{"id":15213,"date":"2014-02-07T14:03:11","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15213"},"modified":"2014-02-07T14:03:11","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:03:11","slug":"breath-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/breath-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Breath of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'Termite<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Termite Lunch,” by bananeman (Edgar Vonk) on Flickr.com<\/a>. Used under a Creative Commons license. Wondering about the title? See Wikipedia<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Wonder, to preserve itself, withdraws. It withdraws from the mind, from the willing mind, which would make of mystery a category.<\/p>\n

I remember being told a story about an old culture that believed the center of the forest was holy and could not be entered into. Even in the heat of the hunt, should the chased beast enter into the sacred center, the hunter would stop and not pursue. I think often about that line — which is not a line in any definite sense, is no certain marking, but rather is itself somehow without definition, a hazy line, a faulty boundary — that marks the periphery. One side of the line is the daily world where we who have appetites must fill our mouths, we who have thoughts must fill our minds. The other side is within the world and beyond, where appetite isn’t to be sated, where desire is not to be fulfilled, and where thoughts refuse to lead to knowledge. I like the moment of failure that finds us on that line, abandoned of intent, caught in an experience of a different order, stalking the line between two different worlds and imperfectly taking part in both. Such a place risks blasphemy at the same time that it returns reverence to risk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Dan Beachy-Quick [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Snow Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

One must have a mind of winter
\nTo regard the frost and the boughs
\nOf the pine trees crusted with snow;<\/p>\n

And have been cold a long time
\nTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,
\nThe spruces rough in the distant glitter<\/p>\n

Of the January sun; and not to think
\nOf any misery in the sound of the wind,
\nIn the sound of a few leaves,<\/p>\n

Which is the sound of the land
\nFull of the same wind
\nThat is blowing in the same bare place<\/p>\n

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
\nAnd, nothing himself, beholds
\nNothing that is not there and the nothing that is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wallace Stevens [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech — if not all human speech — is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breathe in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder — they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we’re breathing in. The problem is, that when we’re breathing in, we can’t speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Li-Young Lee [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Mind-Body Problem<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I think of my youth I feel sorry not for myself
\nbut for my body. It was so direct
\nand simple, so rational in its desires,
\nwanting to be touched the way an otter
\nloves water, the way a giraffe
\nwants to amble the edge of the forest, nuzzling
\nthe tender leaves at the tops of the trees. It seems
\nunfair, somehow, that my body had to suffer
\nbecause I, by which I mean my mind, was saddled
\nwith certain unfortunate high-minded romantic notions
\nthat made me tyrannize and patronize it
\nlike a cruel medieval baron, or an ambitious
\nEnglish-professor husband ashamed of his wife—
\nHer love of sad movies, her budget casseroles
\nand regional vowels. Perhaps
\nmy body would have liked to make some of our dates,
\nto come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl
\nwith “None of your business!” Perhaps
\nit would have liked more presents: silks, mascaras.
\nIf we had had a more democratic arrangement
\nwe might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,
\nto a grudging respect for each other, like Tony Curtis
\nand Sidney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,
\ninstead of the current curious shift of power
\nin which I find I am being reluctantly
\ndragged along by my body as though by some
\nswift and powerful dog. How eagerly
\nit plunges ahead, not stopping for anything,
\nas though it knows exactly where we are going.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Katha Pollitt [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Ecstasy also means to be gripped by passion, but from a slightly different perspective: rapture is vertical, ecstasy horizontal. Rapture is high-flying, ecstasy occurs on the ground. For some reason, the ancient Greeks were obsessed with the symbol of standing, and relied on that one image for countless ideas, feelings, and objects. As a result, a great many of our words today simply reflect where or how things stand: stanchion<\/em>, status<\/em>, stare<\/em>, staunch<\/em>, steadfast<\/em>, statute<\/em>, and constant<\/em>. But there are also hundreds of unexpected ones, such as stank<\/em> (standing water), stallion<\/em> (standing in a stall), star<\/em> (standing in the sky), restaurant<\/em> (standing place for the wanderer), prostate<\/em> (standing in front of the bladder), and so on. To the Greeks, ecstasy meant to stand outside onself. How is that possible? Through existential engineering. “Give me a place to stand,” Archimedes proclaimed in the third century B.C., “and I will move the earth.” Levered by ecstasy, one springs out of one’s mind. Thrown free of one’s normal self, a person stands in another place, on the limits of body, society, and reason, watching the known world dwindle in the distance<\/em> (a spot standing far away). The euphoria of flying in dreams, or the longing to fly through the ocean with dolphins, fills us with rapture. Can one feel ecstasy and rapture at the same time? “The heart of standing is you cannot fly,” William Empson muses in a poem about the simultaneous limits and grandeur of a love affair. These are two escape routes from the mundane, two paths to deep play, equally quenching, equally mystical, and subtly different. All roads may indeed lead to Rome, but one might be hilly, the other marshy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Diane Ackerman [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The Place Where Clouds Are Formed<\/strong>
\n(excerpt)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

III
\nWe sit close in the cab of the truck.
\nThe weather is cold, wet outside.
\nToo messy to stand in
\nwaiting for a school bus.
\nMy father’s truck is warm inside,
\nhaving been at work since four a.m.
\nThe sound of the engine is soothing,
\nheater working to capacity.
\nInside the cab we are silent.
\nWe don’t need language.
\nWe listen to the regular hum of the engine,
\nrhythm of the windshield wipers,
\nsoft rain on the hood.
\nAware of the cold air
\nsurrounding our temporary shelter.
\nWe look out over the fields
\nwhere fog clings to the soil.
\nEvery now and then
\nwith the back of his gloved hand
\nhe wipes the windshield.
\n“Is it coming yet?”
\nThe three of us sit quietly,
\nbreathing clouds.
\nClouds condense as
\nthey contact the coolness of the windows.
\nMy father appears to breathe air
\nwith temperature in balance.
\nHe forms no clouds.
\nHe watches us.
\nWe continue to breathe
\ngray, soft mist, waiting for the school bus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “Termite Lunch,” by bananeman (Edgar Vonk) on Flickr.com. Used under a Creative Commons license. Wondering about the title? See Wikipedia.] From whiskey river: Wonder, to preserve itself, withdraws. It withdraws from the mind, from the willing mind, which would make of mystery a category. I remember being told a story about an old culture […]<\/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":[247,1393,5,251],"tags":[1299,1438,3496,3727,3728,3729],"class_list":{"0":"post-15213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-06_writing","9":"category-poetry-writing_cat","10":"tag-wallace-stevens","11":"tag-diane-ackerman","12":"tag-li-young-lee","13":"tag-dan-beachy-quick","14":"tag-katha-pollitt","15":"tag-ofelia-zepeda","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3Xn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213","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=15213"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15219,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15213\/revisions\/15219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}