{"id":14461,"date":"2013-08-16T12:10:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T16:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=14461"},"modified":"2013-08-16T12:10:21","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T16:10:21","slug":"the-awakening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/the-awakening\/","title":{"rendered":"The Awakening"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kXt9QGiNEtM?rel=0\" height=\"338\" width=\"600\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: magician <a title=\"Wikipedia, on Rob Zabrecky\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rob_Zabrecky\" target=\"_blank\">Rob Zabrecky<\/a> helps\u00a0<\/em><em><a title=\"The 88's home page\" href=\"http:\/\/the88.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">The 88<\/a> make a point about opening your eyes. Which is to say,<br \/>\nI <\/em>assume<em> The 88 is making that point&#8230; &#8217;cause <\/em>I have no idea what the lyrics of this song are<em>. People,<br \/>\npeople &#8212; is it really that hard or copyright-threatening to make lyrics available when you release a<br \/>\nnew song\/video?]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From\u00a0<a title=\"whiskey river: Mark Doty, on the continuous reinvention of the world\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2013\/08\/the-physical-reinvention-of-world-is.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The physical reinvention of the world is endless, relentless, fascinating, exhaustive; nothing that seems solid is. If you could stand at just a little distance in time, how fluid and shape-shifting physical reality would be, everything hurrying into some other form, even concrete, even stone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Mark Doty [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Dog Years,' by Mark Doty\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=4BIB4D3PEI8C&amp;pg=PA125#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: William Olsen, on the power of (a single line of) poetry\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2013\/08\/i-have-heard-this-line-now-so-many.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>\u00a0(italicized paragraphs):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The sense of justice is an enemy to prayer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I remember coming across this &#8212; what would you call it? &#8212; an assertion, an observation, a statement, thinking out loud, whatever it is that it should take up a whole page in <em>Unattainable Earth<\/em>, another later-career book by Milosz&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>I have heard this line now so many times in my head that it has become something like a mantra. It turns me inside out and back into the world as it is and might be, and it does not cancel either justice or prayer but calmly evokes both. That is how I hear it now, today, at the moment I am writing this. As something I wish to hear. As something, in order to hear, I must say out loud in a way. Science now tells us that reading literally activates many of the same facial muscles that speaking does. Speaking and listening at once, each the same and ever the other &#8212; poetry can call both into being.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>My favorite line of Whitman is from his long song of the earth &#8220;The Compost&#8221;:<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Now I am terrified of the earth, it is that calm and patient.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As one ages, perhaps there is happiness only if, as Lowell puts it, there is a &#8220;terror in happiness&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I now imagine I can hear some of that calm and patience, and even perhaps the terror, in the little bit of Milosz that takes up an entire page.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(William Olsen [<a title=\"Numero Cinq: 'On the Prayerful in Poetry,' by William Olsen\" href=\"http:\/\/numerocinqmagazine.com\/2011\/11\/20\/on-the-prayerful-in-poetry-an-essay-by-william-olsen\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and (from <a title=\"whiskey river's commonplace book: 'Flowers in the sky'\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriverscommonplace.blogspot.com\/2011\/04\/flowers-in-sky.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>whiskey river&#8217;s commonplace book<\/em><\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn&#8217;t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked &#8212; as I am surprisingly often &#8212; why I bother to get up in the mornings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Richard Dawkins [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Unweaving the Rainbow,' by Richard Dawkins\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=ZudTchiioUoC&amp;pg=PA6#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from\u00a0<em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The faith of early rising is that one has awakened aboveground, and that the night-damp and dreamy confusion will be baked solid by the rising sun. In English we use the word <em>wake<\/em>\u00a0for such different realities: ceasing to sleep, holding a vigil or party beside someone who has died, a disturbance in the water after a ship passes, or the aftermath or consequence of anything. They all meet in a past nearly beyond imagining, in the Old Norse word <em>vaka<\/em>, &#8220;an opening in the ice.&#8221; That opening could lead to fish, hunting, travel, driftwood for ship repair, suicide, or just a badly needed escape from the cage of long winters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;It&#8217;s telling, I suppose, that in English we name our bad dreams <em>nightmares<\/em>, as if they were female horses galloping out of control, or <em>mares<\/em>, the pockmarked craters of the Moon. Yet we haven&#8217;t needed a separate word for fabulous dreams, delicious dreams, dreams of blessed calm. The Bantu have, calling their blissful dreams <em>bilita mpatshi<\/em> (pronounced bee-LEE-tah mm-POT-she). We could also use an equivalent of Indonesian <em>Kekau<\/em>, the feeling of waking from a horrible nightmare, still slightly tippy but glad to step onto shore once again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Diane Ackerman [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day,' by Diane Ackerman\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=-mAD0cHsKucC&amp;lpg=PP1&amp;pg=PT110#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Snowman opens his eyes, shuts them, opens them, keeps them open. He&#8217;s had a terrible night. He doesn&#8217;t know which is worse, a past he can&#8217;t regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too closely. Then there&#8217;s the future. Sheer vertigo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Margaret Atwood [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Oryx and Crake,' by Margaret Atwood\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=1GeHO2uy1XQC&amp;pg=PT170#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The Death of Santa Claus<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s had the chest pains for weeks,<br \/>\nbut doctors don&#8217;t make house<br \/>\ncalls to the North Pole,<\/p>\n<p>he&#8217;s let his Blue Cross lapse,<br \/>\nblood tests make him faint,<br \/>\nhospital gown always flap<\/p>\n<p>open, waiting rooms upset<br \/>\nhis stomach, and it&#8217;s only<br \/>\nindigestion anyway, he thinks,<\/p>\n<p>until, feeding the reindeer,<br \/>\nhe feels as if a monster fist<br \/>\nhas grabbed his heart and won&#8217;t<\/p>\n<p>stop squeezing. He can&#8217;t<br \/>\nbreathe, and the beautiful white<br \/>\nworld he loves goes black,<\/p>\n<p>and he drops on his jelly belly<br \/>\nin the snow and Mrs. Claus<br \/>\ntears out of the toy factory<\/p>\n<p>wailing, and the elves wring<br \/>\ntheir little hands, and Rudolph&#8217;s<br \/>\nnose blinks like a sad ambulance<\/p>\n<p>light, and in a tract house<br \/>\nin Houston, Texas, I&#8217;m 8,<br \/>\ntelling my mom that stupid<\/p>\n<p>kids at school say Santa&#8217;s a big<br \/>\nfake, and she sits with me<br \/>\non our purple-flowered couch,<\/p>\n<p>and takes my hand, tears<br \/>\nin her throat, the terrible<br \/>\nnews rising in her eyes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Charles Harper Webb\u00a0[<a title=\"University of Pittsburgh Press: excerpts from 'Shadow Ball,' by Charles Harper Webb\" href=\"http:\/\/www.upress.pitt.edu\/htmlSourceFiles\/pdfs\/9780822960423exr.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: magician Rob Zabrecky helps\u00a0The 88 make a point about opening your eyes. Which is to say, I assume The 88 is making that point&#8230; &#8217;cause I have no idea what the lyrics of this song are. People, people &#8212; is it really that hard or copyright-threatening to make lyrics available when you release a [&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":[247,1393,74,5,36,251],"tags":[1438,1645,3545,3583,3584,3585,3586,3587],"class_list":{"0":"post-14461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-reading","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"tag-diane-ackerman","13":"tag-margaret-atwood","14":"tag-mark-doty","15":"tag-rob-zabrecky","16":"tag-the-88","17":"tag-william-olsen","18":"tag-richard-dawkins","19":"tag-charles-harper-webb","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3Lf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14461","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=14461"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14471,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14461\/revisions\/14471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}