{"id":17834,"date":"2016-03-18T10:36:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T14:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17834"},"modified":"2016-03-18T10:36:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T14:36:21","slug":"stricken-conscious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/stricken-conscious\/","title":{"rendered":"Stricken Conscious"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/sketchfab.com\/models\/c78940a56b7f4dd798bb57d629a450ee\/embed\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Interactive image: 3D printing, reimagining the Venus de Milo engaged in spinning thread, by <a title=\"Cosmo Wenman's site\" href=\"http:\/\/Virginia Postrel\" target=\"_blank\">Cosmo Wenman<\/a> (with direction from <a title=\"Virginia Postrel's site\" href=\"https:\/\/vpostrel.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Virginia Postrel<\/a>). More info <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/arts\/culturebox\/2015\/05\/the_venus_de_milo_s_arms_3d_printing_the_ancient_sculpture_spinning_thread.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From <a title=\"whiskey river: Patrick Rothfuss, on the four doors of the mind\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2016\/03\/perhaps-greatest-faculty-our-minds.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.<\/p>\n<p>First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind&#8217;s way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.<\/p>\n<p>Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying &#8216;time heals all wounds&#8217; is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.<\/p>\n<p>Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.<\/p>\n<p>Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Patrick Rothfuss [<a title=\"Google Books: 'The Name of the Wind,' by Patrick Rothfuss\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=TG5DXNXv2tAC&amp;pg=PT150#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: 'After,' by Dorothy Walters\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2016\/03\/after-there-is-one-thing-certain.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>After<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There is one thing certain.<br \/>\nOnce you have stood<br \/>\nin the midst of that<br \/>\nsearing flame,<br \/>\nbeen struck down<br \/>\nto earth<br \/>\nlike a pilgrim<br \/>\nentered by light at last<br \/>\nand have lain there,<br \/>\nwaiting,<br \/>\nnot quite certain&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>how can you ever know again<br \/>\nwhat it is<br \/>\nnot to be blinded by the light,<br \/>\nnever to have gone there<br \/>\nto the top of the snow hung peak<br \/>\nand felt that nameless something<br \/>\ndescend onto your shoulders,<br \/>\nyour breast,<br \/>\neven as you bent forward<br \/>\nin disbelief.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Dorothy Walters [<a title=\"Kundalini Splendor: 'After,' by Dorothy Walters\" href=\"http:\/\/kundalinisplendor.blogspot.de\/2010\/01\/after-poem.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from <em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>All of the questions that had been open when my head had hit the pillow were still pending. But in the intervening hours, my brain had been changing to fit the new shape of my world. I guess that&#8217;s why we can&#8217;t do anything else when we&#8217;re sleeping: it&#8217;s when we work hardest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Neal Stephenson [<a title=\"Amazon.com: 'Anathem,' by Neal Stephenson\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B0015DPXKI\/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&amp;btkr=1#reader_B0015DPXKI\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>For the Anniversary of My Death<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Every year without knowing it I have passed the day<br \/>\nWhen the last fires will wave to me<br \/>\nAnd the silence will set out<br \/>\nTireless traveler<br \/>\nLike the beam of a lightless star<\/p>\n<p>Then I will no longer<br \/>\nFind myself in life as in a strange garment<br \/>\nSurprised at the earth<br \/>\nAnd the love of one woman<br \/>\nAnd the shamelessness of men<br \/>\nAs today writing after three days of rain<br \/>\nHearing the wren sing and the falling cease<br \/>\nAnd bowing not knowing to what<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(W. S. Merwin [<a title=\"Google Books: 'The Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry,' by Helen Vendler (ed.)\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=sq7gXQNLv-gC&amp;pg=PA252#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Eltisley Maze had two separate campuses, and they were as different as a cloudless summer day and a blizzard. Eltisley Hall had grand stone buildings over six hundred years old, and nobody ever raised his or her voice there. Students at Eltisley walked single file along the gravel walkways, wearing blazers, ties, and shorts, with the school&#8217;s crest over their hearts (a bear and stag face-to-face, holding a flaming chalice between them). You addressed your teachers or upperclassmen as Sir or Miss and ate in Formal Hall in the Greater Building. The Maze, meanwhile, was a disorienting jumble of nine-faced buildings and looping walkways, where you could wear whatever you pleased. You could sleep all day, do drugs, play video games, do anything you fancied. Except that you would find yourself trapped in a room with no door (or toilet) for weeks, until you learned some crazy lesson. Or you would be tossed into a bottomless pit, or chased around for days by people with sticks. Or you would find yourself unable to stop tap-dancing. Or pieces of you might start falling off, one by one. Nobody told you anything in The Maze.<\/p>\n<p>Once, Eltisley Hall and The Maze had been two separate schools, representing two styles of magic that were at odds, but now they were joined because magic had been united, at great cost.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Charlie Jane Anders [<a title=\"Google Books: 'All the Birds in the Sky,' by Charlie Jane Anders\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=VjIXCAAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA191#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>A Slow Fuse<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some seventy years later<br \/>\nyour father, sitting at your table<br \/>\nover wine he savors, last rays mellow-<br \/>\ning in it, recalls his favorite aunt,<br \/>\nRifka.<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 2em;\">&#8220;Just naming her shoots<\/span><br \/>\nrifles off again inside the morning<br \/>\nsquare, rifles she aimed into the air<br \/>\nfor certain customers, the pigeons<br \/>\nerupting.&#8221;<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 3.5em;\">Handsome, clever,<\/span><br \/>\nbut with little actual schooling,<br \/>\nshe, a Jewess, kept a shop in Moscow,<br \/>\nstocking horse- and battle-gear,<br \/>\nbustling all day long.<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 8em;\">Powders,<\/span><br \/>\nbraided with his laboring breath,<br \/>\nstill prickle inside his nostrils;<br \/>\nlike the wayward flickers cast<br \/>\nby lazily swimming,<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 7.5em;\">naked limbs,<\/span><br \/>\nleathers polished, buckles, gleam;<br \/>\nand the oats banked in their bins,<br \/>\nheavy August winds drowsed in them,<br \/>\nat one glance, a single sniffing,<br \/>\nbloom;<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 2.5em;\">the harnesses and bells,<\/span><br \/>\nby gaslight starred, send out appeals,<br \/>\nwhile sleighs collect for midnight<br \/>\njunkets.<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 3em;\">He smitten with it all,<\/span><br \/>\nlike those officers of the Czar<br \/>\nwho, admiring her wit, her seasoned<br \/>\ngaiety, forever jammed the shop.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Even the city&#8217;s metropolitan,<br \/>\nyoung despite his full, black robes,<br \/>\ntook to dropping in on her, his jagged,<br \/>\nbushy beard awag with chat.<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 11.5em;\">One balmy<\/span><br \/>\nsummer evening, I remember, the three<br \/>\nof us, laughter brimming like wine<br \/>\n(he turned his glass to the lessened<br \/>\nlight), relaxed in her snug flat.<\/p>\n<p>The next morning at breakfast,<br \/>\ntalk going on as if we&#8217;d never stop&#8221;&#8212;<br \/>\nhe, a startled look lit on his face,<br \/>\nbreaking in upon himself, exclaims,<br \/>\nthe pigeons crackling through the air&#8212;<br \/>\n&#8220;My God, he spent the night with her!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He, sipping the last drop, sits<br \/>\nback, as much as he&#8217;s amazed amused<br \/>\nto see this special virtue of old age,<br \/>\nthe oats ripening only in slow time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Theodore Weiss [<a title=\"Poetry Foundation: 'A Slow Fuse,' by Theodore Weiss\" href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poem\/176633\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Interactive image: 3D printing, reimagining the Venus de Milo engaged in spinning thread, by Cosmo Wenman (with direction from Virginia Postrel). More info here.] From whiskey river: Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves [&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":"What *were* the Venus de Milo's arms up to?, and other mind-awakeners: 'Stricken Conscious'","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":[247,1393,95,250,4281,5,50,36,251,3460,3477,4159],"tags":[351,1344,4147,4273,4274,4275,4276,4277,4278,4279,4280,4282],"class_list":{"0":"post-17834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-science-medicine","9":"category-art","10":"category-3d-printing","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-language-writing_cat","13":"category-reading","14":"category-poetry-writing_cat","15":"category-science-fiction-06_writing","16":"category-fantasy-06_writing","17":"category-essays","18":"tag-ws-merwin","19":"tag-surprise","20":"tag-dorothy-walters","21":"tag-theodore-weiss","22":"tag-charlie-jane-anders","23":"tag-neal-stephenson","24":"tag-patrick-rothfuss","25":"tag-cosmo-wenman","26":"tag-virginia-postrel","27":"tag-venus-de-milo","28":"tag-3d-printing","29":"tag-mythology","30":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4DE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17834","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=17834"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17847,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17834\/revisions\/17847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}