You’ve Got to Blink If You Want to See

[Image: “(Half-)Shoeless in Paradise,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH). This was #779 (2019-11-14) in my series of 1,000 “everyday black-and-white” posts on Instagram (a series which I wrapped up in June, 2020).]

From whiskey river:

For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, “The emperor is naked!” — when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game — everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.

(Václav Havel [source])

…and:

But there are other people, people who choose to be crazy in order to cope with what they regard as a crazy world. They have adopted craziness as a lifestyle. I’ve found that there is nothing I can do for these people because the only way you can get them to give up their craziness is to convince them that the world is actually sane. I must confess that I have found such a conviction almost impossible to support.

(Tom Robbins [source])

…and:

Reality Is Always Freshly Born

The more successful a technique, the more it is guaranteed to produce certain results.
But reality can never be known in advance.
Creativity is not a matter of just applying know-how in order to achieve ends that have been figured out in advance.
Indeed, we may say that if you know what to do in any situation, it’s the wrong thing.
Living truth has to be created in the act of living and even the means have to be created in the act of giving ourselves to the task.
If you know what to say, it’s a lie.
If you know how to teach, you’re a propagandist.
If you know how to compose a verse, you’re not a poet.
If you know how to get along with your husband or wife, you’re not really married, you’re simply applying psychology.
(If you know how to heal your client, you’re not a real therapist.)
Reality is not gained by know how.
Reality is always freshly born.
Whenever a relationship or action is real, it is being created and re-created from moment to moment.
The real question is not what to do, but
How can I give myself more completely to the situation, to the task, to the person at hand?
As one learns how to give oneself more and more unreservedly, one is led step by step and
Discovers what to do

(Bernard Phillips [source (anecdotal/hearsay)])

Not from whiskey river:

Medusa on Sansome and Pine 

The woman is daft.
Invented her own sect.
Has upside-down sex.
With alternate species.

You see her on the street.
Corner of Sansome and Pine:
Morning rev up of sf financial types.
Instead, there she is, beneath a gigantic hat.

Hair wild, in coils, like a rattle-
Snake. Smiles like she’s got the shakes.
Every cell in her seems to vibrate.
Psst! Could you turn that to low?

The gray-suited, heads bent to cement, pass.
Edges of her sleeves are threads;
Her clothes mismatch. The shoes
Are not a pair. She stands as you stare,

Or better yet, ignore. You ask
Her if she’s fine, and she replies, Fan-
Tastic! As if this were the day
She’d finally learned to levitate,

And her eyes are the doors
To a holographic universe,

And she looks right through you,
As if you too had won the lottery of the soul.
And you look down at your shiny, perfectly symmetrical shoes,
Like, Man, that’s more than I wanted to know.

And — Didn’t anyone tell you you need a reason —
A house you own, matching clothes,
Translucent skin, sheen of fashion,
A pulsing bank account, like our galaxy always expanding —

To feel so friggin’ over the moon?
Who are you? How do you justify you?
What made you you? What context gave you you?
And on the curb you kick, swing, scuff your shoes.

The woman is daft.
Invented her own sect.
Probably has no sex, or too much.
With any species.

She hasn’t yet learned
That happiness is contingent —
It depends upon
The things aforelisted.

She’s just riding on the being of being.
Hedonist. On her hand, a rock
As if, eons ago, the glacier had swung by and deposited
A boulder on her finger. The elemental pinned to her.

The woman is daft, I tell you.
Adrift. Steer clear. The glint
In her — shield your eyes. Downcast.
Don’t let it get to you. She will die

Alone — while you, you’ll have —
Have — Resist. Do not,
I say, do not
Long for that magic.

(Tiffany Higgins [source])

…and:

To me, the point of sitting still is that it helps you see through the very idea of pushing forward; indeed, it strips you of yourself, as of a coat of armor, by leading you into a place where you’re defined by something larger. If it does have benefits, they lie within some invisible account with a high interest rate but very long-term yields, to be drawn upon at that moment, surely inevitable, when a doctor walks into your room, shaking his head, or another car veers in front of yours, and all you have to draw upon is what you’ve collected in your deeper moments.

(Pico Iyer [source])

…and:

Inventory

We gaze into your eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes.
We forget the display is blind.

Your fanned tail really a cupped palm,
gathering each hen’s quiver to your ear,

your feathers the green-blue glamours of
reflective absence. No one

ever praises the ass of the peacock,
grin of quills that does the heavy lifting,

or how you eat anything from ants
to Styrofoam, from cheese to chicken.

Road roamer, flower devourer:
the one who’ll pick a fight with a goat.

Preen all you want. What I love of you
will be the bare undercarriage,

the calamus. I am done with beauty.
Only a blinking eye can measure the light.

(Sandra Beasley [source])