{"id":16379,"date":"2015-02-13T12:23:50","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T17:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16379"},"modified":"2015-02-13T12:23:50","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T17:23:50","slug":"the-door-open-the-light-tentative-the-compass-uncertain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/the-door-open-the-light-tentative-the-compass-uncertain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Door Open, the Light Tentative, the Compass Uncertain"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: a colony of chinstrap penguins in the bowl of Mount Michael — an active volcano in Antarctica. Photo by\u00a0Sebasti\u00e3o Salgado, from his spectacular book <\/em>Genesis<\/a>. “These landscapes are as alive as I am,” Salgado has said. “One day I was walking around rocks near a volcano that were one day old. They had just become solid.”]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Clarissa Pinkola Estes [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Mind Wanting More<\/strong><\/p>\n

Only a beige slat of sun
\nabove the horizon, like a shade pulled
\nnot quite down. Otherwise,
\nclouds. Sea rippled here and
\nthere. Birds reluctant to fly.
\nThe mind wants a shaft of sun to
\nstir the grey porridge of clouds,
\nan osprey to stitch sea to sky
\nwith its barred wings, some dramatic
\nmusic: a symphony, perhaps
\na Chinese gong.<\/p>\n

But the mind always
\nwants more than it has —
\none more bright day of sun,
\none more clear night in bed
\nwith the moon; one more hour
\nto get the words right; one
\nmore chance for the heart in hiding
\nto emerge from its thicket
\nin dried grasses — as if this quiet day
\nwith its tentative light weren’t enough,
\nas if joy weren’t strewn all around.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The wind of longing blows to your right, from the orange groves, and to your left, from the sea salt. A fog, approaching the chambers of your heart from the north, makes it difficult for memory to distinguish what is private from what is public. You fear for the present stifled by the hegemony of the past and fear for the past from the absurdity of the present. You do not know where to stand at this crossroads. Are you what you were, or what you are now? You fear you will forget tomorrow while mired in the question: In which time do I live?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

As If<\/strong><\/p>\n

How do you explain why elephants
\nappear to move their unwieldy hulks
\nwith greater dignity than most humans do
\nin their finest moments,
\nas if they had evolved beyond wanting
\nanything but what they have?
\nWhy does the field begin to ripple
\nbefore the wind arrives in whispers,
\nas if there were a communication,
\nas if the landscape were poorly dubbed,
\nand we weren\u2019t expected to notice?
\nWhat butterfly does not dart away from us
\nas if it could sense our latent cruelties,
\nand yet return to check and double-check?
\nHas the night not gotten recently darker,
\nas if to insinuate that we have squandered
\nthe light that was there?
\nHave we made too much of our own?
\nAnd did you notice afterward the dawn
\nopening up with a tentative eagerness
\nas if there were something crucial to illumine,
\nas if we would wake up early just to see it?
\nI imagine you reading this now
\nwith an expression of quiet trouble
\nitself troubled by currents of hope,
\nas if you imagined me here with you,
\nas if I might be able to see your expression,
\nand at least answer it with mine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(J. Allyn Rosser [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

When I dance I dance; when I sleep I sleep; yes, when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been concerned with extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of solitude, and to myself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Michel de Montaigne [source<\/em><\/a> (and many elsewheres)])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

People do not live in the present always, at one with it. They live at all kinds of and manners of distance from it, as difficult to measure as the course of planets. Fears and traumas make their journeys slanted, peripheral, uneven, evasive.<\/p>\n

I, myself, concentrated so much on my sixth sense that I developed this vision which sees beyond facts, the better to find sensations and divinations. It is possible I never learned the names of birds in order to discover the bird of peace, the bird of paradise, the bird of the soul, the bird of desire. It is possible I avoided learning the names of composers and their music the better to close my eyes and listen to the mystery of all music as an ocean. It may be I have not learned dates in history in order to reach the essence of timelessness. It may be I never learned geography the better to map my own routes and discover my own lands. The unknown was my compass. The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unknown was my science and progress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Ana\u00efs Nin [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: a colony of chinstrap penguins in the bowl of Mount Michael — an active volcano in Antarctica. Photo by\u00a0Sebasti\u00e3o Salgado, from his spectacular book Genesis. “These landscapes are as alive as I am,” Salgado has said. “One day I was walking around rocks near a volcano that were one day old. They had just […]<\/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":[247,1393,405,250,5,36,251],"tags":[1859,2587,2933,3544,3963,3964,3965,3966],"class_list":{"0":"post-16379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-nature","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-reading","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"tag-holly-hughes","14":"tag-j-allyn-rosser","15":"tag-distance","16":"tag-michel-de-montaigne","17":"tag-mahmoud-darwish","18":"tag-clarissa-pinkola-estes","19":"tag-uncertainty","20":"tag-anais-nin","21":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4gb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16379","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=16379"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16388,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16379\/revisions\/16388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}