{"id":28275,"date":"2025-05-02T11:33:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T15:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=28275"},"modified":"2025-05-02T11:33:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T15:33:45","slug":"recognize-your-ghost-road-and-stay-on-it-and-keep-moving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/recognize-your-ghost-road-and-stay-on-it-and-keep-moving\/","title":{"rendered":"Recognize Your Ghost Road, and Stay on It — and Keep Moving"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

[Image: “That Next Step Is a Lulu (NYC High Line, April 2025),” by John E. Simpson.\u00a0(Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see\u00a0this page<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0<\/em><\/em><\/em>RAMH.)<\/em><\/em>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From whiskey river’s commonplace book<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Ghost Road<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You stand and look out
over a field of wheat
that ripples and rolls
farther than you can see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you recover
from the dazzle of sunlight
playing on golden brown<\/p>\n\n\n\n

you see two parallel
lines or traces
of an old ghost road<\/p>\n\n\n\n

looping and bending
toward the horizon
and infinity beyond…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What spirits hover here
waiting for harvest?
Whose breath blows
over this grain?
Whose voices whisper
when wind blows?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Norbert Krapf<\/a> [source: unknown<\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and (excerpted, and in slightly different form):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Creation is what we do while we’re waiting to die. If we’re not, we sit around watching reruns of I Love Lucy<\/em>, eating potato chips, and drinking Diet Coke, or Pepsi, or “lite” beer — and we fall asleep. We don’t even know when, finally, out of boredom and frustration, we die. And, even though we will die just the same, we can choose to stay awake, to create. When we create, we live. When we make love, when we lose ourselves in the passion and intense sensation of coupling, our beautiful matter blends creating new matter, new life, and we are alive. When we take sticks and paste and crayons and cobble them together into God knows what, we are alive. When we grow greate swathes and blobs of color against barren walls, or sing a lullaby to a child, or knit our first rough scarf, we are alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creation is both the act and celebration of this magic, the fleeting mystery that it is to be alive.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Ralph L. Wahlstrom [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

,,,and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Remember, the universe has a lot of things going on that we don’t know about. We have no\u00a0idea<\/em>\u00a0what the universe is like. What it wants to have happen. We don’t know what’s trying to come through us… Say\u00a0Yes\u00a0to what is trying to come through you and Shazam!<\/em> You’re answering a score of seemingly unrelated problems that seem to be about this piece of writing, but — you find out years later — are answers to other pieces of writing, or to issues in your life, or to problems you were going to have in the future but now won’t.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Andy Couturier [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Obake,<\/em>\u00a0the Japanese “ghost,” is exactly what its name suggests:\u00a0o<\/em>\u00a0is an honorific prefix, while\u00a0bake<\/em>\u00a0is a noun from\u00a0bakeru, <\/em>[…],\u00a0the verb meaning “undergo change.” Japanese ghosts, then, are essentially transformations. They are one sort of thing that mutates into another, one phenomenon that experiences shift and alteration, one meaning that becomes unstuck and twisted into something else.\u00a0Obake<\/em>\u00a0undermine the certainties of life as we usually understand it…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Centuries ago in India, the Buddha taught that nothing in this world is stable, no form of existence is anything more than a wandering through flux. People may think they have a self, and may strive to build an ego, or worry about their personal consistencies or reputations, but these concerns are delusions. A “self” is an imaginary construct; and so, in a sense, “transformation” is actually the truest manifestation of being.\u00a0Obake,<\/em>\u00a0the ultimate transformers, point up the folly of our human security in the unchanging status of things, and obliterate our proud sense of understanding the structure of the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Tim Screech [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From elsewhere:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

A Portrait of a Dog as an Older Guy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When his owner died in 2000 and a new family
moved into their Moscow apartment,
he went to live with mongrels in the park.
In summer there was plenty of food, kids
often left behind sandwiches, hotdogs and other stuff.
He didn\u2019t have a big appetite,
still missing his old guy.
He too was old, the ladies no longer excited him,
and he didn\u2019t burn calories chasing them around.
Then winter came and the little folk abandoned the park.
The idea of eating from the trash occurred to him
but the minute he started rummaging in the
overturned garbage container, a voice
in his head said: \u201cNo, Rex!\u201d
The remnants of a good upbringing lower
our natural survival skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I met him again in the early spring of 2001.
He looked terrific. Turning gray became him.
His dark shepherd eyes were perfectly bright,
like those of a puppy.
I asked him how he sustained himself
in this new free-market situation
when even the human species suffered from malnutrition.
In response he told me his story;
how at first he thought that life without his man
wasn\u2019t worth it, how those
who petted him when he was a pet
then turned away from him, and how one night
he had a revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His man came to him in his sleep,
tapped him on his skinny neck and said:
\u201cLet\u2019s go shopping!\u201d So the next morning he took the subway
and went to the street market
where they used to go together every Sunday and where
vendors recognized him and fed him
to his heart\u2019s content.
\u201cPerhaps you should move closer to that area?\u201d
I ventured.\u2014\u201cNo, I\u2019ll stay here,\u201d he sighed,
\u201coldies shouldn\u2019t change their topography. That\u2019s
what my man said.\u201d
Indeed, he sounded like one himself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Katia Kapovich [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Why Be Liberal?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fundamentals first: be liberal because you already — irreversibly, fundamentally, biologically —\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0liberal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens at the cellular level as we go through life? Cells mutate. They grow, divide, multiply. They consume, they excrete; breathe in and out; become other cells, which become other cells, which hook up with yet more cells and become something entirely different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when we die? It all stops. That’s not the result. It’s the REASON we die. Death, at a cellular level, is indistinguishable from stasis.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone wants to attain comfortable, stable levels of activity. Everyone — especially nowadays — longs for yesterday, or the day before, or a day ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Like the scorpion’s sting, nostalgia is in our nature, up here in the thin air at the top of Maslow’s pyramid. So go ahead. Relax. You don’t have to change everything, all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when we completely stop changing we don’t go happily along from one day to the next, each tomorrow indistinguishable from each today which differs not at all from every yesterday. No. To stop changing, we must stop eating (to eat is to change one form of matter into another, or into raw energy). We must no longer sleep, for that is a change in state from consciousness to the alternative. And if we stop changing while asleep, we don’t wake up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we stop changing, we die<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservatives, especially when operating in full-bore legislate-morality mode, often declare themselves as crusaders on behalf of life.\u00a0Bullshit<\/em>. They deny life itself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(FLJerseyBoy, A Dog Starv’d<\/em> [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “That Next Step Is a Lulu (NYC High Line, April 2025),” by John E. Simpson.\u00a0(Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see\u00a0this page\u00a0at\u00a0RAMH.)] From whiskey river’s commonplace book: Ghost Road You stand and look outover a field of wheatthat ripples and rollsfarther than you can see. When you recoverfrom the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28280,"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":null,"activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Andy Couturier, Katie Kapovich, et al.: 'Recognize Your Ghost Road, and Stay on It \u2014 and Keep Moving'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,3286,247,1393,4701,250,251,4159],"tags":[7,212,1452,3713,3881,4015,5601,6110,6111,6112,6113,6114],"class_list":{"0":"post-28275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-everyday-life","8":"category-obsessions","9":"category-ruminations","10":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","11":"category-my-photography","12":"category-art","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"category-essays","15":"tag-writing","16":"tag-creativity","17":"tag-fljerseyboy","18":"tag-change","19":"tag-liberalism","20":"tag-katia-kapovich","21":"tag-change-and-stasis","22":"tag-tim-screech","23":"tag-andy-couturier","24":"tag-ralph-j-wahlstrom","25":"tag-conservatism","26":"tag-norbert-krapf","27":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/thatlaststepisalulu_med_johnesimpson.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-7m3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28275","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=28275"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28285,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28275\/revisions\/28285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}