{"id":17695,"date":"2016-02-19T11:10:04","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T16:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17695"},"modified":"2016-02-19T11:10:04","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T16:10:04","slug":"genii-locorum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/genii-locorum\/","title":{"rendered":"Genii Locorum<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'81,'<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “81,” by the user known as “Fu Ke,” on Flickr<\/a>. I came really close to using a half-dozen or so photos by this user instead; finally decided that this best aligns with today’s theme (such as it is). It’s very… <\/em>Escherian, no?]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

For we human beings are used to inappropriate things; we are accustomed to the clatter of the incongruous; it is a tune to which we can go to sleep. If one appropriate thing happens, it wakes us up like the pang of a perfect chord.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(G. K. Chesterton [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Nights Our House Comes to Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some nights in midwinter when the creek clogs
\nWith ice and the spines of fir trees stiffen
\nUnder a blank, frozen sky,
\nOn these nights our house comes to life.
\nIt happens when you’re half asleep:
\nA sudden crack, a fractured dream, you bolting
\nUpright – but all you can hear is the clock
\nYour great-grandfather found in 1860
\nAnd smuggled here from Dublin for his future bride,
\nA being as unknown to him then as she is now
\nTo you, a being as distant as the strangers
\nWho built this house, and died in this room
\nSome cold, still night, like tonight,
\nWhen all that was heard were the rhythmic clicks
\nOf a pendulum, and something, barely audible,
\nMoving on the dark landing of the attic stairs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Matthew Brennan [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness, dear, my happiness will remain, in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal’s black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Perhaps we are here<\/em> in order to say: house,
\nbridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window—
\nat most: column, tower… But to say<\/em> them, you must understand,
\noh to say them more<\/em> intensely than the Things themselves
\nEver dreamed of existing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Rainer Maria Rilke [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Massachusetts<\/strong>
\n(excerpt)<\/span><\/p>\n

We fought in Salem,
\nas she nosed the rented car
\nthrough streets that
\nstubbornly refused to match
\nthe squiggled lines
\naccordioning from my lap.
\nShe pressed me for direction
\nas I spun the folding paper
\nlike a compass point,
\nurged me for instruction
\nas I traced the lines like Braille,
\nmy fingers blinded,
\ntapping out the spell of history;
\nI could not navigate this town.
\n[…]\nMy lover, steering wheel in hand,
\nstared into narrow streets
\nwith the eyes of a dark bird.
\n\u201cWhich way,\u201d she cawed, \u201cwhich way?\u201d
\nBut mine glowed with the blankness
\nof a woman swaying from a noose,
\nclothing asunder,
\ncurses drowning in an airless throat,
\nspirit driven from its home;
\nit circled now above our heads.
\nThe useless atlas crumpled at my feet,
\nit could not lead me to a place
\nwhere threat did not bear down like heavy stones;
\nwe fought in Salem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Terry Wolverton [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The Gargoyle in Our Backyard<\/strong><\/p>\n

…only two patients are alive and free of tumor at the time of this report, both 7 years after resection….<\/em> “Oat Cell Carcinoma of the Lung: A Review of 138 Cases.\u201d Cancer<\/em> 23.3 (1969)<\/p>\n

Forty years ago, my father made medical history:
\nStaved off the cancer storming in his lung,
\nA squall that had sunk everyone else on board
\nHis boat, capsized in cold, uncharted waters.
\nLast year, dismantled off our coast, he foundered
\nFor good. We planted what\u2019s left in our inland grove.<\/p>\n

All day, today, the western sky wore black,
\nWidowed young by a sun buried too soon.
\nAt five, the darkness drove east, then unleashed
\nThe grief of straight-line winds that leveled
\nOur ancient elm as if it had no roots.
\nIt crashed across the fence whose white boards<\/p>\n

Flattened like broken teeth. But amid the split spar
\nAnd a thousand chips, the gargoyle stands intact:
\nIt guards the bits of bone and ash shipwrecked
\nBeneath it, emboldened by what survives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Matthew Brennan [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

So you<\/span> have all these big fears waiting for you and the main one is: we’re all going to die. You deal with that by making everything into little fears, so that if a samale<\/em> [a spirit] proceeds through the village and you look at it through a crack in the hut wall, then something terrible will happen. If you don’t, you just carry on with your gossip, you’ll be fine.<\/p>\n

Now that’s just the same as all the taboos on a trawler, how you really must not say sheep or pig, or rabbit or even salmon. And above all you mustn’t wear green. But that tells you, the spirits of the sea, they not only care about your speech, they care about your fucking dress sense, your sense of fashion. It becomes personal — that’s the way to get it down to human scale. And it’s immensely comforting. But if you say “rabbit fish,” everybody’s touching cold iron. Cold iron’s everywhere — that’s what it’s about — it enables you to cope with this horror out there. It seems to me that’s the basis of religion. That’s what ritual is about, to make things human, to make you forget the vast, indifferent 3.2 billion years of evolution that have gone on. They must have looked at the night sky and thought, Jesus, that’s just too big, so you make those stars into angels, you transform it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Redmond O’Hanlon [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “81,” by the user known as “Fu Ke,” on Flickr. I came really close to using a half-dozen or so photos by this user instead; finally decided that this best aligns with today’s theme (such as it is). It’s very… Escherian, no?] From whiskey river: For we human beings are used to inappropriate things; […]<\/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":"Nabokov, Rilke, et al: Genii Locorum: Latin, \"spirits of places\"","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":[247,1393,250,5,251,4159],"tags":[66,1078,2124,4256,4257,4258],"class_list":{"0":"post-17695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"category-essays","12":"tag-gk-chesterton","13":"tag-rainer-maria-rilke","14":"tag-vladimir-nabokov","15":"tag-matthew-brennan","16":"tag-terry-wolverton","17":"tag-redmond-ohanlon","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4Bp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17695","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=17695"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17711,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17695\/revisions\/17711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}