Whence, Whither, and How One Becomes the Other

[Image: “Down & Out,” by user “Alberto_VO5” on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!) I really liked this photo, but I’m actually not sure why it struck me as apt for this post… perhaps because Gumby seems so clearly headed in one direction or another?]

From whiskey river:

I would like to visit the factory that makes train horns, and ask them how they are able to arrive at that chord of eternal mournfulness. Is it deliberately sad? Are the horns saying, Be careful, stay away from this train or it will run you over and then people will grieve, and their grief will be as the inconsolable wail of this horn through the night? The out-of-tuneness of the triad is part of its beauty.

(Nicholson Baker [source])

…and:

Sunlight

After days of darkness I didn’t understand
a second of yellow sunlight
here and gone through a hole in clouds
as quickly as a flashbulb, an immense
memory of a moment of grace withdrawn.
It is said that we are here but seconds in cosmic
time, twelve and a half billion years,
but who is saying this and why?
In the Salt Lake City airport eight out of ten
were fiddling relentlessly with cell phones.
The world is too grand to reshape with babble.
Outside the hot sun beat down on clumsy metal
birds and an actual ten-million-year-old
crow flew by squawking in bemusement.
We’re doubtless as old as our mothers, thousands
of generations waiting for the sunlight.

(Jim Harrison [source])

…and:

We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all of life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice. I don’t believe in this world sorrow.

(E. M. Forster [source])

…and:

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

(Anne Lamott [source])

Not from whiskey river:

The Song of the Trolleys

It was one of the carols
of summer and I knew that
even when all the leaves
were falling through it as it passed
and when frost crusted the tracks
as soon as they had stopped ringing
summer stayed on in that song
going again the whole way
out of sight to the river
under the hill and the hissing
when it had to stop
the humming to itself
while it waited until
it could start again
out of an echo warning
once more with a clang of its bell.
I could hear it coming
from far summers that I
had never known
long before I could see it
swinging its head
to its own tune on its way
and hardly arrived before it
was going and its singing
receding with its growing
smaller until it was gone
into sounds that resounded
only when they have come to silence
the voices of morning stars
and the notes that once rose
out of the throats of women
from cold mountain villages
at the fringe of the forest
calling over the melting
snow to the spirits asleep
in the green heart of the woods
Wake now it is time again

(W.S. Merwin [source])

…and:

They were aware of themselves, yes. They were thinking, yes. But they were more than thinking. They were feeling. They were feeling the connection of themselves to the galaxies and stars. They were grasping the beauty and depth of their existence and then expressing that experience in musical harmonies and rhythms. And in paintings. In metaphors, and words. In dance. In symbiotic transference. They imagined the cosmos beyond their own bodies. They imagined. But they could not imagine where all of it started. For all of their intelligence, there were limits to their imagination. They could not know of things that were not of their essence. They could not know of the Void. But the mystery of such things they did seem to feel, and it tingled in them and opened them up.

(Alan Lightman [source])

…and:

Full Capacity

It’s called a kneeling bus because it lowers for those who need it.
And we bend our knees to allow others to pass. Here,
we’re humble. The woman holding her briefcase the whole time
so it won’t slip onto my side, the man mouthing every word
he reads but careful not to make a sound, each person
trying to fit some task into the bounds of their small seat
and hour, all diligence, drawn elbows, and dropped eyes.
There is not enough room to unfold the newspaper’s
black headline (Habitat Destruction) but, somehow, hope fits.
The others, too, headed home must look out the window
when we pass a building with a balloon tied to the mailbox.
Imagine that was your welcome. You are wanted in this place.
How often can humans feel less than harmful to where we are?
Balloons just outline the space occupied by the air
we would have expelled anyway, but they fill a room
with the promise of cake, sugar paste connecting one layer
to more of itself. Bus riders stack on board,
scanning for seats. There are open spaces, if only
in our searching eyes.

(Rose McLarney [source])