{"id":12095,"date":"2012-11-16T13:28:13","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T18:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=12095"},"modified":"2017-08-26T07:34:36","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T11:34:36","slug":"making-a-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/making-a-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Making a World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: photo of\u00a0<\/em>Fr\u00edo Estudio del Desastre (<\/em>Frozen Study of a Disaster) (2005), by the Cuban artistic duo calling themselves Los Carpinteros. The installation — part of a larger exhibit and book<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Handwork: Constructing the World — depicts the moment at which a missile has burst through the wall… but omits the missile. For more info, see this museum site’s page<\/a>.<\/em>]\n

From\u00a0whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Writing is a very, very unnatural act. Most people are out living — their bodies are, they’re walking and they’re talking and they’re working and playing and they’re interacting. Writing’s very unnatural because you are not living when you write. But at the same time, what a great paradox — because you’re all writers so you all know. You’re all going, Oh but no, no, I’m most alive when I write<\/em>. So are you more living or less, we can’t use “more” or “less,” it’s just different. And this is the crux of any writer’s life. It is the essential paradox and question and torment and joy. Are you writing or living and what’s the difference and where’s the line and how do we divide those activities?<\/p>\n

I’ve spent my whole life thinking, Is this unnatural?<\/em> Shouldn’t someone be parading outside my apartment with a cardboard placard saying, “Insanity’s taking place on the inside?” They really should, there’d be a point to it. And then, in other moods, I go, No, no, no, the insanity’s taking place out there<\/em>. And I waffle back and forth. And this waffling back and forth, when you yourself experience it, it’s called life. And you are going to experience this waffling back and forth for the rest of your life. And whenever you do, don’t think you’re unnatural or broken or different. It’s life, and we’re living it, and that tension is life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Ruefle [source: see the note below<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

After a Rain<\/strong><\/p>\n

They noticed, you see, that I was a noticing
\nkind of person, and so they left the dictionary
\nout in the rain and I noticed it,
\nI noticed it was open to the rain<\/em> page,
\nmuch harm had come to it, it had aged to the age
\nof ninety-five paper years and I noticed rainbow<\/em>
\nfollows rain<\/em> in the book, just as it does on
\nearth, and I noticed it was silly of me to
\nnotice so much but I noticed there is no stationery
\nin heaven, I noticed an infant will grip your hand like
\nthere is no tomorrow, while the very aged
\nwill give you a weightless hand for the same reason,
\nI noticed in a loving frenzy that some are hemlocked
\nand others are not (believe me yours unspeakably obliged),
\nI noticed whoever I met in my search for entrance
\ninto this world went too far (but that was their
\ndestination) and I noticed the road followed roughly
\nthe route of a zipper around a closed case,
\nI noticed the sea was human but no one believed me,
\nand that some birds have the wingspan of an inch
\nand some flowers the petal span of a foot yet the two
\nare very well suited to each other, I noticed that.
\nThere are eight major emotional states but I forget
\nseven of them, I can hear the ambulance singing
\nbut I don\u2019t think it will stop for me,
\nbecause I noticed the space between the waterfall and
\nthe rock and I am safe there, resting in
\nthe cradle of all there is, the way a sea horse
\n(when it is tired) will tie its tail to a seaweed
\nand rest, and there has not been, in my opinion,
\nenough astonishment over this fact, so now I will
\nwithdraw my interest in the whole external world
\nwhile I am in the noticing mode, notice how I
\ntalk to you just as if you were sitting on my lap
\nand not as if it were raining, not as if there were
\na sheet of water between us or anything else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Ruefle [source<\/em><\/a>])
\n
\nNot from\u00a0whiskey river<\/em>\u00a0(in response to the question, “How does a book take shape for you?”):<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a vast topic, and, to be honest, one I barely understand. Even in the case of a naturalistic writer, who in a sense takes his subject matter directly from the world around him, it\u2019s difficult enough to understand how a particular fiction imposes itself. But in the case of an imaginative writer, especially one like myself with strong affinities to the surrealists, I\u2019m barely aware of what is going on. Recurrent ideas assemble themselves, obsessions solidify themselves, one generates a set of working mythologies, like tales of gold invented to inspire a crew. I assume one is dealing with a process very close to that of dreams, a set of scenarios devised to make sense of apparently irreconcilable ideas. Just as the optical centers of the brain construct a wholly artificial three-dimensional universe through which we can move effectively, so the mind as a whole creates an imaginary world that satisfactorily explains everything, as long as it is constantly updated. So the stream of novels and stories continues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(J.G. Ballard [source<\/em><\/a>]\n

…and:<\/p>\n

…the tree from which our little fantasy town took its name stood in the town square. It had broad leaves, like a maple or pin oak, but grew in the shape of a pine: a straight, tall cone. It lost its leaves every autumn, like other broadleaves. But every other spring, it also shed its bark<\/em>. The bark fell off in big brown sheets. Little children in town would be sent to dance around the tree and collect the sheets of bark, on a festive biennial holiday naturally called Barking Day<\/em>, and the bark would be ground up and soaked in water, compressed and dried, and made into rugged covers for the volumes of the town archives which were kept down in the library. When I, Peedee, grew up, I would be the Barking Tree town librarian in my spare time — my actual job would be to fight evil whereversoever<\/em> it raised its foul head — so anybody who wanted to check the archives about Barking Tree history or laws would have to go through me. (But I would be generous, I explained later. The turnstile granting entry to the library would accept coins as small as a 200-croner gold piece, the croner being the unit of currency in Barking Tree.)<\/p>\n

So that was the barking tree, then, which for several weeks every couple of years stood exposed to the elements and insects and human mischief. Every bad thing which happened to the tree during that time eventually got covered over with new bark and absorbed into the wood, but continued to shape the tree for the rest of its life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES, from Barking Tree<\/em>)<\/p>\n

<\/a>______________________<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0<\/strong>The first Mary Ruefle quote from whiskey river<\/em> — about the unnaturalness of writing — comes from a September talk between Ruefle and Alice Quinn, one of a “Poets in Conversation” series<\/a>\u00a0sponsored by the NYU Creative Writing program. I’ve not found a transcript, but I did locate a good-quality MP3 podcast of it, over an hour long (and, to be honest, I haven’t listened to it in full).<\/p>\n

[NB: The whole thing is pretty large, in the neighborhood of 80MB: if you’re thinking of clicking the little “Download” link below to acquire your own copy, prepare yourself for a wait.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n

[back to top<\/em><\/a>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: photo of\u00a0Fr\u00edo Estudio del Desastre (Frozen Study of a Disaster) (2005), by the Cuban artistic duo calling themselves Los Carpinteros. The installation — part of a larger exhibit and book,\u00a0Handwork: Constructing the World — depicts the moment at which a missile has burst through the wall… but omits the missile. For more info, see […]<\/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":[247,1393,250,5,105,251,324,372],"tags":[3075,3258,3259],"class_list":{"0":"post-12095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-short-fiction","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-researchresources","13":"category-style-and-craft","14":"tag-mary-ruefle","15":"tag-los-carpinteros","16":"tag-j-g-ballard","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-395","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12095","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=12095"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19580,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12095\/revisions\/19580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}