Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

“Let Me Show You Me,” the Braggart Said — and Show Himself, He Did

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[Image: “Awesome Street/Private Street,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

Having grown used to the polite verbiage of modern-day counseling—we speak of “having guilt feelings” rather than actually acknowledging our guilt—I found myself delighted by the pithy language and imagery of the early monks. Here, for example, is the seventh-century monk of Sinai, John Climacus, on the subject of pride, from a book that is still read in Orthodox monasteries during Lent:

Pride is a denial of God, an invention of the devil, contempt for men. It is the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of barrenness. It is a flight from God’s help, the harbinger of madness, the author of downfall. It is the cause of diabolical possession, the source of anger, the gateway of hypocrisy. It is the fortress of demons, the custodian of sins, the source of hardheartedness. It is the denial of compassion, a bitter pharisee, a cruel judge. It is the foe of God. It is the root of blasphemy.

Welcome to the truth: that’s the feeling I have when I read such a text. And the monk Evagrius, the first to write down and attempt to codify the beliefs and practices of the desert monks with regard to sin (which they called “demons” or “bad thoughts”), not only provides me with a means of understanding my own “bad thoughts” but also with the tools to confront them. His view of anger is typically sensible. Anger, he wrote, is given to us by God to help us confront true evil. We err when we use it casually, against other people, to gratify our own desires for power or control.

(Kathleen Norris [source])

…and:

It is a curious psychological fact that the man who seems to be “egotistic” is not suffering from too much ego, but from too little.

When the ego is strong and well developed, there is no nagging need to impress others—by money, by rudeness, or by any other show of false strength.

Sydney J. Harris [source])

Not from whiskey river:

But why does compassion have to be universal? Because this is different from moral judgment. It doesn’t prevent you from saying that those [people like Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, and Donald Trump] are walking psychopaths, that they have no heart. But compassion is to remedy suffering wherever it is, whatever form it takes and whoever causes it. So what is the object of compassion here? It is the hatred and the person under its power. If someone beats you with a stick, you don’t get angry with the stick — you get angry with the person. These people we are talking about are like sticks in the hands of ignorance and hatred…

I realize this is a question that no one on the path to enlightenment would ask, but broadly speaking, am I on the right path? You?

Yes. [Laughs.] I mean, I cannot make a clinical examination, but I feel that you resonate with ideas which are dear to me. So that’s a good sign.

I’ll take it! If you had said, “Oh, that’s all rubbish” — you know, once there was a French journalist, very cynical, and he said to me, “This thing about becoming a better person and all that, this is the politics of the hash trade.” I don’t know what he meant. But what I said was, “My dear friend, if genuinely trying to become a better person and do a little good — if that’s the politics of the hash trade, I’m happy to spend my whole life in the hash trade.”

(from an interview of the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard by New York Times columnist David Marchese [source])

…and:

#42: Years later, it’s not uncommon to forget the names and faces of people you once saw, day after day, as you went about your life of the moment. These people visited you in your office, in your home, in church or elsewhere, and you returned the favor, and cherished the opportunity to again be in their company. And yet you never forget the names and faces of people who “did you wrong”: insulted you, embarrassed you, hurt your feelings, stole your thunder. This paradox says much about memory, of course, but it also says much about why human beings steadfastly, stubbornly remain human.

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)

When They’ve All Had Their Quarrels and Parted

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

From whiskey river:

There is a twilight zone in our own hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves—our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and drives—large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness.

This is a very good thing. We always will remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That’s a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility but also to a deep trust in those who love us. It is in the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.

(Henri Nouwen [source])

Not from whiskey river:

The Soul Selects Her Own Society

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

(Emily Dickinson [source])

…and:

Once we were so few we fit intimately into the life of extended families. As our numbers swelled, you would think we would feel an even greater sense of belonging, of belonging everywhere to everyone. But there are so many of us, more than we can ever know in a lifetime—or even imagine as individuals—that we often feel just the opposite: as if we belong nowhere to no one. We can move among multitudes, and feel isolated and alone. We live unique, private lives of hope and self-interest. We also live polite, cooperative lives of teamwork and negotiation. When our population was low, that meant cooperating on a hunt or ceremony or marriage, or perhaps the exchange of goods. We knew the people who owed us, and those to whom we were indebted. We knew our friends and allies on sight—they often revealed talents and tempers in the daily dramas of the community. We knew whom to trust in a crisis, where to go for solace. Today there are so many of us that we forge alliances with people we will never meet, whose names we don’t even know—with banks, insurance companies, sprawling corporations, governments, churches, armed forces. We belong to organizations more virtuous and trustworthy than any of their members are as individuals. We belong to our families as we always did, to kith and kin, but we also belong electronically, telephonically, statistically, generationally, anonymously to people far from us.

We are masons, blacksmiths, teachers, lawyers. We have invented machines in which we fly, submersibles to patrol the secret recesses of the oceans. We have polished the marble of our cities, and also filled them with decay. We have homesteaded the night with electric lights, turning it into a dazzling country. We have learned sin and shame, new words for hate, novel forms of mischief and deep play. We perform towering feats of altruism. Little of it was planned. It simply happened, child by child, loved one by loved one, piece by piece, over the great caravan of human history.

(Diane Ackerman [source])

In high school, I met, befriended, and eventually fell in love with a girl who was utterly outside my league in terms of how many people she knew and was friends with, her likely impact on our school and society at large, and — it must be said — her romantic confusions and entanglements. We eventually attended and graduated from the same college, and stayed in touch for the next decade or so, through one marriage (or another) to other people, and although we never had a “romantic” relationship, we certainly talked about the prospect occasionally. It just never got off the ground.

Anyway, she at some point gave me a book, Stories and Satires — a selection of the stories of Sholom Aleichem. I have no idea how or why she chose that book; it had no obvious connection to anything going on in our lives. I probably read and enjoyed a few of the tales but don’t remember much about them. Frustratingly, though, I remember — but only almost — the inscription she’d added to the title page. It purported to be a quotation from Thomas More, I think — Thomas Somebody, anyhow — but I’ve never been able to trace or recreate it exactly.

But it went something like this, in words which don’t sound to me much like someone of More’s ilk:

We had reached that stage of Anglo-Saxon regard when two people will not look each other in the eye, for fear of revealing how very fond of each other they are.

It kills me that I can’t remember it, and it kills me that I can’t recreate the true sense of the passage (let alone its impact on me), even in other words. My copy of the book, needless to say, is long gone, and while I can certainly buy a new copy, it won’t contain that inscription. (I’m afraid I’m not interested in it otherwise.) My friend — as I learned from a mutual acquaintance — died over 20 years ago, so even that avenue of research is now closed off…

With those exact words or not, I did — do still — love the mystery of friendship which the quotation danced around. Even (maybe especially!) if we never exchange explicit “I love you” declarations, I know and my friends know what lies beneath the surface of our joshing, our sharing of intimate memories and fears, and our simple silence in one another’s presence. I don’t make friends easily — am decidedly not at all the “Hail, fellow, well met!” sort. But the deep understanding that someone is a friend, no matter how often we’re geographically in the same place: I think I may treasure that as much as any other life experience.

“This Is No Movie — This Is REAL! (The Last Reel…)”

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[This post’s title alludes to a favorite bit from Firesign Theatre‘s 1970 album, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me Those Pliers. If I could find a transcript of it, I’d link thereto… but I can’t. So allow me to introduce you to the album in its entirety, above, via the magic of YouTube. I’d hate to isolate the specific location in the audio where this line occurs — thus robbing you of the full, rich, 40-some-minutes experience — so, well, just listen.]

From whiskey river:

Self help

In the middle of the night
in Sweden, in the northern part
northish, anyway,
at midsummer
there are no stars
the light shimmers when you get up
and walk through the woods
to the outhouse
shimmers. it is not

like
what you are used to, shining from
like the sun through
the trees to your eyes.
it breaks and shimmers
in all directions.
at least i am pretty sure,
i didn’t have my glasses on.

we saw two moose
a big one one evening
a little one the next evening

i sat on the porch in a lawn chair
i looked at the lake
and at the trees
eventually i noticed i was not thinking
i was a little surprised

what am i doing when i am not thinking
i am living
so i lived on the porch
for a few days.

would i recommend this?
i don’t recommend anything
anymore
you’ll figure it out

(Mig Living [source])

…and:

The moon glows the same:
It is the drifting cloud forms
Make it seem to change.

(Matsuo Basho [source])

…and (ibid.):

Awakening doesn’t mean you awaken. It means that there is only awakening. There is no “you” who is awake, there is only awakeness. As long as you identify with a “you” who is either awake or not awake, you are still dreaming. Awakening is awakening from the dream of a separate you into simply being Awakeness.

The problem is that most people are paying attention to objects, to what they perceive – rather than to the ultimate perceiver, the background. Either way, awareness is happening 100% of the time. The light is on brightly. It never goes off, but where is it looking? The human condition is characterized by a complete fascination with objects, starting with this object that we interpret as “me.” Me is only a thought. You are before this me thought.

(Adyashanti [source, source])

Not from whiskey river:

Nonreading

Bookstores don’t provide
a remote control for Proust,
you can’t switch
to a soccer match,
or a quiz show, win a Cadillac.

We live longer
but less precisely
and in shorter sentences.

We travel faster, farther, more often,
but bring back slides instead of memories.
Here I am with some guy.
There I guess that’s my ex.
Here everyone’s naked
so this must be a beach.

Seven volumes—mercy.
Couldn’t it be cut or summarized,
or better yet put into pictures.
There was that series called “The Doll,”
but my sister-in-law says that’s some other P. [*]

And by the way, who was he anyway.
They say he wrote in bed for years on end.
Page after page
at a snail’s pace.
But we’re still going in fifth gear
and, knock on wood, never better.

(Wislawa Szymborska [source])

…and:

When you contemplate the nature of Self, you are meditating. That is why meditation is the highest state. It is the return to the root of your being, the simple awareness of being aware. Once you become conscious of the consciousness itself, you attain a totally different state. You are now aware of who you are. You have become an awakened being. It’s really just the most natural thing in the world. Here I am. Here I always was. It’s like you have been on the couch watching TV, but you were so totally immersed in the show that you forgot where you were. Someone shook you, and now you’re back to the awareness that you’re sitting on the couch watching TV. Nothing else changed. You simply stopped projecting your sense of self onto that particular object of consciousness. You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of Self. That is who you are.

As you pull back into the consciousness, this world ceases to be a problem. It’s just something you’re watching. It keeps changing, but there is no sense of that being a problem. The more you are willing to just let the world be something you’re aware of, the more it will let you be who you are—the awareness, the Self, the Atman, the Soul.

You realize that you’re not who you thought you were. You’re not even a human being. You just happen to be watching one.

(Michael A. Singer [source])

____________________________

* The “other P” in Szymborska’s poem refers to Polish writer Boleslaw Prus (1847-1912). His 1890 novel, The Doll, was eventually adapted both for television and for film.

Life Behind a Glass Mask

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[Image: “Day 19 — Untitled,” by Lip Jin Lee. Found it on Flickr; using it here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!)]

From whiskey river:

The Game of Roles

In any narrative, facts are present or not. One might assume the more facts, the better the constructed history, since facts are meant to reflect what can’t be computed by storytelling alone, which is said to be subjective and therefore inaccurate. In many cases, the story is filled with complex details, which only one person knows. You sit at a table and turn a page on which marks make letters that suggest a timeline. It’s clear that you believe nothing will ever outrank your cold and unforgiving erudition, however, everything you think is based, even at the most basic neuronal level, on the way you connect a long line of dots. Refined interpretation requires that you know that someone once said the offspring of reality and illusion is only a staggering confusion. Keep in mind that your mind is a twice-shattered light bulb and on the other side of detachment is the fact that someone is busy living while you are translating the fact that she’s dead. Also remember that behind your glass mask is only your mind.

(Mary Jo Bang, A Doll for Throwing [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Sometimes people have to get slapped in the face with a fish before they’ll admit being allergic to seafood.

(N.K. Jemisin [source])

…and:

…art is the most unnatural minion of the state. Not only is it created by fanciful people who tire of repetition even more quickly than they tire of being told what to do, it is also vexingly ambiguous. Just when a carefully crafted bit of dialogue is about to deliver a crystal-clear message, a hint of sarcasm or the raising of an eyebrow can spoil the entire effect. In fact, it can give credence to a notion that is the exact opposite of that which was intended. So, perhaps it is understandable that governing authorities are bound to reconsider their artistic preferences every now and then, if for no other reason than to keep themselves fit.

(Amor Towles [source])

…and:

Wrinkles

Lines on the face, tattoos of aging.
Life is proved upon the body
Like needle-jabs from a blind machine.

The older one gets, the more one is conscious of aging. We can barely remember childhood innocence and exuberance. We are surprised by the youthful vitality and unmarked face when we see earlier photos of ourselves. When we look in the mirror, we reluctantly acknowledge the aging mask. It seems that there is no escaping the marks of life.

Every experience that we have, everything that we do and think is registered upon us as surely as the steady embroidery of a tattoo artist. But to a large degree, the pattern and picture that will emerge is up to us. If we go to a tattoo artist, it is we who select the picture. In life, it is we who select what we will become by the actions we perform. There is no reason to go through life thoughtlessly, to let accident shape us. That is like allowing oneself to be tattooed by a blind man. How can you help but turn out old and ugly?

Whether we emerge beautiful or ugly is our sole responsibility.

(Deng Ming-Dao [source])

At Sea in an Open Boat: God’s Dog, the Sound of Steaming Coffee, a Fairy Godmother…

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[Image: “Aloft (Redwood City, California),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

We were traveling down in Florida over the last couple of weeks — from the Panhandle down to South Florida and on up to Jacksonville — tying off some loose ends of our erstwhile life there, and visiting family and friends to boot. As a result, I never got around to posting anything at all a week ago: the first missed “whiskey river Fridays” post in a long while…

So, let’s wrap today’s post here around several passages from the river‘s entries during those two weeks. First:

Beyond the wall of the unreal city, beyond the security fences topped with barbed wire and razor wire, beyond the asphalt belting of the superhighways, beyond the cemented banksides of temporarily stopped and mutilated rivers, beyond the rage of lies that poisons the air, there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it. And then—

May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God’s dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.

(Edward Abbey [source])

…and then this:

Breathing Space, July

The one who’s lying on his back under the tall trees
is also up there within them. He’s flowing out into thousands of twigs,
swaying to and fro,
sitting in an ejector seat that lets go in slow motion.

The one who’s standing down by the docks squints at the water.
The docks age faster than people.
They have silver-gray lumber and stones in their gut.
The glaring light pounds all the way in.

The one who’s traveling all day in an open boat
over the glittering bays
will fall asleep at last inside a blue lamp
while the islands crawl like huge moths over the glass.

(Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Patty Crane [source])

…and finally (italicized portion):

If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA’s state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts. [Such as:]

…That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack.

That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work.

(David Foster Wallace [source])

Then — as per usual, seeming to me somehow mystically and/or at least vaguely thematically linked with the whiskey river selections — consider the following:

“I might be able to still enchant the babe,” said [fairy godmother] Agnes a bit doubtfully. “Even if we miss the christening. But it doesn’t take as well, not with humans. You lay a name on them and suddenly their whole future is rolled out like dough in front of you, but it doesn’t last. Life starts to bake it pretty quick.”

(T. Kingfisher [source])

…and:

A large guerrilla party formed in one of the suburbs, setting off on their own to fight the victorious enemy.

The madmen suffered a terrible fate: they were disarmed, divided, forcefully washed, given new clothes, and made to listen to music, eat luxurious food, and revel in company with beautiful women.

Many took their own lives, many were put into lunatic asylums, while most, disgraced and ridiculed, victims to the temptation, returned to Principal City.

(Yefim Zozulya, translated by Vlad Zhenevsky [source])

…and:

The Applicant

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit—-

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they’ll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

(Sylvia Plath [source])

Weekend Music Break: Tom Rush and James Montgomery, “Statesboro Blues”

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[Original “Statesboro Blues” lyrics by Blind Willie McTell are here. But of course, since this is a blues song, individual performers often wander away from the “official” version…]

Tom Rush, oh yeah: him I knew about. His Wikipedia entry summarizes:

Thomas Walker Rush (born February 8, 1941) is an American folk and blues singer, guitarist and songwriter who helped launch the careers of other singer-songwriters in the 1960s and has continued his own singing career for 60 years.

…which — because, well, Wikipedia — doesn’t tell you everything (or much, really) that you need to know about him; even the details provided there kinda skim the surface. (Visit his own site to get meatier info about him.)

But James Johnson? I confess — that was a new name to me… See, I subscribe to a newsletter — a blog, really — called “The Lefsetz Letter,” by a music industry insider named Bob Lefsetz; this post of a couple days ago alerted me to the presence of this video. It was so euphoric — rhapsodic — a writeup that I just had to see the video for myself. In typical Lefsetz fashion, he rambles quite a bit, and quite a bit entertainingly, before getting to the point; I recommend the full post, but here’s an excerpt:

Tom talks about playing a song. They’re going to do “Statesboro Blues.”

James says he’s not sure he remembers all the lyrics, but he’ll give it a whack. And then Tom starts strumming his guitar, and then James comes in on his harp… JAMES COME IN ON HIS HARP!

Man, this is the sound that launched a million careers. The blues of yore. We heard it, locked into the groove, and were influenced by it. We played the blues, we listened to the blues, but the blues are nowhere in today’s modern music world. Oh, you can hear influences. But the pure element? That’s gone. But Tom and James are locked right into it.

And then James starts to sing and…

Man, this is good!

So I go back to Wikipedia, to find out more details, I mean where’s this guy been? Performing! But in the Boston area. He’s still doing it, like a bluesman of yore. And he’s got it.

And just like pornography, you know it when you hear it, and I’m hearing it. I’m woken right up. James is positively wailing on that harp, like a pro, not an amateur, it’s everything it used to be, BUT IT’S NOW!

So this, in any case, seems an ideal excuse to resuscitate my old “Midweek/Weekend Music Break” series — something I’ve been contemplating since we finally settled down here a couple months ago. I can’t promise to post regularly in the series… but jeez, I do miss music.

Not Necessarily Lost; Just Not Nailed Down

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[Video: “Where We Are,” by The Lumineers. (Lyrics here, and elsewhere.) As widely reported at the time of the song’s release, it was inspired by a near-fatal car crash, a decade prior; I think you’d have to be willfully literal-minded to imagine that that’s its sole “meaning.”]

From whiskey river:

Democracy
(excerpt)

I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
That time cannot decay
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

(Leonard Cohen [source])

…and:

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

(J. D. Salinger [source])

Not from whiskey river:

“Do you think,” said Mira, leaning on her spade, “that the kind of person who can never say sorry is also the kind of person who can never say thank you, or do you think that those are two different categories of people?”

“Ooh, that’s a good one,” Shelley said. She considered it.

“Because I saw this blog a while back,” Mira went on, “where this woman had just decided to stop saying sorry, like, ever, and every time she would have said it, she found a way of saying thank you instead. So, like, instead of saying ‘sorry for being late,’ she’d say, ‘thanks for waiting,’ and instead of saying ‘sorry for being such a mess’ she’d say, ‘thanks for being so understanding,’ and on and on like that. And she wrote in this blog how this one little change like totally transformed her life and all her relationships, like all of a sudden, her friendships got so much healthier and more mature and more honest, and because she was appreciating everyone in her life way more, they started appreciating her back, and it was this whole thing.”

“Wow,” Shelley said. “Thank you for telling me that story.”

“Thank you for listening.”

“Thank you for assuming that I was listening.”

“Thank you for not making it obvious if you weren’t.”

They dug the ground in silence for a moment, both grinning.

(Eleanor Catton [source — sorry, the book’s too recent for verbatim text to have been quoted anywhere!])

…and:

The Tale of Two Hands Clapped

Two hands clapped and made a noise. Both hands rejoiced. The noise was such that the clap had seemingly proved, once and for all, the existence of either hand. Flesh had met flesh. Skin, skin. Cells, cells. The slap had even stung a bit. The two hands were very happy with the outcome of their clapping experiment. They congratulated each other with more and more rigorous clapping and even a little bit of waving and thumbs-ups.

Hurrah! the Right Hand shouted. We’re here! We really do exist!

We’re here, said the Left, though a little doubtfully, because what had they confirmed, really, when you thought about it?

(Thomas Pierce [source])

Relaxing on the Rubble of an Avalanche of Words

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[Image: “Artifact,” by John E. Simpson.]

From whiskey river:

The Summer You Read Proust

Remember the summer you read Proust?
In the hammock tied to the apple trees
your daughters climbed, their shadows
merging with the shadows of the leaves
spilling onto those long arduous sentences,
all afternoon and into the evening—robins,
jays, the distant dog, the occasional swaying,
the way the hours rocked back and forth,
that gigantic book holding you in its woven nest—
you couldn’t get enough pages, you wished
that with every turning a thousand were added,
the words falling you into sleep, the sleep
waking you into words, the summer you read
Proust, which lasted the rest of your life.

(Philip Terman [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Last year’s Lake Wobegon Fourth of July (Delivery Day) was glory itself, sunny and not too hot, flags flying, drummers drumming, scores of high-stepping horses, smart marching units in perfect cadence, and Ben Franklin, Sacajawea, Ulysses S. Grant, Babe Ruth, Amelia Earhart, and Elvis marching arm in arm along with Miss Liberty majestic in sevenpointed crown and wielding her torch like a big fat baton, plus the Leaping Lutherans parachute team, the Betsy Ross Blanket Toss, a battery of cannons belching flame boomboomboom from the crest of Adams Hill and Paul Revere galloping into town to cry out the news that these States are now Independent, God Bless Us All, and Much Much More, all in all a beautiful occasion in honor of America, and the only sour note was that so few in Lake Wobegon appreciated how truly glorious it all was, since Wobegonians as a rule consider it bad luck to be joyful, no matter what Scripture might say on the subject, and so in the swirl of color and music and costumes and grandeur you could hear people complain about the high cost of gasoline and shortage of rainfall and what in God’s Name were they going to do with the leftover food.

(Garrison Keillor [source])

…and:

To learn even something as simple as to water the roots of a plant rather than its leaves was not to be dealt the harsh reality of cold hard fact, but rather to be let into a secret. In a garden, expertise was personal and anecdotal — it was allegorical — it was ancient — it had been handed down; one felt that gardeners across the generations were united in a kind of guild, and that every counsel had the quality of wisdom, gentle, patient, and holistic — and yet unwavering, for there was no quarrelling with the laws and tendencies of nature, no room for judgment, no dispute: the proof lay only in the plants themselves, and in the soil, and in the air, and in the harvest.

(Eleanor Catton [source])

They say — you know who they are; you may even be one of them yourself — that the optimum English-language sentence length lies somewhere south of 25 words. Beyond that, you’re severely trying your hypothetical reader’s comprehension, to say nothing of their patience…

But I do love encountering the occasional monster, especially in fiction. Proust’s (in)famous longest sentence — you can read it here, about halfway down the page and starting with the words, “Their honor precarious…” — is kinda hard to swallow; maybe it’s better in the original French (which I can’t read), but its English translation, at over 950 words of chunky abstraction, indirection, suspended clauses (some dependent, some not…), resists even the most patient taste. But coming upon such a thing in the 100- to 200-word range, especially in the hands of someone who “sees” the reader and not just themselves… well, it’s a source of great pleasure for me.

(As an “exercise” — so I excused the self-indulgence — I once wrote a story consisting of a couple short sentences bracketing a hideous giant sentence nearly 900 words long. You can read “Just So You’d Know” here, if you’re so inclined… although I don’t know why you would be!)

Possibly, one reason I’ve recently turned from writing to photography — the art of saying as much as possible, in as few words as you can — lies in a subconscious shame about this love of long sentences. I shouldn’t be enjoying this, I think; I should be bored by now, I should have turned the page two minutes ago.

So Much to Know: Give Me Time to Be Whole

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[Image: “I Work Better,” by John E. Simpson. During our road trip, we became intimately, excruciatingly familiar with the stubborn and unpredictable personalities of hotel luggage carts — the resistance to movement forward and back, the eccentric swiveling. At this hotel in Hannibal, Missouri, the luggage carts at least included helpful steering instructions.]

From whiskey river (italicized lines):

Summer Solstice

I wanted to see where beauty comes from
without you in the world, hauling my heart
across sixty acres of northeast meadow,
my pockets filling with flowers.
Then I remembered,
it’s you I miss in the brightness
and body of every living name:
rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.
You are the green wonder of June,
root and quasar, the thirst for salt.
When I finally understand that people fail
at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,
the paper wings of the dragonfly
aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?
If I get the story right, desire is continuous,
equatorial. There is still so much
I want to know: what you believe
can never be removed from us,
what you dreamed on Walnut Street
in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,
learning pleasure on your own.
Tell me our story: are we impetuous,
are we kind to each other, do we surrender
to what the mind cannot think past?
Where is the evidence I will learn
to be good at loving?
The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond
for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.
There are violet hills,
there is the covenant of duskbirds.
The moon comes over the mountain
like a big peach, and I want to tell you
what I couldn’t say the night we rushed
North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers
and the way you go into yourself,
calling my half-name like a secret.
I stand between taproot and treespire.
Here is the compass rose
to help me live through this.
Here are twelve ways of knowing
what blooms even in the blindness
of such longing. Yellow oxeye,
viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms
pleading do not forget me.
We hunger for eloquence.
We measure the isopleths.
I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.
The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.
Fireflies turn on their electric wills:
an effulgence. Let me come back
whole, let me remember how to touch you
before it is too late.

(Stacie Cassarino [source])

Not from whiskey river:

She had once read in a book about consciousness that over the years, the human brain makes an AI version of your loved ones. The brain collects data, and within your brain, you host a virtual version of that person. Upon the person’s death, your brain still believes the virtual person exists, because, in a sense, the person still does. After a while, though, the memory fades, and each year, you are left with an increasingly diminished version of the AI you had made when the person was alive.

(Gabrielle Zevin [source])

…and:

You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice.

(Richard Powers [source])

…and:

#50: Memories bind ineluctably to time — not just time since, but time contemplated. To remember a profound experience, it must have lasted long enough for you to consider back then. And later, you must have at your disposal a block of time to fill in all the gaps around the experience, with contexts real or imagined, as the case may be. The sudden sharp pain that time you accidentally slivered off a fingertip: that didn’t qualify as an experience, and to look back on the moment now is not to remember it. But “Born to Run” playing on the stereo; the block of cheddar, with its red wax casing; the small wooden chopping board on which you were preparing a snack, and the wooden-handled cheese knife with the thin, broad blade; the abrupt splash of carmine across the countertop and in the sink; the wad of paper towels swaddling the finger;the panicky stumble down the stairs; the frightened eyes of your landlady; the mad dash to the emergency room; and most of all, the translucent quarter-inch of flesh which you imagined, crazily, might need to be surgically reattached — with all that context, yes: now, that’s a memory.

Further, to be later cemented into your self, a memory — like a garden flower — requires time spent caring for it. It requires water and fertilization; it requires contemplation. With the rest of your life before you, if you flit about madly from experience to new experience, you may “remember” things which have happened to you. But you will not have memories.

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)

What Might Have Been: The Ambiguities, Collapsing into Life

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[Image: “OK (Santa Monica, California),” by John E. Simpson.]

From whiskey river (italicized lines):

Mind

The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop. What is it
they cast for? The poplars,
advancing or retreating,
lose their stature
equally, and yet stand firm,
making arrangements
in order to become
imaginary. The city
draws the mind in streets,
and streets compel it
from their intersections
where a little
belongs to no one. It is
what is driven through
all stationary portions
of the world, gravity’s
stake in things, the leaves,
pressed against the dank
window of November
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edges give a bit
and soften. See how
then the picture becomes clear,
the mind entering the ground
more easily in pieces,
and all the richer for it.

(Jorie Graham [source])

Not from whiskey river:

On the night Sam went missing, it occurred to Sadie that nothing in life was as solid-state as it appeared. A childish game might be deadly. A friend might disappear. And as much as a person might try to shield herself from it, the possibility for the other outcome was always there. We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn’t chosen. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living. Sometimes, it felt as if you might be walking down Brattle Street, and without warning, you could slip into this other life, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole that led to Wonderland. You would end up a different version of yourself, in some other town. But it wouldn’t be strange like Wonderland, not at all. Because you would have expected all along that it could have turned out that way.

(Gabrielle Zevin [source])

The Missus and I are in San Francisco this weekend for a family wedding. Our hotel’s airport shuttle service has not been restored since the COVID-19 lockdown, so we and a couple of her relatives opted to summon an Uber, which arrived promptly. This was around 5:00 PM, so the highway leading away from the airport were clogged with rush-hour traffic; luckily, there was a nearly-empty express lane available to vehicles with three or more passengers. We were zipping right along in that lane… until the impatient driver of a car with a single passenger suddenly pulled in front of the SUV in which we were riding.

Our driver recovered very well, blasting the horn and slipping juuuuuust through the roughly car-sized gap between the concrete wall on the left and the now panic-stricken driver on the right, who was trying to re-insert himself into the lane he’d veered from. And the remainder of the brief ride proceeded without further incident — albeit with a lot of nervous chatter and laughter from everyone… everyone but me.

All I myself could do was to imagine the intersection now receding in the rearview mirror — not a literal intersection, but a potential divergence which life had suddenly, unprompted, thrown in our path. There really was no “choice,” as such, offered to anyone in our car; our driver’s response was automatic and instinctive. The other driver had made an unconsidered choice, of course, and it had instantly opened up a rat’s nest of alternative if-then-else futures for many others on the highway — not just our car and lives and his own, but the cars and lives of dozens, indeed hundreds of other drivers and passengers all around us (potentially even including those in the oncoming lanes, on the other side of the median)…

Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five described the alien Tralfamadorians’ view of creatures’ lives: all moments coexisting, such that any given “I” is actually like a giant caterpillar extending all the way from the womb to the grave, and wriggling — morphing — like mad from one split-second to the next. Years earlier, Robert A. Heinlein’s story “Life-Line” had expressed the idea this way:

He stepped up to one of the reporters. “Suppose we take you as an example. Your name is Rogers, is it not? Very well, Rogers, you are a space-time event having duration four ways. You are not quite six feet tall, you are about twenty inches wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there stretches behind you more of this space-time event, reaching to, perhaps, 1905, of which we see a cross section here at right angles to the time axis, and as thick as the present. At the far end is a baby, smelling of sour milk and drooling its breakfast on its bib. At the other end lies, perhaps, an old man some place in the 1980s. Imagine this space-time event, which we call Rogers, as a long pink worm, continuous through the years. It stretches past us here in 1939, and the cross section we see appears as a single, discrete body. But that is illusion. There is physical continuity to this pink worm, enduring through the years. As a matter of fact, there is physical continuity in this concept to the entire race, for these pink worms branch off from other pink worms. In this fashion the race is like a vine whose branches intertwine and send out shoots. Only by taking a cross section of the vine would we fall into the error of believing that the shootlets were discrete individuals.”

This perception is compounded by all the overlapping, wriggling routes of all the other caterpillars or worms, none of whom exactly occupy the exact same point in time and space (except perhaps in catastrophic explosions in which many individuals at once are vaporized and, for a time, share the same cubic foot of air). To consider the multi-layered overlapping and intertwining complexities of all the possible futures which those lives don’t actually have, don’t actually share, and all the possible branches of life — of infinitely wriggling worms — which might have erupted from those futures…

Well, the mind reels.

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