[Image: “Clarity Piercing / Thom McAn,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.) I’m surely not the only photographer who’s resisted the temptation to undercut an image with a smug or too-clever title or other commentary — but this is one of those pictures for which the temptation almost won.]
Consider those moments familiar, I think, to pretty much all of us: any moment in which we observe something which tickles us, or moves or angers us, or just brings fleeting satisfaction in and of itself, to no one but ourselves. (Sometimes, but mercifully not always, such moments abruptly collapse when pricked with a question from someone else, on the order of “What are you thinking about?” or just plain, “What?”) These little sparkles of Something Happening bespeckle our days like the dozen seasonings of a stew, and I believe they’re what make the stew remotely palatable — even more than do the major ingredients (conversations, events, “experiences”) which we’re more likely to recall as chunky milestones of a day, a week, a life.
Such unspoken secrets underpin friendships and loves, whole societies and subcultures. They’re not — needn’t be, at any rate — guilty secrets; they’re just ones we hold within ourselves, like tiny jewels in a black-velvet bag tied with a drawstring: in our consciousness, individual or collective. And they’re at the core of a couple of readings this week.
First, from whiskey river:
Here in these circuses and carnivals we all love each other with our oddities and queernesses. People leave us alone because we mesmerize them with tricks, tickle them with feathers, tie them up in wonder and hope. We never let them know that we read books, that we love everyone and accept everything, that our bodies are free, that we travel, resist, and fight and that we give refuge to convicts and revolutionaries, that we have saved gypsies and Jews. We never let them know that we untie ropes, that we train horses to dance without the weight of armor or swords, and we keep it a secret that the strongman loves the cannon man, that they cook dinner for one another, that they share the same bed, and that every time the cannon man is up in the air with smoke trailing from his feet, the strongman waits on the other side to catch him if he falls. And, my little child, do not tell a soul that we are knowers and non-believers. We know that after this grand act of life nothing is left but the dust beneath the elephants’ feet and the sound of the monkeys’ clapping. When they come to you with prophets and promises of heavens of honey and milk, remember that we are no more than flowers having our last glance at the world before we die, with grace and with gratitude for the wonders we witnessed, for the magic box we built, the animals we loved, the carpets we flew, the stars that we encountered after the spectacle ended and the spectators were left to lament and wait for the coming of their phantom trains to take them to their imaginary heavens…
(Rawi Hage [source])
…and, not from whiskey river:
Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov stirred at half past eight to the sound of rain on the eaves. With a half-opened eye, he pulled back his covers and climbed from bed. He donned his robe and slipped on his slippers. He took up the tin from the bureau, spooned a spoonful of beans into the Apparatus, and began to crank the crank.
Even as he turned the little handle round and round, the room remained under the tenuous authority of sleep. As yet unchallenged, somnolence continued to cast its shadow over sights and sensations, over forms and formulations, over what has been said and what must be done, lending each the insubstantiality of its domain. But when the Count opened the small wooden drawer of the grinder, the world and all it contained were transformed by that envy of the alchemists–the aroma of freshly ground coffee.
In that instant, darkness was separated from light, the waters from the lands, and the heavens from the earth. The trees bore fruit and the woods rustled with the movement of birds and beasts and all manner of creeping things. While closer at hand, a patient pigeon scuffed its feet on the flashing.
(Amor Towles [source])
Leave a Reply