{"id":15247,"date":"2014-02-21T12:11:01","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T17:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15247"},"modified":"2014-02-21T12:11:01","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T17:11:01","slug":"eye-openings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/eye-openings\/","title":{"rendered":"Eye-Openings"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Awakening in the Snow,” by user InnocentEyez on Flickr.com<\/a> (photograph of sculpture, <\/em>The Awakening<\/a>, by J. Seward Johnson). Reproduced here under a Creative Commons license.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Franz Kafka is Dead<\/strong><\/p>\n

He died in a tree from which he wouldn’t come down. “Come down!” they cried to him. “Come down! Come down!” Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. “I can’t,” he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. “Why?” they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. “Because then you’ll stop asking for me.” The people whispered and nodded among themselves. They put their arms around each other, and touched their children’s hair. They took off their hats and raised them to the small, sickly man with the ears of a strange animal, sitting in his black velvet suit in the dark tree. Then they turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers’ shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn’t wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees, Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. It all caught in the delicate pointed shells of his ears and rolled like pinballs through the great hall of his mind.<\/p>\n

That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children woke up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice. One child, the smallest, shrieked out in delight and her cry tore through the silence and exploded the ice of a giant oak tree. The world shone.<\/p>\n

They found him frozen on the ground like a bird. It’s said that when they put their ears to the shell of his ears, they could hear themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Nicole Krauss\u00a0[source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We read of spiritual efforts, and our imagination makes us believe that, because we enjoy the idea of doing them, we have done them.\u00a0I am appalled to see how much of the change I thought I had undergone lately was only imaginary.\u00a0The real work seems still to be done.\u00a0It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself — to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed & then to find yourself still in bed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(C. S. Lewis [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Sloth<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you’re one of seven
\nDownfalls, up in your kingdom
\nOf mulberry leaves, there are men
\nBetting you aren’t worth a bullet,<\/p>\n

That your skin won’t tan into a good
\nWallet. As if drugged in the womb
\n& limboed in a honeyed languor,
\nBy the time you open your eyes<\/p>\n

A thousand species have lived
\n& died. Born on a Sunday
\nMorning, with old-world algae
\nIn your long hair, a goodness<\/p>\n

Disguised your two-toed claws
\nBright as flensing knives. In this
\nUpside-down haven, you’re reincarnated
\nAs a fallen angel trying to go home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Yusef Komunyakaa [source<\/em><\/a>]).<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Morning<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
\nthe swale of the afternoon,
\nthe sudden dip into evening,<\/p>\n

then night with his notorious perfumes,
\nhis many-pointed stars?<\/p>\n

This is the best—
\nthrowing off the light covers,
\nfeet on the cold floor,
\nand buzzing around the house on espresso—<\/p>\n

maybe a splash of water on the face,
\na palmful of vitamins—
\nbut mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,<\/p>\n

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
\nthe typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
\na cello on the radio,<\/p>\n

and, if necessary, the windows—
\ntrees fifty, a hundred years old
\nout there,
\nheavy clouds on the way
\nand the lawn steaming like a horse
\nin the early morning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Billy Collins [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/span><\/p>\n

Now Emrys approaches the rise from the top of which, for the first time in a lifetime so it seems, he may look west and down into the valley: the valley formed by the meeting place of the Rivers Twrch and Tawe, the confluence for which [the village of] Cymer Bach is named.<\/p>\n

His heart thuds in his chest and his eyes swim. For too long, he thinks, has he lidded the pot in which simmers his one true home, and now it threatens to overspill and to blind him. He pushes a clutch of black hair behind one ear, and that is when the sun at last breaks through the cloud cover.<\/p>\n

For one glorious moment a golden shaft of great width pours down from the sky, and Emrys pictures the villagers at that moment, on the far side of this hillock. They are stopping in their day’s occupations, looking up into the sunlight, pushing their own hair back, smiling, and perhaps some of them are even at this moment regarding the hillock from the far side and will see Emrys as he reaches its little summit. Then the sun ducks back again under its autumn coverlet, and a slight breeze kicks up.<\/p>\n

Chilly<\/em>, Emrys thinks, and he follows this thought immediately with another: Smoke?<\/em> Or rather, No smoke?<\/em>, for in that brief moment it strikes him oddly that he sees no threads of smoke rising from the chimneys of Cymer Bach.<\/p>\n

And then he is at the summit — and then, at last, he is looking down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES, Seems to Fit<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Awakening in the Snow,” by user InnocentEyez on Flickr.com (photograph of sculpture, The Awakening, by J. Seward Johnson). Reproduced here under a Creative Commons license.] From\u00a0whiskey river: Franz Kafka is Dead He died in a tree from which he wouldn’t come down. “Come down!” they cried to him. “Come down! Come down!” Silence filled […]<\/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":[247,1393,250,36,251,515],"tags":[1141,2177,3691,3742,3743],"class_list":{"0":"post-15247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-reading","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"category-grail","12":"tag-billy-collins","13":"tag-c-s-lewis","14":"tag-nicole-krauss","15":"tag-j-seward-johnson","16":"tag-yusef-komunyakaa","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3XV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15247","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=15247"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15253,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15247\/revisions\/15253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}