[Image: “Rippled Water (Twin Peaks),” by John E. Simpson (shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page here at RAMH).]
From whiskey river (first paragraph):
On Parables
Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross over to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.
Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.
Another said: I bet that is also a parable.
The first said: You have won.
The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.
The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.
(Franz Kafka [source])
…and:
Welcome
if you believe nothing is always what’s left
after a while, as I did,
If you believe you have this collection
of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here
behind the silence and the averted eyes)
If you believe an afternoon can collapse
into strange privacies—
how in your backyard, for example,
the shyness of flowers can be suddenly
overwhelming, and in the distance
the clear goddamn of thunder
personal, like a voice,
If you believe there’s no correct response
to death, as I do; that even in grief
(where I’ve sat making plans)
there are small corners of joy
If your body sometimes is a light switch
in a house of insomniacs
If you can feel yourself straining
to be yourself every waking minute
If, as I am, you are almost smiling…
(Stephen Dunn [source])
…and:
When William Stafford Died
Well, water goes down the Montana gullies.
“I’ll just go around this rock and think
About it later.” That’s what you said.
When death came, you said, “I’ll go there.”There’s no sign you’ll come back. Sometimes
My father sat up in the coffin and was alive again.
But I think you were born before my father,
And the feet they made in your time were lighter.One dusk you were gone. Sometimes a fallen tree
Holds onto a rock, if the current is strong.
I won’t say my father did that, but I won’t
Say he didn’t either. I was watching you both.If all a man does is to watch from the shore,
Then he doesn’t have to worry about the current.
But if affection has put us into the stream,
Then we have to agree to where the water goes.
(Robert Bly [source])
Not from whiskey river:
“Everybody knows the story about me and Dr. Freud,” says my grandfather.
“We were in love with the same pair of black shoes in the window of the same shoe store. The store, unfortunately, was always closed. There’d be a sign: death in the family or back after lunch, but no matter how long I waited, no one would come to open.
“Once I caught Dr. Freud there shamelessly admiring the shoes. We glared at each other before going our separate ways, never to meet again.”
(Charles Simic [source])
…and:
October
(excerpt)6
“The very hairs of your head
are numbered,” said the words
in my head, as the haircutter
snipped and cut, my round head
a newel poked out of the tent
top’s slippery sheet, while my
hairs’ straight rays rained
down, making pattern on the neat
vacant cosmos of my lap. And
maybe it was those tiny flies,
phantoms of my aging eyes, seen
out of the sides floating (that,
when you turn to find them
full face, always dissolve) but
I saw, I think, minuscule,
marked in clearest ink, Hairs
#9001 and #9002 fall, the cut-off
ends streaking little comets,
till they tumbled to confuse
with all the others in their
fizzled heaps, in canyons of my
lap. And what keeps asking
in my head now that, brushed off
and finished, I’m walking
in the street, is how can those
numbers remain all the way through,
and all along the length of every
hair, and even before each one
is grown, apparently, through
my scalp? For, if the hairs of my
head are numbered, it means
no more and no less of them
have ever, or will ever be.
In my head, now cool and light,
thoughts, phantom white flies,
take a fling: This discovery
can apply to everything.
(May Swenson [source])
…and:
#25: People say: age is a blessing; people say: age is a curse. But people are wrong. Age is a flexible sack or bottle — a bota bag, a wineskin — in which we store beans, precious stones, grains of spice. As we age the container stretches, warps, still expands… but the rate of growth slows, and eventually stops. And so the grains of memory continue to mound up, mound up, and they approach the top of the container. We sprinkle out one, two, a few every now and then onto the plate, and when they emerge their chemical structure is not quite the same as when they joined the heap: altered by time, humidity, the amount of light and air we have allowed into the sack. The container fills. There is always more of everything inside. Someday the container will be full, and someday, if we live long enough, the level of the contents sinks lower. But always, the container itself is just a container. Blessings, curses: if such judgments can be made, they apply only to individual stones, beans, grains. Choose the contents carefully. Your sack will never hold them all, and you can afford to be selective.
(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)
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