{"id":16106,"date":"2014-10-24T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-10-24T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16106"},"modified":"2014-10-23T09:13:56","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T13:13:56","slug":"the-deceptively-smallest-of-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/the-deceptively-smallest-of-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deceptively Smallest of Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: <\/em>Lesson #3<\/a>: On Starting Small, by user Don (theshanghaieye) on Flickr<\/a>; used under a Creative Commons license. (Click to enlarge.) The descriptive text accompanying the photo includes this note, from a source identified only as “Rules of Chess”: <\/em>If a pawn makes it all the way across the board, it may be promoted to any piece of the same color. They reminded me of the Lewis chessmen<\/a>.<\/em>]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

All That Is Glorious Around Us<\/strong><\/p>\n

is not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled
\noverlooks, towering clouds, but doing errands on a day
\nof driving rain, staying dry inside the silver skin of the car,
\n160,000 miles, still running just fine. Or later,
\nsitting in a caf\u00e9 warmed by the steam
\nfrom white chicken chili, two cups of dark coffee,
\nwatching the red and gold leaves race down the street,
\nconfetti from autumn’s bright parade. And I think
\nof how my mother struggles to breathe, how few good days
\nshe has now, how we never think about the glories
\nof breath, oxygen cascading down our throats to the lungs,
\nsimple as the journey of water over a rock. It is the nature
\nof stone \/ to be satisfied \/ writes Mary Oliver, It is the nature
\nof water \/ to want to be somewhere else, rushing down
\na rocky tor or high escarpment, the panoramic landscape
\nboundless behind it. But everything glorious is around
\nus already: black and blue graffiti shining in the rain’s
\nbright glaze, the small rainbows of oil on the pavement,
\nwhere the last car to park has left its mark on the glistening
\nstreet, this radiant world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Barbara Crooker [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It is only for a week or two that a broken chair or a door off its hinges is recognized for such. Soon, imperceptibly, it changes its character, and becomes the chair which is always left in the corner, the door which does not shut. A pin, fastening a torn valance, rusts itself into the texture of the stuff, is irremovable; the cracked dessert plate and the stew pan with a hole in it, set aside until the man who rivets and solders should chance to come that way, become part of the dresser, are taken down and dusted and put back, and when the man arrives no one remembers them as things in need of repair. Five large keys rest inside the best soup-tureen, scrupulously preserved though no one knows what it was they once opened, and the pastry-cutter is there too, little missed, for the teacup without a handle has taken its place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Sylvia Townsend Warner [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In The Middle<\/strong><\/p>\n

of a life that’s as complicated as everyone else’s,
\nstruggling for balance, juggling time.
\nThe mantle clock that was my grandfather’s
\nhas stopped at 9:20; we haven’t had time
\nto get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
\nthe chimes don’t ring. One day I look out the window,
\ngreen summer, the next, the leaves have already fallen,
\nand a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
\nour parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
\nagain how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
\nand evening’s slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
\nmixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
\ntwine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
\nhis tail, a metronome, 3\/4 time. We’ll never get there,
\nTime is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
\nus on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
\nsometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
\nof rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
\nin love, running out of time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Barbara Crooker [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

There’s a line in [Basin and Range<\/em>]<\/a>: “If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time. And then in a way you do not live at all, but in another way you live forever.” And I certainly developed this sense of time. I was fascinated by the intersection of human time and geologic time. You know, people just go along and build houses, they do this and that, they get married, one thing or another—and then an earthquake strikes where they happen to live. That earthquake was in the making all along, but nobody knows this! Human time is so different. The earth is sitting there, it’s just there, bobbing, and now—human time and geologic time, bang<\/em>, hairs crossed! The hairs crossed when gold was discovered in the American River and Sutter’s Mill, and they cross in any earthquake.<\/p>\n

The geologists all say a million years is the smallest unit they can really think in, and you come to understand what that means…<\/p>\n

The fact is that everything I’ve written is very soon going to be absolutely nothing—and I mean nothing<\/em>. It’s not about whether little kids are reading your work when you’re a hundred years dead or something, that’s ridiculous! What’s a hundred years? Nothing. And everything, it doesn’t evanesce, it disappears. And time goes on, and the planet does what it’s going to do. It makes you think that you’re living in your own time all right. It makes the idea of some kind of heritage seem touching, seem odd.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(John McPhee [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It is the nature of stone
\nto be satisfied.
\nIt is the nature of water
\nto want to be somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Everywhere we look;
\nthe sweet guttural swill of the water
\ntumbling.
\nEverywhere we look:
\nthe stone, basking in the sun,<\/p>\n

or offering itself
\nto the golden lichen.<\/p>\n

It is our nature not only to see
\nthat the world is beautiful<\/p>\n

but to stand in the dark, under the stars,
\nor at noon, in the rainfall of light,<\/p>\n

frenzied,
\nwringing our hands,<\/p>\n

half-mad, saying over and over:<\/p>\n

what does it mean, that the world is beautiful—
\nwhat does it mean?<\/p>\n

The child asks this,
\nand the determined, laboring adult asks this—<\/p>\n

both the carpenter and the scholar ask this,
\nand the fisherman and the teacher;<\/p>\n

both the rich and the poor ask this
\n(maybe the poor more than the rich)<\/p>\n

and the old and the very old, not yet having figured it out ask this
\ndesperately<\/p>\n

standing beside the golden coated field rock,
\nor the tumbling water,
\nor under the stars—<\/p>\n

what does it mean?<\/em>
\n what does it mean?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

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