{"id":15722,"date":"2014-06-13T10:24:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T14:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15722"},"modified":"2014-06-13T10:24:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T14:24:38","slug":"the-devils-you-dont-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/the-devils-you-dont-know\/","title":{"rendered":"The Devil(s) You Don’t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “The Cadejos,” hand-painted etching on paper, by Todd Freeman<\/a>; found on Flickr<\/a>.
\n(Click to enlarge.) For more information, see the note at the foot of this post<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Neil Gaiman [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

My definition of a devil is a god who has not been recognized. That is to say, it is a power in you to which you have not given expression, and you push it back. And then, like all repressed energy, it builds up and becomes completely dangerous to the position you’re trying to hold.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Joseph Campbell [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

To feel anything
\nderanges you. To be seen
\nfeeling anything strips you
\nnaked. In the grip of it
\npleasure or pain doesn’t
\nmatter. You think what
\nwill they do what new
\npower will they acquire if
\nthey see me naked like
\nthis. If they see you
\nfeeling. You have no idea
\nwhat. It’s not about them.
\nTo be seen is the penalty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Anne Carson [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Please Marry Me<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please marry me. Your mother likes me.
\n–Line spoken by an unknown woman, in a dream<\/span><\/p>\n

We are stretched out on a dingy sofa, and I think
\nI must be barefoot because a woman whom no one knows
\nIs massaging the ankle of one leg of mine and the instep
\nOf the other, all this toward morning, and I have that
\nOccasional epiphany one has while still asleep
\nThat I am floating down a river
\nBecause I am so happy and all the dismal issues
\nHave been made tractable at last, and so I say to her
\nThat the late symphonies of Gustav Mahler
\nAre more lucid if you’re sitting close to, and above,
\nThe orchestra, so that you can see the contrapuntal
\nLines moving from strings to woodwinds
\nAnd then back again, whereupon this woman,
\nSitting (I now realize) at my feet, says, in the full
\nHeat of our dream life, and in that happiness,
\n“Please marry me. Your mother likes me,”
\nAnd so I wake, not laughing, although my mother<\/p>\n

Has been dead for over thirty years, but in wonderment
\nOver what quality this dream-woman must have owned
\nTo have pleased my mother so that she,
\nMy late mother, would have said, despite her ban
\nOn ordinary pleasantries, that she had liked someone,
\nAnyone, who might have cared for me, and as I lie
\nIn bed I think of the last movement of Mahler’s Ninth
\nWhen the melodic lines go quiet for minute after minute
\nIn a prolonged farewell to music and to life,
\nWhich my mother would attend to in her bathrobe
\nLate at night, the stereo turned up, blended whiskey
\nIn her highball glass mixed with milk as a disguise,
\nLeaning back, hand over eyes, silent-movie style
\nLike Norma Desmond listening as Von Stroheim plays
\nThe organ wearing his white gloves. No, it wasn’t
\nMahler, it was Schoenberg, Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em>,
\nMoon-drunk music, mad and inconsolable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Charles Baxter [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Humans are amphibians — half spirit and half animal… As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation — the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

War Poetry<\/strong><\/p>\n

The class has dropped its books. The janitor’s
\ndisturbed some wasps, broomed the nest
\nstraight off the roof. It lies outside, exotic
\nas a fallen planet, a burst city of the poor;
\nits newsprint halls, its ashen, tiny rooms
\nall open to the air. The insect\u2019s buzz
\nis low-key as a smart engine. They group,
\nregroup, in stacks and coils, advance
\nand cross like pulsing points on radar screens.<\/p>\n

And though the boys have shaven heads
\nand football strips, and would, they swear,
\nenlist at once given half a chance,
\nmarch down Owen’s darkening lanes
\nto join the lads and stuff the Boche —
\nthey don\u2019t rush out to pike the nest,
\nor lap the yard with grapeshot faces.
\nThey watch the wasps through glass,
\nsilently, abashed, the way we all watch war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Kate Clanchy [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

As a baby, [my son] Eric was a real stair-climber. My wife or I would usually catch him after he’d negotiated no more than a step or two. But on one occasion, as I remember now, while his mother and I were eating our dinner, he’d gotten fussy and neurotic there in his high chair, as babies will; we wiped the stray food from his face and fingers and put him down on the floor. He was just under a year old, I think. As my wife and I nattered on, absorbed in our adulthood, Eric crept on hands and knees out of the kitchen, into the hall and up the stairs. It must have taken him ten or fifteen minutes, but he assaulted the stairs, craggy and orthogonal, with as much tenacity as he later pursued his engineering degrees.<\/p>\n

At some point I suddenly said to my wife, “Where’s Eric?” and she replied, “I don’t know, wasn’t he just in here?” We leapt from our chairs.<\/p>\n

Eric got to the top of the stairs about then, but did not go on to explore the mysteries of the second floor; only the stairs were of interest. He’d ascended them, all right, but at that age still lacked I suppose the motor and visual skills to get himself back down. And yes, he did start to scream then. Our conversation obviously over, I went to fetch him while my wife cleared the table. He was lying on his stomach on the second floor at the top of the stairs, facing down towards me, his little hands and arms waving feebly, the way they do, like huge pink fleshy antennae. Screaming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES, “Dissonance”)<\/p>\n

<\/a>___________________________<\/p>\n

About the image:<\/strong> The cadejo<\/em> is a dog-like character appearing in Central American folk tales. Per Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There is a good white cadejo<\/em> and an evil black cadejo<\/em>. Both are spirits that appear at night to travelers: the white to protect them from harm during their journey, the black… to kill them. The colors of the cadejo<\/em> are sometimes exchanged according to local tradition. In some places the black cadejo<\/em> is seen as the good one and the white cadejo<\/em> the evil one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like that you don’t know which cadejo<\/em> is which unless you know where you are, and what the natives believe there… or, of course, until you trust one.<\/p>\n

[back to top<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “The Cadejos,” hand-painted etching on paper, by Todd Freeman; found on Flickr. (Click to enlarge.) For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.] From whiskey river: Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no […]<\/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":[247,1393,250,5,50,105,251,3477],"tags":[180,852,2177,3811,3815,3816,3817,3818,3819],"class_list":{"0":"post-15722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-language-writing_cat","11":"category-short-fiction","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"category-fantasy-06_writing","14":"tag-the-devil","15":"tag-neil-gaiman","16":"tag-c-s-lewis","17":"tag-anne-carson","18":"tag-todd-freeman","19":"tag-joseph-campbell","20":"tag-charles-baxter","21":"tag-kate-clanchy","22":"tag-cadejos","23":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-45A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15722","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=15722"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15735,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15722\/revisions\/15735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}