{"id":12592,"date":"2013-01-11T11:09:18","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T16:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=12592"},"modified":"2013-01-11T11:09:18","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T16:09:18","slug":"life-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/life-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: <\/em>The Ultimate Answer, one of my few successful attempts at (representational) visual art]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Flannery O’Connor [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and (italicized portion):<\/p>\n

I can often sense the spirit of a place, but I’m not entirely convinced such spirits have an existence separate from their environment. In that sense I’m both believer and skeptic; I’d like to believe, but keep searching for that elusive proof.<\/p>\n

I do believe in an everyday sort of magic\u2014the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of syncronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone. These are magics that many of us experience, parts of a Mystery that can’t\u2014and perhaps shouldn’t—be explained.<\/em><\/p>\n

I should add that often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world, the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to, like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places. When one of my characters becomes aware of a magical element, it might be because the world is wider than we assume it to be, but it might also be a reminder to pay attention to what is here already, hidden only because it’s been forgotten.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Charles de Lint [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Passing Remark<\/strong><\/p>\n

In scenery I like flat country.
\nIn life I don’t like much to happen.<\/p>\n

In personalities I like mild colorless people.
\nAnd in colors I prefer gray and brown.<\/p>\n

My wife, a vivid girl from the mountains,
\nsays, “Then why did you choose me?”<\/p>\n

Mildly I lower my brown eyes —
\nthere are so many things admirable people do not understand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(William Stafford [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

An Oregon Message<\/strong><\/p>\n

When we first moved here, pulled
\nthe trees in around us, curled
\nour backs to the wind, no one
\nhad ever hit the moon—no one.
\nNow our trees are safer than the stars,
\nand only other people\u2019s neglect
\nis our precious and abiding shell,
\npierced by meteors, radar, and the telephone.<\/p>\n

From our snug place we shout
\nreligiously for attention, in order to hide:
\nonly silence or evasion will bring
\ndangerous notice, the hovering hawk
\nof the state, or the sudden quiet stare
\nand fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor.<\/p>\n

This message we smuggle out in
\nits plain cover, to be opened
\nquietly: Friends everywhere—
\nwe are alive! Those moon rockets
\nhave missed millions of secret
\nplaces! Best wishes.<\/p>\n

Burn this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(William Stafford [source<\/em><\/a> (via Check It Out<\/em><\/a>]))<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The capacity to leap across mountains of information to land lightly on the wrong side represents the highest of human endowments.<\/p>\n

It may be that this is a uniquely human gift, perhaps even stipulated in our genetic instructions. Other creatures do not seem to have DNA sequences for making mistakes as a routine part of daily living, certainly not for programmed error as a guide for action.<\/p>\n

We are at our human finest, dancing with our minds, when there are more choices than two. Sometimes there are ten, even twenty different ways to go, all but one bound to be the wrong, and the richness of selection in such situations can lift us onto totally new ground. This process is called exploration and is based on human fallibility. If we had only a single center in our brains, capable of responding only when a correct decision was to be made, instead of the jumble of different credulous, easily conned clusters of neurons that provide for being flung off into blind alleys, up trees, down dead ends, out into blue sky, along wrong turnings, around bends, we could only stay the way we are today, stuck fast<\/p>\n

The lower animals do not have this splendid freedom. They are limited most of them, to absolute infallibility. Cats, for all their good side, never make mistakes. I have never seen a maladroit, clumsy, or blundering cat. Dogs are sometimes fallible, occasionally able to make charming minor mistakes, but they get this way by trying to mimic their masters. Fish are flawless in everything they do. Individual cells in a tissue are mindless machines, perfect in their performance, as absolutely inhuman as bees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Lewis Thomas [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Dark Charms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eventually the future shows up everywhere:
\nthose burly summers and unslept nights in deep
\nlines and dark splotches, thinning skin.
\nHere’s the corner store grown to a condo,
\nthe bike reduced to one spinning wheel,
\nthe ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail
\nno longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds.
\nThe clear water we drank as thirsty children
\nstill runs through our veins. Stars we saw then
\nwe still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often.
\nThe old tunes play and continue to move us
\nin spite of our learning, the wraith of romance,
\nlost innocence, literature, the death of the poets.
\nWe continue to speak, if only in whispers,
\nto something inside us that longs to be named.
\nWe name it the past and drag it behind us,
\nbag like a lung filled with shadow and song,
\ndreams of running, the keys to lost names.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: The Ultimate Answer, one of my few successful attempts at (representational) visual art] From\u00a0whiskey river: The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction […]<\/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":[183,247,1393,405,250,5,251],"tags":[1214,1345,1365,2023,2268,3324,3325,3326,3327],"class_list":{"0":"post-12592","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-nature","10":"category-art","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"tag-magic","14":"tag-william-stafford","15":"tag-learning","16":"tag-lewis-thomas","17":"tag-dorianne-laux","18":"tag-flannery-oconnor","19":"tag-charles-de-lint","20":"tag-lessons","21":"tag-mistakes","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3h6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12592","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=12592"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12599,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12592\/revisions\/12599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}