{"id":21261,"date":"2019-07-19T10:27:13","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T14:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=21261"},"modified":"2019-07-19T10:30:08","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T14:30:08","slug":"but-eventually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/but-eventually\/","title":{"rendered":"But Eventually…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: “Prison for a Day”; found it on Flickr<\/a> (used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!), posted by user “amberandclint.” This is a portion of the interior of an airport (Bangkok International? not sure; the caption’s wording is ambiguous), where the photographer once spent eleven hours while waiting for his wife’s flight to board.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Promise of Blue Horses<\/strong><\/p>\n

A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning,
\nthen the sun—<\/span>
\nrelating the difference between sadness
\nand the need to praise<\/span>
\nthat which makes us joyful, I can’t calculate
\nhow the earth tips hungrily<\/span>
\ntoward the sun—then soaks up rain—or the density
\nof this unbearable need<\/span>
\nto be next to you. It’s a palpable thing—this earth philosophy
\nand familiar in the dark<\/span>
\nlike your skin under my hand. We are a small earth. It’s no
\nsimple thing. Eventually<\/span>
\nwe will be dust together; can be used to make a house, to stop
\na flood or grow food<\/span>
\nfor those who will never remember who we were, or know
\nthat we loved fiercely.<\/span>
\nLaughter and sadness eventually become the same song turning us
\ntoward the nearest star—<\/span>
\na star constructed of eternity and elements of dust barely visible
\nin the twilight as you travel<\/span>
\neast. I run with the blue horses of electricity who surround
\nthe heart<\/span>
\nand imagine a promise made when no promise was possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

<\/p>\n

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

A Summer Garden<\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/p>\n

Several weeks ago I discovered a photograph of my mother
\nsitting in the sun, her face flushed as with achievement or triumph.
\nThe sun was shining. The dogs
\nwere sleeping at her feet where time was also sleeping,
\ncalm and unmoving as in all photographs.<\/p>\n

I wiped the dust from my mother’s face.
\nIndeed, dust covered everything; it seemed to me the persistent
\nhaze of nostalgia that protects all relics of childhood.
\nIn the background, an assortment of park furniture, trees and shrubbery.<\/p>\n

The sun moved lower in the sky, the shadows lengthened and darkened.
\nThe more dust I removed, the more these shadows grew.
\nSummer arrived. The children
\nleaned over the rose border, their shadows
\nmerging with the shadows of the roses.<\/p>\n

A word came into my head, referring
\nto this shifting and changing, these erasures
\nthat were now obvious—<\/p>\n

it appeared, and as quickly vanished.
\nWas it blindness or darkness, peril, confusion?<\/p>\n

Summer arrived, then autumn. The leaves turning,
\nthe children bright spots in a mash of bronze and sienna.<\/p>\n

2<\/span><\/p>\n

When I had recovered somewhat from these events,
\nI replaced the photograph as I had found it
\nbetween the pages of an ancient paperback,
\nmany parts of which had been
\nannotated in the margins, sometimes in words but more often
\nin spirited questions and exclamations
\nmeaning “I agree” or “I’m unsure, puzzled—”<\/p>\n

The ink was faded. Here and there I couldn’t tell
\nwhat thoughts occurred to the reader
\nbut through the bruise-like blotches I could sense
\nurgency, as though tears had fallen.<\/p>\n

I held the book awhile.
\nIt was Death in Venice (in translation);
\nI had noted the page in case, as Freud believed,
\nnothing is an accident.<\/p>\n

Thus the little photograph
\nwas buried again, as the past is buried in the future.
\nIn the margin there were two words,
\nlinked by an arrow: “sterility” and, down the page, “oblivion”—<\/p>\n

“And it seemed to him the pale and lovely
\nsummoner out there smiled at him and beckoned…”<\/p>\n

3<\/span><\/p>\n

How quiet the garden is;
\nno breeze ruffles the Cornelian cherry.
\nSummer has come.<\/p>\n

How quiet it is
\nnow that life has triumphed. The rough<\/p>\n

pillars of the sycamores
\nsupport the immobile
\nshelves of the foliage,<\/p>\n

the lawn beneath
\nlush, iridescent—<\/p>\n

And in the middle of the sky,
\nthe immodest god.<\/p>\n

Things are, he says. They are, they do not change;
\nresponse does not change.<\/p>\n

How hushed it is, the stage
\nas well as the audience; it seems
\nbreathing is an intrusion.<\/p>\n

He must be very close,
\nthe grass is shadowless.<\/p>\n

How quiet it is, how silent,
\nlike an afternoon in Pompeii.<\/p>\n

4<\/span><\/p>\n

Beatrice took the children to the park in Cedarhurst.
\nThe sun was shining. Airplanes
\npassed back and forth overhead, peaceful because the war was over.<\/p>\n

It was the world of her imagination:
\ntrue and false were of no importance.<\/p>\n

Freshly polished and glittering—
\nthat was the world. Dust
\nhad not yet erupted on the surface of things.<\/p>\n

The planes passed back and forth, bound
\nfor Rome and Paris—you couldn’t get there
\nunless you flew over the park. Everything
\nmust pass through, nothing can stop—<\/p>\n

The children held hands, leaning
\nto smell the roses.
\nThey were five and seven.<\/p>\n

Infinite, infinite—that
\nwas her perception of time.<\/p>\n

She sat on a bench, somewhat hidden by oak trees.
\nFar away, fear approached and departed;
\nfrom the train station came the sound it made.<\/p>\n

The sky was pink and orange, older because the day was over.<\/p>\n

There was no wind. The summer day
\ncast oak-shaped shadows on the green grass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Louise Gl\u00fcck [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Coming and going, life and death.
\nA thousand villages, a million houses.
\nDon’t you get the point?
\nMoon in the water, blossom in the sky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

[Image: “Prison for a Day”; found it on Flickr (used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!), posted by user “amberandclint.” This is a portion of the interior of an airport (Bangkok International? not sure; the caption’s wording is ambiguous), where the photographer once spent eleven hours while waiting for his wife’s flight to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21271,"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":"Cormac McCarthy, Louise Gl\u00fcck, et al.: 'But Eventually...'","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":[247,1393,250,5,4878,251],"tags":[376,1549,2929,3878,3895,4941,4942,4943],"class_list":{"0":"post-21261","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-06_writing","11":"category-fiction","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"tag-louise-gluck","14":"tag-cormac-mccarthy","15":"tag-zen","16":"tag-joy-harjo","17":"tag-impermanence","18":"tag-gizan","19":"tag-passages","20":"tag-the-natural-order-of-things","21":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/prisonforaday_amberandclint_thumb.jpg?fit=640%2C403&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5wV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21261","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=21261"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21272,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21261\/revisions\/21272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}