{"id":24572,"date":"2021-05-21T09:36:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T13:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=24572"},"modified":"2021-05-21T09:38:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T13:38:00","slug":"everything-continuing-in-all-directions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/everything-continuing-in-all-directions\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Continuing in All Directions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n

[Image — more or less untitled — by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page<\/a> at <\/em><\/em>RAMH.)<\/em><\/em> It does in fact have a functional “title,” but not one I’m particularly fond of, nor chained to. Ideas?]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Wonder Is<\/strong><\/p>

The washing never gets done.
The furnace never gets heated.
Books never get read.
Life is never completed.
Life is like a ball which one must continually
catch and hit so that it won’t fall.
When the fence is repaired at one end,
it collapses at the other. The roof leaks,
the kitchen door won’t close,there are cracks in the foundation,
the torn knees of children’s pants . . .
One can’t keep everything in mind. The wonder is
that beside all this one can notice
the spring which is so full of everything
continuing in all directions — into evening clouds,
into the redwing’s song and into every
drop of dew on every blade of grass in the meadow,
as far as the eye can see, into the dusk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Jaan Kaplinski [source<\/a> (among others)<\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

#23:<\/strong> To appreciate post-apocalyptic fiction, we generally must imagine being among the survivors: the last person to eat a can of beans, say; the last to “own” a pet dog or cat; the last to consult — let alone to care about consulting — a wristwatch. In a world of uncontrolled entropy, we wonder, what must it feel like to defend (successfully or not) the ramparts of order and routine?<\/p>

Here’s the mystery: any apocalypse — fictional or real, without a “post-” — marks only one point in the timeline. And of course we all know what a given midpoints feel like, in<\/em> the moment. But what happened at the starting line? <\/p>

What must it have felt like, say, as the very first<\/em> person to perform some action that one was aware of performing? Not just the first to open a can of beans, but the first to remember something — something from even a moment ago, let alone from decades ago? What does it mean to “know” something at all, let alone to “remember” it later? When you type a sentence which begins with a capital “W,” do you “know” you’ve just struck that particular combination of keys? Do you “remember” having done so, a split-second or a minute afterwards? Did you ever<\/em> know or remember it? And if so, did you fail to notice the miraculous first moment when that thing apparently happened on its own, without decision or reflection? Can you even imagine such a moment, as it must have felt when it popped and sparked in your ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestor’s head…?<\/p>

Maybe living through and then, later, remembering complex experiences — phases of life, everyday (or, for that matter, uncommon<\/em>) events, people and relationships we consider unforgettable — is like typing a sentence. It’s impossible not to notice a given first-time experience. (To experience something is<\/em> to notice it, no?) But thereafter? Within the cavernous, routinely mined spaces of our souls, re-experiencing something we’ve lived through consists of just taking a scoop from the tailings piled off to the side, from an imagination-dump — a muddied or gloriously colored dump, as the case may be. But the outcome scarcely resembles anything we might call conscious<\/em> or controlled<\/em>… let alone (the gods know) true<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Where’s the rest of this “Fridays at <\/a><\/em>RAMH<\/a>” post? See this note<\/a> from a couple of days ago.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image — more or less untitled — by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.) It does in fact have a functional “title,” but not one I’m particularly fond of, nor chained to. Ideas?] From whiskey river: The Wonder Is The washing never gets […]<\/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":"Jaan Kaplinski, and a Maxim for Nostalgists: 'Everything Continuing in All Directions'","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":[183,38,247,1393,4701,250,251,4159],"tags":[61,3285,5377,5378,5379],"class_list":{"0":"post-24572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-backwards","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-my-photography","11":"category-art","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"category-essays","14":"tag-memory","15":"tag-maxims-for-nostalgists","16":"tag-jaan-kaplinski","17":"tag-the-timeline","18":"tag-experience","19":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-6ok","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24572","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=24572"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24664,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24572\/revisions\/24664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}