An Image in a Ball of Glass

[Image: “Disembodied Legs,” by Miguel Tejada-Flores; spotted this on Flickr, of course, and use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). The photographer explains, “Disembodied legs protruding from an automobile transmission – advertising an automotive repair shop, in Central Point, Oregon.” He also includes an epigraph: “You don’t get to have legs and not use them. / Dance”; the quotation seems to have come from this book, by author Dianna Hardy.]

From whiskey river:

Playing and fun are not the same thing, though when we grow up we may forget that and find ourselves mixing up playing with happiness. There can be a kind of amnesia about the seriousness of playing, especially when we played by ourselves or looked like we were playing by ourselves.

I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played, seems to play back.

If playing isn’t happiness or fun, if it is something which may lead to those things or to something else entirely, not being able to play is misery.

No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn’t able to, though I wanted to—

There were times when nothing played back. Writers call it ‘writer’s block’. For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don’t usually know them.

(Lynda Barry [source])

…and:

There is no hope anywhere but in this moment, in the karmic terms laid down by one’s own life. This very day is an aspect of nirvana, which is not different from samsara but, rather, a subtle alchemy, the manifestation of dark mud in the pure, white blossom of the lotus.

“Of course I enjoy this life! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!”

(Peter Matthiessen [source])

…and:

Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next—life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was—a whisper.

What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth dead falling or tiger-trapping.

In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink-blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspot outside your grandparents’ window long ago.

(Ray Bradbury [source)

Not from whiskey river:

On Being a Grid One Might Go Off
(excerpt)

You’ve grown so accustomed
to mereness that what you call a life no longer houses the sublime.

It seems easy to leave. It seems this easy to leave. After
a second you’ll want to consider the centimeters of resistance
stitching air between here and all of elsewhere. But, still,
inhabit the bodiless second. To possess it is a bearable joy.

(Justin Phillip Reed [source])

…and:

To bend the ear to silence is to discover how seldom it is there. Always something moves. When the air is quite still, there is always running water; and up here that is a sound one can hardly lose, though on many stony parts of the plateau one is above the watercourses. But now and then comes an hour when the silence is all but absolute, and listening to it one slips out of time. Such a silence is not a mere negation of sound. It is like a new element, and if water is still sounding with a low far-off murmur, it is no more than the last edge of an element we are leaving, as the last edge of land hangs on the mariner’s horizon. Such moments come in mist, or snow, or a summer night (when it is too cool for the clouds of insects to be abroad), or a September dawn. In September dawns I hardly breathe—I am an image in a ball of glass. The world is suspended there, and I in it.

(Nan Shepherd [source])

…and:

A Possum Entering the Argument

We’re talking about
when we met
and you say

it was easier
to fall for me thinking
(I’ll remember

this pause)
it was likely I’d be
dead by now.

Talking. Falling.
Thinking. Waiting . . .
Have I

undone
what you’ve tried to do?
You say no.

You say the surprise
of still being
is something

being built—
the machine of our living,
this saltwork of luck,

stylish, safe,
comfortable and
unintended.

Meanwhile, I haven’t
had the opportunity
to tell you, but

our lovely little dog
has just killed
a possum.

Maybe it’s unfair,
a possum entering
the argument here.

But I lay it down
before us:
because an ugly

dying  possum
played dead
and didn’t run,

its dubious cunning
was brought to an end
outside our door

by our brutal, beautiful
and very pleased
little dog.

So how do I say
that this is not
about death or sadness

or even whether
you really
first loved me

waiting, thinking
I’d be
dying young?

It’s just that
standing there
a few minutes ago

holding a dead possum
by its repellent
bony tail,

I was struck by how
eerily pleased I was
to be a spectator

to teeth, spit,
agony and claw,
feeling full of purpose,

thinking how different
in our adversaries
we are from possums.

We try love—
the fist of words,
their opening hand.

And whether we play
dead or alive,
our pain, the slow

circulation of happiness,
our salt and work,
the stubborn questions

we endlessly
give names to
haunt us with choice.

(Tom Healy [source])