{"id":19390,"date":"2017-06-23T06:36:34","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T10:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=19390"},"modified":"2017-06-23T06:36:34","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T10:36:34","slug":"freshly-unchanged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/freshly-unchanged\/","title":{"rendered":"Freshly Unchanged"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Arsia<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: The Arsia Mons volcano on Mars; image courtesy of NASA, via Flickr<\/a>. The original (very complete) page<\/a> of information at the NASA site itself quotes a researcher, one Jacob Richardson, who says, “We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years ago–the late Jurassic period on Earth–and then died out around the same time as Earth’s dinosaurs.” It built up slowly, <\/em>very slowly: Richardson says, “Think of it like a slow, leaky faucet of magma… Arsia Mons was creating about one volcanic vent every 1 to 3 million years at the peak, compared to one every 10,000 years or so in similar regions on Earth.” The caldera is about 68 miles (110 kilometers) in diameter, and “deep enough to hold the entire volume of water in Lake Huron, and then some.” (For comparison, the surface area of Lake Huron, per Wikipedia, is about 23,000 miles; the Arsia Mons caldera’s surface area works out to less than 15,000 square miles — the caldera is <\/em>much deeper than the Great Lake.)]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Theory of Memory<\/strong><\/p>\n

Long, long ago, before I was a tormented artist, afflicted with longing yet incapable of forming durable attachments, long before this, I was a glorious ruler uniting all of a divided country—so I was told by the fortune-teller who examined my palm. Great things, she said, are ahead of you, or perhaps behind you; it is difficult to be sure. And yet, she added, what is the difference? Right now you are a child holding hands with a fortune-teller. All the rest is hypothesis and dream.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Louise Gl\u00fcck [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Ordinary Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

To rise early, reconsider, rise again later
\nto papers and the news. To smoke a few if time
\npermits and, second-guessing the weather,<\/p>\n

dress. Another day of what we bring to it –
\nmatters unfinished from days before,
\nregrets over matters we’ve finished poorly.<\/p>\n

Just once you’d like to start out early,
\nfree from memory and lighter for it.
\nLike Adam, on that first day: alone<\/p>\n

but cheerful, no fear of the maker,
\nanything his for the naming; nothing
\nto shrink from, nothing to shirk,<\/p>\n

no lot to carry that wasn’t by choice.
\nAnd at night, no voice to keep him awake,
\nno hurry to rise, no hurry not to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Tracy K. Smith [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Buddhists say that thoughts are like drops of water on the brain; when you reinforce the same thought, it will etch a new stream into your consciousness, like water eroding the side of a mountain. Scientists confirm this bit of folk wisdom: our neurons break connections and form new pathways all the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Caitlin Doughty [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one’s awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one’s personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Vladimir Nabokov [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

The Past<\/strong><\/p>\n

Small light in the sky appearing
\nsuddenly between
\ntwo pine boughs, their fine needles<\/p>\n

now etched onto the radiant surface
\nand above this
\nhigh, feathery heaven—<\/p>\n

Smell the air. That is the smell of the white pine,
\nmost intense when the wind blows through it
\nand the sound it makes equally strange,
\nlike the sound of the wind in a movie—<\/p>\n

Shadows moving. The ropes
\nmaking the sound they make. What you hear now
\nwill be the sound of the nightingale, chordata<\/em>,
\nthe male bird courting the female—<\/p>\n

The ropes shift. The hammock
\nsways in the wind, tied
\nfirmly between two pine trees.<\/p>\n

Smell the air. That is the smell of the white pine.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is my mother’s voice you hear
\nor is it only the sound the trees make
\nwhen the air passes through them<\/p>\n

because what sound would it make,
\npassing through nothing?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Louise Gl\u00fcck [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The Past, then, is a constant accumulation of images. It can be easily contemplated and listened to, tested and tasted at random, so that it ceases to mean the orderly alternation of linked events that it does in the large theoretical sense. It is now a generous chaos out of which the genius of total recall, summoned on this summer morning in 1922, can pick anything he pleases: diamonds scattered all over the parquet in 1888; a russet black-hatted beauty at a Parisian bar in 1901; a humid red rose among artificial ones in 1883; the pensive half-smile of a young English governess, in 1880, neatly reclosing her charge’s prepuce after the bedtime treat; a little girl, in 1884, licking the breakfast honey off the badly bitten nails of her spread fingers; the same, at thirty-three, confessing, rather late in the day, that she did not like flowers in vases; the awful pain striking him in the side while two children with a basket of mushrooms looked on in the merrily burning pine forest; and the startled quonk of a Belgian car, which he had overtaken and passed yesterday on a blind bend of the alpine highway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Vladimir Nabokov [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The Arrival of the Past<\/strong><\/p>\n

You wake wanting the dream
\nyou left behind in sleep,
\nwater washing through everything,
\nclearing away sediment
\nof years, uncovering the lost
\nand forgotten. You hear the sun
\nbreaking on cold grass,
\non eaves, on stone steps
\noutside. You see light
\nigniting sparks of dust
\nin the air. You feel for the first
\ntime in years the world
\nelectrified with morning.<\/p>\n

You know something has changed
\nin the night, something you thought
\ngone from the world has come back:
\nshooting stars in the pasture,
\nsleeping beneath a field
\nof daisies, wisteria climbing
\nover fences, houses, trees.<\/p>\n

This is a place that smells
\nlike childhood and old age.
\nIt is a limb you swung from,
\na field you go back to.
\nIt is a part of whatever you do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: The Arsia Mons volcano on Mars; image courtesy of NASA, via Flickr. The original (very complete) page of information at the NASA site itself quotes a researcher, one Jacob Richardson, who says, “We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19401,"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":"Right now, vs. every other moment: 'Freshly Unchanged'","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":[247,95,593,250,5,50,251,4159],"tags":[376,1495,2124,2390,3887,3897,4551,4552,4553],"class_list":{"0":"post-19390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-science-medicine","9":"category-history-in-the-news","10":"category-art","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-language-writing_cat","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"category-essays","15":"tag-louise-gluck","16":"tag-mars","17":"tag-vladimir-nabokov","18":"tag-astronomy","19":"tag-the-past","20":"tag-volcanoes","21":"tag-tracy-k-smith","22":"tag-caitlin-doughty","23":"tag-scott-owens","24":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/arsiamons_mars_nasa_thumb.jpg?fit=640%2C360&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-52K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19390","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=19390"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19402,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19390\/revisions\/19402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}