{"id":12302,"date":"2012-12-14T12:07:16","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T17:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=12302"},"modified":"2018-03-03T07:34:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-03T12:34:26","slug":"that-couldve-been-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/that-couldve-been-me\/","title":{"rendered":"That Could’ve Been Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “When Thoughts Break” (found<\/a> at the site of Dharma Consulting)]<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (highlighted<\/span> portion):<\/p>\n

Here and Now<\/strong><\/p>\n

for Barbara<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

There are words<\/span>
\nI’ve had to save myself from,
\nlike My Lord and Blessed Mother,
\nwords I said and never meant,
\nthough I admit a part of me misses
\nthe ornamental stateliness
\nof High Mass, that smell<\/p>\n

of incense. Heaven did exist,<\/span>
\nI discovered, but was reciprocal
\nand momentary, like lust
\nfelt at exactly the same time—
\ntwo mortals, say, on a resilient bed,
\nmaking a small case for themselves.<\/p>\n

You and I<\/em> became the words<\/span>
\nI’d say before I’d lay me down to sleep,
\nand again when I’d wake—wishful
\nwords, no belief in them yet.
\nIt seemed you’d been put on earth
\nto distract me
\nfrom what was doctrinal and dry.
\nElectricity may start things,
\nbut if they’re to last
\nI’ve come to understand
\na steady, low-voltage hum<\/span><\/p>\n

of affection<\/span>
\nmust be arrived at. How else to offset
\nthe occasional slide
\ninto neglect and ill temper?
\nI learned, in time, to let heaven
\ngo its mythy way, to never again<\/span><\/p>\n

be a supplicant<\/span>
\nof any single idea. For you and me
\nit’s here and now from here on in.<\/span>
\nNothing can save us, nor do we wish
\nto be saved.<\/p>\n

Let night come<\/span>
\nwith its austere grandeur,
\nancient superstitions and fears.
\nIt can do us no harm.
\nWe’ll put some music on,
\nopen the curtains, let things darken
\nas they will.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Stephen Dunn [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. If creation had been left up to me, I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the imagination or courage to do more than shape a single, reasonably sized atom, smooth as a snowball, and let it go at that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Annie Dillard [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a> (highlighted portion<\/span>; these are excerpts from the full piece, from which is hard not to excerpt a lot<\/em> more):<\/p>\n

…I remember—I must have been eight or nine—wandering out to the ungrassed backyard of our newly constructed suburban house and seeing that the earth was dry and cracked in irregular squares and other shapes, and I felt I was looking at a map<\/em> and I was completely overcome by this description, my first experience of making a metaphor, and I felt weird and shaky and went inside and wrote it down: the cracked earth is a map. Although it only takes a little time to tell it, and it is hardly interesting, it filled a big moment at the time, it was an enormous ever-expanding room of a moment, a chunk of time that has expanded ever since and that my whole life keeps fitting into.<\/p>\n

I remember John Moore, another teacher, who did the damnedest thing. We were studying Yeats, and at the beginning of one class Mr. Moore asked us if we would like to see a picture of Yeats. We nodded, and he held up a photograph of Yeats taken when he was six months old, a baby dressed in a long white gown. Maybe he was even younger, maybe he was an infant. I thought it was the funniest thing anyone had ever done, the strangest, most ridiculous, absurd thing to have done. But nobody laughed and if Mr. Moore thought it was funny, you couldn’t tell by his face. I always liked him for that. The poems we were reading in class were not written by a baby. And yet whenever I think of Yeats, I see him as a tiny baby wearing a dress\u2014that photograph is part of my conception of the great Irish poet. And I love that it is so. We are all so small.<\/p>\n[…]\n

I remember the day I stood in front of a great, famous sculpture by a great, famous sculptor and didn\u2019t like it. Such a moment is a landmark in the life of any young artist. It begins in confusion and guilt and self-doubt and ends in a triumphant breakthrough: I see the world and I see that I am free before it, I am not at the mercy of historical opinion and what I want to turn away from, I turn away from, what I want to approach, I approach. Twenty-five years later I read an essay by John Berger on Rodin and in it Berger was able to articulate all that I felt on that afternoon, standing in front of a great Rodin. But by then I was old and vain and the pride of being vindicated was, I admit, just as exciting as Berger\u2019s intellectual condemnation of Rodin\u2019s desire toward dominance.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember thinking my feelings implicated me with Rodin and though now I liked him less than ever, my repulsion was braided with a profound sympathy inseparable from my feelings for myself. And that is a landmark in the life of an old artist looking at art: the realization that none of us can ever be free from ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember the first time I realized the world we are born into is not the one we leave.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Ruefle [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Winter Happiness<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pride, pride, pride, pride, pride,
\npride and happiness. Winter
\nand empty fields and beyond the trees
\nthe Aegean. The night sky
\nbright in the puddles of this lane.
\nSuch dear loneliness. Going along
\nto no man’s clock. No one who knows
\nmy middle name for a thousand miles.
\nThinking back to childhood. Astonished
\nthat I could find the way here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jack Gilbert [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/a>…and:<\/p>\n

#1<\/a>:<\/strong> Hold onto your memories, no matter how many or few you’ve got, no matter whether you’re gradually losing them or still acquiring new ones. Write them down if you have to; get a cheap voice-memo recorder and carry it around with you for later transcription. Whatever. The point is, nobody else will hold onto them for you, and not many more will actually care enough to try. They’ve got their own stock to tend to.<\/p>\n

#12:<\/strong> Like the joke says, Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be<\/em>. It never was, either.<\/p>\n

#14:<\/strong> Eyewitness mis<\/em>-identification has wrongly convicted more people than any other single cause. As an eyewitness to your own past, what makes you<\/em> so so damned reliable?<\/p>\n

#31:<\/strong> Old photographs are wonderful, and if you’re lucky enough to have old voice recordings, family movies or videos, then the gods of memory must indeed be smiling on you. If you want to taste something again, well, somebody, somewhere<\/em>, has probably posted its recipe on the Web. And the echo may be faint, but you can always recapture the first moment you touched sandpaper just by touching it again. Unfortunately, though, no one’s ever gonna invent scent recordings. That wild-growing mint you stepped on in your grandparents’ back yard, suffusing your head with the sweet, astringent sting of green?\u00a0Gone<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES,\u00a0Maxims for Nostalgists<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “When Thoughts Break” (found at the site of Dharma Consulting)] From\u00a0whiskey river (highlighted portion): Here and Now for Barbara There are words I’ve had to save myself from, like My Lord and Blessed Mother, words I said and never meant, though I admit a part of me misses the ornamental stateliness of High Mass, […]<\/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":[38,247,1393,250,5,251],"tags":[179,295,3015,3075,3285],"class_list":{"0":"post-12302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-backwards","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"tag-stephen-dunn","13":"tag-annie-dillard","14":"tag-jack-gilbert","15":"tag-mary-ruefle","16":"tag-maxims-for-nostalgists","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3cq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302","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=12302"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20071,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302\/revisions\/20071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}