{"id":12748,"date":"2013-02-08T14:53:14","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T19:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=12748"},"modified":"2013-02-08T14:58:13","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T19:58:13","slug":"what-lies-beneath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/what-lies-beneath\/","title":{"rendered":"What Lies Beneath"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: lunar surface, color-enhanced, per results of the NASA GRAIL mission.
\nFor more information, see the note<\/a> at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

“My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps on doing bad, dumb things.”<\/p>\n

“Your soul and your what?” he said.<\/p>\n

“My soul and my meat,” I said.<\/p>\n

“They’re separate?” he said.<\/p>\n

“I sure hope they are,” I said. I laughed. “I would hate to be responsible for what my meat does.”<\/p>\n

I told him, only half joking, about how I imagined the soul of each person, myself included, as being a sort of flexible neon tube inside. All the tube could do was receive news about what was happening with the meat, over which it had no control.<\/p>\n

“So when people I like do something terrible,” I said, “I just flense them and forgive them.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“<\/em>Flense?” he said. “What’s flense?”<\/em><\/p>\n

“It’s what whalers used to do to whale carcasses when they got them on board,” I said. “They would strip off the skin and blubber and meat right down to the skeleton. I do that in my head to people — get rid of all the meat so I can see nothing but their souls. Then I forgive them.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Kurt Vonnegut [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Eyes-Shut Facing Eyes-Rolling-Around<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pay close attention to your mean thoughts.<\/p>\n

That sourness may be a blessing,
\nas an overcast day brings rain for the roses
\nand relief to dry soil.<\/p>\n

Don’t look so sourly on your sourness!
\nIt may be it’s carrying what you most deeply need
\nand want. What seems to be keeping you from joy
\nmay be what leads you to joy.<\/p>\n

Don’t call it a dead branch.
\nCall it the live, moist root.<\/p>\n

Don’t always be waiting to see
\nwhat’s behind it. That wait and see
\npoisons your Spirit.<\/p>\n

Reach for it.
\nHold your meanness to your chest
\nas a healing root,
\nand be through with waiting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jelaluddin Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks) [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn’t a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Neil Gaiman [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Onions<\/strong><\/p>\n

How easily happiness begins by
\ndicing onions. A lump of sweet butter
\nslithers and swirls across the floor
\nof the saut\u00e9 pan, especially if its
\nerrant path crosses a tiny slick
\nof olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.<\/p>\n

This could mean soup or risotto
\nor chutney (from the Sanskrit
\nchatni<\/em>, to lick). Slowly the onions
\ngo limp and then nacreous
\nand then what cookbooks call clear,
\nthough if they were eyes you could see<\/p>\n

clearly the cataracts in them.
\nIt’s true it can make you weep
\nto peel them, to unfurl and to tease
\nfrom the taut ball first the brittle,
\ncaramel-colored and decrepit
\npapery outside layer, the least<\/p>\n

recent the reticent onion
\nwrapped around its growing body,
\nfor there’s nothing to an onion
\nbut skin, and it’s true you can go on
\nweeping as you go on in, through
\nthe moist middle skins, the sweetest<\/p>\n

and thickest, and you can go on
\nin to the core, to the bud-like,
\nacrid, fibrous skins densely
\nclustered there, stalky and in-
\ncomplete, and these are the most
\npungent, like the nuggets of nightmare<\/p>\n

and rage and murmury animal
\ncomfort that infant humans secrete.
\nThis is the best domestic perfume.
\nYou sit down to eat with a rumor
\nof onions still on your twice-washed
\nhands and lift to your mouth a hint<\/p>\n

of a story about loam and usual
\nendurance. It’s there when you clean up
\nand rinse the wine glasses and make
\na joke, and you leave the minutest
\nwhiff of it on the light switch,
\nlater, when you climb the stairs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

Letter to a Lost Friend<\/strong><\/p>\n

There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened
\nbetween us, like ostyt<\/em>, which can be used<\/span>
\nfor a cup of tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room,
\nand return, it is too cool; or perekhotet<\/em>,<\/span>
\nwhich is to want something so much over months
\nand even years that when you get it, you have lost<\/span>
\nthe desire. Pushkin said, when he saw his portrait by Kiprensky,
\n“It is like looking into a mirror, but one that flatters me.”<\/span>
\nWhat is the word for someone who looks into her friend’s face
\nand sees once smooth skin gone like a train that has left
\nthe station in Petersburg with its wide avenues and nights
\nat the Stray Dog Cafe, sex with the wrong men,<\/span>
\nwho looked so right by candlelight, when everyone was young
\nand smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, painted or wrote<\/span>
\nall night but nothing good, drank too much vodka, and woke
\nin the painful daylight with skin like fresh cream, books<\/span>
\neverywhere, Lorca on Gogol, Tolstoy under Madame de S\u00e9vign\u00e9,
\nso that now, on a train in the taiga<\/span> of Siberia,
\nI see what she sees—all my books alphabetized and on shelves,
\nfeet misshapen, hands ribbed with raised veins,<\/span>
\nneck crumpled like last week’s newspaper, while her friends
\nare young, their skin pimply and eyes bright as puppies’,<\/span>
\nand who can blame her, for how lucky we are to be loved
\nfor even a moment, though I can’t help but feel like Pushkin,<\/span>
\na rough ball of lead lodged in his gut, looking at his books
\nand saying, “Goodbye, my dear friends,” as those volumes<\/span>
\nclose and turn back into oblong blocks, dust clouding
\nthe gold leaf that once shimmered on their spines.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Barbara Hamby [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and finally, Frank Sinatra offers up a definitive what-lies-beneath tidbit for the week of Valentine’s Day:<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>I’ve Got You Under My Skin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:31 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:ivegotyouundermyskin_franksinatra.mp3|titles=’I’ve Got You Under My Skin’|artists=Frank Sinatra]<\/div>\n

[Lyrics<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>____________________________<\/p>\n

About the image:<\/strong> NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission<\/a>, which concluded in December, mapped the surface of the Moon in a way impossible with mere human senses. The two lunar satellites involved, dubbed Ebb and Flow, set out to determine precise altitudes and densities of the Moon’s surface caused by the impacts of meteors and other rocky space junk over the millennia. (Since the Moon is unprotected by an atmosphere, all this stuff slams into it without burning up or even decelerating.) If you imagine the Moon as a baseball getting hit a gazillion times by debris of stone and metal, you can imagine it must have been dented quite a bit. What’s already there gets compressed at each point of impact, which affects the density of the material, which in turn affects the gravity. As Ebb and Flow circled the Moon together, the gravity ever so slightly pulled them closer together or pushed them further apart: it was this effect which enabled these amazing images. You look at the Moon from down here on a cloudless night, and you see all the impact craters, and you think:\u00a0Wow. That thing’s been hit a <\/em>lot!<\/em>\u00a0We learned from Ebb and Flow, though, that what we can\u00a0see<\/em> doesn’t come anywhere close to a complete picture of the cumulative barrage.<\/p>\n

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

[Image: lunar surface, color-enhanced, per results of the NASA GRAIL mission. For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.] From\u00a0whiskey river (italicized portion): “My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps on doing bad, dumb things.” “Your soul and your what?” he […]<\/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":[247,1393,95,74,250,5,251],"tags":[852,1494,2048,2340,2403,3157,3366,3367,3368],"class_list":{"0":"post-12748","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-science-medicine","9":"category-music","10":"category-art","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"tag-neil-gaiman","14":"tag-nasa","15":"tag-frank-sinatra","16":"tag-kurt-vonnegut","17":"tag-william-matthews","18":"tag-barbara-hamby","19":"tag-grail-nasa-mission","20":"tag-rumi","21":"tag-the-moon","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3jC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12748","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=12748"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12773,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12748\/revisions\/12773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}