{"id":16696,"date":"2015-04-24T06:38:33","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T10:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16696"},"modified":"2015-04-24T06:38:33","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T10:38:33","slug":"ecstasy-in-the-commonplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/ecstasy-in-the-commonplace\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecstasy in the Commonplace"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Mill City is Crumbling and I’m going to Art-A-Whirl!,” by user jadammel on Flickr. com<\/a>. (Used under a Creative Commons license.) This is an example of something called a Holgarama<\/a>: a panoramic photo taken with a camera called a Holga, whose cult status is attributable to the weirdly and unpredictably flawed photos it takes. Wikipedia<\/a> calls this, delicately, “its low-fidelity aesthetic.”]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Everything Is Going to Be All Right<\/strong><\/p>\n

How should I not be glad to contemplate<\/p>\n

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window<\/p>\n

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?<\/p>\n

There will be dying, there will be dying,
\nbut there is no need to go into that.<\/p>\n

The poems flow from the hand unbidden
\nand the hidden source is the watchful heart.<\/p>\n

The sun rises in spite of everything
\nand the far cities are beautiful and bright.<\/p>\n

I lie here in a riot of sunlight
\nwatching the day break and the clouds flying.<\/p>\n

Everything is going to be all right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Derek Mahon [source<\/a> (and elsewhere)<\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Every day my early morning walk along the water grants me a second waking. My feet are nimble, now my ears wake, and give thanks for the ocean’s song.<\/p>\n

This enormity, this cauldron of changing greens and blues, is the great palace of the earth. Everything is in it — monsters, devils, jewels, swimming angels, soft-eyed mammals that unhesitatingly exchange looks with us as we stand on the shore; also, sunk with some ship or during off-loading, artifacts of past decades or centuries; also the outpourings of fire under water, the lava trails; and kelp fields, coral shelves, and so many other secrets — the remembered and faithfully repeated recitations of the whales, the language of dolphins — and the multitude itself, the numbers and the kinds of shark, seal, worm, vegetations, and fish: cod, haddock, swordfish, hake, also the lavender sculpin<\/span>, the chisel-mouth<\/span>, the goldeye<\/span>, the puffer<\/span>, the tripletail<\/a>, the stargazing minnow<\/span>. How can we not know that, already, we live in paradise?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

Black Boys Play the Classics<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most popular “act” in
\nPenn Station
\nis the three black kids in ratty
\nsneakers & T-shirts playing
\ntwo violins and a cello—Brahms.
\nWhite men in business suits
\nhave already dug into their pockets
\nas they pass and they toss in
\na dollar or two without stopping.
\nBrown men in work-soiled khakis
\nstand with their mouths open,
\narms crossed on their bellies
\nas if they themselves have always
\nwanted to attempt those bars.
\nOne white boy, three, sits
\ncross-legged in front of his
\nidols—in ecstasy—
\ntheir slick, dark faces,
\ntheir thin, wiry arms,
\nwho must begin to look
\nlike angels!
\nWhy does this trembling
\npull us?
\nA: Beneath the surface we are one.<\/em>
\nB: Amazing! I did not think that they could speak this tongue.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

The horse-drawn tram has vanished, and so will the trolley, and some eccentric Berlin writer in the twenties of the twenty-first century, wishing to portray our time, will go to a museum of technological history and locate a hundred-year-old streetcar, yellow, uncouth, with old-fashioned curved seats, and in a museum of old costumes dig up a black, shiny-buttoned conductor\u2019s uniform.\u00a0 Then he will go home and compile a description of Berlin streets in bygone days.\u00a0 Everything, every trifle, will be valuable and meaningful: the conductor\u2019s purse, the advertisement over the window, that peculiar jolting motion which our great-grandchildren will perhaps imagine — everything will be ennobled and justified by its age.<\/p>\n

I think that here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in the far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Vladimir Nabokov [source<\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

This Ecstasy<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s not paradise I’m looking for
\nbut the naming I hardly gave a thought to.
\nCall it the gift I carried in my loneliness
\namong the animals before I started
\nlistening to the news. Call it the hint
\nI had about the knowledge that would explode.
\nIn the meantime, which is real time
\nplus the past, you\u2019re swishing your skirt
\nand speaking French, which is more
\nthan I can take, which I marvel at
\nlike a boy from the most distant seat
\nin the Kronos<\/span> Dome<\/span>, where I am one
\nof so many now I see the point
\nof falling off. There\u2019s not enough seats
\nfor us all to attend the eschaton<\/span>.
\nThis ecstasy that plants beauty
\non my tongue, so that if it were
\na wing, I’d be flying with the quickness
\nof a hummingbird and grace of a heron,
\nis so much mercy in light of the darkness
\nthat comes. Who would say consolation?
\nWho would say dross? Not that anyone
\nwould blame them. All night I hear
\nso many echoes in the forest I’m tempted
\nto look back, to save myself in hindsight,
\nwhere all I see is the absence of me.
\nWhere all I hear is your voice,
\nwhich couldn\u2019t be more strange.
\nHow to go on walking hand in hand
\nwithout our bodies on the path
\nwe made for our feet, talking, talking?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “Mill City is Crumbling and I’m going to Art-A-Whirl!,” by user jadammel on Flickr. com. (Used under a Creative Commons license.) This is an example of something called a Holgarama: a panoramic photo taken with a camera called a Holga, whose cult status is attributable to the weirdly and unpredictably flawed photos it takes. […]<\/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":[183,1393,250,5,36,105,251],"tags":[595,2124,2980,4030,4031,4032],"class_list":{"0":"post-16696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-reading","11":"category-short-fiction","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"tag-mary-oliver","14":"tag-vladimir-nabokov","15":"tag-chard-deniord","16":"tag-holgaramas","17":"tag-derek-mahon","18":"tag-toi-derricotte","19":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4li","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696","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=16696"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16704,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696\/revisions\/16704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}