Running After My Hat

In and Out of Context

October 26, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Prague – Diving Pig,” by a photographer identifying him/herself only as “BR0WSER.” Found it at Flickr, of course, and use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). Depending on your mindset at the moment, the picture can be amusing or disorienting; it helps to read the caption, which identifies this as a sculpture by one Jan Kedlec. For a bit more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

The sky was clear that morning and there might still have been stars although he saw none. The thought of stars contributed to the power of his feeling. What moved him was a sense of those worlds around us, our knowledge however imperfect of their nature, our sense of their possessing some grain of our past and of our lives to come. It was that most powerful sense of our being alive on the planet. It was that most powerful sense of how singular, in the vastness of creation, is the richness of our opportunity. The sense of that hour was of an exquisite privilege, the great benefice of living here and renewing ourselves with love. What a paradise it seemed!

(John Cheever [source])

…and:

But is this really what having a self feels like? Do selves always seek their good, in the end? Are they never perverse? Do they always want meaning? Do they not sometimes want its opposite? And is this how memory works? Do our childhoods often return to us in the form of coherent, lyrical reveries? Is this how time feels? Do the things of the world really come to us like this, embroidered in the verbal fancy of times past? Is this really realism?

(Zadie Smith [source])

…and:

An Archival Print

God snaps your picture — don’t look away —
this room right now, your face tilted
exactly as it is before you can think
or control it. Go ahead, let it betray
all the secret emergencies and still hold
that partial disguise you call your character.

Even your lip, they say, the way it curves
or doesn’t, or can’t decide, will deliver
bales of evidence. The camera, wide open,
stands ready; the exposure is thirty-five years
or so — after that you have become
whatever the veneer is, all the way through.

Now you want to explain. Your mother
was a certain — how to express it? — influence.
Yes. And your father, whatever he was,
you couldn’t change that. No. And your town
of course had its limits. Go on, keep talking —
Hold it. Don’t move. That’s you forever.

(William Stafford [source])

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What You (and I) Cannot Really Know

October 19, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Portrait of the Unknown Saxophonist,” by Tom Waterhouse. Found it on Flickr, and use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!).

From whiskey river:

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 10¹⁸ joules of potential energy—enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.

(Bill Bryson [source])

…and:

A Face

It’s just by chance, who
you are, but given myself
I take care of this being.
Nobody else will remember
its hunger, cold, loneliness:
I will be reminded, and care.

This face, like an old watch,
I carry wherever I go.
Grandmothers, grandfathers, you pictures,
you should forgive my regret:
my wanting another. I carry it
as you did. It belongs
somewhere, and I am taking it there.

On corners I let the wind
have all the world, and I turn
as a ship accepts the waves
but is itself and has a voyage
built into it, stubbornly.

The choice of being who you are
is offered us, or being nothing.
The mask of myself is an old gift
nobody else took. So I brought it here.

(William Stafford [source: various occurrences around the Web, none complete or canonical])

…and:

Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn’t you. That isn’t you at all.

(Leila Sales [source])

…and:

What are we? A fleeting, intricate presence riding a tiny speck of water and rock, out here in the dark, sailing the ship of wonder ever more deeply into the void from which we came, that is our true home and mysterious destination.

(Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal [source])

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A Luxurious Bite of the Present

October 5, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Please Do Not Obstruct (Ludlow, UK),” by John E. Simpson (shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH).]

From whiskey river (italicized lines):

Ode to the Present

This
present moment,
smooth
as a wooden slab,
this
immaculate hour,
this day
pure
as a new cup
from the past—
no spider web
exists—
with our fingers,
we caress
the present; we cut it
according to our magnitude
we guide
the unfolding of its blossoms.
It is living,
alive—
it contains
nothing
from the unrepairable past,
from the lost past,
it is our
infant,
growing at
this very moment, adorned with
sand, eating from
our hands.
Grab it.
Don’t let it slip away.
Don’t lose it in dreams
or words.
Clutch it.
Tie it,
and order it
to obey you.
Make it a road,
a bell,
a machine,
a kiss, a book,
a caress.
Take a saw to its delicious
wooden
perfume.
And make a chair;
braid its
back;
test it.
Or then, build
a staircase! Yes, a
staircase.
Climb
into
the present,
step
by step,
press your feet
onto the resinous wood
of this moment,
going up,
going up,
not very high,
just so
you repair
the leaky roof.
Don’t go all the way to heaven.
Reach
for apples,
not the clouds.
Let them
fluff through the sky,
skimming passage,
into the past. You
are
your present,
your own apple.
Pick it from
your tree.
Raise it
in your hand.
It’s gleaming,
rich with stars.
Claim it.
Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.

(Pablo Neruda [source])

…and:

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backwards in time and exist in two places at once.

It was my brother Stephen who told me that, when he wore his raveling maroon sweater to study in and spent a lot of time standing on his head so that the blood would run down into his brain and nourish it. I didn’t understand what he meant, but maybe he didn’t explain it very well. He was already moving away from the imprecision of words.

But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.

(Margaret Atwood [source])

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This Here, This Now, This You

September 28, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: Untitled photograph by Mike Liu; it was taken in 2016, at San Francisco International Airport. (I found it on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license –thank you!) About the image, the photographer says only: “I always seem to take the same photograph from the same spot of the same subject after getting off the plane. It is because I think the airport is a place of minor miracles, where connections are lost and made and reunions are the everyday trade.”]

From whiskey river (first paragraph):

Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.

For endless eons there was no you. Before you know it, you will cease to be again. And in between you have this wonderful opportunity to see and feel and think and do. Whatever else you accomplish with your life, nothing will remotely compare with the incredible accomplishment of having managed to get yourself born. Congratulation. Well done. You really are special.

(Bill Bryson [source])

…and (last four stanzas):

Roses, Late Summer

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can’t sing
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.
so they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of the light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.
And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn’t mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

(Mary Oliver [source])

…and:

A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.

(May Sarton [source])

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Discrete Infinities

September 21, 2018 by John 1 Comment

[Image: “Double Self-Portrait With Old Man,” by Tom Waterhouse — an old favorite. Found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!)]

From whiskey river:

Among the Multitudes

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.

I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from under another tree.

Nature’s wardrobe
holds a fair supply of costumes:
spider, seagull, field mouse.
Each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.

I didn’t get a choice either,
but I can’t complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
Someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape tousled by the wind.

Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.

A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.

A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.

A shady type whose darkness
dazzled some.

What if I’d prompted only fear,
loathing,
or pity?

If I’d been born
in the wrong tribe,
with all roads closed before me?

Fate has been kind
to me thus far.

I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments.

My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.

I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is,
someone completely different.

(Wislawa Szymborska [source])

…and:

Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there’s no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.

(Robert M. Pirsig [source])

…and:

On Meditating, Sort Of

Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?

Some days I fall asleep, or land in that
even better place—half asleep—where the world,
spring, summer, autumn, winter—
flies through my mind in its
hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.

So I just lie like that, while distance and time
reveal their true attitudes: they never
heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.

Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints—
all that glorious, temporary stuff.

(Mary Oliver [source])

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What You Thought Was Said

September 14, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Pass Me That Wrench,” by June Yarham; found on Flickr, of course, and used here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!)]

From whiskey river (italicized lines):

Sometimes a Voice (1)

Sometimes a voice—have you heard this?—
wants not to be voice any longer, wants something
whispering between the words, some
rumour of its former life. Sometimes, even
in the midst of making sense or conversation, it will
hearken back to breath, or even farther,
to the wind, and recognize itself
as troubled air, a flight path still
looking for its bird.
I’m thinking of us up there
shingling the boathouse roof. That job is all
off balance—squat, hammer, body skewed
against the incline, heft the bundle,
daub the tar, squat. Talking,
as we have always talked, about not living
past the age of thirty with its
labyrinthine perils: getting hooked,
steady job, kids, business suit. Fuck that. The roof
sloped upward like a take-off ramp
waiting for Evel Knievel, pointing into open sky. Beyond it
twenty feet or so of concrete wharf before
the blue-black water of the lake. Danny said
that he could make it, easy. We said
never. He said case of beer, put up
or shut up. We said
asshole. Frank said first he should go get our beer
because he wasn’t going to get it paralysed or dead.
Everybody got up, taking this excuse
to stretch and smoke and pace the roof
from eaves to peak, discussing gravity
and Steve McQueen, who never used a stunt man, Danny’s
life expectancy, and whether that should be a case
of Export or O’Keefe’s. We knew what this was—
ongoing argument to fray
the tedium of work akin to filter vs. plain,
stick shift vs. automatic, condom vs.
pulling out in time. We flicked our butts toward the lake
and got back to the job. And then, amid the squat,
hammer, heft, no one saw him go. Suddenly he
wasn’t there, just his boots
with his hammer stuck inside one like a heavy-headed
flower. Back then it was bizarre that,
after all that banter, he should be so silent,
so inward with it just to
run off into sky. Later I thought,
cool. Still later I think it makes sense his voice should
sink back into breath and breath
devote itself to taking in whatever air
might have to say on that short flight between the roof
and the rest of his natural life.

(Don McKay [source])

…and:

4. Minor Miracles

Taking the empty air
Deep in our lungs,
Warming it there,

Extracting from it
What our blood needs,

Then breathing it back
Out as sound
We’ve added meaning to.

(Gregory Orr [source])

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Seeing What Is Only Suggested

September 7, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “#storypix 2018-08-19,” by John E. Simpson (shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page here at RAMH). This is one of a nightly series posted on Instagram, in which each caption represents a fragment of an imagined narrative which the corresponding picture no more than hints at — a separate story for each picture. The caption for this one says, “The guy claimed to have X-ray vision. Maybe that should’ve explained how he managed to just walk out of jail, but the Agency didn’t seem to think so.”]

From whiskey river:

My house here is painted the yellow colour of fresh butter on the outside, with glaringly green shutters; it stands in full sunlight in a square that has a green garden with plain trees, oleanders and acacias. It is completely whitewashed inside, with a floor made of red bricks. And over it there is the intensely blue sky. In this house I can love and breathe, meditate and paint.

(Vincent van Gogh [source])

…and:

When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven’t looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent.

(Clarice Lispector [source])

…and:

“Sketch” Sunday Afternoon NY
(excerpt)

—awright so we’re all
gonna die but now is the
time to sing & see, to be
humble, sacrificed, late,
crazy, talkative, fool-
ish…

Time, rather, to be proud,
indispensable, early
sane, silent, serious…

(Jack Kerouac [source])

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Spirit from Material

August 31, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Spirits in the Material World, Plate 3,” by Thomas Hawk; found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). As has happened before, with other photographers, I find now that I’ve used Hawk’s work to illustrate earlier posts as well as this one. I don’t know how to conduct a search (of almost 1,500 posts) to find all such favorites, but I wish I did!]

From whiskey river:

The Discovery Of Daily Experience

It is a whisper. You turn somewhere,
hall, street, some great event: the stars
or the lights hold; your next step waits you
and the firm world waits—but
there is a whisper. You always live so,
a being that receives, or partly receives, or
fails to receive each moment’s touch.

You see the people around you—the honors
they bear—a crutch, a cane, eye patch,
or the subtler ones, that fixed look, a turn
aside, or even the brave bearing: all declare
our kind, who serve on the human front and earn
whatever disguise will take them home. (I saw
Frank last week with his crutch de guerre.)

When the world is like this—and it is—
whispers, honors or penalties disguised—no wonder
art thrives like a pulse wherever civilized people,
or any people, live long enough in a place to
build, and remember, and anticipate; for we are
such beings as interact elaborately with what
surrounds us. The limited actual world we successively
overcome by fictions and by the mind’s inventions
that cannot be quite arbitrary (and hence do reflect
the actual), but can escape the actual (and hence
may become art).

(William Stafford [source])

…and:

Be pleased yet once again to come down and breathe a soul into the newly formed, fragile film of matter with which this day the world is to be freshly clothed.

(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin [source])

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A Fabulous Yonder

August 24, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Rippled Water (Twin Peaks),” by John E. Simpson (shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page here at RAMH).]

From whiskey river (first paragraph):

On Parables

Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross over to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.

(Franz Kafka [source])

…and:

Welcome

if you believe nothing is always what’s left
after a while, as I did,
If you believe you have this collection
of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here
behind the silence and the averted eyes)
If you believe an afternoon can collapse
into strange privacies—
how in your backyard, for example,
the shyness of flowers can be suddenly
overwhelming, and in the distance
the clear goddamn of thunder
personal, like a voice,
If you believe there’s no correct response
to death, as I do; that even in grief
(where I’ve sat making plans)
there are small corners of joy
If your body sometimes is a light switch
in a house of insomniacs
If you can feel yourself straining
to be yourself every waking minute
If, as I am, you are almost smiling…

(Stephen Dunn [source])

…and:

When William Stafford Died

Well, water goes down the Montana gullies.
“I’ll just go around this rock and think
About it later.” That’s what you said.
When death came, you said, “I’ll go there.”

There’s no sign you’ll come back. Sometimes
My father sat up in the coffin and was alive again.
But I think you were born before my father,
And the feet they made in your time were lighter.

One dusk you were gone. Sometimes a fallen tree
Holds onto a rock, if the current is strong.
I won’t say my father did that, but I won’t
Say he didn’t either. I was watching you both.

If all a man does is to watch from the shore,
Then he doesn’t have to worry about the current.
But if affection has put us into the stream,
Then we have to agree to where the water goes.

(Robert Bly [source])

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I Don’t Belong Here… Do I?

August 17, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: Senecio, by Paul Klee. 1922; watercolor, pen and ink. This work seems to have drawn an interesting range of interpretations. Sometimes it’s described as just a mask, or a mask-like representation of a human head; it’s apparently referred to sometimes by the alternate title Head of a Man Going Senile; and Wikipedia notes that Senecio is the scientific name for a genus of the daisy family and is Latin for, simply, “old man.” For a fairly exhaustive rumination about it, see this book (starting at the page to which that link takes you). Note that the “about this book” description of the book says, in part, that it “reveal[s] the importance of metaphysics in everyday life through a disclosure of the grounding principles that inform the bureaucratic approach to human predicaments” — so, brace yourself accordingly.]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Individuality

Individuality?
is not of the substance of elements.
It is an organism, indivisibly
occupied
by elementary objects of a divergent character:
if you
were to attempt division, these parts
would die.

Myself,
for instance: an entire dramatic company.

Enter an ancestor, prophetic;
enter a hero, brutal
a rake, alcoholic, to argue
with a learned professor.
A lyrical beauty, rolling her eyes
heavenward, a case
of chronic infatuation —
enter a heavy father,
to take care of that.
enter a liberal uncle — to arbitrate….
Aunt Chatterbox gossiping in a corner.
Chambermaid Lewdie, giggling.

And I, watching it all,
astonishment in my eyes.
Poised, in my left hand
a sharpened pencil.

A pregnant woman!, a mother
is planning
her entrance —
Shushhh! you
don’t belong here
you
are divisible!
She fades.

(Paul Klee [source])

…and (in somewhat different words):

While I was at UCLA, D.T. Suzuki (the famous Zen scholar, writer, master, etc.) came to visit. They set up the Regents auditorium for him. So we were all there, the audience all excited, and out came the head of the Oriental department. The audience all quieted down. The [department] head introduced [him]: “Here is D.T. Suzuki, world class Zen scholar, writer, master, etc. Here he is!”

We all sat in silence. This little guy comes out to the mike. Adjusts a pair of glasses. This is him, we’ve seen pictures of him before, but he looks smaller and etc. He reaches out and taps the mike.

A hollow ping sounds though the hall. He says, “Zen Buddhism, very hard understand. Thank you,” and walks off stage.

The audience went crazy! There was a mad struggle backstage, and then the head led Suzuki back out, a couple of the department professors with him. They set up some chairs, sat Suzuki down and asked him questions for an hour so everyone would be satisfied.

But I can still hear his voice: “Zen Buddhism, Very hard understand…”

(Jonathan Greenlee [source])

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