{"id":16647,"date":"2015-04-17T12:01:40","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T16:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16647"},"modified":"2017-04-05T11:11:46","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T15:11:46","slug":"seeking-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/seeking-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeking Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “reflections (A),” by Camil Tulcan (camil_t) on Flickr<\/a>. (Click image to enlarge.) Used under a Creative Commons license.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

You can’t see yourself. You know what you look like because of mirrors and photographs, but out there in the world, as you move among your fellow human beings, whether strangers or friends or the most intimate beloveds, your own face is invisible to you. You can see other parts of yourself, arms and legs, hands and feet, shoulders and torso, but only from the front, nothing of the back except the backs of your legs if you twist them into the right position, but not your face, never your face, and in the end — at least as far as others are concerned — your face is who you are, the essential fact of your identity. Passports do not contain pictures of hands and feet. Even you, who have lived inside your body for sixty-four years now, would probably be unable to recognize your foot in an isolated photograph of that foot, not to speak of your ear, or your elbow, or one of your eyes in close-up. All so familiar to you in the context of the whole, but utterly anonymous when taken piece by piece. We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You’d dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You’d see the face of a stranger. And you’d know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I Have Decided<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.<\/p>\n

Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.<\/p>\n

Are you following me?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

God on the Treadmill<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes it takes miles to give up resistance,
\nthough the mirror shows a body unresisting, shows
\nperhaps something to admire. Others may.
\nA body without difficulty loosening, breaking
\nits own willfulness, cracking itself
\nlike a rusted bolt that finally begins to turn.
\nA body that turns. Toward openness, fantasy,
\nthose desires of and not of the body. Sometimes
\nI notice a powerful man engaged steadily
\nrepeating difficult action: folding himself, his tight
\nskin, over and over, lifting a declined torso
\nor pulling up a suspended trunk, and think,
\nhow neat, how controlled to be inside that body.
\nI struggle not to stare, grip myself not to lose myself
\ninside the thought of being inside that body.
\nI can never get there I know because it is
\nthe image I want, the veneer of muscle
\nhaving taken primacy from mind, now first
\namong equals: bicep, abdominal, quadricep,
\nthe launch after launch of a perpetual run.
\nI want the image even when I am it, or nearly it—
\nbecause even then, I am also that other thing,
\nself-conscious, burdened, struggling for movement.<\/p>\n

If there is a link between God and animals—
\nthe way He identifies with the so much
\nthat isn\u2019t us, as He had to have, to have made them—
\nit must be in the body enacting will immediate
\nthrough movement, as if with a word
\ncreating a world (enacting creation immediate
\nthrough speech). Which is to say, this is my time
\nof prayer, my only time: miles in, as long
\nas it takes for the body to relinquish resistance.
\nBright, public, surrounded by others who move
\ntoward better movement. And all the while seeing
\nin a wall of mirrors that image of myself, deer,
\nhorse, running close kin to breathing, motion
\nnecessary to survival, perfect image of a man
\nthat I\u2019m merely a self-conscious copy of.
\nI pray for things, of course, for myself
\nand for those whose pain touches me, selfish
\nand unselfish prayers for intimates and strangers.
\nI pray for the runner in the mirror, too, sleek, easy
\nanimal, unselfconscious and present, and absent
\nas a god, the man who could almost be me,
\nwho I do my best to rush toward. I pray that
\none day, by His grace, we may meet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Benjamin S. Grossberg [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

If “Landslide” doesn’t qualify as a theme song for Stevie Nicks, I can’t imagine what does. It was the first song she contributed to Fleetwood Mac’s repertoire, and was written during (and perhaps more or less about) a rocky period in her personal relationship with Lindsay Buckingham. Says Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Nicks has performed it on every Fleetwood Mac tour since joining the band, with the exception of the Shake the Cage<\/em> tour, as well as all of her own solo tours from 2005 onwards.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Its lyrics offer something at once both questioning and reassuring. Even if it hadn’t been a hit for Fleetwood Mac, other performers certainly would have come upon it at some point, responded to those lyrics and to the quiet, acoustic treatment the words seem to require, and made of it an anthem. (Of course, since it was<\/em> a hit for Nicks and her band, it’s been taken up successfully by artists from the Dixie Chicks to Smashing Pumpkins.)<\/p>\n

Here’s the original version, from 1975’s Fleetwood Mac<\/em> album.
\n\n

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

[Image: “reflections (A),” by Camil Tulcan (camil_t) on Flickr. (Click image to enlarge.) Used under a Creative Commons license.] From whiskey river: You can’t see yourself. You know what you look like because of mirrors and photographs, but out there in the world, as you move among your fellow human beings, whether strangers or friends […]<\/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":[247,1393,74,250,5,251],"tags":[595,1421,1584,3314,4026,4027,4028,4029],"class_list":{"0":"post-16647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"tag-mary-oliver","13":"tag-milan-kundera","14":"tag-fleetwood-mac","15":"tag-paul-auster","16":"tag-mirrors","17":"tag-stevie-nicks","18":"tag-benjamin-s-grossberg","19":"tag-reflections","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4kv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16647","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=16647"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19038,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16647\/revisions\/19038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}