What You (and I) Cannot Really Know

[Image: “Portrait of the Unknown Saxophonist,” by Tom Waterhouse. Found it on Flickr, and use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!).

From whiskey river:

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 10¹⁸ joules of potential energy—enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.

(Bill Bryson [source])

…and:

A Face

It’s just by chance, who
you are, but given myself
I take care of this being.
Nobody else will remember
its hunger, cold, loneliness:
I will be reminded, and care.

This face, like an old watch,
I carry wherever I go.
Grandmothers, grandfathers, you pictures,
you should forgive my regret:
my wanting another. I carry it
as you did. It belongs
somewhere, and I am taking it there.

On corners I let the wind
have all the world, and I turn
as a ship accepts the waves
but is itself and has a voyage
built into it, stubbornly.

The choice of being who you are
is offered us, or being nothing.
The mask of myself is an old gift
nobody else took. So I brought it here.

(William Stafford [source: various occurrences around the Web, none complete or canonical])

…and:

Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn’t you. That isn’t you at all.

(Leila Sales [source])

…and:

What are we? A fleeting, intricate presence riding a tiny speck of water and rock, out here in the dark, sailing the ship of wonder ever more deeply into the void from which we came, that is our true home and mysterious destination.

(Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal [source])

Not from whiskey river:

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk;
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

(William Stafford [source])

…and:

In a well-coordinated and well-designed room it can seem as though the armchair and its ottoman, a standing lamp and the adjoining side cabinet, are “conversing” with one another, such that a polite person would hesitate to disrupt the exchange by passing between them. When human beings stand side by side talking, is there a similar sense of coordination, of souls in deep and sympathetic converse that should not be lightly disrupted? I would say yes, but even more often no, at least on social occasions, which means on most occasions. The fact is, people seldom truly speak with or listen to one another; more often than they care to admit, they deliver soliloquies, with each individual using another’s remark merely as a launching pad for his or her own performance.

(Tuan Yi-Fu [source])

…and:

Gay Pride Weekend, S.F., 1992

I forgot how lush and electrified
it was with you. The shaggy
fragrant zaps continually passing
back and forth, my fingertip
to your clavicle, or your wrist
rubbing mine to share gardenia
oil. We so purred like dragonflies
we kept the mosquitoes away
and the conversation was heavy,
mother-lacerated childhoods
and the sad way we’d both
been both ignored and touched
badly. Knowing that being
fierce and proud and out and
loud was just a bright new way
to be needy. Please listen to me, oh
what a buzz! you’re the only one
I can tell. Even with no secret,
I could come close to your ear
with my mouth and that was
ecstasy, too. We barely touched
each other, we didn’t have to
speak. The love we made leapt
to life like a cat in the space
between us (if there ever was
space between us), and looked
back at us through fog. Sure,
this was San Francisco, it was
often hard to see. But fog always
burned off, too, so we watched
this creature to see if it knew
what it was doing. It didn’t.

(Brenda Shaughnessy [source])

___________________________

Aside: Hurricane Michael completely defeated my hopes of continuing the “post every Friday” streak. I hope you were able to touch base with whiskey river while I was away!