{"id":19541,"date":"2017-08-17T17:19:55","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T21:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=19541"},"modified":"2017-08-18T11:28:02","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T15:28:02","slug":"juddering-through-to-the-quiet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/juddering-through-to-the-quiet\/","title":{"rendered":"Juddering Through, to the Quiet"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Planet-Forming Disk Around a Baby Star,” from NASA Blueshift on Flickr<\/a>. (Used under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) This is an artist’s concept, depicting (says the Flickr description) “a young star surrounded by a dusty protoplanetary disk. This disk contains the raw material that can form planets as the star system matures.” For more information, see the note<\/a> below.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

My friend Suzie told me while I was driving her home from that bar about the real meaning of the blindfolded figure of Justice holding the scales. Suzie was drawing her own tarot cards and rethinking each card as she went. Justice, a book on classical lore asserted, stood at the gates of Hades deciding who would go in, and to go in was to be chosen for refinement through suffering, adventure, transformation, a punishing route to the reward that is the transformed self. It made going to hell seem different. And it suggested that justice is a far more complicated \u00a0and incalculable thing than we often imagine, that if everything is to come out even in the end, then the end is farther away than anticipated and far harder to estimate. It suggests too that to reside in comfort can be to have fallen by the wayside. Go to hell, but keep moving once you get there, come out the other side. Finally she drew a group around a campfire as her picture of justice, saying that justice is helping each other on the journey.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Rebecca Solnit [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Frederick Buechner [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Anger, [Evagrius<\/span>] wrote, is given to us by God to help us confront true evil. We err when we use it casually, against other people, to gratify our own desires for power or control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Kathleen Norris [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

August<\/strong><\/p>\n

Summer sings its long song, and all the notes are green.
\nBut there’s a click, somewhere in the middle
\nof the month, as we reach the turning point, the apex,
\na Ferris wheel, cars tipping and tilting over the top,
\nand we see September up ahead, school and schedules
\nreturning. And there’s the first night you step outside
\nand hear the katydids arguing, six more weeks
\nto frost, and you know you can make it through to fall.
\nDark now at eight, nights finally cooling off for sleep,
\nno more twisting in damp sheets, hearing mosquitoes’
\nthirsty whines. Lakes of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace
\nmirror the sky’s high cirrus. Evenings grow chilly,
\ntime for old sweaters and sweatpants, lying in the hammock
\nsquinting to read in the quick-coming dusk.
\nA few fireflies punctuate the night’s black text,
\nand the moonlight is so thick, you could swim in it
\nuntil you reach the other side.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Barbara Crooker [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Ballad of Orange and Grape<\/strong><\/p>\n

After you finish your work
\nafter you do your day
\nafter you’ve read your reading
\nafter you’ve written your say —
\nyou go down the street to the hot dog stand,
\none block down and across the way.
\nOn a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Most of the windows are boarded up,
\nthe rats run out of a sack —
\nsticking out of the crummy garage
\none shiny long Cadillac;
\nat the glass door of the drug-addiction center,
\na man who’d like to break your back.
\nBut here’s a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose and pink, too.<\/p>\n

Frankfurters frankfurters sizzle on the steel
\nwhere the hot-dog-man leans —
\nnothing else on the counter
\nbut the usual two machines,
\nthe grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty,
\nI face him in between.
\nA black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on walking.<\/p>\n

I watch the man as he stands and pours
\nin the familiar shape
\nbright purple in the one marked ORANGE
\norange in the one marked GRAPE,
\nthe grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE
\nand orange drink in the GRAPE.
\nJust the one word large and clear, unmistakable, on each machine.<\/p>\n

I ask him : How can we go on reading
\nand make sense out of what we read? —
\nHow can they write and believe what they’re writing,
\nthe young ones across the street,
\nwhile you go on pouring grape in ORANGE
\nand orange into the one marked GRAPE —?
\n(How are we going to believe what we read and we write and we hear and we say and we do?)<\/p>\n

He looks at the two machines and he smiles
\nand he shrugs and smiles and pours again.
\nIt could be violence and nonviolence
\nit could be white and black women and men<\/span>
\nit could be war and peace or any
\nbinary system, love and hate, enemy, friend.
\nYes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don’t do.<\/p>\n

On a corner in East Harlem
\ngarbage, reading, a deep smile, rape,
\nforgetfulness, a hot street of murder,
\nmisery, withered hope,
\na man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE
\nand orange into the one marked GRAPE,
\npouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Muriel Rukeyser [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/a>_______________________________<\/p>\n

About the image:<\/strong> The description at Flickr goes on to say, “NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope observed a fledgling solar system like the one depicted in this artist’s concept, and discovered deep within it enough water vapor to fill the oceans on Earth five times. This water vapor starts out in the form of ice in a cloudy cocoon (not pictured) that surrounds the embryonic star, called NGC 1333-IRAS 4B (buried in center of image). Material from the cocoon, including ice, falls toward the center of the cloud. The ice then smacks down onto a dusty pre-planetary disk circling the stellar embryo (doughnut-shaped cloud) and vaporizes. Eventually, this water might make its way into developing planets.” You can learn more about the “wet disk” of NGC 1333-IRAS 4B here<\/a>. As for NASA Blueshift, the image’s nominal “photographer,” it seems to be<\/a> a sort of public-information subsidiary of the Goddard Space Flight Center.<\/p>\n

[back to top<\/a>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Planet-Forming Disk Around a Baby Star,” from NASA Blueshift on Flickr. (Used under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) This is an artist’s concept, depicting (says the Flickr description) “a young star surrounded by a dusty protoplanetary disk. This disk contains the raw material that can form planets as the star system matures.” For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19558,"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":"Rbecca Solnit, Muriel Rukeyser, et al., on making your way through dark history: 'Juddering Through, to the Quiet'","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":[183,247,1393,94,95,250,5,50,251,4159],"tags":[1504,2490,3394,3884,4456,4581,4582,4583,4584],"class_list":{"0":"post-19541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-everyday-life","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-02_in-the-news","11":"category-science-medicine","12":"category-art","13":"category-06_writing","14":"category-language-writing_cat","15":"category-poetry-writing_cat","16":"category-essays","17":"tag-frederick-buechner","18":"tag-muriel-rukeyser","19":"tag-barbara-crooker","20":"tag-rebecca-solnit","21":"tag-kathleen-norris","22":"tag-anger","23":"tag-justice","24":"tag-surviving","25":"tag-thriving","26":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/planetformingdiskbabystar_nasablueshift_thumb.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-55b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19541","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=19541"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19563,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19541\/revisions\/19563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}