{"id":11811,"date":"2012-09-21T11:59:15","date_gmt":"2012-09-21T15:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=11811"},"modified":"2012-09-21T10:38:47","modified_gmt":"2012-09-21T14:38:47","slug":"step-back-good-now-look-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/step-back-good-now-look-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Step Back. Good. Now, Look Again."},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[<\/em>Whale in a green sea, by Jorge Vaz (a\/k\/a jfmfaz, on Flickr<\/a>). Found it at the blog
\n<\/a> of North Vancouver artist Therese Lydia Joseph.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0whiskey river<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(italicized portion):<\/p>\n

The trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us. We grew into our lives like a kernel beneath the earth, never able to process the enigma of our composition.<\/em> Think about this for a moment: if you weren’t a baby and you came to earth as a human with a fully developed brain and had the full weight of the molecular experience occur to you at once, you would hardly have the capacity to respond in any cognitive way to your experience. But because we were born as babies and had to be taught to speak and to pee in a toilet, we think all of this is normal. Well, it isn’t normal. Nothing is normal. It is all rather odd, isn’t it, our eyes in our heads, our hands with five fingers, the capacity to understand beauty, to feel love, to feel pain.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Donald Miller [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

How to See Deer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forget roadside crossings.
\nGo nowhere with guns.
\nGo elsewhere your own way,<\/p>\n

lonely and wanting. Or
\nstay and be early:
\nnext to deep woods<\/p>\n

inhabit old orchards.
\nAll clearings promise.
\nSunrise is good,<\/p>\n

and fog before sun.
\nExpect nothing always;
\nfind your luck slowly.<\/p>\n

Wait out the windfall.
\nTake your good time
\nto learn to read ferns;<\/p>\n

make like a turtle:
\ndownhill toward slow water.
\nInstructed by heron,<\/p>\n

drink the pure silence.
\nBe compassed by wind.
\nIf you quiver like aspen<\/p>\n

trust your quick nature:
\nlet your ear teach you
\nwhich way to listen.<\/p>\n

You’ve come to assume
\nprotective color; now
\ncolors reform to<\/p>\n

new shapes in your eye.
\nYou’ve learned by now
\nto wait without waiting;<\/p>\n

as if it were dusk
\nlook into light falling:
\nin deep relief<\/p>\n

things even out. Be
\ncareless of nothing. See
\nwhat you see.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Philip Booth [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from\u00a0whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The Task<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.
\nWe wake into it daily—open eyes, braid hair—
\na robe unfurled
\nin rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.<\/p>\n

And yes, it is a simple enough task
\nwe’ve taken on,
\nthough also vast:
\nfrom dusk to dawn,<\/p>\n

from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not
\nbe blinded by the praising.
\nTo lie like a cat in hot
\nsun, fur fully blazing,<\/p>\n

and dream the mouse;
\nand to keep too the mouse’s patient, waking watch
\nwithin the deep rooms of the house,
\nwhere the leaf-flocked<\/p>\n

sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jane Hirshfield [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call him John, write out a birth certificate, tell him about his family history, and two minutes later he gets eaten by another fish — that’s tragic. But it’s only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none. You got hold of a fraction of a dynamic process, a molecular dance, and made a separate entity out of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Eckhart Tolle [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Night Flight<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am doing laps at night, alone
\nIn the indoor pool. Outside
\nIt is snowing, but I am warm
\nAnd weightless, suspended and out
\nOf time like a fly in amber.<\/p>\n

She is thousands of miles
\nFrom here, and miles above me,
\nGhosting the stratosphere,
\nHeading from New York to London.
\nThough it is late, even
\nAt that height, I know her light
\nIs on, her window a square
\nOf gold as she reads mysteries
\nAbove the Atlantic. I watch<\/p>\n

The line of black tile on the pool’s
\nFloor, leading me down the lane.
\nIf she looks down by moonlight,
\nUnder a clear sky, she will see
\nBlack water. She will see me
\nSwimming distantly, moving far
\nFrom shore, suspended with her
\nIn flight through the wide gulf
\nAs we swim toward land together.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(George Bilgere [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

His sister, he saw, was standing beside him. He tried to explain it to her, tried to put a finger on what fascinated him. This house<\/em>, he told her. It’s a little different. There’s something about it…<\/em>\u00a0But he saw, from the way she looked at him, that she thought it was a game, that he was making it up.<\/p>\n

“What are you seeing?” she asked, with a grin.<\/p>\n

Why not?<\/em>\u00a0he thought. Why not make it a game?<\/em><\/p>\n

“What are you<\/em>\u00a0seeing?” he asked her.<\/p>\n

Her grin faltered a little but she stopped staring at him and stared at the house.<\/p>\n

“I see a house,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Is there something wrong with it?” he prompted.<\/p>\n

She nodded, then looked to him for approval.<\/p>\n

“What’s wrong?” he asked.<\/p>\n

Her brow tightened like a fist. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “The window?”<\/p>\n

“What about the window?”<\/p>\n

“I want you to do it,” she said. “It’s more fun.”<\/p>\n

He sighed, and then pretended to think. “Something wrong with the window,” he said. “Or not the window but the number of windows.” She was smiling, waiting.”The problem is the number of windows. There’s one more window on the outside than on the inside.”<\/p>\n

He covered his mouth with his hand. She was smiling and nodding, but he couldn’t go on with the game. Because, yes, that was exactly the problem, there was one more window on the outside than on the inside. That, he knew, was what he’d been trying to see all along.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Brian Evenson\u00a0[source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Whale in a green sea, by Jorge Vaz (a\/k\/a jfmfaz, on Flickr). Found it at the blog of North Vancouver artist Therese Lydia Joseph.] From\u00a0whiskey river\u00a0(italicized portion): The trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us. We grew into our lives like a kernel beneath the earth, never […]<\/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":[183,247,1393,250,5,36,251],"tags":[270,3110,3196,3197,3198,3199,3200,3201,3202],"class_list":{"0":"post-11811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-reading","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"tag-jane-hirshfield","14":"tag-donald-miller","15":"tag-jorge-vaz","16":"tag-philip-booth","17":"tag-eckhart-tolle","18":"tag-george-bilgere","19":"tag-brian-evenson","20":"tag-seeing-not-seeing","21":"tag-normality","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-34v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11811","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=11811"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11823,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11811\/revisions\/11823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}