{"id":16150,"date":"2014-11-07T12:03:09","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T17:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16150"},"modified":"2014-11-07T12:03:09","modified_gmt":"2014-11-07T17:03:09","slug":"suspended-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/suspended-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspended Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: photograph by Saul Leiter. I know very little about this photo, although its title <\/em>might be “Riding the Surface.” (Leiter didn’t title his photographs enigmatically, as a rule; this one might even be called “Bus.”) It was taken sometime in the 1960s, probably in New York City. Found widely around the Web, it seems — as best as I can tell — to have been among the photos in Leiter’s collection called <\/em>Early Color<\/a> (2006)<\/em>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, ‘We are All Writing God’s Poem’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, the sky’s the soft blue of a work shirt washed
\na thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
\nbegins with a single step. On the interstate listening
\nto NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
\nsay, “The universe is not only stranger than we
\nthink, it’s stranger than we can think.” I think
\nI’ve driven into spring, as the woods revive
\nwith a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
\nscarves flung over bark’s bare limbs. Barely doing
\nsixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound<\/em>,
\nand aren’t we just? Just yesterday,<\/em>
\n I read Li Po: “There is no end of things<\/em>
\n in the heart,” but it seems like things<\/em>
\n are always ending — vacation or childhood,<\/em>
\n relationships, stores going out of business,<\/em>
\n like the one that sold jeans that really fit —<\/em>
\n And where do we fit in? How can we get up<\/em>
\n in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,<\/em>
\n put one foot after the other, open the window,<\/em>
\n make coffee, watch the steam curl up<\/em>
\n and disappear. At night, the scent of phlox curls<\/em>
\n in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,<\/em>
\n lavender, thistle, a box of spilled crayons<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I see the mountains in the sky; the great clouds; and the moon; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is “it” — it is not exactly beauty that I mean… A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too: of the infinite oddity of the human position; with the moon up there and those mountain clouds. Who am I, what am I, and so on: these questions are always floating about in me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Virginia Woolf [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a> (italicized lines):<\/p>\n

Saga<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everything that ever happened to me<\/em>
\n is just hanging — crushed<\/em>
\n and sparkling — in the air,<\/em>
\n waiting to happen to you.<\/em>
\nEverything that ever happened to me
\nhappened to somebody else first.
\nI would give you an example
\nbut they are all invisible.
\nOr off gallivanting around the globe.
\nNot here when I need them
\nnow that I need them
\nif I ever did which I doubt.
\nBeing particular has its problems.
\nIn particular there is a rift through everything.
\nThere is a rift running the length of Iceland
\nand so a rift runs through every family
\nand between families a feud.
\nIt\u2019s called a saga. Rifts and sagas
\nfill the air, and beautiful old women
\nsing of them, so the air is filled with
\nmusic and the smell of berries and apples
\nand shouting when a gun goes off
\nand crying in closed rooms.
\nFaces, who needs them?
\nEating the blood of oranges
\nI in my alcove could use one.
\nAbbas<\/a> and ammas<\/a>!
\ncome out of your huts, travel
\nhalfway around the world,
\ninspect my secret bank account of joy!
\nMy face is a jar of honey
\nyou can look through,
\nyou can see everything
\nis muted, so terribly muted,
\nwho could ever speak of it,
\nsealed and held up for all?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

But the overriding emotion in\u00a0[photographer Saul Leiter’s] work is a stillness, tenderness, and grace that is at odds with the mad rush of New York street life. “In No Great Hurry,” the understated film made about Leiter last year by the filmmaker Tomas Leach, contains an exchange that gets to the core of Leiter’s practice. Late in the film, Leiter said, “There are the things that are out in the open and then there are the things that are hidden, and life has more to do, the real world has more to do with what is hidden, maybe. You think?”…<\/p>\n

The content of Saul Leiter’s photographs arrives on a sort of delay: it takes a moment after the first glance to know what the picture is about. You don\u2019t so much see the image as let it dissolve into your consciousness, like a tablet in a glass of water. One of the difficulties of photography is that it is much better at being explicit than at being reticent. Precisely how the hypnotic and dreamlike feeling is achieved in Leiter’s work is a mystery, even to their creator. As he said in “In No Great Hurry,” laughing, “If I’d only known which ones would be very good and liked, I wouldn’t have had to do all the thousands of others.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Teju Cole [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

God Particles<\/strong><\/p>\n

I could almost hear their soft collisions
\non the cold air today, but when I came in,<\/p>\n

shed my layers and stood alone by the fire,
\nI felt them float toward me like spores<\/p>\n

flung far from their source, having crossed
\nmiles of oceans and fields unknown to most<\/p>\n

just to keep my body fixed to its place
\non the earth. Call them God if you must,<\/p>\n

these messengers that bring hard evidence
\nof what I once was and where I have been—<\/p>\n

filling me with bits of stardust, whaleskin,
\ngoosedown from the pillow where Einstein<\/p>\n

once slept, tucked in his cottage in New Jersey,
\ndreaming of things I know I\u2019ll never see.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(James Crews [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Come to me here from Crete<\/strong><\/p>\n

Come to me here from Crete,<\/p>\n

To this holy temple, where
\nYour lovely apple grove stands,
\nAnd your altars that flicker
\nWith incense.<\/p>\n

And below the apple branches, cold
\nClear water sounds, everything shadowed
\nBy roses, and sleep that falls from
\nBright shaking leaves.<\/p>\n

And a pasture for horses blossoms
\nWith the flowers of spring, and breezes
\nAre flowing here like honey:
\nCome to me here,<\/p>\n

Here, Cyprian, delicately taking
\nNectar in golden cups
\nMixed with a festive joy,
\nAnd pour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

Suppose a person breaks a billion-world universe into tiny dust-motes, and another person does the same, and so on [up to ten persons]. Then one of them takes all the tiny dust-motes [from one billion-world universe] and goes toward the east, dropping one dust-mote after he passes through worlds as numerous as all the dust-motes he carries. After he passes through the same number of worlds, he drops another dust-mote. He does so until he has dropped all the tiny dust-motes. Another person [of the ten] walks toward the south [and does the same]. This continues until the same is done in the west, the north, each of the four intermediate directions, the zenith, and the nadir. Good man, can anyone know the number of these worlds that have been thus traversed?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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[Image: photograph by Saul Leiter. I know very little about this photo, although its title might be “Riding the Surface.” (Leiter didn’t title his photographs enigmatically, as a rule; this one might even be called “Bus.”) It was taken sometime in the 1960s, probably in New York City. Found widely around the Web, it seems […]<\/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":[247,1393,250,5,36,251],"tags":[3075,3394,3483,3916,3917,3918,3919,3921],"class_list":{"0":"post-16150","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-reading","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"tag-mary-ruefle","13":"tag-barbara-crooker","14":"tag-virginia-woolf","15":"tag-saul-leiter","16":"tag-teju-cole","17":"tag-james-crews","18":"tag-sappho","19":"tag-mahayan-sutras","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4cu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16150","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=16150"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16155,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16150\/revisions\/16155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}