{"id":15985,"date":"2014-09-05T10:55:29","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T14:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15985"},"modified":"2014-09-05T11:02:16","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T15:02:16","slug":"small-things-big-big-things-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/small-things-big-big-things-small\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Things Big, Big Things Small"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: illustration from\u00a0<\/em>Mountains and Molehills; or, Recollections of a Burnt Journal (1855), by one Frank Marryat. (Click image to enlarge.) For the complete book in various formats, see the Internet Archive<\/a>. For more information about this image in particular, see the note<\/a> at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n

The Swan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Across the wide waters
\nsomething comes<\/span>
\nfloating—a slim<\/span>
\nand delicate<\/span><\/p>\n

ship, filled
\nwith white flowers—<\/span>
\nand it moves<\/span>
\non its miraculous muscles<\/span><\/p>\n

as though time didn\u2019t exist,
\nas though bringing such gifts<\/span>
\nto the dry shore<\/span>
\nwas a happiness<\/span><\/p>\n

almost beyond bearing.
\nAnd now it turns its dark eyes,<\/span>
\nit rearranges<\/span>
\nthe clouds of its wings,<\/span><\/p>\n

it trails
\nan elaborate webbed foot,<\/span>
\nthe color of charcoal.<\/span>
\nSoon it will be here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, what shall I do
\nwhen that poppy-colored beak<\/span>
\nrests in my hand?<\/span>
\nSaid Mrs. Blake of the poet:<\/span><\/p>\n

I miss my husband\u2019s company—
\nhe is so often<\/span>
\nin paradise.<\/span>
\nOf course! the path to heaven<\/span><\/p>\n

doesn\u2019t lie down in flat miles.
\nIt\u2019s in the imagination <\/em><\/span>
\nwith which you perceive <\/em><\/span>
\nthis world,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

and the gestures <\/em>
\nwith which you honor it.<\/em><\/span>
\nOh, what will I do, what will I say, when those white wings<\/span>
\ntouch the shore?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Time has no meaning, space and place have no meaning, on this journey. All times can be inhabited, all places visited. In a single day the mind can make a millpond of the oceans. Some people who have never crossed the land they were born on have traveled all over the world. The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body. The self is not contained in any moment or any place, but it is only in the intersection of moment and place that the self might, for a moment, be seen vanishing through a door, which disappears at once.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jeanette Winterson [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Living<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fire in leaf and grass
\nso green it seems
\neach summer the last summer.<\/p>\n

The wind blowing, the leaves
\nshivering in the sun,
\neach day the last day.<\/p>\n

A red salamander
\nso cold and so
\neasy to catch, dreamily<\/p>\n

moves his delicate feet
\nand long tail. I hold
\nmy hand open for him to go.<\/p>\n

Each minute the last minute.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Denise Levertov [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

The View from Zero Bridge<\/strong><\/p>\n

My father made his way to Zero Bridge
\nbefore the sun slipped up the riverbed
\nand lighted plum groves—long before the cars,
\ncarts, rickshaws, trucks, and bicycles emerged,
\ndew-slick at dawn, into the dust. He passed
\nour shuttered shop, passed Ram Bagh Road, arrived
\nand, with his camera, peered over the edge.
\nThe long shikaras<\/em><\/span> jostled side by side,
\ntheir pointed noses wedged on the stone slab,
\ntheir open bellies full—kohlrabi, beets,
\nred carrots, long green kuddu<\/em><\/span>, string beans—rows
\npiled patchwork, high as each small boat could hold.
\nThe farmers, barefoot, balanced at the edges,
\nhaggling, counting, weighing. He framed and shot<\/p>\n

a young man in an orange, cabled sweater
\nswinging a bale of okra to his shoulder;
\na pyramid of eggplants on a scale;
\na farmer setting weights to balance them,
\nthe wind across the Jhelum<\/span> billowing
\nhis gray pajama. After the shutter closed,
\nthe farmers tipped their heart-shaped paddles, turned,
\nrowed back to Dal Lake’s maze of floating gardens.<\/p>\n

It must have been our last year. Had he known,
\nhe might have waited for the shot he missed:
\nthe empty boats, the paddles poised to break
\nmorning’s gold film, laid thin across the lake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Lynn Aarti Chandhok [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night. I carry this thought, the child’s mystery and terror of this thought, I feel this immensity in my soul every second of my life<\/p>\n

I have my iron desk that I hauled up three flights of stairs, with ropes and wedges. I have my pencils that I sharpen with a paring knife.<\/p>\n

There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Don DeLillo [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Early in my research, I came across a moment — forty minutes into the eighty-eighth hour of Gemini VII — which, for me, sums up the astronaut experience and why it fascinates me. Astronaut Jim Lovell is telling Mission Control about an image he has captured on film — “a beautiful shot of a full Moon against the black sky and the strato formations of the clouds below,” reads the mission transcript. After a momentary silence, Lovell’s crewman Frank Borman presses the talk<\/span> button. “Borman’s dumping urine. Urine [in] approximately one minute.”<\/p>\n

Two lines further along we see Lovell saying, “What a sight to behold!” We don’t know what he’s referring to, but there’s a good chance it’s not the moon. According to more than one astronaut memoir, one of the most beautiful sights in space is that of a sun-illumined flurry of flash-frozen waste-water droplets. Space doesn’t just encompass the sublime and the ridiculous. It erases the line between.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

Amos Calloway (Danny DeVito):<\/strong> Forget it Kid. Don’t waste your time. She’s out of your league.<\/p>\n

Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor):<\/strong> What do you mean? You don’t even know me.<\/p>\n

Amos Calloway:<\/strong> Sure I do. You were hot shit back in Hickville, but here in the real world, you got squat. You don’t have a plan. You don’t have a job. You don’t have anything except the clothes on your back… You were a big fish in a small pond, but this here is the ocean, and you’re drowning. Take my advice and go back to Puddleville. You’ll be happy there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Dialogue from Tim Burton’s Big Fish<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/a>_________________________<\/p>\n

About the image:<\/strong> Frank Marryat’s 1855 journal records his time spent in, among other places, a gold mining community called Tuttletown (a\/k\/a Tuttle Town, Tuttle-Town, Mormon Gulch), California. Although no caption is specifically assigned to the illustration (also by Marryat), the surrounding text tells the tale:<\/p>\n

Who talks of hope and disappointment in the same breath? Shall a day of the one efface or tarnish the recollection of a year’s happiness brightened by the other?—Not with me whilst I live. “See here, now, boys,” said a Tuttletonian miner, one day, as he held up to an admiring crowd a small and well-constructed lady’s boot. “The chunk aint found that can buy this boot; ‘taint for sale, no-how!<\/em>”<\/p>\n

A lady’s boot to you, or I, reader, is not much unless we are married and have to pay for a pair occasionally; but so long as we can associate our hopes of earthly happiness for the future with some emblem held out to us even at arm’s length,as was the miner’s “lady’s boot,” we may go on our way to work as did his gratified spectators more cheerfully and light of heart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: illustration from\u00a0Mountains and Molehills; or, Recollections of a Burnt Journal (1855), by one Frank Marryat. (Click image to enlarge.) For the complete book in various formats, see the Internet Archive. For more information about this image in particular, see the note at the foot of this post.] From whiskey river (italicized portion): The Swan […]<\/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":[247,1393,95,53,5,36,251,324],"tags":[595,850,1423,1496,1907,3869,3870,3871,3872,3873,3874],"class_list":{"0":"post-15985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-science-medicine","9":"category-movies-media","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-reading","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"category-researchresources","14":"tag-mary-oliver","15":"tag-denise-levertov","16":"tag-don-delillo","17":"tag-jeanette-winterson","18":"tag-mary-roach","19":"tag-lynn-aarti-chandhok","20":"tag-big-fish","21":"tag-tim-burton","22":"tag-frank-marryat","23":"tag-gold-mining","24":"tag-gold-rush","25":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-49P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15985","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=15985"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16004,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15985\/revisions\/16004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}