{"id":17334,"date":"2015-10-16T06:56:53","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T10:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17334"},"modified":"2015-10-16T06:56:53","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T10:56:53","slug":"things-to-keep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/things-to-keep\/","title":{"rendered":"Things to Keep"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'Gripped,'<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Gripped,” by user s2ublack (Stewart Black) on Flickr<\/a>. Used under a Creative Commons license.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Necessities<\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/strong><\/p>\n

A map of the world<\/em>. Not the one in the atlas,
\nbut the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in.
\nWith the blue thread of the river by which we grew up.
\nThe green smear of the woods we first made love in.
\nThe yellow city we thought was our future.
\nThe red highways not traveled, the green ones
\nwith their missed exits, the black side roads
\nwhich took us where we had not meant to go.
\nThe high peaks, recorded by relatives,
\nthough we prefer certain unmarked elevations,
\nthe private alps no one knows we have climbed.
\nThe careful boundaries we draw and erase.
\nAnd always, around the edges,
\nthe opaque wash of blue, concealing
\nthe drop-off they have stepped into before us,
\nsingly, mapless, not looking back.<\/p>\n

2<\/strong><\/p>\n

The illusion of progress<\/em>. Imagine our lives without it:
\ntape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off.
\nWheels turning but going nowhere.
\nPaintings flat, with no vanishing point.
\nThe plots of all novels circular;
\npage numbers reversing themselves past the middle.
\nThe mountaintop no longer a goal,
\nmerely the point between ascent and descent.
\nAll streets looping back on themselves;
\nlife as a beckoning road an absurd idea.
\nOur children refusing to grow out of their childhoods;
\nthe years refusing to drag themselves
\ntoward the new century.
\nAnd hope, the puppy that bounds ahead,
\nno longer a household animal.<\/p>\n

3<\/strong><\/p>\n

Answers to questions<\/em>, an endless supply.
\nNew ones that startle, old ones that reassure us.
\nAll of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment
\nsolutions, like kisses or surgery.
\nRising inflections countered by level voices,
\nwords beginning with w<\/em> hushed
\nby declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere
\nof the period chasing after the hook,
\nthe doubter that walks on water
\nand treads air and refuses to go away.<\/p>\n

4<\/strong><\/p>\n

Evidence that we matter<\/em>. The crash of the plane
\nwhich, at the last moment, we did not take.
\nThe involuntary turn of the head,
\nwhich caused the bullet to miss us.
\nThe obscene caller who wakes us at midnight
\nto the smell of gas. The moon’s
\nfull blessing when we fell in love,
\nits black mood when it was all over.
\nConfirm us, we say to the world,
\nwith your weather, your gifts, your warnings,
\nyour ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences.<\/p>\n

5<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even now, the old things first things<\/em>,
\nwhich taught us language. Things of day and of night.
\nIrrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon.
\nFire as revolution, grass as the heir
\nto all revolutions. Snow
\nas the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered.
\nThe river as what we wish it to be.
\nTrees in their humanness, animals in their otherness.
\nSummits. Chasms. Clearings.
\nAnd stars, which gave us the word distance,
\nso we could name our deepest sadness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory<\/em> and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

Nightingale<\/strong><\/p>\n

When our daughter was a baby,
\nshe\u2019d sometimes cry and cry,<\/p>\n

raw-throated nightingale heavy
\non evening\u2019s shoulders,<\/p>\n

no solace in the rocking lullaby,
\nwarm milk, blue velvet blanket,<\/p>\n

nor in the whispered words,
\nthe quiet shush we\u2019d loose<\/p>\n

while pacing back and forth
\nacross the wooden floors.<\/p>\n

Until one night, by chance,
\nwe needed diapers,<\/p>\n

and my wife, as tired
\nas I and needing, if not rest,<\/p>\n

at least another\u2019s voice to sooth
\nthe small disquiet in her chest,<\/p>\n

lifted Morgan from the crib,
\nbundled her against the cold,<\/p>\n

and together we walked out beneath
\nthe stars that pulsed<\/p>\n

against the winter\u2019s crisp
\nand piled into the car.<\/p>\n

And halfway to the store,
\nheater blowing warm against our feet,<\/p>\n

we noticed the muffled
\nwind that faintly buffeted the glass,<\/p>\n

the slapping, even rhythm
\nof the concrete seams we crossed,<\/p>\n

and the silence—but for heavy breathing
\ncoming from the car seat in the back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

Say It<\/strong><\/p>\n

Say that it is the continuous life
\nyou desire, that one day might stretch into
\nthe next without a seam, without seeming
\nto move one minute away from the past
\nor that in passing through whatever comes<\/p>\n

you keep coming to the faces you love,
\nnever leaving them entirely behind.<\/p>\n

Say that it is simply a wish to waste
\ntime forever, lingering with the friends
\nyou\u2019ve gathered together, a gradual
\nillumination traveling the spine,
\neyes brimming with the moment that is now.<\/p>\n

Say that it is the impulse of the soul
\nto endure forever. Say it again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

We geezers carry about a bulging directory of dead husbands or wives, children, parents, lovers, brothers and sisters, dentists and shrinks, office sidekicks, summer neighbors, classmates, and bosses, all once entirely familiar to us and seen as part of the safe landscape of the day. It’s no wonder we’re a bit bent. The surprise, for me, is that the accruing weight of these departures doesn’t bury us, and that even the pain of an almost unbearable loss gives way quite quickly to something more distant but still stubbornly gleaming. The dead have departed, but gestures and glances and tones of voice of theirs, even scraps of clothing — that pale-yellow Saks scarf — reappear unexpectedly, along with accompanying touches of sweetness or irritation.<\/p>\n

Our dead are almost beyond counting and we want to herd them along, pen them up somewhere in order to keep them straight. I like to think of mine as fellow-voyagers crowded aboard the \u00cele de France (the idea is swiped from “Outward Bound”)*…<\/p>\n

[…enumerates many names…]<\/em><\/p>\n

These names are best kept in mind rather than boxed and put away somewhere. Old letters are engrossing but feel historic in numbers, photo albums delightful but with a glum after-kick like a chocolate caramel. Home movies are killers: Zeke, a long-gone Lab, alive again, rushing from right to left with a tennis ball in his mouth; my sister Nancy, stunning at seventeen, smoking a lipstick-stained cigarette aboard Astrid, with the breeze stirring her tied-up brown hair; my mother laughing and ducking out of the picture again, waving her hands in front of her face in embarrassment — she’s about thirty-five. Me sitting cross-legged under a Ping-Pong table, at eleven. Take us away.<\/p>\n

My list of names is banal but astounding, and it’s barely a fraction, the ones that slip into view in the first minute or two. Anyone over sixty knows this; my list is only longer. I don’t go there often, but, once I start, the battalion of the dead is on duty, alertly waiting. Why do they sustain me so, cheer me up, remind me of life? I don’t understand this. Why am I not endlessly grieving?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

____________________<\/p>\n

* I don’t know the meaning of the conjoined phrases \u00cele de France<\/em> and Outward Bound<\/em> (even in quotation marks — a book? movie?); neither appears elsewhere in Roger Angell’s essay, and I haven’t (yet) found them together on the Web…<\/p>\n

…except<\/em> as the title on a single page of Scientific American<\/em>, volume 137, issue 4 (October 1927). The page seems to be one of those grouped under the heading “Camera Shots of Scientific Events,” and depicts five photographs of the cruise ship called the \u00cele de France<\/em>, at the time “the world’s sixth largest vessel.” You can see the page for yourself, here<\/a> (240KB PDF).<\/p>\n

Edit to add, a few minutes later:<\/strong> Outward Bound<\/em>, as it happens, was indeed a 1930 film most of whose action takes place on a cruise ship (although the \u00cele de France<\/em> is not named in it). From Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Henry and Ann (Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Helen Chandler), a pair of young lovers, are planning to commit suicide and are worried about what will happen to their dog when they are gone. The scene then changes to a disparate group of passengers who find themselves aboard a darkened, fog-enshrouded crewless boat, sailing to an unknown destination…<\/p>\n

In time, the passengers slowly realize what is going on: they are all dead. They will be judged during the course of the voyage and go either to Heaven or to Hell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whew<\/em>. I just hate leaving unsolved an obviously solvable mystery!<\/p>\n

(As for the \u00cele de France<\/em> itself, you can read about its demise here<\/a> — in yet another Hollywood film, 1960’s The Last Voyage<\/em>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Gripped,” by user s2ublack (Stewart Black) on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.] From whiskey river: Necessities 1 A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas, but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in. With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up. […]<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,247,1393,53,5,251,4159],"tags":[1421,2314,2631,4191,4192],"class_list":{"0":"post-17334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-backwards","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-movies-media","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-milan-kundera","14":"tag-lisel-mueller","15":"tag-joyce-sutphen","16":"tag-tony-morris","17":"tag-roger-angell","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4vA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17334","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=17334"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17344,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17334\/revisions\/17344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}