{"id":20951,"date":"2019-02-15T06:30:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T11:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=20951"},"modified":"2019-02-15T06:30:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T11:30:51","slug":"to-think-about-thinking-about-what-we-think-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/to-think-about-thinking-about-what-we-think-about\/","title":{"rendered":"To Think About Thinking About What We Think About*"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Boat shoes tucked under hall tree,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page<\/a> at RAMH) I am inordinately fond of this photo, for reasons which generally escape me. But it’s probably got something to do with our taking steps to “downsize”: to move into a smaller home, and rid ourselves of a great deal of stuff we’ve gotten used to looking at over 25+ years.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we’ve just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don’t know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we’ve got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.<\/p>\n

But “astonishing” is an epithet concealing a logical trap. We’re astonished, after all, by things that deviate from some well-known and universally acknowledged norm, from an obviousness we’ve grown accustomed to. Now the point is, there is no such obvious world. Our astonishment exists per se and isn’t based on comparison with something else.<\/p>\n

Granted, in daily speech, where we don’t stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like “the ordinary world,” “ordinary life,” “the ordinary course of events”… But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world.<\/p>\n

It looks like poets will always have their work cut out for them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wislawa Szymborska (translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh) [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Common Book<\/span> Pillow Book<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Long enough since the genre was popular
\nwe’ve forgotten what to call it: weird mix of quotes and collectibles, private
\nthoughts and uncensored meditations in brief, like locks of hair and
\nchild height charts of your considerations
\nand ponderings. An abandoned art, you practice it with care: each quote
\nequal to the other, simple entries like coordinates of unmarked appearances
\nin the sky—twenty years, over
\n8,000 days—the weather is “what you make of sunshine,” and only women “can
\nmake a man successful,” haven’t you heard
\n“God is the messenger, and we are all brothers and sisters,” organizations
\nof hate “must be fought with the ultimate crest: humanity,” and you
\nnote a quote with a love reserved
\nfor precision and the unattained, and I
\nsuspend like cracked meteors in the ether
\nof your common message: go to bed, what is truly important in this world
\nhas already been said.<\/p>\n

“When people deserve love the least
\nis when they need it the most,” we are the axis
\nof cliche, “like mother like daughter,” sign your name
\non this one before I turn out the light
\nand resume my interrupted prayer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

Poetic Subjects<\/strong><\/p>\n

The capital city. Arrowroot. Water-bur. Colts. Hail. Bamboo grass. The round-leaved violet. Club moss. Water oats. Flat river-boats. The mandarin duck.<\/p>\n

—The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon<\/span><\/p>\n

The sky. And the sky above that. The exchange of ice between mouths. Other people’s poems.<\/p>\n

My friend says we never write about anything we can get to the bottom of. For him, this is a place arbored with locust trees. For me, it’s a language for which I haven’t quite found the language yet.<\/p>\n

The dewy smell of a new-cut pear. Bacon chowder flecked with thyme. Roasted duck skin ashine with plum jam. Scorpion peppers.<\/p>\n

Clothes on a line. A smell of rain battering the rosemary bush. The Book Cliffs. Most forms of banditry. Weathered barns. Dr. Peebles. The Woman’s Tonic<\/em>, it says on the side, in old white paint.<\/p>\n

The clink of someone putting away dishes in another room.<\/p>\n

The mechanical bull at the cowboy bar in West Salt Lake. The girls ride it wearing just bikinis and cowboy hats. I lean over to my friend and say, I would worry about<\/em> catching something<\/em>. And he leans back to say, That’s really the thing you’d worry <\/em>about?<\/em> We knock the bottom of our bottles together.<\/p>\n

How they talk in old movies, like, Now listen here. Just because you can swing a bat <\/em>doesn’t mean you can play ball<\/em>. Or, I’ll be your hot cross if you’ll be my bun<\/em>. Well, anyway, you know what I mean.<\/p>\n

Somewhere between the sayable and the unsayable, poetry runs. Antidote to the river of forgetting.<\/p>\n

Like a rosary hung from a certain rearview mirror. Like the infinite rasp of gravel under the wheel of a departing car.<\/p>\n

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s last words were I’m so happy, I’m so happy<\/em>. Oscar Wilde took one look at the crackling wallpaper in his Paris flat, then at his friends gathered around and said, One or the other of us has got to go<\/em>. Wittgenstein said simply, Tell all <\/em>my friends, I’ve had a wonderful life<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

Things That Arouse a Fond Memory of the Past<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dried hollyhock. The objects used during the Display of Dolls. To find a piece of deep violet or grape-color material that has been pressed between the pages of a notebook.<\/p>\n

It is a rainy day and one is feeling bored. To pass the time, one starts looking through some old papers. And then one comes across the letters of a man one used to love.<\/p>\n

Last year’s paper fan. A night with a clear moon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

#50:<\/strong> I was telling the old man on the porch about my memory of a stuffed animal from my childhood: a small gray elephant I called Elmer. By the time he passed at last from my hands, Elmer was missing an ear and one plastic-marble eye, and patches of fur had worn through to reveal a cross-hatching of plain cotton fabric. But eventually he’d done his job, whatever it was, and it was time for both of us to move on… I didn’t know where the story was going, and trailed off into silence. The old guy smiled at first, then he glanced to one side, as if seeking a cue from somewhere offstage. He said, finally: “They ain’t a thing in this world that looking at it, really seeing<\/em> it, and ‘specially thinking about<\/em> it later don’t make it more — well, more of that<\/em> thing<\/em>. Know what I mean?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists<\/em>)<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

* About this post’s title:<\/em><\/strong> Yes, it parses, and yes, it says what I want it to say. (Heh.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Boat shoes tucked under hall tree,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH) I am inordinately fond of this photo, for reasons which generally escape me. But it’s probably got something to do with our taking steps to “downsize”: to move into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20958,"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":"Wislawa Szymborska, Shei Shonagon, Maxims for Nostalgists, et al.: 'To Think About Thinking About What We Think About'","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":[183,1393,4701,250],"tags":[921,3285,3937,4871,4872,4873],"class_list":{"0":"post-20951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-everyday-life","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-my-photography","10":"category-art","11":"tag-wislawa-szymborska","12":"tag-maxims-for-nostalgists","13":"tag-rebecca-lindenberg","14":"tag-sei-shonagon","15":"tag-priscilla-uppal","16":"tag-noumenon-and-phenomenon","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/boatshoestuckedunderhalltree_johnesimpson_thumb.jpg?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5rV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20951","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=20951"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20957,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20951\/revisions\/20957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}