{"id":20343,"date":"2018-06-08T06:39:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T10:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=20343"},"modified":"2018-06-08T06:39:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-08T10:39:47","slug":"fresh-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/fresh-starts\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresh Starts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “happy 1st day of january, ’11,” by user “muffett68” on Flickr<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

This Blank Page<\/strong><\/p>\n

is where I begin to exist. See, and already you
\nbegin to know me, an insistence somewhere
\nthat your eyes transmute into Voice—thence
\nthe somebody as much as I am that you
\napprehend. But I am more arrogant than this, I
\nam here before you, making the paths through
\nblank lines of space,
\na detergent across the glass of your language,
\nrestoring the shock of perspective
\nto the household kitchen window
\n(the view that you had grown up with
\ntill you could see behind all the fences)
\nso that, following the footprints of my eyes
\nalready quite outside the walls of
\nthis page
\nyou may be lured somewhere further enough to be
\nmore than the small note that was
\nextension of me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Thomas Shapcott [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Last Spring<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fill yourself up with the forsythias
\nand when the lilacs flower, stir them in too
\nwith your blood and happiness and wretchedness,
\nthe dark ground that seems to come with you.<\/p>\n

Sluggish days. All obstacles overcome.
\nAnd if you say: ending or beginning, who knows,
\nthen maybe—just maybe—the hours will carry you
\ninto June, when the roses blow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Gottfried Benn [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Luckily for art, life is difficult, hard to understand, useless, and mysterious. Luckily for artists, they don’t require art to do a good day’s work. But critics and teachers do. A book, a story, should be smarter than its author. It is the critic or the teacher in you or me who cleverly outwits the characters with the power of prior knowledge of meetings and ends.<\/p>\n

Stay open and ignorant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Grace Paley [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Borrow the Whole Air
\n<\/strong>(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n

7<\/p>\n

Again and again beyond all repetition
\nnight comes back with different gifts of coolness
\nto rejoice our chemistries and colours.
\nTree and bush and flower are rinsed with night
\nand through the gesture of each open door
\ndark walks with living garlands in its breath.
\nAccepting is to be drawn in
\nto an image of discovery, not death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Thomas Shapcott [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Billy decided to go back to work in his office in the shopping plaza. Business was booming as usual. His assistants were keeping up with it nicely. They were startled to see him. They had been told by his daughter that he might never practice again.<\/p>\n

But Billy went into his examining room briskly, asked that the first patient be sent in. So they sent him one–a twelve-year old boy who was accompanied by his-widowed mother. They were strangers, new in town. Billy asked them a little about themselves, learned that the boy’s father had been killed in Vietnam–in the famous five-day battle for Hill 875 near Dakto. So it goes.<\/p>\n

While he examined the boy’s eyes, Billy told him matter-of-factly about his adventures on Tralfamadore, assured the fatherless boy that his father was very much alive still in moments the boy would see again and again. “Isn’t that comforting?” Billy asked.<\/p>\n

And somewhere in there, the boy’s mother went out and told the receptionist that Billy was evidently going crazy. Billy was taken home. His daughter asked him again, “Father, Father, Father-what are<\/em> we going to do<\/em> with you?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Kurt Vonnegut [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Once, Driving West of Billings, Montana<\/strong><\/p>\n

I ran into the afterlife.
\nNo fluffy white clouds. Not even stars. Only sky
\ndark as the inside of a movie theater
\nat three in the afternoon and getting bigger all the time,
\nexpanding at terrific speed
\nover the car which was disappearing,
\nflattening out empty
\nas the fields on either side.<\/p>\n

It was impossible to think<\/span>
\nunder that rain louder than engines.
\nI turned off the radio to listen, let my head
\nfill up until every bone
\nwas vibrating—sky.<\/p>\n

Twice, trees of lightning<\/span>
\nbroke out of the asphalt. I could smell
\nthe highway burning. Long after, saw blue smoke twirling
\nbehind the eyeballs, lariats
\ndoing fancy rope tricks, jerking silver
\ndollars out of the air, along with billiard cues, ninepins.<\/p>\n

I was starting to feel I could drive forever
\nwhen suddenly one of those trees was right in front of me.
\nOf course, I hit it—
\nbranches shooting stars down the windshield,
\npoor car shaking like a dazed cow.
\nI thought this time for sure I was dead
\nso whatever was on the other side had to be eternity.<\/p>\n

Saw sky enormous as nowhere. Kept on driving.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “happy 1st day of january, ’11,” by user “muffett68” on Flickr.] From whiskey river: This Blank Page is where I begin to exist. See, and already you begin to know me, an insistence somewhere that your eyes transmute into Voice—thence the somebody as much as I am that you apprehend. But I am more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20352,"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":"Thomas Shapcott, Susan Mitchell, Grace Paley, et al.: 'Fresh Starts'","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":[247,1393,50,251,3460,4159],"tags":[2340,4669,4743,4744,4745,4746,4747],"class_list":{"0":"post-20343","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-language-writing_cat","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"category-science-fiction-06_writing","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-kurt-vonnegut","14":"tag-beginnings","15":"tag-suan-mitchell","16":"tag-thomas-shapcott","17":"tag-grace-paley","18":"tag-gottfried-benn","19":"tag-cycles","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/happyfirstdayofjanuary11_muffett68_thumb.jpg?fit=600%2C450&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5i7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20343","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=20343"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20353,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20343\/revisions\/20353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}