[Image: “Audrey II (Milan Fashion Week),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]
From whiskey river’s commonplace book:
The workshop…
The paper I write on or you
write on, every word we write,
every cross and twirl of the
pen, and the curious way we
write what we think, yet very
faintly…In them realities for you and
me — in them poems for you
and me…In them themes, hints, provokers.
(Walt Whitman [source])
…and:
The way of seeing mountains and rivers differs according to the type of being that sees them. There are beings that see what we call water as a jeweled necklace. It does not mean however that they see a jeweled necklace as water…
What different types of beings see is different. And we should reflect on this fact. Is it that there are various ways of seeing an object? Or is it that we have mistaken various images for one object? We should concentrate every effort on understanding this question and then concentrate still more. Given this multitude of perspectives, it follows that training on the way of practice and verification must also not be merely of one or two kinds. The ultimate realm must have a thousand types, ten thousand kinds.
(Dogen, translated by Carl Bielefeldt [source])
…and:
All your nonsenses and truths, your finery and squaladoptions, combine and coalesce into one noise including laugh and whimper, scream and sigh, forever and forever repeating, in any tongue we care to choose, whatever lessened, separated message we want to hear. The Universe says simply, but with every possible complication, ‘Existence’ and it neither pressures us nor draws us out, except as we allow. It all boils down to nothing, and where we have the means and will to fix our reference within that flux, then there we are. Let me be part of that outrageous chaos… and I am.
(Iain Banks [source])
From elsewhere:
This very distinguished philosophy professor came out on the platform in front of this gang of students and took a bit of chalk and scrawled up a proposition in symbolic logic on the board. He turned to the audience and said, “Well now, ladies and gentlemen, I think you’ll agree that that’s obvious?”
Then he looked at it a bit more and started to scratch his head and after a while he said, “Excuse me!” And he disappeared.
About half an hour later he came back beaming all over his face and said triumphantly, “Yes, I was right—it is obvious!”
(John Brunner [source])
…and:
The Mongolian countryside is government land. Instead of the patchwork of farms and fences that divide an American countryside, the land is an unbroken expanse, more a blanket than a quilt. On this rolling and largely treeless nation, Mongolian nomads—who make up around a fifth of the population—are free to set up camp and graze their herds where they wish. Likewise, you may drive wherever you wish. The countryside has few roads. Or is one big road. Feel like visiting the folks who live off by that stream in the distance? Turn the steering wheel and aim the car.
(Mary Roach [source])
…and:
Drive
We are two copper spoons
beneath the blanket.
I am listening to my wife’s
gentle breaths.
She is finally relaxed
after a long night of wrestling
in her sleep.
My hand is on her thigh
but I am thinking about
the perfect drive I hit
on number five at Southwind,
and the seven iron to the edge
of the green.
I replay the birdie putt trickling in
to the hole over and over again.
It could be on the golf channel
except there’s no roaring crowd,
no exuberant fan screaming,
“get in the hole!”
no English accent whispering
into a microphone
about the significance of the shot,
how my steady play today
finally reflects my potential,
my work ethic, my readiness
for the moment.
She shifts her weight, the air between
our hips disappears.
I close my eyes.
I am no longer watching the flight
of the ball. I am the ball in flight.
I have been well struck. I am moving
with intention toward the earth.
This is not a game.
And it’s us doing all the whispering.
(Frank X Walker [source])
…and:
# 32: From the “How to See 3D” section of the Magic Eye books series’ FAQ:
Hold the center of the printed image right up to your nose. It should be blurry. Focus as though you are looking through the image into the distance. Very slowly move the image away from your face until the two squares above the image turn into three squares. If you see four squares, move the image farther away from your face until you see three squares. If you see one or two squares, start over!
When you clearly see three squares, hold the page still and the hidden image will magically appear. Once you perceive the hidden image and depth, you can look around the entire 3D image. The longer you look, the clearer the illusion becomes. The farther away you hold the page, the deeper it becomes.
Well, I don’t know about that — it’s probably just my own quirk, my own literal-mindedness, but…: all that printing, focusing, shuffling and shifting and squinting of paper — I’d rather just look at the world for those minutes, yes?
(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)
John's Brudder says
Several interesting connections for me, to this week’s Run.
Whitman: makes me think about a decision I made this week to make my current “workshop” (cellar office) less digital – I’ve set up a drafting table to forego “CAD”.
Bielefeldt: I have often thought about how “we” see – is orange the same color to you as it is to me?
Banks: squaladoptions? What the hell? You posted this just because of that word, didn’t you?
Brunner: this reminds me of the Philosophy class I had at Pratt, where it was easy to imagine that professor being the one of this quote.
Roach: I listened to a podcast this week discussing the shepheards of Mongolia.
Walker: has he gotten into my head?
JES: Maxims for Nostalgists? Is there more to this? Should I have read this previously in some other tome that was passed along?
John says
A few thoughts:
Bielefeldt: I’ve wondered the same thing. Conclusion (well, mine): there’s no way of knowing; color experience is 100% subjective. We just agree to assign common names to particular frequencies of light — no matter how we actually perceive those frequencies.
Banks: If you follow the “[source]” link to Banks’s book The Crow Road (as it appears on the Internet Archive), you will see that “squaladoptions” is indeed exactly how it appears on the indicated page (129); it seems to have been spelled that way by someone who’d written it out. Later in the book, a different character thinks to himself the phrase “squalid options”… not having actually READ the entire book, I don’t know how the two characters relate to each other, or to their particular spellings.
Brunner: this passage is also strikingly familiar to me as an expression of things going on in my head when I’m writing. I’ll be hammering out a paragraph and suddenly stop to reconsider a sentence I’d just typed. “Huh?” — something like that — and then I either change the sentence or just shrug and think, “It’s OK for now.”
Maxims for Nostalgists: this is a long-standing but very occasional thing here, going waaaay back almost to the beginning. There are now close to 100 of the things, not “collected” in any single document except a long draft of an email message to myself. (I have not composed them in advance — just on the fly, as one occurs to me on the Friday in question. There’s actually a “#999,” which would stand as an epilogue of sorts to the whole batch of them. And not all of them have anything to do with nostalgia or memory — nor, for that matter, are all of them exactly, uh, maxim-like.) Although you can’t see them all together, you can see the Friday posts in which they appear by following the Maxims for Nostalgists link in the “Tagged With” list at the foot of the post. (Each “maxim,” I think, is at the bottom of each post in which one appears.
John says
Re: the Maxims for Nostalgists — having checked just now, I see the first appearance was actually in December of 2012. FOUR of them (#s 1, 12, 14, and 31) appeared in that post. (I should add that I’ve always numbered them quasi-randomly, filling in gaps between 1-100 as needed, and I think there are actually some dup numbers.)