{"id":2238,"date":"2008-12-05T10:41:37","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T15:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=2238"},"modified":"2023-08-09T17:14:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T21:14:07","slug":"everyday-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/everyday-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Giant<\/p>\n

[Photo of a giant Archimedes screw<\/a>. Funny, isn’t it — how
\na giant screw can be both a problem and a solution?]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Starfish<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
\nthe store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
\nstiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
\nyour eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
\ndown beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
\nthe channel was full of starfish<\/em>. And you wonder,
\nis this a message, finally, or just another day?<\/p>\n

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
\npond, where whole generations of biological
\nprocesses are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
\nspeak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
\nthey sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
\nenough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
\nThere is movement beneath the water, but it
\nmay be nothing. There may be nothing going on.<\/p>\n

And then life suggests that you remember the
\nyears you ran around, the years you developed
\na shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
\nowned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
\ngenuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
\nbecome. And then life lets you go home to think
\nabout all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.<\/p>\n

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
\nwho never had any conditions, the one who waited
\nyou out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
\nyou are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
\nso you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
\nwere born at a good time. Because you were able
\nto listen when people spoke to you. Because you
\nstopped when you should have and started again.<\/p>\n

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
\nlate night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
\nthen life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
\nwhile outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
\nwith smiles on their starry faces as they head
\nout to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(by Eleanor Lerman)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And, not from whiskey river, this:<\/p>\n

[Discussing the mind traps that keep you from maintaining your motorcycle properly.]<\/em><\/p>\n

The first is stuckness, a mental stuckness that accompanies the physical stuckness of whatever it is you’re working on… A screw sticks, for example, on a side cover assembly. You check the manual to see if there might be any special cause for this screw to come off so hard, but all it says is “Remove side cover plate” in that wonderful terse technical style that never tells you what you want to know. There’s no earlier procedure left undone that might cause the cover screws to stick.<\/p>\n

If you’re experienced you’d probably apply a penetrating liquid and an impact driver at this point. But suppose you’re inexperienced and you attach a self-locking plier wrench to the shank of your screwdriver and really twist it hard, a procedure you’ve had success with in the past, but which this time succeeds only in tearing the slot of the screw.<\/p>\n

Your mind was already thinking ahead to what you would do when the cover plate was off, and so it takes a little time to realize that this irritating minor annoyance of a torn screw slot isn’t just irritating and minor. You’re stuck. Stopped. Terminated. It’s absolutely stopped you from fixing the motorcycle.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

This is the zero moment of consciousness. Stuck. No answer. Honked. Kaput. It’s a miserable experience emotionally. You’re losing time. You’re incompetent. You don’t know what you’re doing. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take the machine to a real mechanic who knows how to figure these things out.<\/p>\n

It’s normal at this point for the fear-anger syndrome to take over and make you want to hammer on that side plate with a chisel, to pound it off with a sledge if necessary. You think about it, and the more you think about it the more you’re inclined to take the whole machine to a high bridge and drop it off. It’s just outrageous that a tiny little slot of a screw can defeat you so totally.<\/p>\n

What you’re up against is the great unknown, the void of all Western thought… Creativity, originality, inventiveness, intuition, imagination…”unstuckness,” in other words… are completely outside its domain.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now… you realize that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Finally, Robbie Robertson and The Band provide their own every-night<\/em> solution to everyday matters (lyrics below):<\/p>\n\n

Lyrics:<\/p>\n

All La Glory<\/strong>
\n(music and lyrics by J.R. Robertson;
\nperformance by The Band;
\n<\/em>vocal <\/em>by Levon Helm)<\/em><\/p>\n

I wanna hear pitter patter
\nClimb up your ladder now
\nIt’s time for you to dream away,
\nFor what a big day you’ve been through.
\nYou’ve done all the things that you wanted to do.
\nAll la glory, I’m second story,
\nFeel so tall like a prison wall.<\/p>\n

I’m lookin’ for a star bright
\nTo shine down your light now
\nAnd keep the little one safe and warm,
\n‘Cause to her it’s just a fantasy
\nAnd to me it’s all a mystery.
\nAll la glory, I’m second story,
\nFeel so tall like a prison wall.<\/p>\n

And before the leaves all turn brown,
\nBefore they fall to the ground,
\nYou will find the harmony,
\nWait and see.<\/p>\n

Listen to the serenade,
\nLittle girl, promenade now.
\nYou’ve got the sunshine in your hand
\nAnd maybe come some sweet day
\nYou’ll walk that Milky Way.
\nAll la glory, I’m second story,
\nFeel so tall like a prison wall,<\/p>\n

That tall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Photo of a giant Archimedes screw. Funny, isn’t it — how a giant screw can be both a problem and a solution?] From whiskey river: Starfish This is what life does. It lets you walk up to the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a stiff knee. It lets you choose the way […]<\/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":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,74,5,251],"tags":[178,785,786,789,790,792,793,794,795],"class_list":{"0":"post-2238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"tag-whiskey-river","12":"tag-starfish","13":"tag-eleanor-lerman","14":"tag-pirsig","15":"tag-zen-and-motorcycles","16":"tag-the-everyday","17":"tag-attention","18":"tag-the-band","19":"tag-all-la-glory","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-A6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238","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=2238"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26428,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions\/26428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}