robert Musil [source (PDF)])

Not from whiskey river:

Arlene and Esme

In our house we live with Arlene. My little sister has a plan.
She has what they call a beginner’s mind. She sees everything
from an un-given-up perspective. I’m frightened; I know
Arlene better than anyone; she knows me better. Esme says
if I’m scared we can’t win. But I am scared. Arlene drags me
over to the window where the black mould has made
a map of Australia. Australia gives me trouble breathing,
it’s so far away. Arlene points it out and I get the feeling
in my chest, my whole life in there twisted up like a snake.
It could bite me or her. She puts a hand on my breastbone.
You’re not strong. I want to tell her we can look after ourselves.
I want to tell her I’m in charge now, but I can still see the dark
blur at the edges. I don’t sleep anymore, my head is full
of this insomniac light. I lie awake watching over my sisters
and I listen to them breathe. Esme whispers that I should
wake her if I need to. I say I will, but I never do. Even when
I sleep I dream I can’t sleep and I’m standing there looking
down at them, the night pouring from my hands. Esme has
a future in mind. She’s always laughing. She gets up early
and makes buttermilk pancakes using normal milk soured
with lemon juice. She tries things out. Arlene tells us
to stay away from sharp things or we’ll cut ourselves. Esme
does what she likes. She grates apple for a new recipe and
cuts her knuckle and laughs. I don’t know if I can live my life.
I don’t know if I can look after someone as unafraid as Esme.
I don’t know how to change what I do, the way someone
eating soup will, out of habit, bite down. Esme laughs; she’s
serving up apple pancakes with banana and maple syrup
and she says, You are a whole person. A row of mornings fan out.
And the pancakes are sweet and slightly gummy with a salt edge.

(Emily Berry [source])

…and:

I Am Merely Posing for a Photograph

(excerpt)

I am merely posing for a photograph.
Remember, when the Nomenclature
stops you, tell them that—“Sirs, he was posing
for my camera, that is all.” …yes, that may just work.

My eyes:
clear, hazel like my father’s, gaze across the sea, my hands at my side, my
legs spread apart in the wet sands, my pants crumpled, torn, withered, my
shirt in rags, see-through in places, no buttons, what a luxury, buttons, I
laugh a little, my tongue slips and licks itself, almost, I laugh, licks itself
from side to side, the corners of my mouth, if only I could talk like I used
to, giggle under moonlight, to myself, my arms destitute, shrunken, I
hadn’t noticed, after so many years sifting through rubble stars, rubble toys,
rubble crosses, after so many decades beseeching rubble breasts—pretend I
came to swim, I am here by accident,

like you.

(Juan Felipe Herrera [source])