{"id":28953,"date":"2025-10-31T11:14:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T15:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=28953"},"modified":"2025-10-31T11:14:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T15:14:34","slug":"the-key-to-the-rock-the-answer-to-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/the-key-to-the-rock-the-answer-to-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"The Key to the Rock, the Answer to the Question"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/figure>\n

[Image: “mixed messages,” by John E. Simpson.\u00a0(Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see\u00a0this page<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0<\/em>RAMH.)]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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

\n

Writing in the Dark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not difficult.
Anyway, it’s necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wait till morning, and you’ll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fumble for the light, and you’ll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out of reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You must have paper at hand,
a felt-tip pen—ballpoints don’t always flow,
pencil points tend to break. There’s nothing
shameful in that much prudence: those are our tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never mind about crossing your t’s, dotting your i’s—
but take care not to cover
one word with the next. Practice will reveal
how one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the other
to keep each line
clear of the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from depths of unknowing,
words that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Denise Levertov [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Thomas Merton [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

A story about a Taoist hermit in the mountains conveys the truth of our oneness with divine humor. A formal delegation from the Confucian temple below decided to visit and seek his advice. When they arrived at his hut unannounced, they were scandalized to find him completely naked. “What are you doing meditating in your hut with no pants on?” they demanded. “The whole world is my hut,” he replied. “This small room is my pants. What I want to know is, what are you doing in my pants?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Jack Kornfield [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\n

No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like the land they come from, filled with nine aunties, people named Bubba. There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say \u2014 snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola \u2014 something fertile, with a hidden danger or shame, thick like the humidity, unspoken yet ever-present. Often when a southerner reads, the members of the class look at each other, and you can hear them thinking, gee, I can’t write like that. The power and force of the land is heard in the piece. These southerners know the names of what shrubs hang over what creek, what dogwood flowers bloom what color, what kind of soil is under their feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tease the class, “Pay no mind. It’s the southern writing gene. The rest of us have to toil away.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Natalie Goldberg [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Elegy at Middle River<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an hour before noon, and Amtrak train no. 56 rips a path
through the rain outside Baltimore,
its speed screamed across the iron-black bones
of the track, our train now stopping in the woods,
no platform, and I pull Al Green
out of my ears to a car completely hushed. We wait,
wait longer, till the intercom stirs; says
nothing. Someone folds gum into his mouth and chews.
An older couple up ahead is peeling the skin
off dark plums. Across the aisle a little girl\u2019s feet dangle
inches from a slippery floor scummy from people\u2019s shoes,
holding a water-filled bag of goldfish to her face
like a hungry cat. Her mother looks over, smiles,
covers her daughter\u2019s ears, explains, we hit something,
probably a deer<\/em>, so low she only mouths it,
and we watch another train worker pass
beneath the windows, his hair gathered and curled
in the rain. A man comes back from the train caf\u00e9,
hands his wife her tea, tells her the conductor\u2019s locked
himself in the restroom, won\u2019t come out,
and for the next two hours no one
speaks a word. Sometimes an arm
pulled through a sleeve, skin surfacing for air.
Sometimes the gravel\u2019s gray teeth
crunched under service men\u2019s boots. Sometimes a moan
from the dumb weight of the engine\u2014a beast stilled
by what is pinioned beneath it. The little girl
opens her bag of fish, and pushes half of her sandwich,
crusts cut off by her mother, into the water, and outside
a dog barks at nothing, a siren, and a worker\u2019s found a phone,
holding it out like it\u2019s burning his hand, and the little girl
tosses the sopped bread into the aisle, one of her fish
flopping out with it and I listen to its wetted slap,
watch it flail, rose-gold and nothing\u2019s getting better,
and we know it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Courtney Kampa [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Words are your business, boy. Not just the<\/em> Word. Words are everything. The key to the Rock, the answer to the Question.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Ralph Ellison [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “mixed messages,” 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: Writing in the Dark It’s not difficult.Anyway, it’s necessary. Wait till morning, and you’ll forget.And who knows if morning will come. Fumble for the light, and you’ll bestark awake, but the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28957,"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":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Thomas Merton, Courtney Kampa, Ralph Ellison, et al.: 'The Key to the Rock, the Answer to the Question'","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":[247,1393,4701,250,5,4878,251,4159],"tags":[325,850,2690,3474,6213,6214,6215,6216],"class_list":{"0":"post-28953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-my-photography","10":"category-art","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-fiction","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"category-essays","15":"tag-thomas-merton","16":"tag-denise-levertov","17":"tag-natalie-goldberg","18":"tag-jack-kornfield","19":"tag-courtney-kampa","20":"tag-ralph-ellison","21":"tag-reading-between-the-lines","22":"tag-writing-the-lines","23":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/mixedmessages_johnesimpson_med.jpg?fit=576%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-7wZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28953","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=28953"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28964,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28953\/revisions\/28964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}