{"id":12976,"date":"2013-03-22T11:58:44","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T15:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=12976"},"modified":"2013-03-22T15:25:13","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T19:25:13","slug":"particles-of-moments-waves-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/particles-of-moments-waves-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Particles of Moments, Waves of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/49951982?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0&amp;color=BF370A\" height=\"338\" width=\"600\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: trailer for <\/em>The Heart &amp; The Sea<em>, a 2012 feature by Australian filmmaker \u00a0<a title=\"Look and Sea: Nathan Oldfield's blog\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lookandsea.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nathan Oldfield<\/a>.<br \/>\nSee the note at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From\u00a0<em><a title=\"whiskey river: Andre Gide, on the oscillation of joy\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2013\/03\/through-loyalty-to-past-our-mind.html\" target=\"_blank\">whiskey river<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(italicized portion):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow&#8217;s joy is possible only if today&#8217;s makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one<\/em>; that each flower owes it to itself to fade for the sake of its fruit; that the fruit, unless it falls and dies, cannot assure new blooms, so that spring itself rests on winter&#8217;s grief.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Andr\u00e9 Gide [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Journals, Vol. 3: 1928-1939,' by Andr\u00e9 Gide\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=IJ6hoJVNApYC&amp;pg=PA31#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: Andre Gide, on the rarity of joy\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2013\/03\/know-that-joy-is-rarer-more-difficult.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Andr\u00e9 Gide [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Autumn Leaves,' by Andr\u00e9 Gide\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=xUtdDnEhkMMC&amp;pg=PT13#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: 'Up Jumped Spring,' by Al Young\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2013\/03\/up-jumped-spring-whats-most-fantastical.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Up Jumped Spring<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"epigraph\">for Nana<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s most fantastical almost always goes<br \/>\nunrecorded and unsorted. Take spring.<br \/>\nTake today. Take dancing dreamlike; coffee<br \/>\nyour night, creameries your dream factories.<br \/>\nTake walking as a dream, the dearest, sincerest<br \/>\nmeans of conveyance: a dance. Take leave<br \/>\nof the notion that this nation&#8217;s or any other&#8217;s earth<br \/>\ncan still be the same earth our ancestors walked.<br \/>\nChemistry strains to connect our hemispheres.<br \/>\nThe right and left sidelines our brain forms<br \/>\nin the rain this new world braves &#8211; acid jazz.<br \/>\nThe timeless taste her tongue leaves in your mouth,<br \/>\nstirred with unmeasured sugars, greens the day<br \/>\nthe way sweet sunlight oxygenates, ignites<br \/>\nall nights, all daytimes, and you &#8211; this jumps.<br \/>\nSheer voltage leaps, but nothing keeps or stays.<br \/>\nSequence your afternoon as dance. Drink spring.<br \/>\nHolding her hard against you, picture the screenplay.<br \/>\nTake time to remember to get her spells together.<br \/>\nUp jumps the goddess gratified, and up jumped spring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Al Young [<a title=\"Al Young's Web site: 'Up Jumped Spring'\" href=\"http:\/\/alyoung.org\/2011\/04\/04\/up-jumped-spring\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from\u00a0<em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Prayer in My Boot<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For the wind no one expected<\/p>\n<p>For the boy who does not know the answer<\/p>\n<p>For the graceful handle I found in a field<br \/>\nattached to nothing<br \/>\npray it is universally applicable<\/p>\n<p>For our tracks which disappear<br \/>\nthe moment we leave them<\/p>\n<p>For the face peering through the cafe window<br \/>\nas we sip our soup<\/p>\n<p>For cheerful American classrooms sparkling<br \/>\nwith crisp colored alphabets<br \/>\nhappy cat posters<br \/>\nthe cage of the guinea pig<br \/>\nthe dog with division flying out of his tail<br \/>\nand the classrooms of our cousins<br \/>\non the other side of the earth<br \/>\nhow solemn they are<br \/>\nhow gray or green or plain<br \/>\nhow there is nothing dangling<br \/>\nnothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery<br \/>\nno self-portraits or visions of cupids<br \/>\nand in these rooms the students raise their hands<br \/>\nand learn the stories of the world<\/p>\n<p>For library books in alphabetical order<br \/>\nand family businesses that failed<br \/>\nand the house with the boarded windows<br \/>\nand the gap in the middle of a sentence<br \/>\nand the envelope we keep mailing ourselves<\/p>\n<p>For every hopeful morning given and given<br \/>\nand every future rough edge<br \/>\nand every afternoon<br \/>\nturning over in its sleep<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Naomi Shihab Nye [<a title=\"Google Books: '19 Varieties of Gazelle,' by Naomi Shihab Nye\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=bRvTSCC2PCMC&amp;pg=PA44#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Among the books I have accumulated is a rare item with the title,\u00a0<em>Hawaiian Life, or Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes<\/em>, by Charles Warren Stoddard, published in 1894. Stoddard was a Californian with a big literary reputation and he spent a lot of time in Hawaii and wrote several books about the Islands. He was a poet but this book I have is prose, the kind of prose that comes out of a poet, especially the kind of poet Stoddard was. I have read the book and I can&#8217;t remember finding, anywhere in it, a single valuable fact. Yet I did get some satisfaction out of it. Somewhere in its pages I came upon these words:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>The skies wept copiously.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It took me back to the southern part of Florida and the hurricane of 1926. I was a green young local reporter, and into Sebring came a skilled hand from the Associated Press, sent all the way down from Atlanta, and he used our office to write his dispatches, and I&#8217;ve never forgotten the thrill that came to me when he started off his second-day story with the line:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>The skies wept copiously.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That was the lead, the first paragraph. I looked at it and read it over to myself several times, and I thought, God, if I could only some day write like that!&#8230; no, I would never be able to produce such magnificent imagery. The skies wept copiously. The skies wept copiously. I walked around as if in a daze, repeating it, and now, thirty-two years later, I find that the sleazy bastard stole it from Charles Warren Stoddard, and for all I know Charles Warren Stoddard may have stolen it from&#8230; well, from old Noah himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(H. Allen Smith,\u00a0<em>Waikiki Beachnik<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Zen Living<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Birdsongs that sound like the steady determined tapping<br \/>\nof a shoemaker&#8217;s hammer,<br \/>\nor of a sculptor making tiny ball-peen dents in a silver plate,<br \/>\nwake me this morning. <em>Is it possible<br \/>\nthe world itself can be happy?<\/em> The calico cat<br \/>\nstretches her long body out across the top of my computer monitor,<br \/>\nyawning, its little primitive head a cave of possibility.<br \/>\nAnd I&#8217;m ready again<br \/>\nto try and see accidents, the over and over patterns<br \/>\nof double-slit experiments a billionfold<br \/>\nrepeated before me. If I had great patience,<br \/>\nI could try to count the poplar, birch and oak<br \/>\nleaves in their shifting welter outside my bedroom window<br \/>\nor the almost infinitesimal trails of thought that flash and flash<br \/>\neverywhere, as if decaying particles inside a bubble chamber,<br \/>\nwindshield raindrops, lake ripples. However,<br \/>\ninstead I go to fry some bacon, crack two eggs<br \/>\ninto the cast-iron skillet that&#8217;s even older than this house,<br \/>\nand on the calendar (each month another oriental fan<br \/>\nwhere the climbing solitary is dwarfed&#8230; or on dark blue oceans<br \/>\nminuscular fishing boats bob beneath gigantic waves)<br \/>\nX out the days, including those I&#8217;ve forgotten.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Dick Allen [<a title=\"Google Books: 'The Day Before: New Poems,' by Dick Allen\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=xgVAywHdWzsC&amp;pg=PA29#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>__________________<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the video:<\/strong>\u00a0In October, <a title=\"The Liquid Salt: 'Nathan Oldfield: The Heart &amp; The Sea Interview'\" href=\"http:\/\/www.liquidsaltmag.com\/2012\/10\/nathan-oldfield-the-heart-the-sea-interview\/\" target=\"_blank\">the <em>Liquid Salt<\/em> blog\u00a0interviewed filmmaker Nathan Oldfield<\/a>\u00a0about <em>The Heart &amp; The Sea.<\/em>\u00a0Here&#8217;s an excerpt:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>It\u2019s been three years since your last film (<em>Seaworthy<\/em>). How is this film different?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In some ways, this film grew out of the place where <em>Seaworthy<\/em> finished. <em>Seaworthy<\/em> was an emotional film to make in that the centerpiece of the movie was about losing our daughter, Willow. Some of that grief permeates the entirety of the film, at least for me, even though the second part of <em>Seaworthy<\/em> is really about new hope and a return to joy. <em>The Heart &amp; The Sea<\/em> moves forward in that joy, that gratitude for life and living and friendships and family. I remember after we had the premi\u00e8re of <em>Seaworthy<\/em> my good friend Tom Wegener and I were together having a deep talk about the film. He looked me right in the eye and he predicted, with his wonderfully infectious enthusiasm, &#8220;Nathan, your next film will be all about joy!&#8221; He was absolutely right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>The Heart &amp; The Sea<\/em> opened in New York this past weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: trailer for The Heart &amp; The Sea, a 2012 feature by Australian filmmaker \u00a0Nathan Oldfield. See the note at the foot of this post.] From\u00a0whiskey river\u00a0(italicized portion): Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow&#8217;s joy is possible only if today&#8217;s makes way for it; that each wave owes the [&hellip;]<\/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":[183,247,1393,53],"tags":[1172,1515,1862,3414,3415,3416,3417,3418,3419,3420,3421],"class_list":{"0":"post-12976","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-movies-media","10":"tag-naomi-shihab-nye","11":"tag-h-allen-smith","12":"tag-dick-allen","13":"tag-al-young","14":"tag-andre-gide","15":"tag-nathan-oldfield","16":"tag-joy","17":"tag-grief","18":"tag-particles-and-waves","19":"tag-small-things","20":"tag-surfing","21":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3ni","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12976","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=12976"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12987,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12976\/revisions\/12987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}