{"id":16078,"date":"2014-10-10T11:49:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T15:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16078"},"modified":"2014-10-10T11:49:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T15:49:42","slug":"regarding-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/regarding-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Regarding the Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: photo by NASA’s Terra satellite, taken September 29, 2014. (Click to enlarge.)
\nSee the note<\/a> at the foot of this post for more information.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Our awareness is overwhelmed by hundreds of different thoughts, feelings and sensations. Some we latch onto because they’re attractive fantasies or scary preoccupations; some we try to shove away because they’re too upsetting or because they distract us from whatever we’re trying to accomplish at the moment.<\/p>\n

Instead of focusing on some of them and pushing away others, though, just look at them as feathers flying in the wind. The wind is your awareness, your inborn openness and clarity. Feathers — the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations that pass through our awareness — are harmless. Some may be more attractive than others, some less attractive; but essentially they’re just feathers. Look at them as fuzzy, curly things floating through the air.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Ngawang Tsoknyi Gyatso [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Fall<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
\nChanges its tense in the long-haired maples
\nThat dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
\nRedden on their branches (in a fiery competition
\nWith the final remaining cardinals) and then
\nBegin to sidle and float through the air, at last
\nSettling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
\nAt twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
\nIn a season of odd, dusky congruences — a scarlet tanager
\nAnd the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
\nLoping down the center of a wide street and the sun
\nSetting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
\nA gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
\nBlamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
\nChanges and moves in the split second between summer’s
\nSprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
\nPulling out of the station according to schedule,
\nAnother moment arriving on the next platform. It
\nHappens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
\nFrom their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
\nSliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
\nAround us even as its colorful weather moves us,
\nEven as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
\nAnd every year there is a brief, startling moment
\nWhen we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
\nSuddenly feel something invisible and weightless
\nTouching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
\nIt is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
\nIt is the changing light of fall falling on us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Edward Hirsch [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Old Men Playing Basketball<\/strong><\/p>\n

The heavy bodies lunge, the broken language
\nof fake and drive, glamorous jump shot
\nslowed to a stutter. Their gestures, in love
\nagain with the pure geometry of curves,<\/p>\n

rise toward the ball, falter, and fall away.
\nOn the boards their hands and fingertips
\ntremble in tense little prayers of reach
\nand balance. Then, the grind of bone<\/p>\n

and socket, the caught breath, the sigh,
\nthe grunt of the body laboring to give
\nbirth to itself. In their toiling and grand
\nsweeps, I wonder, do they still make love<\/p>\n

to their wives, kissing the undersides
\nof their wrists, dancing the old soft-shoe
\nof desire? And on the long walk home
\nfrom the VFW, do they still sing<\/p>\n

to the drunken moon? Stands full, clock
\nmoving, the one in army fatigues
\nand houseshoes says to himself, pick and roll<\/em>,
\nand the phrase sounds musical as ever,<\/p>\n

radio crooning songs of love after the game,
\nthe girl leaning back in the Chevy\u2019s front seat
\nas her raven hair flames in the shuddering
\nlight of the outdoor movie, and now he drives,<\/p>\n

gliding toward the net. A glass wand
\nof autumn light breaks over the backboard.
\nBoys rise up in old men, wings begin to sprout
\nat their backs. The ball turns in the darkening air.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(B. H. Fairchild [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The game of Cement Tag added a human element to the Gothic terrors of that other cement-related game: cement was no longer poison, but rather the only place where you could be pursued and tagged by It<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It<\/em> was called that precisely because there were no words for it. It<\/em> had no face, no name, and It<\/em> was vaguely related to The Boogieman.\u00a0 But Its<\/em> anonymity made it worse.\u00a0 It was It<\/em> only when your back was turned; when you faced It<\/em>, it became Jimmy, Steve, Richard, Lindsay, or Mouse.\u00a0 You couldn’t run backwards because you might trip on a tree root breaking through a sidewalk, and as you fell onto your back your last thought — just before becoming It<\/em> yourself — would be, I was wrong it wasn’t one of the guys, it was <\/em>It…<\/em><\/p>\n

This morning in particular, as he rose groggily from his twin bed, placed gingerly bare feet on the icy tiles of his bedroom floor, and rummaged about under the bed for the day’s wardrobe, The Boy knew this morning something special was going to happen.\u00a0 It was just something in the air, something that crackled like piles of dry leaves through which shuffled a pair of black high-top Keds. What it was, see, was this: he was going to get all the way to school pursued by It<\/em>, by a whole succession of It<\/em>s, and he was miraculously not going to become It<\/em> himself.\u00a0 It wouldn’t be easy.\u00a0 It<\/em> always assumed the character, behind his back, of the speediest of his friends, and The Boy himself was not athletic at all, let alone speedy.\u00a0 So he would have to race especially fast, and he would have to race without hesitation or looking back; he would have to burst out the door of his house, leap across the cement steps onto the lawn, and bound like a deer — boing… boing… — all the way to school.\u00a0 You were always safe when you got to school, because everyone, It<\/em> included, had to walk in the hallways.\u00a0 Running risked being tagged by a teacher, an ill-tempered janitor, or even the principal, the only captor conceivably more horrible than It<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES, How It Was: <\/em>Autumn<\/em>)<\/p>\n

<\/a>_______________________________<\/p>\n

About the image:<\/strong> The volcanoes surrounding the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Katmai National Park, in Alaska, have not erupted in a while. Nevertheless, ash from those past eruptions sometimes gets picked up by the wind and blown aloft again. Here, the wind is blowing to the southeast, “over Shelikof Strait, Kodiak Island, and the Gulf of Alaska.” For more information, see the page on Flickr<\/a> where I found this image. You can also see the approximate area shown in this photo on Google Maps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

[Image: photo by NASA’s Terra satellite, taken September 29, 2014. (Click to enlarge.) See the note at the foot of this post for more information.] From whiskey river: Our awareness is overwhelmed by hundreds of different thoughts, feelings and sensations. Some we latch onto because they’re attractive fantasies or scary preoccupations; some we try to […]<\/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":[183,247,1393,250,5,36,4,251],"tags":[1494,1987,3233,3620,3897,3898,3899,3900,3901],"class_list":{"0":"post-16078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-reading","12":"category-howitwas","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"tag-nasa","15":"tag-edward-hirsch","16":"tag-b-h-fairchild","17":"tag-autumn","18":"tag-volcanoes","19":"tag-tsoknyi-rinpoche","20":"tag-childhood-games","21":"tag-alaska","22":"tag-katmai-national-park","23":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4bk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078","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=16078"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16094,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078\/revisions\/16094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}