{"id":20702,"date":"2018-11-09T05:53:21","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T10:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=20702"},"modified":"2018-11-09T05:55:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T10:55:08","slug":"drink-and-be-whole-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/drink-and-be-whole-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Drink, and Be Whole Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[About the image: “Trophies of Hurricane Michael,” by John E. Simpson (shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page<\/a> at <\/em>RAMH).]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The important thing is allowing the whole world to wake up. Part of allowing the whole world to wake up is recognizing that the whole world is free—everybody is free to be as they are. Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Perfected<\/strong><\/p>\n

The droppings of last year’s horses
\nBlaze up into golden stones.<\/p>\n

– James Wright<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The pond is feathered, grey-backed, moving north.
\nNothing can hold it.
\nThe fat little saint in the garden prays only
\nfor a paint-job.<\/span>
\nFlickers and downies contend at the feeder.
\nIs this a world in good order?<\/p>\n

A red-winged blackbird grates on the world’s nerves—
\nanother of the saints of repetition.
\nThis is not a day
\nto ask after the gardener.<\/span><\/p>\n

If Earth is perfected,
\nit is in its cycles, its seasons, its relentless
\nreplications,<\/span>
\nas Time is perfected in the saint’s plaster leprosy,
\nthe scabbed mud of the shoreline,
\nthe pile of lobbed limbs<\/span>
\nin the hollow.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the geese, they’ve turned to alchemy,
\ndepositing green tubes underfoot, vials
\nthe winds will powder and carry
\ndown to the water.<\/span><\/p>\n

Drink, and be whole again.<\/em><\/p>\n

As light sinks, the waters,
\nresistant to the world’s thirst, stiffen
\nbeneath a glinting shield.<\/span>
\nStill, the deer bend to whatever is on offer.
\nThe saints, too, are making do
\nwith gold.<\/span>
\nHard on a throat, gold.
\nWho would dare to ask after
\nthe gardener?<\/span><\/p>\n

The pond is flying north against
\nall natural law,<\/span>
\ndragging the dead,
\nand whatever is un-rooted, uprooted,
\nunresolved.<\/span>
\nSee how the waters have broken
\ninto scales, red in the last light, silver
\nwhere the moon<\/span><\/p>\n

touches, troughs, touches.<\/em><\/p>\n

With sunrise and the washing
\nof heaven’s flesh in risen mist, ask:
\nIs this a world in good order?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Ask again. Tomorrow<\/em>
\nis the only answer, every sacred
\ndying cell of it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Marjorie Stelmach [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

At the source page, the poet says of “Perfected”: “Arriving in a damp, chilly, early spring for a stay at a retreat center I have always loved, I asked after the woman who had welcomed me on previous visits and learned that she had been diagnosed with advanced stage cancer. The poem came from my contemplation of the sad disarray of her garden and the untended beauty of the adjacent wetland wilderness. Angered by the apparent intentions—so opposed to my own wishes—of the disease, of the seasons, of the Gardener, I struggled to understand anew the term ‘perfected’ (from Latin: <\/em>completion), and to accept the world as complete, able to contain all things including disorder and even death and, by the alchemy of time and change, to remain in some sense ‘perfected.’ I can\u2019t say I succeeded in convincing myself, but the poem represents my own attempt, as Frost put it, to ‘drink and be whole again \/ beyond confusion.'”<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

Directive<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back out of all this now too much for us,
\nBack in a time made simple by the loss
\nOf detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
\nLike graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
\nThere is a house that is no more a house
\nUpon a farm that is no more a farm
\nAnd in a town that is no more a town.
\nThe road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
\nWho only has at heart your getting lost,
\nMay seem as if it should have been a quarry—
\nGreat monolithic knees the former town
\nLong since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
\nAnd there’s a story in a book about it:
\nBesides the wear of iron wagon wheels
\nThe ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
\nThe chisel work of an enormous Glacier
\nThat braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
\nYou must not mind a certain coolness from him
\nStill said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
\nNor need you mind the serial ordeal
\nOf being watched from forty cellar holes
\nAs if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
\nAs for the woods’ excitement over you
\nThat sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
\nCharge that to upstart inexperience.
\nWhere were they all not twenty years ago?
\nThey think too much of having shaded out
\nA few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
\nMake yourself up a cheering song of how
\nSomeone’s road home from work this once was,
\nWho may be just ahead of you on foot
\nOr creaking with a buggy load of grain.
\nThe height of the adventure is the height
\nOf country where two village cultures faded
\nInto each other. Both of them are lost.
\nAnd if you’re lost enough to find yourself
\nBy now, pull in your ladder road behind you
\nAnd put a sign up closed<\/span> to all but me.
\nThen make yourself at home. The only field
\nNow left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
\nFirst there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
\nSome shattered dishes underneath a pine,
\nThe playthings in the playhouse of the children.
\nWeep for what little things could make them glad.
\nThen for the house that is no more a house,
\nBut only a belilaced<\/span> cellar hole,
\nNow slowly closing like a dent in dough.
\nThis was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
\nYour destination and your destiny’s
\nA brook that was the water of the house,
\nCold as a spring as yet so near its source,
\nToo lofty and original to rage.
\n(We know the valley streams that when aroused
\nWill leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
\nI have kept hidden in the instep arch
\nOf an old cedar at the waterside
\nA broken drinking goblet like the Grail
\nUnder a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
\nSo can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
\n(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
\nHere are your waters and your watering place.
\nDrink and be whole again beyond confusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[About the image: “Trophies of Hurricane Michael,” by John E. Simpson (shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH).] From whiskey river: The important thing is allowing the whole world to wake up. Part of allowing the whole world to wake up is recognizing that the whole world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20731,"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":"When you fancy everything 'out there' as the source of your trouble: 'Drink, and Be Whole Again'","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":[183,247,1393,94,96,4701,250,251,4159],"tags":[1249,4109,4704,4823,4824,4825],"class_list":{"0":"post-20702","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-politics-in-the-news","12":"category-my-photography","13":"category-art","14":"category-poetry-writing_cat","15":"category-essays","16":"tag-robert-frost","17":"tag-adyashanti","18":"tag-marjorie-stelmach","19":"tag-figuring-things-out","20":"tag-making-sense-of-nonsense","21":"tag-when-all-the-world-is-mad","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/trophiesofhurricanemichael_johnesimpson_thumb.jpg?fit=400%2C711&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5nU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20702","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=20702"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20737,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20702\/revisions\/20737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}