{"id":16257,"date":"2015-01-02T11:48:34","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T16:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16257"},"modified":"2023-11-18T10:03:38","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T15:03:38","slug":"a-direction-in-which-to-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/a-direction-in-which-to-look\/","title":{"rendered":"A Direction in Which to Look"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Kp9G0zkorio?si=kYds8QkNgiqRXkke\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: Linda Ronstadt sings &#8220;Blue Bayou,&#8221; in a performance filmed in September, 1977.<br \/>\n(Lyrics <a title=\"Lyrics: 'SongTitle'\">here<\/a>.)]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From <em><a title=\"whiskey river: Rebecca Solnit, on looking back while traveling forward\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2014\/12\/how-do-you-calculate-upon-unforeseen-it.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">whiskey river<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Rebecca Solnit [<a title=\"Google Books: 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost,' by Rebecca Solnit\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=mgK5EdIQDL4C&amp;pg=PT17#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: 'New Year's Day' (excerpt), by Kim Addonizio\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2015\/01\/today-i-want-to-resolve-nothing.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">and<\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>New Year&#8217;s Day<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The rain this morning falls<br \/>\non the last of the snow<\/p>\n<p>and will wash it away. I can smell<br \/>\nthe grass again, and the torn leaves<\/p>\n<p>being eased down into the mud.<br \/>\nThe few loves I\u2019ve been allowed<\/p>\n<p>to keep are still sleeping<br \/>\non the West Coast. Here in Virginia<\/p>\n<p>I walk across the fields with only<br \/>\na few young cows for company.<\/p>\n<p>Big-boned and shy,<br \/>\nthey are like girls I remember<\/p>\n<p>from junior high, who never<br \/>\nspoke, who kept their heads<\/p>\n<p>lowered and their arms crossed against<br \/>\ntheir new breasts. Those girls<\/p>\n<p>are nearly forty now. Like me,<br \/>\nthey must sometimes stand<\/p>\n<p>at a window late at night, looking out<br \/>\non a silent backyard, at one<\/p>\n<p>rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls<br \/>\nof other people\u2019s houses.<\/p>\n<p>They must lie down some afternoons<br \/>\nand cry hard for whoever used<\/p>\n<p>to make them happiest,<br \/>\nand wonder how their lives<\/p>\n<p>have carried them<br \/>\nthis far without ever once<\/p>\n<p>explaining anything. I don&#8217;t know<br \/>\nwhy I&#8217;m walking out here<\/p>\n<p>with my coat darkening<br \/>\nand my boots sinking in, coming up<\/p>\n<p>with a mild sucking sound<br \/>\nI like to hear. I don&#8217;t care<\/p>\n<p>where those girls are now.<br \/>\nWhatever they&#8217;ve made of it<\/p>\n<p>they can have. <em>Today I want\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><br \/>\n<em>to resolve nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I only want to walk<\/em><br \/>\n<em>a little longer in the cold<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>blessing of the rain,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><br \/>\n<em>and lift my face to it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Kim Addonizio [<a title=\"Poetry Foundation: 'New Year's Day,' by Kim Addonizio\" href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poem\/171217\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from <em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What most distinguishes the Maya conception of time from the Western view, however, is not the counting system but the imagined nature of time itself. For us, time is inanimate: We feel that it &#8220;flows&#8221; by at a constant rate, with no heed paid to human or machine. We can neither give it a boost nor slow it down. For the Maya, however, time is organic &#8212; it can be stretched, shrunk, or even stopped by human activity; people are seen to be intimately involved in time&#8217;s passage&#8230; As divinely ordained ruler, [the king] was seen as the embodiment of time, and it was his duty to maintain the social, political, and cosmological order.<\/p>\n<p>The burden of that temporal responsibility comes to life in one of the most striking exhibits at Harvard University&#8217;s Peabody Museum &#8212; a cast of a stone monument from the Maya city of Cop\u00e1n, in Honduras, known as Altar Q. The square stele is carved with the figures of sixteen kings &#8212; four to a side &#8212; spanning nearly four hundred years of history. Time wraps around this monument, so that the sixteenth monarch is face to face with the first. The old king is passing what looks like a torch to the new king.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Dan Falk [<a title=\"Archaeology Magazine (March\/April 2004): 'Past, Present, Future: Perceptions of Time Through the Ages,' by Dan Falk\" href=\"http:\/\/lph.lpisd.org\/apps\/download\/2\/7OKwkVTOSV07urEkO830KP2anr6CRw5Y7AErCA7wW1nfXbu1.pdf\/Past_%20Present_%20Future_%20Perceptions%20of%20time.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The End of the Holidays<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We drop you at O\u2019Hare with your young husband,<br \/>\ntwo slim figures under paradoxical signs:<br \/>\nUnited and Departures. The season\u2019s perfect oxymoron.<br \/>\nDawn is a rumor, the wind bites, but there are things<br \/>\nfathers still can do for daughters.<br \/>\nOff you go looking tired and New Wave<br \/>\nunder the airport\u2019s aquarium lights,<br \/>\nwith your Coleman cooler and new, long coat,<br \/>\nsomething to wear to the office and to parties<br \/>\nwhere down jackets are not de rigeur.<br \/>\nLast week winter bared its teeth.<br \/>\nI think of summer and how the veins in a leaf<br \/>\ncome together and divide<br \/>\ncome together and divide.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s how it is with us now<br \/>\nas you fly west toward your thirties<br \/>\nI set my new cap at a nautical angle, shift<br \/>\nbaggage I know I\u2019ll carry with me always<br \/>\nto a nether hatch where it can do only small harm,<br \/>\nhaul up fresh sail and point my craft<br \/>\ntoward the punctual sunrise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Mark Perlberg [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Theater of Memory: New and Selected Poems,' by Mark Perlberg\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=ubVKAQAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA80#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: Linda Ronstadt sings &#8220;Blue Bayou,&#8221; in a performance filmed in September, 1977. (Lyrics here.)] From whiskey river: Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, [&hellip;]<\/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":[38,247,1393,593,74,5,36,251],"tags":[61,1019,1137,2702,3884,3945,3946,3947,3948],"class_list":{"0":"post-16257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-backwards","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-history-in-the-news","10":"category-music","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-reading","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"tag-memory","15":"tag-time","16":"tag-now","17":"tag-linda-ronstadt","18":"tag-rebecca-solnit","19":"tag-kim-addonizio","20":"tag-dan-falk","21":"tag-mark-perlberg","22":"tag-anticipation","23":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4ed","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257","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=16257"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26747,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257\/revisions\/26747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}