{"id":29402,"date":"2026-03-27T10:43:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T14:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=29402"},"modified":"2026-03-27T10:43:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T14:43:19","slug":"life-never-sleeps-and-your-muse-shouldnt-either","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/life-never-sleeps-and-your-muse-shouldnt-either\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Never Sleeps, and Your Muse Shouldn’t Either"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[Image: “Operational Readiness,” by Georgie Pauwels. Spotted it on Flickr<\/a>, and use it here under a Creative Commons license: thank you!]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\n

Thesaurus<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given a way would I be this; given
this thing would I be this. I never knew
how persons could be things, and yet we were<\/p>\n\n\n\n

in the vast cosmic Thing; we were little
things. There were greater animations than
ourselves, and to them we were things. This was<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a thought in the forest of —thesaurus
of—my nomenclature. How often had
I thought, am I alive or am I dead,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

never knowing what either Thingness was.
These were the woods we were talking about,
these were the words we were talking about,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

where the forest was always in the trees,
where what I saw was always what I was;
my words, some leaves, all bristling with my life,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

animate and aim\u00e9e<\/em>, all that was all.
There was an aura, call it a halo,
call it the glow of the moment of grace;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

there was something oracular and old,
there was the show and glow, there was hello,
there was yes, no, there was congenial<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and genial and joy. There was genius,
a genie in the bottle, breath in the lungs,
there was more than just being as I was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

wind in the woods, a forest in my mind,
the mind of my life found in the forest,
the Thing being named my thing, as it was.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Sarah Arvio, Sono<\/em> [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and (italicized portion):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“If artists don’t set out to make significant art, what do they do?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…Maybe they do set out to make something significant, in a roundabout sort of way, but it’s not like setting out to make something practical or useful. For one thing, it’s more like play than work. On the other hand, they don’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter. The good ones make art because they have to make it–even though they probably won’t understand why until after it’s already made.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But how do they know what to make?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s dictated by their vision.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You mean it comes to ’em like in a dream?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No, no, it’s seldom that dramatic. Listen, it’s really pretty simple. If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.<\/em>“<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

…and (italicized lines):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Why We Tell Stories<\/strong>
For Linda Foster<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and learned to speak
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would open only for us<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and because we were always defeated,
we invented impossible riddles
only we could solve,
monsters only we could kill,
women who could love no one else
and because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the story of our life
becomes our life<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

and none of us tells it
the same way twice<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because grandmothers looking like spiders
want to enchant the children
and grandfathers need to convince us
what happened happened because of them<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and though we listen only
haphazardly, with one ear,
we will begin our story
with the word and<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

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

\n

A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand deeply as a rattlesnake. The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton\u2014once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?<\/p>\n\n\n\n[…]\n\n\n\n

We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience\u2014even of silence\u2014by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn\u2019t \u201cattack\u201d anything; a weasel lives as he\u2019s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you\u2019re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Annie Dillard [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Operational Readiness,” by Georgie Pauwels. Spotted it on Flickr, and use it here under a Creative Commons license: thank you!] From whiskey river’s commonplace book: Thesaurus Given a way would I be this; giventhis thing would I be this. I never knewhow persons could be things, and yet we were in the vast cosmic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29414,"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":"","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":[183,247,1393,250,251,4159],"tags":[295,2314,2700,6287,6288,6289,6290],"class_list":{"0":"post-29402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-everyday-life","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-art","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-annie-dillard","14":"tag-lisel-mueller","15":"tag-tom-robbins","16":"tag-georgie-pauwels","17":"tag-sarah-arvio","18":"tag-stay-ready","19":"tag-the-impatient-muse","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/operationalreadiness_georgiepauwels_med.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-7Ee","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29402","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=29402"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29417,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29402\/revisions\/29417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}