{"id":22789,"date":"2020-05-29T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T14:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=22789"},"modified":"2020-05-29T10:06:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T14:06:42","slug":"the-seer-the-seen-the-not-quite-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/the-seer-the-seen-the-not-quite-seen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seer, the Seen, the Not Quite Seen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[Image: “Covered Window,” by John E. Simpson; original in my SmugMug gallery<\/a>. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page<\/a> at <\/em>RAMH). This is one of an Instagram series I’ve done for a while, tagged “#jesstorypix” and cross-posted to SmugMug<\/a>; each photo, generally post-processed to within an inch of its life, is captioned with a brief micro-story which the photo inspired (if that’s the word). For the story of “Covered Window,” see the note at the foot of this post<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From whiskey river<\/a><\/em> (which paraphrases the full passage below, as does nearly every other Internet source; it’s an excerpt from a fictional dialogue between the narrator, C.S. Lewis, and his Victorian “mentor” George MacDonald — Lewis opens, describing an unhappy woman they’re observing while touring Hell):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…she’s only a silly, garrulous old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling, and one feels that a little kindness, and rest, and change would put her all right.”<\/p>

“That is what she once was. That is maybe what she still is. If so, she certainly will be cured. But the whole question is whether she is<\/em> now a grumbler.”<\/p>

“I should have thought there was no doubt about that!”<\/p>

“Aye, but ye misunderstand me. The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman—even the least trace of one—still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there’s nothing but ashes we’ll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever. They must be swept up.”<\/p>

“But how can there be a grumble without a grumbler?”<\/p>

“The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye’ll have had experiences… it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticising it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you<\/em> left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(C. S. Lewis [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The One Who Is at Home<\/strong><\/p>

Each day I long so much to see
The true teacher. And each time
At dusk when I open the cabin
Door and empty the teapot,
I think I know where he is:
West of us in the forest.<\/p>

Or perhaps I am the one
Who is out in the night,
The forest sand wet under
my feet, moonlight shining
On the sides of the birch trees,
The sea far off gleaming.<\/p>

And he is the one who is
At home. He sits in my chair
Calmly; he reads and prays
All night.  He loves to feel
His own body around him;
He does not leave the house.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Francisco Albanez, translated by Robert Bly [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

(That’s Believable!<\/em> [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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

A recent proof-of-principle study, led by [Cambridge University researcher Valdas] Noreika, intensively studied a single individual as he repeatedly transitioned into sleep while the brain’s electrical activity was recorded using EEG scalp electrodes. The would-be-sleeper was asked to press a button when he experienced an intrusive thought or image, and to verbally report it to the sleep researchers. The descriptions were pleasantly bizarre: “putting a horse into a sort of violin case and zipping it up,” “the phrase learning to consume consciously from a master,<\/em>” “visual image of a curled up music manuscript.”<\/p>

The electrical activity of the brain became steadily more predictable the longer the person lay still—something that’s entirely normal for sleep entry. Unexpectedly though, the hypnagogic intrusions were preceded not by sudden bursts of complex brain activity, like sparks in a fading candle, but by sudden changes to a more orderly brain state. Noreika is working on the hypothesis that when we enter sleep, the brain steadily dismantles the models and concepts we use to interpret the world, leading to moments of experience unconstrained by our usual mental filters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Vaughan Bell, The Atlantic [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Imagined Copperhead<\/strong><\/p>

The imagined copperhead
hid on the path ahead,
unseen on bronze leaves, unheard,
and a mortal likelihood   
at every step. This was childhood,
mine, the woods’ jihad   
against a boy who’d
intruded among monkshood,
wasp, tick, and nettles haired
with needles. Scrub brush abhorred
him with a horde
of? welts, bites, and stings, but he’d
never seen a copperhead,
though he’d looked hard
taking, as he’d been ordered, heed.
The snake wasn’t a falsehood,
though, to him. Dread
was his nature, and he hared
through sunlight and shade, head
swiveling for the copperhead
he’d begun to covet, the ballyhooed
killer a camouflaged godhead
on which his ingrained faith cohered,
and finally his priesthood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Andrew Hudgins [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succour, what consolation is there in truth. compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don\u2019t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Diane Setterfield [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emergence<\/strong>

So the town grew and they built
us a new bridge over the stream, and later
diverted the flow to an underground tunnel
like a long worm into which
the city shoveled its leaves and garbage,
slowing the current and turning it rank
with mud and rats. Murky. Invisible.<\/p>

People forgot the old brook
with its little fish, and tadpoles and
green reeds, and its ripples conversing
with the sun. Until last week a great storm
of rain and wind blew open
our windows and our memories and
the water burst through and spread itself
across the city in a great sheet and said,
“Remember me?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Luci Shaw [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>

_______<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note:<\/strong> The story which leapt to mind from the photo above is called “Covered Window”:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It didn’t happen often. But late in some afternoons, when the temperature had just begun to dwindle to nighttime; when the day’s-end rush hour had tapered off; when the air was heavy with the mixed perfumes of things stirring to consciousness and other things ever so slightly trending to death — at just such times, if you knew exactly where to look, a small corner of the cover over one small window would flip open—<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Many of the #jesstorypix stories have ended in ellipses or long dashes, as here, allowing the viewer — or so goes the theory — to complete the narrative on their own.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Covered Window,” by John E. Simpson; original in my SmugMug gallery. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH). This is one of an Instagram series I’ve done for a while, tagged “#jesstorypix” and cross-posted to SmugMug; each photo, generally post-processed to within an inch of its […]<\/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":"C.S. Lewis, Diane Setterfield, a #jesstorypix entry, et al.: 'The Seer, the Seen, the Not Quite Seen'","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":[247,1393,4701,250,5,5128,4878,251,4159],"tags":[1904,2177,3650,4350,5142,5143,5145,5146,5147,5148],"class_list":{"0":"post-22789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-my-photography","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-flash-and-microfiction","12":"category-fiction","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"category-essays","15":"tag-figure-and-ground","16":"tag-c-s-lewis","17":"tag-andrew-hudgins","18":"tag-invisibility","19":"tag-francisco-albanez","20":"tag-thats-believable","21":"tag-vaughan-bell","22":"tag-the-atlantic","23":"tag-diane-setterfield","24":"tag-luci-shaw","25":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5Vz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22789","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=22789"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22810,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22789\/revisions\/22810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}