{"id":21067,"date":"2019-04-26T06:32:31","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T10:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=21067"},"modified":"2019-04-26T06:49:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T10:49:59","slug":"exhortations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/exhortations\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhortations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Leap into the Void,” by Yves Klein (1960). For some background about it, see the Rebecca Solnit quotation below. I don’t know what she means by “controversy,” but she <\/em>may just allude to the fact that this is a fake — a product of a double exposure: the upper portion of one photo, the bottom of another<\/a>. In Klein’s actual leap, a team of burly friends stood on the street below him, catching with a tarp.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Things to Think<\/strong><\/p>\n

Think in ways you’ve never thought before
\nIf the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
\nLarger than anything you’ve ever heard,
\nVaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.<\/p>\n

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
\nMaybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
\nHas risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
\nA child of your own whom you’ve never seen.<\/p>\n

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
\nTo give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
\nOr that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
\nBeen decided that if you lie down no one will die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n

Rumination<\/strong><\/p>\n

I sit up late dumb as a cow,
\nwhich is to say
\nsomewhat conscious with thirst
\nand hunger, an eye for the new mooon
\nand the morning’s long walk
\nto the water tank. Everywhere<\/em>
\naround me the birds are waiting<\/em>
\nfor the light. In this world of dreams<\/em>
\ndon’t let the clock cut up<\/em>
\nyour life in pieces.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Packing for the Future: Instructions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Take the thickest socks.
\nWherever you’re going
\nyou’ll have to walk.<\/p>\n

There may be water.
\nThere may be stones.
\nThere may be high places
\nyou cannot go without
\nthe hope socks bring you,
\nthe way they hold you
\nto the earth.<\/p>\n

At least one pair must be new,
\nmust be as blue as a wish
\nhand-knit by your mother
\nin her sleep.<\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Take a leather satchel,
\na velvet bag and an old tin box—
\na salamander painted on the lid.<\/p>\n

This is to carry that small thing
\nyou cannot leave. Perhaps the key
\nyou’ve kept though it doesn’t fit
\nany lock you know,
\nthe photograph that keeps you sane,
\na ball of string to lead you out
\nthough you can’t walk back
\ninto that light.<\/p>\n

In your bag leave room for sadness,
\nleave room for another language.<\/p>\n

There may be doors nailed shut.
\nThere may be painted windows.
\nThere may be signs that warn you
\nto be gone. Take the dream
\nyou’ve been having since
\nyou were a child, the one
\nwith open fields and the wind
\nsounding.<\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Mistrust no one who offers you
\nwater from a well, a songbird’s feather,
\nsomething that’s been mended twice.
\nAlways travel lighter
\nthan the heart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

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

Hymn<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
\nand go on out
\nover the sea marshes and the brant in bays<\/span>
\nand over the hills of tall hickory
\nand over the crater lakes and canyons
\nand on up through the spheres of diminishing air
\npast the blackset noctilucent clouds
\nwhere one wants to stop and look<\/span>
\nway past all the light diffusions and bombardments
\nup farther than the loss of sight
\ninto the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark<\/span><\/p>\n

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
\ninspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
\ntrusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest
\ncoelenterates<\/span>
\nand praying for a nerve cell
\nwith all the soul of my chemical reactions
\nand going right on down where the eye sees only traces<\/p>\n

You are everywhere partial and entire
\nYou are on the inside of everything and on the outside<\/p>\n

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum
\nhas begun to ooze spring sap at the cut
\nand I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark
\nchasmal to my ant-soul running up and down
\nand if I find you I must go out deep into your
\nfar resolutions<\/span>
\nand if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(A. R. Ammons [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Theories of Time and Space<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can get there from here, though
\nthere’s no going home.<\/p>\n

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
\nyou\u2019ve never been. Try this:<\/p>\n

head south on Mississippi 49, one-
\nby-one mile markers ticking off<\/p>\n

another minute of your life. Follow this
\nto its natural conclusion — dead end<\/p>\n

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
\nriggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches<\/p>\n

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
\nthe man-made beach, 26 miles of sand<\/p>\n

dumped on a mangrove swamp \u2014 buried
\nterrain of the past. Bring only<\/p>\n

what you must carry — tome of memory
\nits random blank pages. On the dock<\/p>\n

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
\nsomeone will take your picture:<\/p>\n

the photograph — who you were —
\nwill be waiting when you return<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

The Leap into the Void of 1960<\/em> is a subject of some controversy. What remains of it is the official photograph. It shows a quiet Paris street with stone walls, an old sidewalk, leafy trees above the wall, and from the mansard roof of the wall or walled building on the left, Klein is leaping. Not falling, but leaping upward, his body arced, his hands out, a few bits of hair flying up from his forehead, far above the street below, a dozen feet at least, leaping as though he need not even think of landing, as though he would never land, as though he were entering the weightless realm of space or the timeless realm of the photograph that would hold him up above the ground forever… A train runs by in the background, a bicyclist pedals away down the right side of the otherwise abandoned street. Like Bruegel’s painting<\/a> of Icarus falling into the sea while a farmer plows, Klein was flying and no one seemed to know or care, or so says the photograph…<\/p>\n[Klein] published a single edition of a four-page newspaper, Le Dimanche<\/em> (Sunday<\/em>), whose front page was dominated by this photograph of the leap and whose various newspaper-formatted texts were a description of a manifesto for his work. “A Man in Space!” said the headline for the photograph, parodying the space race that sought to put a man into orbit, and a caption that read, translated, “The Monochrome [Yves le Monochrome was his nom de guerre<\/em>], who is also a fourth dan black belt judo champion, regularly practices dynamic l\u00e9vitation! (with or without a net, at the risk of his life). He means to be in shape to go into space soon to join his favorite work: an aerostatic sculpture composed of 1,001 blue balloons, which, in 1957, escaped from his exhibition into the sky over Saint-Germain-des-Pres never to return. To liberate sculpture from the base has been his preoccupation for a long time.” The text is quintessentially Klein, a mix of astute engagement with artistic practice and contemporary events, good-humored prank, and mysticism. It continues, “Today anyone who paints space must actually go into space to paint, but he must get there without any faking, and neither in an airplane, a parachute, nor a rocket: he must go there by his own means, by an autonomous, individual force: in a word, he must be capable of levitating.” Thus did the Rosicrucian and judo studies of his earlier years come to a culmination. “The Blue Revolution Continues,” says a bold caption above the masthead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “Leap into the Void,” by Yves Klein (1960). For some background about it, see the Rebecca Solnit quotation below. I don’t know what she means by “controversy,” but she may just allude to the fact that this is a fake — a product of a double exposure: the upper portion of one photo, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21078,"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":"Jim Harrison, Lorna Crozier, Rebecca Solnit, et al., on outer (and inner) urgings: 'Exhortations'","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":[247,1393,250,251,4159],"tags":[1395,2978,3884,4306,4908,4909,4910,4911],"class_list":{"0":"post-21067","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-art","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"category-essays","12":"tag-robert-bly","13":"tag-a-r-ammons","14":"tag-rebecca-solnit","15":"tag-jim-harrison","16":"tag-yves-klein","17":"tag-natasha-threthewey","18":"tag-lorna-crozier","19":"tag-compulsions","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/leapintothevoid_yvesklein_thumb.jpg?fit=500%2C629&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5tN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21067","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=21067"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21081,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21067\/revisions\/21081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}