The Flip Side of Intuition

[Image: “Wind Farm,” by Andrew Gustar. (From Flickr, of course, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) This is indeed a wind farm; the photo was taken from an airplane just off the Dutch coast.]

From whiskey river:

Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow…

This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.

(Leslie Jamison [source])

…and:

As I read the Book of Genesis, God didn’t give Adam and Eve a whole planet.

He gave them a manageable piece of property, for the sake of discussion let’s say 200 acres.

I suggest to you Adams and Eves that you set as your goals the putting of some small part of the planet into something like safe and sane and decent order.

There’s a lot of cleaning up to do.

There’s a lot of rebuilding to do, both spiritual and physical.

And, again, there’s going to be a lot of happiness. Don’t forget to notice!

What painters and sculptors and writers do, incidentally, is put very small properties indeed into good order, as best they can.
A painter thinks, “I can’t fix the whole planet, but I can at least make this square of canvas what it ought to be.” And a sculptor thinks the same about a lump of clay or marble. A writer thinks the same about a piece of paper, conventionally eleven inches long and eight and a half inches wide.

We’re talking about something less than 200 acres, aren’t we?

(Kurt Vonnegut Jr. [source])

…and:

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear,
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

(Joy Harjo [source])

Not from whiskey river:

At the Bomb Testing Site

At noon in the desert a panting lizard   
waited for history, its elbows tense,   
watching the curve of a particular road   
as if something might happen.

It was looking at something farther off   
than people could see, an important scene   
acted in stone for little selves
at the flute end of consequences.

There was just a continent without much on it   
under a sky that never cared less.   
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.   
The hands gripped hard on the desert.

(William Stafford [source])

…and:

Fisher Beach
(excerpt)

Today the light is just right for Sunday painters
or someone more serious, a Seurat or Cézanne
painting promenades and bathers over and over
with everyday titles like “La Plage” or “Sur la Mer,”
hoping to capture life’s moment with a few
brushstrokes of color. Yes, it’s easy after a few weeks here
to believe we know this place, to feel it’s ours,
but if we drew a picture in the sand and signed our names,
it would all be gone by tomorrow, the way we’ll be
when we pack the car at dawn and drive to Baltimore.
Still, three children do just that, raking out
giant letters and hieroglyphs in the sand,
unreadable at ground level but probably legible
from the tiny plane that ferries sightseers all day
back and forth from Provincetown to Buzzard’s Bay.
What? What do they say?
Climbing the steepest dune on all fours, a clumsy quadruped,
I can make them out, a few words, a date,
that defy, or underscore, the transience of our stay:

TRURO AUGUST 1

WE WERE HERE!