{"id":18306,"date":"2016-08-05T10:31:50","date_gmt":"2016-08-05T14:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=18306"},"modified":"2016-08-05T06:36:31","modified_gmt":"2016-08-05T10:36:31","slug":"what-comes-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/what-comes-first\/","title":{"rendered":"What Comes First"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “What a Chick Feels Before Hatching,” by Becca Peterson. Found it on Flickr<\/a>; used here under a Creative Commons license.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (but just excerpted here):<\/p>\n

Your original, fundamental position is prior to consciousness. This “prior to consciousness” identity that you are cannot be named at all. From this unnameable, non-conceptual source, which is your original, innate nature, arises the sense of conscious presence. This is also the sense of being, the experience that “I am,” or the bare fact of knowing that you are. This is the first appearance or experience upon your original state. Within this consciousness state emerges the mind, the body and the entire world of appearances. Little can be said about your original state because it is clearly beyond all concepts and even prior to consciousness. Some pointers that have been used are: non-conceptual awareness, awareness unaware of itself, pure being (beyond being and non-being), the absolute, the unmanifest, noumenon, cognizing emptiness, no thing — to name only a few.<\/p>\n

This non-conceptual awareness or being is<\/em> what you are. It is pure non-duality or unicity in which both subject and object are merged. Just as the sun does not know light because it is<\/em> light, so you do not know your original nature (as an object) because you are that<\/em>. It is forever beyond the grasp of concepts and subject-object knowledge. Yet it is entirely evident and inescapable as that in you (which is you) that allows you to say with utter certitude “I am” and “I know that I am.” Even when those words subside, you are<\/em>. Even when the consciousness that knows those words subsides, you are<\/em>. Consciousness is the light of creation. But you, as the unnameable source, are the primordial awareness, being or no thing (call it what you will) in which consciousness comes and goes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(John Wheeler [source<\/em><\/a> (in somewhat different words)])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn’t a story; it’s a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Rebecca Solnit [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

Like the quotations above? All credit, then, to the anonymous (and unknown to me) <\/em>whiskey river<\/a> blogger — who shared them this past week, and who has been inspiring me for over ten years. Below, some relevant (?) discoveries of my own, along the same lines. (More info here<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

First Things<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes the days just won’t move no matter
\nwhat you try. First things, you say in the Spring
\nas you plant the brown rows, but the first thing
\nyou see is they just won’t come. The batter
\nstands interminably in the fresh sun,
\ntapping his yellow bat on the white plate.
\nBall one.Strike one.<\/span>Ball two.<\/span>Strike two.<\/span>At this rate<\/span>
\nwe’ll all be dead before the first home run.<\/p>\n

One night you hear on the phone, “Old Critchly’s dead,”
\nand now it seems to bluster when it rings
\nand the boys saySir<\/span>when you walk to town.<\/span>
\nTommy Critchly! what, what was that he said—
\nI feel so good I swear to God it stings—
\nand you call to the moon,Slow down,<\/span>slow down.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Daniel J. Langton [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Faberg\u00e9’s Egg<\/strong><\/p>\n

Switzerland, 1920<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Friend, “Called away” from my country,
\nI square the egg and put it in a letter
\nthat all may read, gilding each word a little
\nso that touched, it yields to a secret
\nstirring, a small gold bird on a spring
\nsuddenly appearing to sing a small song
\nof regret, elation, that overspills all private
\nbounds, although you ask, as I do, what now
\ndo we sing to, sing for? Before the Great War,
\nI made a diamond-studded coach three inches high
\nwith rock crystal windows and platinum wheels
\nto ceremoniously convey a speechless egg to Court.
\nAll for a bored Czarina! My version of history
\nfantastic and revolutionary as I reduced the scale
\nto the hand-held dimensions of a fairy tale,
\nhiding tiny Imperial portraits and cameos
\nin eggs of pearl and bone. Little bonbons, caskets!
\nThe old riddle of the chicken and the egg
\nis answered thus: in the Belle Epoque
\nof the imagination, the egg came first, containing,
\nas it does, both history and uncertainty, my excesses
\ninducing unrest among those too hungry to see
\nthe bitter joke of an egg one cannot eat.
\nOblique oddity, an egg is the most beautiful of all
\nbeautiful forms, a box without corners
\nin which anything can be contained, anything
\nexcept Time, that old jeweler who laughed
\nwhen he set me ticking. Here, among the clocks
\nand watches of a country precisely ordered
\nand dying, I am not sorry, I do not apologize.
\nThree times I kiss you in memory
\nof that first Easter, that first white rising,
\nand send this message as if it could save you:
\nEven the present is dead. We must live now
\nin the future. Yours, Faberg\u00e9.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Elizabeth Spires [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

[Two girls] asked him please to take a snapshot of them while they were playing ball among the waves. He consented, but since in the meanwhile he had worked out a theory in opposition to snapshots, he dutifully expressed it to the two friends:<\/p>\n

“What drives you two girls to cut from the mobile continuum of your day these temporal slices, the thickness of a second? Tossing the ball back and forth, you are living in the present, but the moment the scansion of the frames is insinuated between your acts it is no longer the pleasure of the game that motivated you but, rather, that of seeing yourselves again in the future, of rediscovering yourselves in twenty years’ time, on a piece of yellowed cardboard (yellowed emotionally, even if modern printing procedures will preserve it unchanged). The taste for the spontaneous, natural, lifelike snapshot kills spontaneity, drives away the present. Photographed reality immediately takes on a nostalgic character, of joy fled on the wings of time, a commemorative quality, even if the picture was taken the day before yesterday. And the life that you live in order to photograph it is already, at the outset, a commemoration of itself. To believe that the snapshot is more true<\/em> than the posed portrait is a prejudice.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “What a Chick Feels Before Hatching,” by Becca Peterson. Found it on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license.] From whiskey river (but just excerpted here): Your original, fundamental position is prior to consciousness. This “prior to consciousness” identity that you are cannot be named at all. From this unnameable, non-conceptual source, which […]<\/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":"Solnit, Calvino, et al., on where things (do\/must) start: 'What Comes First'","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":[247,1393,250,5,36,251,4159],"tags":[2807,3884,4051,4369,4370,4371,4372,4373],"class_list":{"0":"post-18306","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-reading","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-elizabeth-spires","14":"tag-rebecca-solnit","15":"tag-italo-calvino","16":"tag-john-wheeler","17":"tag-daniel-j-langton","18":"tag-first-things","19":"tag-chicken-and-egg","20":"tag-starting-out","21":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4Lg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18306","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=18306"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18319,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18306\/revisions\/18319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}