{"id":22935,"date":"2020-06-19T10:30:35","date_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=22935"},"modified":"2020-06-19T10:30:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:30:49","slug":"grasping-sanctuary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/grasping-sanctuary\/","title":{"rendered":"Grasping Sanctuary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[Image: “Three Worlds” (1955), by M.C. Escher. As you can read in this essay<\/a> at the website of the Escher in Het Palais<\/a> museum, this was actually Escher’s third attempt to capture the effect, starting in 1950. The print served as the front-cover illustration for Beaver & Krause<\/a>‘s influential electronica album, <\/em>In a Wild Sanctuary (1970).]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The American Sublime<\/strong><\/p>

How does one stand
To behold the sublime,
To confront the mockers,
The mickey mockers
And plated pairs?<\/p>

When General Jackson
Posed for his statue
He knew how one feels.
Shall a man go barefoot
Blinking and blank?<\/p>

But how does one feel?
One grows used to the weather,
The landscape and that;
And the sublime comes down
To the spirit itself,<\/p>

The spirit and space,
The empty spirit
In vacant space.
What wine does one drink?
What bread does one eat?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Wallace Stevens [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A normal existence—what could be more irrational? It’s fantastic the number of things you’re forced not to think about in order to go from one end of the day to the other without jumping the track! And the number of memories that have to be driven from your mind, the truths that have to be evaded!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Simone de Beauvoir [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and<\/a> (last stanza):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a dream going on while I am awake.
Because I must pay attention to what
is happening around me, I am unconscious
of the dream. When I sleep, the daylight
things fade out and the perpetual dream
surfaces fully and is memorable.
When I die, the dream is the only
thing left. It balloons and fills the world.<\/p>

As a writer, I coax partly into action
that internally coherent, silent story.
I let my conscious life yield a little,
and a little more, and occasionally a great way,
to my best needs and hopes: whatever
I mean by my best, whatever I mean
by my judgments on the happenings around me,
that center and guide is invited to have its way.<\/p>

For intervals, then, throughout our lives<\/span>
we savor a concurrence, the great blending
of our chance selves with what sustains
all chance. We ride the wave and are
the wave. And with renewed belief
inner and outer we find our talk
turned to prayer, our prayer into truth:
for an interval, early, we become at home in the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(William Stafford [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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

A Private Singularity<\/strong>
(excerpt)<\/em><\/p>

I used to like being young, and I still do,
Because I think I still am. There are physical
Objections to that thought, and yet what
Fascinates me now is how obsessed I was at thirty-five
With feeling older than I was: it seemed so smart
And worldly, so fastidiously knowing to dwell so much
On time — on what it gives, what it destroys, on how it feels.
And now it’s here and doesn’t feel like anything at all:
A little warm perhaps, a little cool, but mostly waiting on my
Life to fill it up, and meanwhile living in the light and listening
To the music floating through my living room each night.
…
I don’t know why I’m reading them again — <\/span>
Elizabeth Bishop, Proust. The stories you remember feel like mirrors,
And rereading them like leafing through your life at a certain age,
As though the years were pages. I keep living in the light
Under the door, waiting on those vague sensations floating in
And out of consciousness like odors, like the smell of sperm and lilacs.
In the afternoon I bicycle to a park that overlooks Lake Michigan,
Linger on a bench and read Contre Sainte-Beuve<\/em> and Time Reborn<\/em>,
A physics book that argues time is real. And that’s my life —
It isn’t much, and yet it hangs together: its obsessions dovetail
With each other, as the private world of my experience takes its place
Within a natural order that absorbs it, but for a while lets it live.
It feels like such a miracle, this life: it promises everything,
And even keeps its promise when you’ve grown too old to care.
It seems unremarkable at first, and then as time goes by it
Starts to seem unreal, a figment of the years inside a universe
That flows around them and dissolves them in the end,
But meanwhile lets you linger in a universe of one —
A village on a summer afternoon, a garden after dark,
A small backyard beneath a boring California sky.
I said I still felt young, and so I am, yet what that means
Eludes me. Maybe it’s the feeling of the presence
Of the past, or of its disappearance, or both of them at once —
A long estrangement and a private singularity, intact
Within a tinkling bell, an iron nail, a pure, angelic clang —
The echo of a clear, metallic sound from childhood,
Where time began: “Oh, beautiful sound, strike again!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(John Koethe [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#60: <\/strong>When you go cave-diving into your memory — carefully, paying respectful attention with all your nine senses — what do you find? Stalactites dripping half-remembered names onto the floor? Solid walls running with chilly slime, like fossils in the making? The cheerful, high-pitched burbling of a stream you can never quite see, calling you ever deeper? Do your feet and fingertips sparkle as though with irradiation from touching the countless surfaces? Does your very breath taste of metal and stone?<\/p>

And does the experience rattle your nerves, or does it calm you? When you again emerge, blinking, into the broad daylight of the now, do you sob with relief and swear not to repeat the experience if you can help it? Or do you first scramble to find writing tools, a computer, anything<\/em> with which to record for your personal posterity the location of this holy place?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

[Image: “Three Worlds” (1955), by M.C. Escher. As you can read in this essay at the website of the Escher in Het Palais museum, this was actually Escher’s third attempt to capture the effect, starting in 1950. The print served as the front-cover illustration for Beaver & Krause‘s influential electronica album, In a Wild Sanctuary […]<\/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":"M.C. Escher, William Stafford, a Maxim for Nostalgists, etc.: 'Grasping Sanctuary'","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":[183,247,1393,250,5,251,4159],"tags":[370,1299,1345,1977,3285,3438,4478,5162,5163],"class_list":{"0":"post-22935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-consciousness","14":"tag-wallace-stevens","15":"tag-william-stafford","16":"tag-m-c-escher","17":"tag-maxims-for-nostalgists","18":"tag-john-koethe","19":"tag-simone-de-beauvoir","20":"tag-beaver-krause","21":"tag-sanctuary","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5XV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22935","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=22935"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22975,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22935\/revisions\/22975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}