{"id":19220,"date":"2017-04-21T08:47:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T12:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=19220"},"modified":"2017-04-20T05:49:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T09:49:52","slug":"just-passing-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/just-passing-through\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Passing Through"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image:<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Closing Time, Office, Coat Rack, Timeless B&W,” by Lynn Friedman on Flickr<\/a>. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) The only “information” provided by the photographer is the lyrics to the song “Closing Time,” by Semisonic. You can see the video for the song here on YouTube<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

We are all bound together in a tapestry that like the sea gives the impression of movement towards something but is actually just a maternal body of material…<\/p>\n

The flowers buzz when the vibration of the bees stimulates their pistons and their molecules swell and their petals hum like cellos. Rocks are alive, the firstborn of the natural world, somber without will.<\/p>\n

There is no freedom from this universe we were born into, because it is our vague source of sensation, our soul<\/em>, the container of our guilt.<\/p>\n

Skins liquefy in heat. And when a bald baby swallow dies on your palm, you feel warmth pouring over your skin, a kind of burning fountain that scalds you like pepper spray.<\/p>\n

Do you think this is a sign of the spirit ripping its energy into you to carry to the other side? I do. There are no actual objects over there, no materials but unformed steaming clouds, colors that harmonize musically, no gravity exists but elasticity composed of invisible mesh images.<\/p>\n

Who will meet me on the other side, I ask you, to prove the error of what I say? Will it be someone who never loved me?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Fanny Howe [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Landscape, Dense with Trees<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you move away, you see how much depends
\non the pace of the days—how much
\ndepended on the haze we waded through
\neach summer, visible heat, wavy and discursive
\nas the lazy track of the snake in the dusty road;
\nand on the habit in town of porches thatched in vines,
\nand in the country long dense promenades, the way
\nwe sacrificed the yards to shade.
\nIt was partly the heat that made my father
\nplant so many trees—two maples marking the site
\nfor the house, two elms on either side when it was done;
\nmimosa by the fence, and as it failed, fast-growing chestnuts,
\nloblolly pines; and dogwood, redbud, ornamental crab.
\nOn the farm, everything else he grew
\nsomething could eat, but this
\nwould be a permanent mark of his industry,
\na glade established in the open field. Or so it seemed.
\nLooking back at the empty house from across the hill,
\nI see how well the house is camouflaged, see how
\nthat porous fence of saplings, their later
\nscrim of foliage, thickened around it,
\nand still he chinked and mortared, planting more.
\nLast summer, although he\u2019d lost all tolerance for heat,
\nhe backed the truck in at the family grave
\nand stood in the truckbed all afternoon, pruning
\nthe landmark oak, repairing recent damage by a wind;
\nthen he came home and hung a swing
\nin one of the horse-chestnuts for my visit.
\nThe heat was a hand at his throat,
\na fist to his weak heart. But it made a triumph
\nof the cooler air inside, in the bedroom,
\nin the maple bedstead where he slept,
\nin the brick house nearly swamped by leaves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Ellen Bryant Voigt [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

#20:<\/strong> I never imagined I could, let alone would<\/em>, someday become an adult. A veil separated the me<\/em> of childhood from any conceivable future as an actor in grown-up dramas, anxious about the accumulated freight (luggage, undelivered mail, and random unlabeled nailed-shut wooden boxes) of a decades-long railway trip. Then one day I looked up and saw that the veil had dissipated — or, as I realized when I looked more carefully, it had somehow passed behind<\/em> me, separated me now from what I had once been. When had that happened — the moment when I’d stood straddling the veil, one foot on either side? I had likely been distracted by some feature of the landscape, oblivious to what was happening right there and then. And now the time gone by, like the one-time future, was gray and indistinct; shadows (of people, of animals, of events personal and historic) moved about behind the scrim without revealing their faces. I’d observed many of them long enough, intently enough, to recognize their identities; but I’d never really see<\/em> them again. For this veil, unlike the old one, was not approaching. It receded. (As for the future, it’s no longer veiled — but I don’t so much as glance at it anymore.) All I could really see now were those parcels and unopened envelopes stacked around me, stacked to the ceiling in loose, shifting heaps of the present. And still the train jostled on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “Closing Time, Office, Coat Rack, Timeless B&W,” by Lynn Friedman on Flickr. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) The only “information” provided by the photographer is the lyrics to the song “Closing Time,” by Semisonic. You can see the video for the song here on YouTube.] From whiskey river: We are […]<\/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":"","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":[38,247,1393,250,5,251,4159],"tags":[2627,2809,3285,3887,3939,4518],"class_list":{"0":"post-19220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-backwards","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-the-present","14":"tag-the-future","15":"tag-maxims-for-nostalgists","16":"tag-the-past","17":"tag-fanny-howe","18":"tag-ellen-bryant-voigt","19":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-500","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19220","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=19220"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19244,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19220\/revisions\/19244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}