{"id":13896,"date":"2013-05-31T12:20:15","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T16:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=13896"},"modified":"2013-05-31T12:20:15","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T16:20:15","slug":"in-the-right-light-nothing-is-not-worth-looking-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/in-the-right-light-nothing-is-not-worth-looking-at\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Right Light, Nothing Is Not Worth Looking At"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: small portion of an infographic of intersecting timelines from films and television shows which feature time travel. (Click to enlarge.) The bright yellow line is that of time itself, and the lines which crisscross it represent the individual movies and shows. (No <\/em>Dr. Who, though: presumably it would complicate things too much.) Lines are color-coded according to the means of time travel: bright blue for alien technology, red for time machine, and so on. The gray line terminating at a red dot, roughly in the center, is labeled “ULTRA PARADOX! Marty McFly meets the <\/em>Star Trek crew and they both battle <\/em>The Terminator.”
\nFor more information, see the Information Is Beautiful<\/a> site — especially, follow the link there to the
\n“how we made this image” page.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

You can’t understand, change, or improve something if you don’t even see it.<\/p>\n

Start<\/strong> with looking. Open! Open! Open!<\/p>\n

Then tilt your head and look again. Deeper…<\/p>\n

Look from every angle. Don’t let one view satisfy your curiosity.<\/p>\n

There is a beautiful wisdom found in seeing from a universal point of view.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Danielle Marie Crume (“Dani”) [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We eat light, drink it in through our skins. With a little more exposure to light, you feel part of things physically. I like feeling the power of light and space physically because then you can order it materially. Seeing is a very sensuous act — there’s a sweet deliciousness to feeling yourself see something.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(James Turrell\u00a0[source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

5.<\/p>\n

We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we change.
\nCongratulations, if
\nyou have changed.<\/span><\/p>\n

6.<\/p>\n

Let me ask you this.
\nDo you also think that beauty exists for some
\nfabulous reason?<\/span><\/p>\n

And if you have not been enchanted by this adventure —
\nyour life —<\/span>
\nwhat would do for you?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

Breakage<\/strong><\/p>\n

I go down to the edge of the sea.
\nHow everything shines in the morning light!
\nThe cusp of the whelk,
\nthe broken cupboard of the clam,
\nthe opened, blue mussels,
\nmoon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred —
\nand nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
\ndropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
\nIt’s like a schoolhouse
\nof little words,
\nthousands of words.
\nFirst you figure out what each one means by itself,
\nthe jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
\nfull of moonlight.<\/p>\n

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

The key to taking the measure of biodiversity lies in a downward adjustment of scale. The smaller the organism, the broader the frontier and the deeper the unmapped terrain. Conventional wildernesses of the overland trek may indeed be gone. Most of Earth’s largest species — mammals, birds, and trees — have been seen and documented. But microwildernesses exist in a handful of soil or aqueous silt collected almost anywhere in the world. They at least are close to a pristine state and still unvisited. Bacteria, protistans, nematodes, mites, and other minute creatures swarm around us, an animate matrix that binds Earth’s surface. They are objects of potentially endless study and admiration, if we are willing to sweep our vision down from the world lined by the horizon to include the world an arm’s length away. A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Edward O. Wilson [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

X-rays are today a humble diagnostic tool but in their infancy were considered nothing short of miraculous. Nan Knight, director of the archives at the history center of the American college of Radiology, told me that Thomas Edison, who seems to have invented publicity along with everything else he invented, at one point announced a public demonstration in which he would take an X-ray photograph of the living brain,* showing actual thoughts as they darted here and there. Within a year after the ray’s discovery, Parisian hucksters were selling tickets to sideshows purporting to show ghosts captured as X-ray images… Somewhere along the way, a rumor surfaced to the effect that opera glasses could be outfitted with X-rays, considerably upping the appeal of a night at the opera for many a bored spouse.<\/p>\n

_____________<\/p>\n

*In reality, an X-ray of the head could not show the brain, because the skull blocks the rays. What appeared to be an X-ray of the folds and convolutions of a human brain inside a skull — an image that circulated widely in 1896 — was in fact an X-ray of artfully arranged cat intestines.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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

….and:<\/p>\n

A Table in the Wilderness<\/strong><\/p>\n

I draw a window
\nand a man sitting inside it.<\/p>\n

I draw a bird in flight above the lintel.<\/p>\n

That’s my picture of thinking<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If I put a woman there instead
\nof the man, it’s a picture of speaking<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If I draw a second bird
\nin the woman’s lap, it\u2019s ministering<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A third flying below her feet.
\nNow it’s singing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Or erase the birds
\nmake ivy branching
\naround the woman’s ankles, clinging
\nto her knees, and it becomes remembering<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You’ll have to find your own
\npictures, whoever you are,
\nwhatever your need.<\/p>\n

As for me, many small hands
\nissuing from a waterfall
\nmeans silence
\nmothered me.<\/p>\n

The hours hung like fruit in night’s tree
\nmeans when I close my eyes
\nand look inside me,<\/p>\n

a thousand open eyes
\nspan the moment of my waking.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the clock
\nadding a grain to a grain
\nand not getting bigger,<\/p>\n

subtracting a day from a day
\nand never having less, means the honey<\/p>\n

lies awake all night
\ninside the honeycomb
\nwondering who its parents are.<\/p>\n

And even my death isn’t my death
\nunless it’s the unfathomed brow
\nof a nameless face.<\/p>\n

Even my name isn’t my name
\nexcept the bees assemble<\/p>\n

a table to grant a stranger
\nlight and moment in a wilderness
\nof Who? Where?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Li-Young Lee [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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