{"id":17686,"date":"2016-02-12T06:28:05","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T11:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17686"},"modified":"2016-02-12T06:28:05","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T11:28:05","slug":"please-continue-but-count-on-interruptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/please-continue-but-count-on-interruptions\/","title":{"rendered":"Please Continue. But Count on Interruptions."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7SE5ZSq8Tio?rel=0\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: &#8220;Stay Go,&#8221; by Robert Cray, from his album <\/em>Shame and A Sin<em>.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From <a title=\"whiskey river: Wallace Stegner, on the fragility of plans\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2016\/02\/you-can-plan-all-you-want-to.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Wallace Stegner [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Crossing to Safety,' by Wallace Stegner\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=SwUfJoxyXWIC&amp;pg=PA191#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: Robert Macfarlane, on the stop-and-go of writing + voyaging\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2016\/02\/as-pen-rises-from-page-between-words-so.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As the pen rises from the page between words, so the walker&#8217;s feet rise and fall between paces, and as the deer continues to run as it bounds from the earth and the dolphin continues to swim even as it leaps again and again from the sea, so writing and wayfaring are continuous activities, a running stitch, a persistence of the same seam or stream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Robert Macfarlane [<a title=\"Google Books: 'The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot,' by Robert Macfarlane\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=OR92FmqcXXkC&amp;pg=PT75#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and, from <a title=\"whiskey river's commonplace book: 'At Blackwater Pond,' by Mary Oliver\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriverscommonplace.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/priests-and-poets.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>whiskey river&#8217;s commonplace book<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>From The Long Sad Party<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Someone was saying<br \/>\nsomething about shadows covering the field, about<br \/>\nhow things pass, how one sleeps towards morning<br \/>\nand the morning goes.<\/p>\n<p>Someone was saying<br \/>\nhow the wind dies down but comes back,<br \/>\nhow shells are the coffins of wind<br \/>\nbut the weather continues.<\/p>\n<p>It was a long night<br \/>\nand someone said something about the moon shedding its white<br \/>\non the cold field, that there was nothing ahead<br \/>\nbut more of the same.<\/p>\n<p>Someone mentioned<br \/>\na city she had been in before the war, a room with two candles<br \/>\nagainst a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.<br \/>\nWe begin to believe<\/p>\n<p>the night would not end.<br \/>\nSomeone was saying the music was over and no one had noticed.<br \/>\nThen someone said something about the planets, about the stars,<br \/>\nhow small they were, how far away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Mark Strand [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Collected Poems,' by Mark Strand\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=HHxIAwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PT175#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"[ibid.]\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriverscommonplace.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/priests-and-poets.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you found a contradiction in your own thoughts, it&#8217;s very unlikely that your whole mentality would break down. Instead, you would probably begin to question the beliefs or modes of reasoning which you felt had led to the contradictory thoughts. In other words, to the extent you could, you would step out of the systems inside you which you felt were responsible for the contradiction, and try to repair them. One of the least likely things for you to do would be to throw up your arms and cry, &#8220;Well, I guess that shows that I believe everything now!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Douglas R. Hofstadter [<a title=\"Internet Archive: 'Godel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid,' by Douglas Hofstadter\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/GEBen_201404\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Neither from <em>whiskey river<\/em>, nor from its <em>commonplace book<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The Natural History of Secrets<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Scraps of paper stapled to telephone poles<br \/>\nshiver in the wind, informative fish scales:<br \/>\nlost cat, yoga class, someone looking for a bass player.<\/p>\n<p>People\u2019s wants and needs right there<br \/>\nfor anyone to read, everyone to read,<br \/>\nlike Latin engravings, like open heart surgery.<\/p>\n<p>I never felt the street belonged to me.<br \/>\nI was just visiting. Have you ever walked<br \/>\nthrough a museum without looking at a thing?<\/p>\n<p>An old boyfriend calls, he thinks we\u2019re just the same;<br \/>\nit pins my stomach to my spine,<br \/>\nlike a butterfly on exhibit.<\/p>\n<p>It helps to say these things out loud:<br \/>\nstate your condition, instant by instant,<br \/>\nlike the New York Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n<p>The strings that hold my vertebrae together<br \/>\nare loosening. Eventually<br \/>\nyour secrets become yours to throw away.<\/p>\n<p>Or if you keep them, like crumpled receipts,<br \/>\nthey fossilize to amber:<br \/>\nyou could make them into earrings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Austen Leah Rosenfeld [<a title=\"Antioch Review (Winter, 2012): 'A Natural History of Secrets,' by Austen Leah Rosenfeld\" href=\"http:\/\/antiochreviewblog.com\/2014\/10\/08\/poem-wednesday-the-natural-history-of-secrets-by-austen-leah-rosenfeld\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a kind of back-door way, &#8220;defunctness&#8221; inheres and may be located via objects updated for their own good. The <em>girdle<\/em> gone to <em>shapewear<\/em> for instance. Or in-line skates&#8230; ok, they are nice. I&#8217;m not arguing that. Streamlined. Adult-sized. Full of compensations for weak ankles. But now, no more skate keys, the kind that came with clamp-on skates so you could tighten the little wheels-on-a-platform to your shoe, reverse sardine-can style. The sensation of the little clamps at the four corners of your thin and insubstantial sneaker: defunct, gone. (And, too, the word &#8220;roller&#8221; &#8212; though my favorite Baltimore team, The Junkyard Dolls, is not playing, thank God, &#8220;in-line derby.&#8221;) Similarly, the one-touch, speedy, programmable cell phone has replaced the sensation of dialing. One no longer removes her finger and lets the dial return on its own, nor can one choose to allow the finger to enjoy the firm, free ride back around to the starting position.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Lia Purpura [<a title=\"Defunct (A Literary Deposit for the Ages): 'Defunct: A Critical Methodology,' by Lia Purpura\" href=\"http:\/\/www.defunctmag.com\/Essays\/Technology\/Purpura_A-Critical-Methodology.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Winged Purposes<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Fly from me does all I would have stay,<br \/>\nthe blossoms did not stay, stayed not the frost<br \/>\nin the yellow grass. Every leash snapped,<br \/>\nevery contract void, and flying in the crows<br \/>\nlingers but a moment in the graveyard oaks<br \/>\nyet inside me it never stops so I can\u2019t tell<br \/>\nwho is chasing, who chased, I can sleep<br \/>\ninto afternoon and still wake soaring.<br \/>\nSo out come the bats, down spiral swifts<br \/>\ninto the chimneys, Hey, I\u2019m real, say the dream-<br \/>\nfigments then are gone like breath-prints<br \/>\non a window, handwriting in snow. Whatever<br \/>\nI hold however flies apart, the children skip<br \/>\ninto the park come out middle-aged<br \/>\nwith children of their own. Your laugh<br \/>\nover the phone, will it ever answer me again?<br \/>\nToo much flying, photons perforating us,<br \/>\nvoices hurtling into outer space, Whitman<br \/>\nout past Neptune, Dickinson retreating<br \/>\nyet getting brighter. Remember running<br \/>\nbarefoot across hot sand into the sea\u2019s<br \/>\nhovering, remember my hand as we darted<br \/>\nagainst the holiday Broadway throng,<br \/>\ncatching your train just as it was leaving?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Dean Young [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Fall Higher,' by Dean Young\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=AAa292HEK7oC&amp;pg=PA101#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>#63:<\/strong> Time itself may resemble a river, the flight of an arrow, a road on a map. But we don&#8217;t &#8212; can&#8217;t &#8212; remember its passing that way. In our minds, the past becomes a chain of floating ice cubes, the flight of many arrows, the dashed line down the center of a roadway. We say, &#8220;a series of events&#8221;; not the <em>series<\/em>, but the <em>events<\/em>, stay with us. We remember signal moments, and forget (or disregard) what lay between them. Each of these moments began, &#8220;happened,&#8221; and then ended. And our memory collects them obsessively, clings to them: we&#8217;re fetishists of discontinuity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(JES, <em>Maxims for Nostalgists<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: &#8220;Stay Go,&#8221; by Robert Cray, from his album Shame and A Sin.] From whiskey river: You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought [&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":"Robert Cray, Mark Strand, Lia Purpura, et al.: \"Please Continue. 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