{"id":18972,"date":"2017-03-03T10:34:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T15:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=18972"},"modified":"2017-03-03T10:34:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T15:34:15","slug":"container-for-the-thing-contained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/container-for-the-thing-contained\/","title":{"rendered":"Container for the Thing Contained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Flickr.com:<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Side of Building Shanghai,” by user DaiLuo on Flickr.com<\/a>. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) From the photographer: “This is straight from the camera, nothing at all done — this is the side of a building in Shanghai. When you stand and look at it, it is difficult to see how they did this. It looked like a holograph.” I myself haven’t been able to discover any more information about the building, let alone how this display is\/was created. Anyone know?]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there… And at the end of your life, your whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Michael Crichton [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Just this, just this, this room where we are. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to who’s there, pay attention to what isn’t known there, pay attention to what is known there, pay attention to what everyone is thinking and feeling, what you’re doing there, and pay attention. Pay attention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(W. S. Merwin [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Drunk on Someone Else’s Love<\/strong>
\n(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n

…I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls
\nwith clean blood
\nand organised drawers.
\nI am the hurricane setting fire to the forests
\nat night when no one else is alive,
\nor awake,
\nhowever you choose to see it,
\nand I live in my own flames.
\nSometimes burning too bright and too wild
\nto make things last
\nor handle
\nmyself or anyone else
\nand so I run.
\nRun run run,
\nfar and wide
\nuntil my bones ache and lungs split
\nand it feels good.
\nHear that people? It feels good,
\nbecause I am the slave and ruler of my own body
\nand I wish to do with it exactly as I please…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Charlotte Eriksson [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Discovery<\/strong><\/p>\n

6:48 a.m., and leaden
\nlittle jokes about what heroes<\/span>
\nwe are for getting up at this hour.<\/span>
\nQuiet. The surf and sandpipers running.
\nT minus ten and counting, the sun
\nmounting over Canaveral<\/span>
\na swollen coral, a color
\nbright as camera lights. We’re blind-
\nsided by a flash:<\/span><\/p>\n

shot from the unseen<\/span>
\nlaunching pad, and so from nowhere,<\/span>
\na flame-tipped arrow—no, an airborne<\/span>
\npen on fire, its ink a plume
\nof smoke which, even while zooming
\nupward, stays as oddly solid<\/span>
\nas the braided tail of a tornado,
\nand lingers there as lightning would
\nif it could steal its own thunder.<\/span><\/p>\n

—Which, when it rumbles in, leaves<\/span>
\nunder or within it a million<\/span>
\nfirecrackers going off, a thrill<\/span>
\nof distant pops and rips in delayed
\nreaction, hitting the beach in fading
\nwaves as the last glint of shuttle<\/span>
\nreceives our hands’ eye-shade salute:
\nthe giant point of all the fuss soon
\nsmaller than a star.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only now does a steady, low<\/span>
\nsputter above us, a lawn mower<\/span>
\ncutting a corner of the sky,<\/span>
\ngrow audible. Look, it’s a biplane!—
\nsome pilot’s long-planned, funny tribute
\nto wonder’s always-dated orbit<\/span>
\nand the itch of afterthought. I swat
\nmy ankle, bitten by a sand gnat:
\nwhat the locals call no-see-\u2019ums.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

Supernatural Love
\n<\/strong>(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n

My father at the dictionary-stand
\nTouches the page to fully understand
\nThe lamplit answer, tilting in his hand<\/p>\n

His slowly scanning magnifying lens,
\nA blurry, glistening circle he suspends
\nAbove the word “Carnation.” Then he bends<\/p>\n

So near his eyes are magnified and blurred,
\nOne finger on the miniature word,
\nAs if he touched a single key and heard<\/p>\n

A distant, plucked, infinitesimal string,
\n“The obligation due to every thing
\nThat\u2019s smaller than the universe.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Gjertrud Schnackenberg [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

…when the bird call came, I was looking down. And there was the skull. Surrounding it was a sensation, and above, a sky very deeply blue. Then it happened: the picture got bigger: the skull was, I saw, not a skull at all, but a weathered mushroom, eaten back, or worn away. The whites and creams, the holes for cords, the holes like sockets and the slendering snout—all turned back to gills\/stem\/cap; there was the shift from bone to mushroom, a rising from solid and going to pith, rigidity softening into flesh.<\/p>\n

In the space a mushroom now held, for full, long seconds, a skull had been.<\/p>\n

That<\/em> pinned me to the afternoon.<\/p>\n

To concentrate a skull up from a mushroom… but no, that’s not it. It went very fast. It was vaster than any conscious thought. To be of a moment that folds up distance, finds<\/em> no distance between mushroom and skull, allows skull<\/em> from the first—though there was a patch of new mushrooms right there, shining, fat, rampant, creamy, just-sprung. To be part of a mind that flies past the known (until finally, the cues come on hard: all those days of good, soaking rain, the fast greening of lawns, everything sprouting and shooting like crazy), to be part of an order, a whole, a knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous:<\/em> at that tufty spot on my neighbor’s grass, with an airy\/oceanic blue sky above, mushroom met skull, the resemblance bloomed and extended me. Right into the heart of the afternoon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “Side of Building Shanghai,” by user DaiLuo on Flickr.com. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) From the photographer: “This is straight from the camera, nothing at all done — this is the side of a building in Shanghai. When you stand and look at it, it is difficult to see how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18978,"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":"Merwin, Purpura, et al., on finding the whole in its parts: 'Container for the Thing Contained'","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":[351,1017,3250,4498,4499,4500,4501,4503],"class_list":{"0":"post-18972","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-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-reading","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"category-essays","14":"tag-ws-merwin","15":"tag-mary-jo-salter","16":"tag-lia-purpura","17":"tag-michael-crichton","18":"tag-charlotte-eriksson","19":"tag-gjertrud-schnackenberg","20":"tag-holographs","21":"tag-holographic-principle","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/sideofbuildingshanghai_dailuo_thumb.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4W0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18972","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=18972"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18981,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18972\/revisions\/18981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}