The Experience at the Heart of the Sense

[Image: “April 2020: The Twig Moon,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.) This is one of an Instagram series tagged #thingsthatlookkindalikeotherthings. At that time, this past spring, it seemed we were being regularly introduced to a new “fun name” for a month’s full moon — “Wolf Moon,” “Corn Moon,” etc.; when I saw this giant concrete manhole cover (or whatever it really is) the title sprang immediately to mind.]

From whiskey river:

At first I couldn’t see anything. I fumbled along the cobblestone street. I lit a cigarette. Suddenly the moon appeared from behind a black cloud, lighting a white wall that was crumbled in places. I stopped, blinded by such whiteness. Wind whistled slightly. I breathed the air of the tamarinds. The night hummed, full of leaves and insects. Crickets bivouacked in the tall grass. I raised my head: up there the stars too had set up camp. I thought that the universe was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket’s saw, the star’s blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken? I threw my cigarette down on the sidewalk. Falling, it drew a shining curve, shooting out brief sparks like a tiny comet.

I walked a long time, slowly. I felt free, secure between the lips that were at that moment speaking me with such happiness. The night was a garden of eyes.

(Octavio Paz [source])

…and:

I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories like these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.

(Lloyd Jones [source])

…and:

What We Miss

Who says it’s so easy to save a life? In the middle of an interview for the job you might get you see the cat from the window of the seventeenth floor just as he’s crossing the street against traffic, just as you’re answering a question about your worst character flaw and lying that you are too careful. What if you keep seeing the cat at every moment you are unable to save him? Failure is more like this than like duels and marathons. Everything can be saved, and bad timing prevents it. Every minute, you are answering the question and looking out the window of the church to see your one great love blinded by the glare, crossing the street, alone.

(Sarah Manguso [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Metaphysics

For a while after he died
my father didn’t seem to
discern dream visitors, but
I was amazed nonetheless
to witness his swift and
serene rejuvenation. From
time to time I’d find him
dining outdoors in beautiful
locales, a multicolored
grain on his plate I’d
never seen elsewhere.

Yes, laughed the server,
it’s a staple here; a sort
of national dish, I guess,
like potatoes in Ireland,
pasta in Italy, couscous
in Morocco, rice in Japan
or Madagascar. We can’t
get enough of it, and it’s
remarkably nutritious.
What’s it called? I asked.
She replied, metaphysics.

(Kate Farrell [source])

…and:

Finishing Up

I wonder if I know enough to know what it’s really like
to have been here: have I seen sights enough to give
seeing over: the clouds, I’ve waited with white
October clouds like these this afternoon often before and

taken them in, but white clouds shade other white
ones gray, had I noticed that: and though I’ve
followed the leaves of many falls, have I spent time with
the wire vines left when frost’s red dyes strip the leaves

away: is more missing than was never enough: I’m sure
many of love’s kinds absolve and heal, but were they passing
rapids or welling stirs: I suppose I haven’t done and seen
enough yet to go, and, anyway, it may be way on on the way

before one picks up the track of the sufficient, the
world-round reach, spirit deep, easing and all, not just mind
answering itself but mind and things apprehended at once
as one, all giving all way, not a scrap of question holding back.

(A.R. Ammons [source])

…and:

Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By “they” I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.

The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer.

I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the place where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

(Thomas Merton [source])