{"id":21038,"date":"2019-04-12T13:18:23","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T17:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=21038"},"modified":"2019-04-12T13:18:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T17:18:23","slug":"being-both-things-and-being-neither-all-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/being-both-things-and-being-neither-all-at-once\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Both Things and Being Neither, All at Once"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Unused House Numbers,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page<\/a> at RAMH.)]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

We do our twenty minutes of meditation a day in the hope that, properly stilled, our minds will stop just reflecting back to us the confusion and multiplicity of our world but will turn to a silvery mist like Alice’s looking glass that we can step through into a world where the beauty that sleeps in us will come awake at last. We send scientific expeditions to Loch Ness because if the dark and monstrous side of fairy tales can be proved to exist, who can be sure that the blessed side doesn’t exist, too? I suspect that the whole obsession of our time with the monstrous in general—with the occult and the demonic, with exorcism and black magic and the great white shark—is at its heart only the shadow side of our longing for the beatific, and we are like the knight in Ingmar Bergman’s film\u00a0The Seventh Seal<\/em>, who tells the young witch about to be burned at the stake that he wants to meet the devil her master, and when she asks him why, he says, “I want to ask him about God. He, if anyone, must know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Photosynthesis<\/strong><\/p>\n

Morning falls out of its orbit
\nand swims up through the blue.
\nLast night, when I heard the news,
\nI forgot my human hunger.<\/p>\n

Now I am making calculations
\nwith a row of ivy and old hibiscus.
\nI am silent as a shadow in the ferns,
\nI am frond green and curled.<\/p>\n

It may be necessary to drink through
\nthe roots; I could eat sunlight and air,
\nstart a green factory in each finger;
\nI could make each arm a branch.<\/p>\n

Let me begin as stem and leaf.
\nI’ll make something you can breathe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As The Poems Go<\/strong><\/p>\n

as the poems go into the thousands you
\nrealize that you’ve created very
\nlittle.
\nit comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
\nthe traffic, the nights and the days of the
\nyears, the faces.
\nleaving this will be easier than living
\nit, typing one more line now as
\na man plays a piano through the radio,
\nthe best writers have said very
\nlittle
\nand the worst,
\nfar too much.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Charles Bukowski [source: various, none canonical — apparently from an out-of-print literary magazine,<\/em> On the Bus])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In one recorded dialogue with a student, Basho instructed, “The problem with most poems is that they are either subjective or objective.” “Don’t you mean too<\/em> subjective or too<\/em> objective?” his student asked. Basho answered, simply, “No.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

Braid<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shoulders knobbed against
\na slat-backed chair,
\nthe temples tugged, a pull<\/p>\n

at the nape, you felt the up-
\nsweep as she smoothed the fine
\nwisps back and tucked<\/p>\n

yank into yank
\nand a third into that
\nuntil the consecutive<\/p>\n

dodges of thumbs and first
\nfingers gathered,
\nfraying and filing<\/p>\n

to their end—ended
\nin an ornament that, suspended,
\nlooked ridiculous, even<\/p>\n

on a child who mostly
\nset forth with
\nwhat was called<\/p>\n

a “finished” look, some
\nloose ends in order where
\nothers were not<\/p>\n

and a slight weight below
\nthe nape’s pull. The view
\nothers had of it<\/p>\n

was invisible to you.
\nIt made something there
\nwhere there would have been<\/p>\n

a blank—now instead
\na kind of face
\nsent from woman to<\/p>\n

woman like a duty,
\nan obstinate
\nduty to pattern.<\/p>\n

It’s too simple to see
\none thing rather
\nthan another, a wish<\/p>\n

protruding once it’s been
\nsuppressed, a vise that holds
\na thought in its proper<\/p>\n

place until it bobs
\nto the surface
\nof a generally balmy<\/p>\n

sea. Women and
\nwoman only a letter
\naway—a strand gets<\/p>\n

mixed, then mixed
\nright out of the heaven
\nof perfect fit;<\/p>\n

one kind of accident
\nturns into another.
\nThe whole head throbs for days.<\/p>\n

Black and white are woven
\ninto gray the way
\nhyperbole has no chance<\/p>\n

once it’s juxtaposed
\nto reason—negation
\njust a thread among<\/p>\n

the available options
\nand hope itself apparent
\nthere in the very<\/p>\n

notion a made thing can last.
\nTougher, coarser, split
\nweave in the years. Shorter,<\/p>\n

longer, shorter, the brain
\nbound to its anchor.
\nThe brushed-out waves<\/p>\n

with their rick-rack
\nshadows, a thread
\ninside the case,<\/p>\n

the case inside
\nthe locket, the locket
\nbeneath the yoke.<\/p>\n

All the effort
\nto save in itself
\na form of loss.<\/p>\n

You can tell a story
\nmany ways. You can leave
\nsomething out or put<\/p>\n

something in; you can fool
\nyourself and hide.
\nYou can shake out<\/p>\n

the form or try
\nto manage every wisp,
\nbut the latter will<\/p>\n

only bring you pain.
\nYou went under
\nthe hand and eye of another<\/p>\n

and the tether cannot
\nbe undone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

#2: <\/strong>“It was an interesting experience.”<\/p>\n

“I hated it.”<\/p>\n

“I loved it.”<\/p>\n

“I loved her.”<\/p>\n

“I love you.”<\/p>\n

With or without pronouns, everything we say about the past — even the very recent past, the that just happened<\/em> past — while feeling to us intimately bound up with the past, stands somehow apart from it. We write journals; we sit around tables at family gatherings and boardooms, swapping memories; we furrow the past with hindsight, dinging the blade on a rock here or a tree root there, but never pausing until the lines are inscribed, neatly, at least to our eyes up here on the tractor. (But don’t get down, don’t look too close, all the order turns to chaos when observed on hands and knees.)<\/p>\n

There’s really no past, you know. Even as we sculpt it so lovingly with our words, our intellect, and our emotion, as we toss scraps of meaning its way in hopes that some might stick, at least for a moment — even then, the past has already slithered away from us. Don’t live in the past<\/em>: so people — even “wise” people — tell us… to which I say, Ha<\/em>. It’s impossible to live anywhere else, even if we (ha, again) can’t live there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Unused House Numbers,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)] From whiskey river: We do our twenty minutes of meditation a day in the hope that, properly stilled, our minds will stop just reflecting back to us the confusion and multiplicity of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21041,"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":"Frederick Buechner, Joyce Sutphen, a Maxim for Nostalgists, et al.: \"Being Both Things and Being Neither\"","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":[38,247,1393,4701,250,5,251,4159],"tags":[270,1504,2631,3120,3285,3957,4383,4902,4903],"class_list":{"0":"post-21038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-backwards","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-my-photography","11":"category-art","12":"category-06_writing","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"category-essays","15":"tag-jane-hirshfield","16":"tag-frederick-buechner","17":"tag-joyce-sutphen","18":"tag-yin-and-yang","19":"tag-maxims-for-nostalgists","20":"tag-charles-bukowski","21":"tag-susan-stewart","22":"tag-things-separate-and-things-together","23":"tag-both-and-neither","24":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/unusedhousenumbers_johnesimpson_thumb.jpg?fit=500%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5tk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21038","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=21038"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21045,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21038\/revisions\/21045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}