{"id":18549,"date":"2016-11-18T06:29:34","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T11:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=18549"},"modified":"2016-11-18T06:30:12","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T11:30:12","slug":"when-a-moment-is-more-than-a-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/when-a-moment-is-more-than-a-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"When a Moment Is More Than a Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Desert Watcher,” by Children of Darklight (user athalfred) on Flickr<\/a>. (Used here under a Creative Commons license.) This is a composite image: the star trails comprise 76 separate photos, stacked atop one another in (presumably digital) layers; the figure at the lower left is a lightpainted<\/a> portrait.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Crossing the Swamp<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is the endless
\nwet thick<\/span>
\ncosmos, the center<\/span>
\nof everything—the nugget<\/span>
\nof dense sap, branching
\nvines, the dark burred<\/span>
\nfaintly belching<\/span>
\nbogs. Here<\/span>
\nis swamp, here
\nis struggle,<\/span>
\nclosure—<\/span>
\npathless, seamless,<\/span>
\npeerless mud. My bones
\nknock together at the pale<\/span>
\njoints, trying<\/span>
\nfor foothold, fingerhold,<\/span>
\nmindhold over
\nsuch slick crossings, deep<\/span>
\nhipholes, hummocks<\/span>
\nthat sink silently<\/span>
\ninto the black, slack
\nearthsoup. I feel<\/span>
\nnot wet so much as<\/span>
\npainted and glittered<\/span>
\nwith the fat grassy
\nmires, the rich<\/span>
\nand succulent marrows<\/span>
\nof earth—a poor<\/span>
\ndry stick given
\none more chance by the whims<\/span>
\nof swamp water—a bough<\/span>
\nthat still, after all these years,<\/span>
\ncould take root,
\nsprout, branch out, bud—<\/span>
\nmake of its life a breathing<\/span>
\npalace of leaves.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

The Origin of Order<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stellar dust has settled.
\nIt is green underwater now in the leaves
\nOf the yellow crowfoot. Its vacancies are gathered together
\nUnder pine litter as emerging flower of the pink arbutus.
\nIt has gained the power to make itself again
\nIn the bone-filled egg of osprey and teal.<\/p>\n

One could say this toothpick grasshopper
\nIs a cloud of decayed nebula congealed and perching
\nOn his female mating. The tortoise beetle,
\nLeaving the stripped veins of morning glory vines
\nLike licked bones, is a straw-colored swirl
\nOf clever gases.<\/p>\n

At this moment there are dead stars seeing
\nThemselves as marsh and forest in the eyes
\nOf muskrat and shrew, disintegrated suns
\nMaking songs all night long in the throats
\nOf crawfish frogs, in the rubbings and gratings
\nOf the red-legged locust. There are spirits of orbiting
\nRock in the shells of pointed winkles
\nAnd apple snails, ghosts of extinct comets caught
\nIn the leap of darting hare and bobcat, revolutions
\nOf rushing stone contained in the sound of these words.<\/p>\n

The paths of the Pleiades and Coma clusters
\nHave been compelled to mathematics by the mind
\nContemplating the nature of itself
\nIn the motions of stars. The patterns
\nOf any starry summer night might be identical
\nTo the summer heavens circling inside the skull.
\nI can feel time speeding now in all directions
\nDeeper and deeper into the black oblivion
\nOf the electrons directly behind my eyes.<\/p>\n

Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind
\nHas been obligated from the beginning
\nTo create an ordered universe
\nAs the only possible proof of its own inheritance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Pattiann Rogers [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Calculus<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last night I had the strangest dream:<\/p>\n

I dreamed of a chain of hundreds of thousands of souls, millions of them, each standing a few feet distant from its neighbors, in a solid row stretching from South to North Pole. (It feels important to stress: these were souls<\/em>, invisible souls.)<\/p>\n

The souls faced north, of course (because everyone agrees that north is up — everyone on Earth, that is; everyone who has ever seen a map printed since the fifteenth century or so). And over their heads, their arms extended, each held a wooden plank, a 1×12, say, several feet long — six feet long, eight feet, twelve (size, as everyone agrees, not mattering). It was like a Morse-coded message on colossal scale, its contents nothing but dashes: dash dash dash<\/em>, — — — — — — — — — —<\/strong>, marching north along a single longitudinal line.<\/p>\n

The point of view shifted to outer space; now I observed the planet from the side. And although distant, I could still see the planks lifted over the souls’ heads. They formed a single straight line no more: instead, their burdens described a semi-circular arc.<\/p>\n

But then I imagined a single plank twelve thousand five hundred miles long — half the Earth’s circumference. I imagined this plank being held rigidly over the head of just one impossibly strong soul, standing at the equator. And I wondered: would gravity all along its length pull at the ends of the board, so that it curved to follow the shape of the earth? Suppose that luckless lonely soul holds a flexible wooden board no longer, but a steel girder. Would its ends dip to the poles? Does inflexibility overpower gravity, and if so, at what point? How is flexibility even measured?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “Desert Watcher,” by Children of Darklight (user athalfred) on Flickr. (Used here under a Creative Commons license.) This is a composite image: the star trails comprise 76 separate photos, stacked atop one another in (presumably digital) layers; the figure at the lower left is a lightpainted portrait.] From whiskey river: Crossing the Swamp Here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18559,"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":true,"_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":"Phenomena which do not stand alone: 'When a Moment Is More Than a Moment'","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":[247,1393,95,405,250,251,3460,3477,4159],"tags":[595,992,1837,3620,4446,4447],"class_list":{"0":"post-18549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-science-medicine","10":"category-nature","11":"category-art","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"category-science-fiction-06_writing","14":"category-fantasy-06_writing","15":"category-essays","16":"tag-mary-oliver","17":"tag-dreams","18":"tag-pattiann-rogers","19":"tag-autumn","20":"tag-chaos-and-order","21":"tag-lightpainting","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/desertwatcher_sahara2015_childrenofdarklight_thumb.jpg?fit=600%2C397&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4Pb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18549","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=18549"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18563,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18549\/revisions\/18563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}