{"id":20940,"date":"2019-02-08T08:30:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T13:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=20940"},"modified":"2019-02-07T08:03:20","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T13:03:20","slug":"light-light-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/light-light-light\/","title":{"rendered":"“…Light, Light, Light!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: ‘Elements Modular Kitchen,’ by Matthew Gilbride — a concept which took third place<\/a> in the 2010 Design Lab competition sponsored by Electrolux, the appliance manufacturer. What you see in this photo are actually seven of the Y-shaped “kitchens,” each of which has an array of buttons in the little blue strip you can see on the outer edges of the surface. The buttons determine whether a given unit is being used for “cooking, refrigeration, air conditioning, [or] lighting.” The caption on the photo at Flickr<\/a> continues: “The appliance draws power wirelessly through technology applied to the wall, which is supplemented through solar energy as required. Multiple units and surfaces automatically work together through wireless smart networking, whilst customisation is offered by being able to install the units as the user prefers.”]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s so important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Correspondences<\/strong>
\n(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes we are led through the doorway
\nby a child, sometimes
\nby a stranger, always a matter of grace changing
\nthe past, for if there is anything we must change
\nit is the past. To look back
\nand see another map.<\/p>\n

Love enough to fill
\na shoe, a suitcase, a bit of ink,
\na painting, a child’s eyes at a chalkboard,
\na bit of chalk, a bit of
\nbone in ash.<\/p>\n

All that is cupped,
\nall that is emptied<\/p>\n

the rush of water from a pump,
\na word spelled out
\non a palm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and (from whiskey river’s commonplace book<\/em><\/a>):<\/p>\n

In a dream I am walking joyfully up the mountain. Something breaks and falls away, and all is light. Nothing has changed, yet all is amazing, luminescent, free. Released at last, I rise into the sky… This dream comes often. Sometimes I run, then lift up like a kite, high above earth, and always I sail transcendent for a time before awaking. I choose<\/em> to awake, for fear of falling, yet such dreams tell me that I am a part of things, if only I would let go, and keep on going. “Do not be heavy,” Soen Roshi says. “Be light, light, light—full of light!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

Not\u00a0 from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Meditation Denying Everything<\/strong>
\n(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n

The trick to renunciation is starting now.
\nThe secret of detachment
\nis having already given up,
\na transcript of speech whose cadences are lost,
\nthe human need for a body to fill in
\nall your body’s deficiencies, those clefts and dents
\nalready given up, the narrative of a life
\ncompletely altered in the retrospect
\nthat knowledge brings and so discredited
\nthe point of memory utterly lost.
\nThat piece of land has always been
\nsuitable for a house. That nest has never
\nbeen ready for eight baby birds
\nwho, top-heavy, frightened their own branch
\nand home and scared themselves
\ncompletely and remarkably away.<\/p>\n

Do you hear that? It’s the wind
\nnegotiating the spine of one leaf
\nit cannot decide whether to raise
\na fragment of an inch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

The Amen Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n

On my desk there is a stone with the word “Amen” on it,
\na triangular fragment of stone from a Jewish graveyard destroyed
\nmany generations ago. The other fragments, hundreds upon hundreds,
\nwere scattered helter-skelter, and a great yearning,
\na longing without end, fills them all:
\nfirst name in search of family name, date of death seeks
\ndead man’s birthplace, son’s name wishes to locate
\nname of father, date of birth seeks reunion with soul
\nthat wishes to rest in peace. And until they have found
\none another, they will not find a perfect rest.
\nOnly this stone lies calmly on my desk and says “Amen.”
\nBut now the fragments are gathered up in lovingkindness
\nby a sad good man. He cleanses them of every blemish,
\nphotographs them one by one, arranges them on the floor
\nin the great hall, makes each gravestone whole again,
\none again: fragment to fragment,
\nlike the resurrection of the dead, a mosaic,
\na jigsaw puzzle. Child’s play.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch) [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

In what we do on foot, meandering<\/em> implies an aimless wandering, with the pleasant connotation that the very aimlessness of the wander is something freely, even happily, chosen.<\/p>\n

The meanders of water seem equally aimless, but are, it turns out, very regular in their irregularity—although if you were walking along the bank of a meandering river, you might find that hard to believe. You would head in one direction, and then curve around until you are going the opposite way, and then around again, following a path which turns upon itself and makes no sense. Could a helicopter or fairy godmother, though, raise you high enough, you would see that what seems like chaos below actually forms a regular repeating pattern of serpentine flexuosity.<\/p>\n

The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but a river neither knows nor cares. It seldom flows straight for a distance of more than about ten times its width. A river erodes its banks, and the way of the world is such that one side invariably erodes faster than the other. It eventually collapses and its sediment is carried along and deposited downstream. Two curves are thus begun: the erosion point becomes the outside of one; the sediment pile, the inside of the next.<\/p>\n

The water on the outside has to flow faster to keep up, causing more erosion, more sediment movement. The outsides get deeper, the insides shallower. At any point, the shape of the river shows its history. If other forces do not prevent, the bends over time work toward becoming perfectly elliptical. Ellipse comes from the Greek for “to fall short,” an ellipse falling as it does short of a perfect circle.<\/p>\n

…The question may be not why some rivers meander, but why every river we see does not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Paumier Jones, “Meander” [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: ‘Elements Modular Kitchen,’ by Matthew Gilbride — a concept which took third place in the 2010 Design Lab competition sponsored by Electrolux, the appliance manufacturer. What you see in this photo are actually seven of the Y-shaped “kitchens,” each of which has an array of buttons in the little blue strip you can see […]<\/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":"Peter Matthiessen, Mary Paumier Jones, et al.: \"...Light, Light, Light!\"","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":[247,1393,3217,17,5,251,4159],"tags":[544,2827,3182,4523,4865,4866,4867,4868,4869,4870],"class_list":{"0":"post-20940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-patterns","9":"category-04_technology","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-household-appliances","14":"tag-peter-matthiessen","15":"tag-yehuda-amichai","16":"tag-weightlessness","17":"tag-mary-paumier-jones","18":"tag-katie-pierson","19":"tag-anne-michaels","20":"tag-joshua-foer","21":"tag-flexibility","22":"tag-novelty","23":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5rK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20940","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=20940"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20949,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20940\/revisions\/20949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}