{"id":10007,"date":"2012-03-02T10:49:28","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T15:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=10007"},"modified":"2012-03-02T10:49:28","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T15:49:28","slug":"more-than-enough-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/more-than-enough-room\/","title":{"rendered":"More Than Enough Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: postcard, “The Big Shot” (the Big Room, Carlsbad Caverns, NM). For more information, see the note at the bottom of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Freedom means being able to choose how we respond to things. When wisdom is not well developed, it can be easily obscured by the provocations of others. In such cases we may as well be animals or robots. If there is no space between an insulting stimulus and its immediate conditioned response — anger — then we are in fact under the control of others. Mindfulness opens up such a space, and when wisdom is there to fill it one is capable of responding with forbearance. It’s not that anger is repressed; anger never arises in the first place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Andrew Olendzki)<\/p>\n

…and (regarding February 29):<\/p>\n

Today is an ephemeral ghost. A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not exist.<\/p>\n

In mundane terms, it marks a leap in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up.<\/p>\n

But this day holds another secret — it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razors edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability.<\/p>\n

A day of unlocked potential.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Space, as Douglas Adams once so aptly wrote, is big.<\/p>\n

To try imagining how big, place a penny down in front of you. If our sun were the size of that penny, the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be 350 miles away. Depending on where you live, that\u2019s very likely in the next state (or possibly country) over.<\/p>\n

Attempting to imagine distances larger than this quickly becomes troublesome. At this scale, the Milky Way galaxy would be 7.5 million miles across, or more than 30 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wired, “How to Picture the Size of the Universe” [source<\/a><\/em>]; also be sure to visit the wonderful Scale of Universe<\/a><\/em> site, which demonstrates these concepts with a clever and slick but almost “No, jeez, too much<\/em>, stop, please!<\/em>” clarity.)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

\n

Altitudes<\/strong><\/p>\n

I
\nLook up into the dome:
\nIt is a great salon, a brilliant place,
\nYet not too splendid for the race
\nWhom we imagine there, wholly at home
\nWith the gold-rosetted white
\nWainscot, the oval windows and the fault-
\nLess figures of the painted vault.
\nStrolling, conversing in that precious light,
\nThey chat no doubt of love,
\nThe pleasant burden of their courtesy
\nBorne down at times to you and me
\nWhere, in this dark, we stand and gaze above.
\nFor all they cannot share,
\nAll that the world cannot in fact afford,
\nTheir lofty premises are floored
\nWith the massed voices of continual prayer.<\/p>\n

II
\nHow far it is from here
\nTo Emily Dickinson’s father’s house in America;
\nThink of her climbing a spiral stair
\nUp to the little cupola with its clear
\nSmall panes, its room for one.
\nLike the dark house below, so full of eyes
\nIn mirrors and of shut-in flies,
\nThis chamber furnished only with the sun
\nIs she and she alone,
\nA mood to which she rises, in which she sees
\nBird-choristers in all the trees
\nAnd a wild shining of the pure unknown
\nOn Amherst. This is caught
\nIn the dormers of a neighbour, who, no doubt,
\nWill before long be coming out
\nTo pace about his garden, lost in thought.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Richard Wilbur [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Each thought has a size, and most are about three feet tall, with the level of complexity of a lawnmower engine, or a cigarette lighter, or those tubes of toothpaste that, by mingling several hidden pastes and gels, create a pleasantly striped product. Once in a while, a thought may come up that seems, in its woolly, ranked composure, roughly the size of one’s hall closet. But a really large<\/em> thought, a thought in the presence of which whole urban centers would rise to their feet, and cry out with expressions of gratefulness and kinship; a thought with grandeur, and drenching, barrel-scorning cataracts, and detonations of fist-clenched hope, and hundreds of cellos; a thought that can tear phone books in half, and rap on the iron nodes of experience until every blue girder rings; a thought that may one day pack everything noble and good into its briefcase, elbow past the curators of purposelessness, travel overnight toward Truth, and shake it by the indifferent marble shoulders until it finally whispers its cool assent — this is the size of thought worth thinking about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Nicholson Baker [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The Raspberry Room<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was solid hedge, loops of bramble and thorny
\nas it had to be with its berries thick as bumblebees.
\nIt drew blood just to get there, but I was queen
\nof that place, at ten, though the berries shook like fists
\nin the wind, daring anyone to come in. I was trying
\nso hard to love this world — real rooms too big and full
\nof worry to comfortably inhabit — but believing I was born
\nto live in that cloistered green bower: the raspberry patch
\nin the back acre of my grandparents’ orchard. I was cross-
\nstitched and beaded by its fat, dollmaker’s needles. The effort
\nof sliding under the heavy, spiked tangles that tore
\nmy clothes and smeared me with juice was rewarded
\nwith space, wholly mine, a kind of room out of
\nthe crush of the bushes with a canopy of raspberry
\ndagger-leaves and a syrup of sun and birdsong.
\nHours would pass in the loud buzz of it, blood
\nmade it mine — the adventure of that red sting singing
\ndown my calves, the place the scratches brought me to:
\njust space enough for a girl to lie down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Karin Gottshall [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

Note (about the image):<\/strong>\u00a0The caption printed on the back of this postcard reads:<\/p>\n

\n

The Big Shot
\nWorlds Largest Flashbulb Photograph
\nCarlsbad Caverns National Park
\nNew Mexico<\/p>\n

History was made on August 19, 1952, 750 feet below the surface of the earth, at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Tex Helm fired off 2400 number 2 Super Flashbulbs, lighting 55million square feet of surface in the Big Room, to capture the beauty of this view. Never attempted again, this magnificant “Big Shot” is a result of Mr Helm’s technical know-how gained through 30 years of photographic experience throughout the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Found it here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

According to answers.com<\/a>, Tex Helm had been hired by Sylvania to demonstrate the effectiveness of flash bulbs (vs. old-style magnesium flashes). (It adds, “National Geographic<\/em> noted that this was the most vivid flash since the atomic bomb was fired in 1945.”)<\/p>\n

Note that the photographer was Ennis Creed “Tex” Helm, not to be confused with George<\/em> “Tex” Helm<\/a>. The latter, a mid-19th-century frontiersman, was peripherally connected to a variety of outlaws at the time — notably his brother, or perhaps cousin, Boone Helm. The same source identifies Boone as a “desperado” and says (on the page before Tex’s entry) that he had “matured as a wild and unruly young man, inclined toward bowie knives, horseplay, alcohol, and rough companions.” Which is hardly the half of it, as you can see from his entire entry (if no one else has ever written a book about Boone Helm, I hereby claim dibs!<\/em>). I was so enthralled that I forgot to check Wikipedia about him — where, of course, he’s got an entry<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: postcard, “The Big Shot” (the Big Room, Carlsbad Caverns, NM). For more information, see the note at the bottom of this post.] From whiskey river: Freedom means being able to choose how we respond to things. When wisdom is not well developed, it can be easily obscured by the provocations of others. In such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,95,593,250,5,251],"tags":[2813,2844,2845,2846,2847,2848,2849,2850,2851,2852,2853],"class_list":{"0":"post-10007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-science-medicine","9":"category-history-in-the-news","10":"category-art","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"tag-the-universe","14":"tag-andrew-olendzki","15":"tag-vera-nazarian","16":"tag-wired","17":"tag-richard-wilbur","18":"tag-nicholson-baker","19":"tag-karin-gottshall","20":"tag-tex-helm-photographer","21":"tag-tex-helm-frontiersman","22":"tag-boone-helm","23":"tag-carlsbad-caverns","24":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2Bp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10007"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10033,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10007\/revisions\/10033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}