{"id":29294,"date":"2026-02-13T11:17:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T16:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=29294"},"modified":"2026-02-13T11:17:54","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T16:17:54","slug":"made-something-new-have-you-or-maybe-you-just-found-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/made-something-new-have-you-or-maybe-you-just-found-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Made Something New, Have You? Or Maybe You Just… Found It?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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[Image: “Stone & Stone Liberty Warehouse No. 2 (Drive In),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page<\/a> at <\/em>RAMH. This is in downtown Durham, NC; as you might expect, given the area’s history, the original building was a tobacco warehouse — the newer construction, though, has repurposed “the look” as, well, who knows: apartments, condominiums, offices… Ironically, I’m pretty sure — given more recent history — it’s a no-smoking facility.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From whiskey river’s commonplace book<\/a><\/em> (with two additional sentences from the source):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’d like to be a Gecko, not permanently, but for ten minutes or so. Geckos are charming small lizardy creatures with suction pads for feet. They live vertically. Walls are their terra firma<\/em>. For them trees grow sideways, hills are sky, pavements are walls. Our heads may be in the clouds but our feet are always on the ground and even if you wear spectacles which make you see the world upside down, you adjust in a day or so, and see everything the right way up. Take the glasses off and you’ll have another few upside-down days until everything reverts back to normal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Alan Fletcher [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Strangers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A man and a woman happened to sit next to one another on a train. The woman took out a book and began reading. The train stopped at a half dozen stations, but she never looked up once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man watched her for awhile, then asked, “What are you reading?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s a ghost story,” she said. “It’s very good, very spooky.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “There are ghosts everywhere.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I don’t believe in them,” he said. “It’s just a lot of superstition. In all my years I’ve never seen a ghost, not one.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Haven’t you?” the woman said — and vanished.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Alvin Schwartz [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It rains during the morning. No visitors today. I feel lonely and amuse myself by writing at random. These are the words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who mourns makes grief his master.
Who drinks makes pleasure his master.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, “I shall be unhappy without loneliness,” shows that he made loneliness his master. He also wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mountain village
who are you calling, yobuko-bird?
I thought you lived alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s nothing so intriguing as living alone. Chosho, the recluse, said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If one’s guest enjoys a half-day’s leisure,
His host loses a half-day’s leisure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sodo is always moved by these words. I, too, feel it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not this human sadness,<\/span>
cuckoo,<\/span>
but your solitary song.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

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I realise at this late stage — coming up to forty years of creative work \u2013 that you build a life over time \u2013 there is no rush. What matters is to do the work that interests you; find a way to pay your bills, shape everything you do around your core values, because every decision we make — and that\u2019s the food on the plate to the people we work with — every decision either supports or undermines who you are, who you want to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We make mistakes, we all do, and it doesn\u2019t matter unless those mistakes become a habit that pulls us further and further away from our course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take yourself seriously and don\u2019t cut corners. You can move fast \u2013 that\u2019s different. Go at the speed you need, but don\u2019t cut corners.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Jeanette Winterson [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Something New Under the Sun<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would have to shine. And burn. And be
a sign of something infinite and turn things
and people nearby into their wilder selves
and be dangerous to the ordinary nature of
signs and glow like a tiny hole in space<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to which a god presses his eye and stares.
Or her eye. Some divine impossible stretch
of the imagination where you<\/em> and I are one.
It would have to be something Martin Buber
would say and, seeing it, point and rejoice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could be the mouth of a Coca-Cola bottle
or two snakes rolling down a mountain trail.
It would have to leap up out of the darkness
of a theater and sing the high silky operatic
note of someone in love. And run naked<\/p>\n\n\n\n

slender fingers through the hair of a stranger,
or your mother or father, or grandfather, or
a grassy hill in West Virginia. It would live
on berries and moss like a deer and roam
the woods at night like the secret life of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the woods at night and when the sun rises you
could see it and think it is yours and that
would be enough and it would come to you
as these words have come to me–slowly,
tenderly, tangibly. Shy and meanderingly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Steve Scafidi [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The world begins to exist when the individual discovers it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Carl Jung [source: here<\/a> and elsewhere<\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You can make a game out of the simplest things: a few rules and a goal. One of the more elegant modern game designs is The Mind<\/em>. The game is comically simple. There\u2019s a deck with a hundred cards in it, numbered from 1 to 100. For level one, you shuffle the deck and deal each player one random card. The goal is for all players to work together as a team to play the cards in order, from lowest to highest. But there is one single, glorious catch: You\u2019re not allowed to communicate. You can\u2019t talk, signal, grunt, or gesture to each other. You have to coordinate wordlessly to play those cards in order. If you can do it for level one, you go up to level two: Reshuffle the deck, and deal two random cards to each person. For a four-player game, you win the game if you can beat level eight\u2014that\u2019s eight random cards dealt to each person, to be played out in perfect order, in total silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game asks you to do the seemingly impossible: to be telepathic. And then it teaches you how that\u2019s actually possible. You play the game by developing a shared sense of timing for how long you should wait to play a given card. And you can get very good at it together. Your group can play these wild, precise sequences in lockstep tempo. It will start to feel like you can touch the inside of each other\u2019s brains and hear a collective clock ticking.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(C. Thi Nguyen [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n