{"id":18344,"date":"2016-08-26T09:28:50","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T13:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=18344"},"modified":"2016-08-26T13:01:44","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T17:01:44","slug":"a-moment-a-place-a-story-a-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/a-moment-a-place-a-story-a-world\/","title":{"rendered":"A Moment, a Place, a Story, a World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Ghost Card,” by Ross Griff (user “rossaroni”); found it on Flickr<\/a>, and used here under a Creative Commons license. For more about the image, see the note<\/a> at the foot of this post.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

August<\/strong><\/p>\n

August rushes by like desert rainfall;
\nA flood of frenzied upheaval,
\nExpected,
\nBut still catching me unprepared.
\nLike a matchflame,
\nBursting on the scene,
\nHeat and haze of crimson sunsets.
\nLike a dream
\nOf moon and dark barely recalled,
\nA moment,
\nShadows caught in a blink.
\nLike a quick kiss;
\nOne wishes for more
\nBut it suddenly turns to leave,
\nDragging summer away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I wanted to ask you about your vision of perfection in an imperfect world, or what side of the earth calls out to you when you touch a physical globe, or maybe about your greatest heartache and how you still go on as your world continues turning, or what you do with a memory once lodged inside your bones that’s still breathing, and burning.<\/p>\n

But you’re still a stranger, and I’m overly polite, so I’ll ask all about your day when I’d rather know about your life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Victoria Erickson [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Cavalleria Rusticana<\/strong><\/p>\n

All the fireflies in the world
\nare gathered in our yard tonight,
\nflickering in the shrubs
\nlike an ostentatious display
\nof Christmas lights out of season.
\nBut the music in the air
\nis the music of heat, of August—
\ncicadas scraping out
\ntheir thin, harsh treble
\nlike country fiddlers settling in
\nfor a long night. I feel at home
\nwith their relentless tune
\nminimalist, like the eighties.<\/p>\n

Events repeat themselves,
\nbut with a difference that makes all
\nthe difference. As a child,
\none summer night in Verona
\nat my first opera,
\nI watched a swarm of matches
\nlight up the Roman arena
\nuntil we were silent. It was as if
\nmusic were a night-blooming flower
\nthat would not open
\nuntil we held our breath.
\nThen the full-blown sound,
\nthe single-minded combat
\nof passion: voices sharpening
\ntheir glittering blades on one another,
\nelecting to live or die.
\nIt was that simple. The story was
\nof no importance, the motive lost
\nin the sufficient, breathing dark.
\nIf there was a moon I don’t remember.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Lisel Mueller [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 served them up 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

Waterlily Fire<\/strong>
\n(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n

IV \/ FRAGILE<\/em><\/p>\n

I think of the image brought into my room
\nOf the sage and the thin young man who flickers and asks.
\nHe is asking about the moment when the Buddha
\nOffers the lotus, a flower held out as declaration.
\n“Isn\u2019t that fragile?” he asks. The sage answers:<\/span>
\n“I speak to you. You speak to me.<\/span> Is that fragile?”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Muriel Rukeyser [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

A Story Can Change Your Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the morning she became a young widow,
\nmy grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow,
\nlooked up from her work to see a hawk turn
\nher prized rooster into a cloud of feathers.
\nThat same moment, halfway around the world
\nin a Minnesota mine, her husband died,
\nburied under a ton of rockfall.
\nShe told me this story sixty years ago.
\nI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true but it ought to be.
\nShe was a hard old woman, and though she knelt
\non Sundays when the acolyte\u2019s silver bell
\nannounced the moment of Christ\u2019s miracle,
\nit was the darker mysteries she lived by:
\nshiver-cry of an owl, black dog by the roadside,
\na tapping at the door and nobody there.
\nThe moral of the story was plain enough:
\nmiracles become a burden and require a priest
\nto explain them. With signs, you only need
\nto keep your wits about you and place your trust
\nin a shadow world that lets you know hard luck
\nand grief are coming your way. And for that
\n—so the story goes—any day will do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Peter Everwine [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Once, I hovered invisibly in a city that arched over a hill. The planet was one of a dozen orbiting an ordinary star, the smallest planet in the system. It was a quiet world. Oceans and wind made scarcely a sound. People spoke to one another only in whispers. I floated above the city and looked down at its streets and inhabitants. Corners of buildings rusted in the air, billows of steam rose from underground canals. Through throngs of creatures moving this way and that, as creatures do in their cities, I spotted two men passing each other on a crowded walkway. Complete strangers. In the eight million beings living in the city, these two had never met before, never chanced to find themselves in the same place at the same time. A common enough occurrence in a city of millions. And as these two strangers moved past, they greeted each other, just a simple greeting. A remark about the sun in the sky. One of them said something else to the other, they exchanged smiles, and then the moment was gone. What an extraordinary event! No one noticed but me. What an extraordinary event! Two men who had never seen each other before and would not likely see each other again. But their sincerity and sweetness, their sharing an instant in a fleeting life. It was almost as if a secret had passed between them. Was this some kind of love? I wanted to follow them, to touch them, to tell them of my happiness. I wanted to whisper to them: “This is it, this is it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Alan Lightman [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/a>____________________________<\/p>\n

About the image:<\/strong> In 1994, the photographer says, he moved into a house which he and his friends thought quite obviously — multiple visions, late night sounds, and so on — to be haunted. He says of this image, in particular:<\/p>\n

In late August of that year, I found this decayed postcard stuffed behind the living room mantle. It was postmarked August 28, 1907 and addressed to the previous occupants of the house. It showed a picture of an observatory on the back. Included in the margin was the cryptic message: “How about last Saturday?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[back to top<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Ghost Card,” by Ross Griff (user “rossaroni”); found it on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license. For more about the image, see the note at the foot of this post. From whiskey river: August August rushes by like desert rainfall; A flood of frenzied upheaval, Expected, But still catching me unprepared. […]<\/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":"Lisel Mueller, Alan Lightman, et al.: 'A Moment, a Place, a Story, a World'","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":[2314,2490,3810,4378,4385,4386,4387,4388,4389,4390],"class_list":{"0":"post-18344","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-lisel-mueller","13":"tag-muriel-rukeyser","14":"tag-alan-lightman","15":"tag-the-moment","16":"tag-elizabeth-maua-taylor","17":"tag-victoria-erickson","18":"tag-peter-everwine","19":"tag-august","20":"tag-spirit-of-a-place","21":"tag-mysteries","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4LS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18344","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=18344"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18355,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18344\/revisions\/18355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}