{"id":11209,"date":"2012-06-15T11:06:40","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T15:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=11209"},"modified":"2012-06-15T11:06:40","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T15:06:40","slug":"i-have-found-it-or-maybe-i-havent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/i-have-found-it-or-maybe-i-havent\/","title":{"rendered":"I Have Found It (or Maybe I Haven&#8217;t)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CWAXBgWM8jQ\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"601\" height=\"338\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[For more about the video, see the note at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From\u00a0<a title=\"whiskey river: Sakyong Mipham, on the ongoing dumbfoundingness of selflessness\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2012\/06\/discovering-selfless-nature-doesnt-have.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Discovering the selfless nature doesn&#8217;t have a monumental &#8220;Eureka!&#8221; quality. It is more like being continually perplexed, the way we feel when we&#8217;re looking for the car keys we&#8217;re so sure are in our pocket, or when the supermarket&#8217;s being renovated and what we need has moved to a different aisle each time we go shopping. That experience of being somewhat dumbfounded is the beginning of wisdom. We&#8217;re beginning to see through our ignorance &#8212; the everyday vigil we sustain to confirm that we exist in some permanent way. We look at our mind and see that it is a fluid situation, and we look at the world and see that it is a fluid situation. Our expectation of permanence is confounded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Sakyong Mipham [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies for Modern Life,'' by Sakyong Mipham\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=pZeWMZHzQCwC&amp;pg=PA149#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: 'The Poet with His Face in Hist Hands,' by Mary Oliver\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2012\/06\/poet-with-his-face-in-his-hands-you.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The Poet with His Face in His Hands<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You want to cry aloud for your<br \/>\nmistakes. But to tell the truth the world<br \/>\ndoesn&#8217;t need anymore of that sound.<\/p>\n<p>So if you&#8217;re going to do it and can&#8217;t<br \/>\nstop yourself, if your pretty mouth can&#8217;t<br \/>\nhold it in, at least go by yourself across<\/p>\n<p>the forty fields and the forty dark inclines<br \/>\nof rocks and water to the place where<br \/>\nthe falls are flinging out their white sheets<\/p>\n<p>like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that<br \/>\njubilation and water fun and you can<br \/>\nstand there, under it, and roar all you<\/p>\n<p>want and nothing will be disturbed; you can<br \/>\ndrip with despair all afternoon and still,<br \/>\non a green branch, its wings just lightly touched<\/p>\n<p>by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,<br \/>\npuffing out its spotted breast, will sing<br \/>\nof the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Mary Oliver [<a title=\"Google Books: 'New and Selected Poems,' by Mary Oliver\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=CErFfdNS8hEC&amp;pg=PA37#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from\u00a0<em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>How Baseball Saved My Marriage<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One happy hour drink in Orono and now I&#8217;m driving<br \/>\nup the Penobscot just for kicks, past the bridge to Indian Island,<br \/>\npast the just-closed Georgia Pacific plant, tidy yards<br \/>\nof Milford, &#8220;Place of a Million Parts&#8221; junkyard,<br \/>\nthe drink still warm in my belly, the strong, true edge of things<\/p>\n<p>glowing with rich clarity in the late summer, late afternoon light.<br \/>\nDylan&#8217;s tangled up in blue on the radio, dozens of migrating<br \/>\nnighthawks flit over fields along the river, crickets shrill<br \/>\nin tall grass, window draft tickles my tan shoulders.<br \/>\nLater tonight, the Red Sox will win with another Big Papi<\/p>\n<p>walk-off homer that will make me whoop to myself in the car.<br \/>\nBut for now, I&#8217;m moving through Olamon, Passadumkeag,<br \/>\naway from the river, into the woods. It&#8217;s the end of a long day,<br \/>\nbut there still seems to be plenty of time and road ahead.<br \/>\nSomething about the light, the beauty of the sky, makes me think<br \/>\nI should keep going right on to northern Maine, all the way<br \/>\nto Canada. I could just keep driving all night, potato fields<br \/>\nnorth of Houlton balancing the dark outside my car windows,<br \/>\nlights across the St. John beckoning me over the border.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve got a full tank of gas, credit cards in my wallet. I could<\/p>\n<p>drive all the way to Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island,<br \/>\nstay in some quaint inn on a craggy coast, walk low beaches<br \/>\nin search of sandpipers heading south from the Arctic.<br \/>\nHow far north do roads go? But it grows late, shadows deepen,<br \/>\nand so far from home, I realize I don&#8217;t know the station<\/p>\n<p>broadcasting tonight&#8217;s game. So it&#8217;s finally baseball<br \/>\nthat curbs my sudden wanderlust. It&#8217;s the simple pleasure<br \/>\nof a good game coming up that makes me turn around<br \/>\nto re-enter the bubble of radio reception, to start<br \/>\nthe long drive back to everything familiar and well-loved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Kristen Lindquist [<a title=\"Writer's Almanac (2012-06-12): 'How Baseball Saved My Marriage,' by Kristen Lindquist\" href=\"http:\/\/writersalmanac.publicradio.org\/index\/index.php%3Fdate=2005\/12\/index.php?date=2012\/06\/12\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and (in response to an interviewer&#8217;s question, &#8220;Even though you&#8217;re not on the stage, do you enjoy that audience feedback?&#8221;):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I do. I mean, when it works, it&#8217;s great. When a production goes wrong, it is hell. It&#8217;s really hell, it&#8217;s so painful. That&#8217;s the other thing. I mean, so you write an article and people don&#8217;t like it. Or you write an article and they never call you again and they don&#8217;t publish it. It&#8217;s not the same pain, it&#8217;s really not. From the word go, from the no actors are available to the director doesn&#8217;t show up, to the show doesn&#8217;t work and no one&#8217;s laughing, to you pick up some terrible review &#8212; I mean, all of that is devastating. It&#8217;s just terrible. It&#8217;s enough to give you a sense of humor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(playwright Wendy Wasserstein [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Last Laughs: Perspectives on Women and Comedy,' edited by Regina Barreca\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=FzMc2Nw05kAC&amp;pg=PA263#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Jane<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, a few days ago I woke up and I heard this voice saying, &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t enough.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Summers<\/span><\/strong> [her psychologist]: Did you recognize the voice?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Jane<\/span><\/strong>: Not at first. But then it started to come back to me. When I was eight years old, someone brought me to a theatre with lots of other children. We had come to see a production of <em>Peter Pan<\/em>. And I remember something seemed wrong with the whole production, odd things kept happening. Like when the children would fly, the ropes would keep breaking and the actors would come thumping to the ground and they&#8217;d have to be carried off by the stagehands. There seemed to be an unlimited supply of understudies to take the children&#8217;s places, and then <em>they&#8217;d<\/em> fall to the ground. And then the crocodile that chases Captain Hook seemed to be a real crocodile, it wasn&#8217;t an actor, and at one point it fell off the stage, crushing several children in the front row.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Summers<\/span><\/strong>: What happened to the children?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Jane<\/span><\/strong>: Several understudies came and took their places in the audience. And from scene to scene Wendy seemed to get fatter and fatter until by the second act she was immobile and had to be moved with a cart.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Summers<\/span><\/strong>: Where does the voice fit in?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Jane<\/span><\/strong>: The voice belonged to the actress playing Peter Pan. You remember how in the second act Tinkerbell drinks some poison that Peter&#8217;s about to drink, in order to save him? And then Peter turns to the audience and he says that Tinkerbell&#8217;s going to die because not enough people believe in fairies, but that if everybody in the audience claps real hard to show that they <em>do<\/em> believe in fairies, then maybe Tinkerbell won&#8217;t die. And so then all the children started to clap. We clapped very hard and very long. My palms hurt and even started to bleed I clapped so hard. Then suddenly the actress playing Peter Pan turned to the audience and she said, &#8220;That wasn&#8217;t enough. You didn&#8217;t clap hard enough. Tinkerbell&#8217;s dead.&#8221; Uh&#8230; well, and&#8230; and then everyone started to cry. The actress stalked offstage and refused to continue with the play, and they finally had to bring down the curtain. No one could see anyting through all the tears, and the ushers had to come help the children up the aisles and out into the street. I don&#8217;t think any of us were ever the same after that experience.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Summers<\/span><\/strong>: How do you think this affected you?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Jane<\/span><\/strong>: Well it certainly turned me against theatre.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Christopher Durang. <em>Identity Crisis<\/em>\u00a0[<a title=\"Google Books: 'Christopher Durang Explains It All for You,' by Christopher Durang\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=Z_zQPiLPalUC&amp;pg=PA64#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>________________________________<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the video:<\/strong> &#8220;Vilnius Temperature&#8221; is a video project organized by architecture student\/video artist Saulius Baradinskas of Vilnius, Lithuania. The project introduces local bands performing in settings around Vilnius; each video is keyed to various temperatures on the Celsius scale. This one, &#8220;Realize Things,&#8221; by a band called <a title=\"Freaks on Floor, at Bandcamp\" href=\"http:\/\/freaksonfloor.bandcamp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Freaks on Floor<\/a>, is the 5\u00b0 C (41\u00b0 F) entry. (I think the temperatures included in each video title may indicate the ambient temperature at the time of recording.) It&#8217;s also a lovely bit of music &#8212; and yes, rather <em>cool<\/em>, weaving artfully among several genres &#8212; in its own right.<\/p>\n<p>For more about the Vilnius Temperature project, see Baradinskas&#8217;s <a title=\"Saulius Baradinskas, at TEDxVilnius\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tedxvilnius.lt\/saulius-baradinskas-and-vilnius-temperature-vilnius-temperature-in-music-degrees\" target=\"_blank\">talk at TEDxVilnius 2011<\/a>; all the project&#8217;s videos can be found <a title=\"Vimeo: Vilnius Temperature videos\" href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/vilniustemperature\" target=\"_blank\">on Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[For more about the video, see the note at the foot of this post.] From\u00a0whiskey river: Discovering the selfless nature doesn&#8217;t have a monumental &#8220;Eureka!&#8221; quality. It is more like being continually perplexed, the way we feel when we&#8217;re looking for the car keys we&#8217;re so sure are in our pocket, or when the supermarket&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/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":[247,1393,74,123,5,209,251,713],"tags":[595,3047,3048,3049,3050,3051,3052,3053,3054],"class_list":{"0":"post-11209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-theater","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-the-business","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"category-humor-writing_cat","14":"tag-mary-oliver","15":"tag-eureka","16":"tag-sakyong-mipham","17":"tag-kristen-lindquist","18":"tag-wendy-wasserstein","19":"tag-christopher-durang","20":"tag-vilnius-temperature","21":"tag-saulius-baradinskas","22":"tag-freaks-on-floor","23":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2UN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209","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=11209"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11232,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209\/revisions\/11232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}