{"id":29447,"date":"2026-04-17T09:31:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=29447"},"modified":"2026-04-17T09:33:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:33:30","slug":"as-it-was-in-the-beginning-only-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/as-it-was-in-the-beginning-only-different\/","title":{"rendered":"As It Was in the Beginning (Only Different)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[Cartoon by David Borchart, from <\/em>The New Yorker (January 11, 2016)]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note to long-time (frequent or occasional) visitors to\u00a0Running After My Hat<\/strong>: this will be the last (regularly scheduled) “whiskey river Friday” post here<\/strong>. I <\/em>may still drop something else from time to time, but this will begin the process of winding\u00a0<\/em>RAMH\u00a0down to something like stasis. More details to come, especially this coming Monday, April 20: anniversary #18!<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From whiskey river’s commonplace book<\/em> (#1, May, 2005)<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

This then is life.
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Curious! how real!
Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors . . . Perhaps I would have liked to be my father, who wrote and had the decency of not publishing. Nothing, nothing, my friend; what I have told you: I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . Can you imagine that I not even know the date of my death?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Jorge Luis Borges [source])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From whiskey river<\/em> itself (December, 2024<\/a>) (italicized lines):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Advice to Myself #2: Resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resist the thought that you may need a savior,
or another special being to walk beside you.
Resist the thought that you are alone.
Resist turning your back on the knife
of the world\u2019s sorrow,
resist turning that knife upon yourself.
Resist your disappearance
into sentimental monikers,
into the violent pattern of corporate logos,
into the mouth of the unholy flower of consumerism.
Resist being consumed.
Resist your disappearance
into anything except
the face you had before you walked up to the podium.
Resist all funding sources but accept all money.
Cut the strings and dismantle the web
that needing money throws over you.
Resist the distractions of excess.
Wear old clothes and avoid chain restaurants.
Resist your genius and your own significance
as declared by others.
Resist all hint of glory but accept the accolade
as tributes to your double.
Walk away in your unpurchased skin.
Resist the millionth purchase and go backward.
Get rid of everything.
If you exist, then you are loved
by existence. What do you need?
A spoon, a blanket, a bowl, a book \u2014
maybe the book you give away.
Resist the need to worry, robbing everything
of immediacy and peace.
Resist traveling except where you want to go.
Resist seeing yourself in others or them in you.
Nothing, everything, is personal.<\/em>
Resist all pressure to have children
unless you crave the torment of joy.
If you give in to irrationality, then
resist cleaning up the messes your children make.
You are robbing them of small despairs they can fix.
Resist cleaning up after your husband.
It will soon replace having sex with him.
Resist outrageous charts spelling doom.
However you can, rely on sun and wind.
Resist loss of the miraculous
by lowering your standards
for what constitutes a miracle.
It is all a fucking miracle.
Resist your own gift\u2019s power
to tear you away from the simplicity of tears.
Your gift will begin to watch you having your emotions,
so that it can use them in an interesting paragraph,
or to get a laugh.
Resist the blue chair of dreams, the red chair of science, the black chair of the humanities, and just be human.
Resist all chairs.
Be the one sitting on the ground
or perching on the beam overhead
or sleeping beneath the podium.
Resist disappearing from the stage,
unless you can walk straight into the bathroom and resume the face,
the desolate face, the radiant face, the weary face, the face
that has become your own, though all your life
you have resisted it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

…and (October, 2024<\/a>):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Don’t Hesitate<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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

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

\n

I suffer from Compulsive Cosmology. The condition often manifests itself on clear summer nights when I\u2019m out looking for the dog. For no good reason something in the sky catches my attention and the next thing I know I am standing with my head bent backward, slack-jawed, contemplating the scope and ultimate fate of the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a cruel disease indeed that forces a middling intellect such as mine into this position. I was, after all, an English Major. The last science course I had was 12th grade Physics and my clearest memory of that was the teacher\u2019s profoundly active case of dandruff. I never understood it. At age 17 even I had heard of treatment shampoo. That brief moment of intellectual superiority may be at the root of my Compulsive Cosmology. It left me with the unshakable delusion that I get the Big Picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then as now what intrigues me about the universe is the utter impossibility of its scale. You cannot force your brain big enough to hold it and it is said to be expanding faster than you can think. Still, when I stare up at it and summer flies coast in and out of my mouth I feel as if I am on the verge of getting it. I see its shape, I feel its speed and know its age. And then the dog shows up and I go inside.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Tom Bodett [source: not available online, originally spotted in <\/em>this issue of <\/em>Funny Times<\/a>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves<\/em>, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. Perhaps you are indeed carrying within yourself the potential to visualize, to design, and to create for yourself an utterly satisfying, joyful, and pure lifestyle. Discipline yourself to attain it, but accept that which comes to you with deep trust, and as long as it comes from your own will, from your own inner need, accept it, and do not hate anything.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(Rainer Maria Rilke [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n\n\n\n

..and finally, maybe inevitably:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

# 000:<\/strong> If you believe in ghosts — ghosts in the sense of diaphanous (once-living, now-dead) beings who pass through walls, moan lugubriously through the night, make your pipes rattle and your lawn die — well, I hate to break the news but… you are probably nuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone alive who does not suffer from certain neurological disorders has a past, carries it in their heads, never lets it go but sometimes takes little pleats and darts in its surface: neatening it up, fitting it around other thoughts and sometimes — often — fitting the other thoughts around it<\/em>. The nature of the past is forever to be known but also unknown, really; we “understand” it, if at all, only in the way that a ten-year-old might “understand” quantum electrodynamics. It has a shape, it has a texture, it has sound and color, it — yes — smells<\/em>… but it’s not quite there, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hold onto your past. It’s yours, like no one else’s. You carry it with you — inescapably — as you move from room to room, from moment to moment, and it never changes no matter what you think you’re doing to change it. The past is that place where you never quite live, but are always moving to, always carrying around in a satchel, sometimes unpacking it for your or someone else’s inspection. It is a gift, unsought, to every human who has ever lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there, there<\/em> is where the ghosts live.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(JES, Maxi<\/em>ms for Nostalgists<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Cartoon by David Borchart, from The New Yorker (January 11, 2016)] Note to long-time (frequent or occasional) visitors to\u00a0Running After My Hat: this will be the last (regularly scheduled) “whiskey river Friday” post here. I may still drop something else from time to time, but this will begin the process of winding\u00a0RAMH\u00a0down to something like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29452,"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":"Walt Whitman, Mary Oliver, a Maxim for Nostalgists, et al.: 'As It Was in the Beginning (Only Different)'","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":[183,38,3286,247,12,1393,274,251,4159],"tags":[326,595,1078,1459,1831,2361,3285,6297,6298,6299],"class_list":{"0":"post-29447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-everyday-life","8":"category-backwards","9":"category-obsessions","10":"category-ruminations","11":"category-03_runningaftermyhat","12":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","13":"category-cartoons","14":"category-poetry-writing_cat","15":"category-essays","16":"tag-tom-bodett","17":"tag-mary-oliver","18":"tag-rainer-maria-rilke","19":"tag-jorge-luis-borges","20":"tag-walt-whitman","21":"tag-louise-erdrich","22":"tag-maxims-for-nostalgists","23":"tag-david-borchart","24":"tag-curtain","25":"tag-all-things-must-pass","26":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/simplifyyourlife_davidborchart.png?fit=1509%2C1420&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-7EX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29447","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=29447"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29456,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29447\/revisions\/29456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}