{"id":18409,"date":"2016-09-23T06:38:40","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T10:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=18409"},"modified":"2016-09-23T06:38:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T10:38:40","slug":"vital-specifics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/vital-specifics\/","title":{"rendered":"Vital Specifics"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Sally, Weld County, Colorado” (1984), by Robert Adams. First found at the National Gallery of Art<\/a>. (Above copy from the Fraenkel Gallery’s exhibit <\/em>Perfect Times, Perfect Places<\/a>.) Sally was Adams’s own dog. Says <\/em>a<\/em> New York Times review<\/em><\/a> of an exhibit at Yale featuring the photo, “It pauses on a dirt road perhaps 10 yards away, looking back over its shoulder as if to invite us to follow and to wonder: ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?'”]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Once, years ago, I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and—it was the most casual of moments—as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it; it was given. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished. Any important difference between myself and all other things vanished. I knew that I belonged to the world, and felt comfortably my own containment in the totality. I did not feel that I understood any mystery, not at all; rather that I could be happy and feel blessed within the perplexity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Oliver [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

From the Shore: Toronto<\/strong><\/p>\n

All afternoon I’ve watched the gulls
\noff the breakwater at Lake Ontario.
\nNo one here seems to like them,
\nhow they scavenge,
\nhover like icons,
\nagainst a metal sky.<\/p>\n

But I am here from another country
\nnot so foreign as the gulls’
\nand I like their garrulousness,
\ntheir joyful noise
\nand the way they hang in the air
\nflying and not flying.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Henrietta Epstein [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Are there scenes in life, right now, for which we might conceivably be thankful? Is there a basis for joy or serenity, even if felt only occasionally? Are there grounds now and then for an unironic smile?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert Adams [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Meditation at Lagunitas<\/strong><\/p>\n

All the new thinking is about loss.
\nIn this it resembles all the old thinking.
\nThe idea, for example, that each particular erases
\nthe luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
\nfaced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
\nof that black birch is, by his presence,
\nsome tragic falling off from a first world
\nof undivided light. Or the other notion that,
\nbecause there is in this world no one thing
\nto which the bramble of blackberry<\/em> corresponds,
\na word is elegy to what it signifies.
\nWe talked about it late last night and in the voice
\nof my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
\nalmost querulous. After a while I understood that,
\ntalking this way, everything dissolves: justice,<\/em>
\npine, hair, woman, you <\/em>and I<\/em>. There was a woman
\nI made love to and I remembered how, holding
\nher small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
\nI felt a violent wonder at her presence
\nlike a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
\nwith its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
\nmuddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
\ncalled pumpkinseed<\/em>. It hardly had to do with her.
\nLonging, we say, because desire is full
\nof endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
\nBut I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
\nthe thing her father said that hurt her, what
\nshe dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
\nas words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
\nSuch tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
\nsaying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert Hass [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Love at First Sight<\/strong><\/p>\n

You always hear about it—
\na waitress serves a man two eggs
\nover easy and she says to the cashier,
\nThat is the man I’m going to marry,
\nand she does. Or a man spies a woman
\nat a baseball game; she is blond
\nand wearing a blue headband,
\nand, being a man, he doesn’t say this
\nor even think it, but his heart is a homing bird
\nwinging to her perch, and next thing you know
\nthey’re building birdhouses in the garage.
\nHow do they know, these auspicious lovers?
\nThey are like passengers on a yellow
\nbus painted with the dreams
\nof innumerable lifetimes, a packet
\nof sepia postcards in their pocket.
\nAnd who’s to say they haven’t traveled
\nbackward for centuries through borderless
\nlands, only to arrive at this roadside attraction
\nwhere Chance meets Necessity and says,
\nWhat time do you get off?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jennifer Maier [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Now when New York comes back to me it comes in hallucinatory flashes, so clinically detailed that I sometimes wish that memory would effect the distortion with which it is commonly credited. For a lot of the time I was in New York I used a perfume called Fleurs de Rocaille<\/em>, and then L\u2019Air du Temps<\/em>, and now the slightest trace of either can short-circuit my connections for the rest of the day. Nor can I smell Henri Bendel jasmine soap without falling back into the past, or the particular mixture of spices used for boiling crabs. There were barrels of crab boil in a Czech place in the Eighties where I once shopped. Smells, of course, are notorious memory stimuli, but there are other things which affect me the same way. Blue-and-white striped sheets. Vermouth cassis. Some faded nightgowns which were new in 1959 or 1960, and some chiffon scarves I bought about the same time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Joan Didion [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Sally, Weld County, Colorado” (1984), by Robert Adams. First found at the National Gallery of Art. (Above copy from the Fraenkel Gallery’s exhibit Perfect Times, Perfect Places.) Sally was Adams’s own dog. Says a New York Times review of an exhibit at Yale featuring the photo, “It pauses on a dirt road perhaps 10 […]<\/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":"'Vital Specifics': Mary Oliver, Robert Hass, Joan Didion, et al., on pleasure in the particular","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":[271,595,1212,1514,3707,4410,4411,4412],"class_list":{"0":"post-18409","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-happiness","13":"tag-mary-oliver","14":"tag-robert-hass","15":"tag-joan-didion","16":"tag-robert-adams","17":"tag-henrietta-epstein","18":"tag-jennifer-maier","19":"tag-specifics","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4MV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18409","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=18409"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18420,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18409\/revisions\/18420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}