{"id":5792,"date":"2009-10-02T06:51:28","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T10:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=5792"},"modified":"2018-10-20T12:50:54","modified_gmt":"2018-10-20T16:50:54","slug":"off-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/off-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"Off Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"

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[Image by Jan Piller at redbubble.com. Click the image for the original\/to purchase.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n

Taking a walk with you<\/strong><\/p>\n

lacking the wit and depth
\nthat inform our dreams’
\nbright landscapes,
\nthis countryside
\nthrough which we walk
\nis no less beautiful for being only what it seems.
\nrising from the dyed
\npool of its shade,
\nthe tree we lean against
\nwas never made to stand
\nfor something else,
\nlet alone ourselves.
\nnor were these fields
\nand gullies planned
\nwith us in mind.
\nwe live unsettled lives
\nand stay in a place
\nonly long enough to find
\nwe don’t belong.
\neven the clouds, forming
\nnoiselessly overhead,
\nare cloudy without
\nresembling us, and, storming
\nthe vacant air,
\ndon’t take into account
\nour present loneliness.
\nand yet, why should we care?
\nalready we are walking off
\nas if to say,
\nwe are not here,
\nwe’ve always been away.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Anyone whose goal is “something higher” must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not<\/a> from whiskey river<\/em> — Brita is a photographer specializing in portraits of writers, and Bill is Bill Gray, a reclusive novelist:<\/p>\n

Brita lay nearly flat in the long tub, hearing someone chopping wood just below the window. Steam rose up around her. First the crack of the ax, then the soft topple of split logs. She felt a small dim misery stealing through her and wasn’t sure what it meant. If there was any day in her recent working life that might be called special, this was it. Not that she thought any longer of building a career. She had no career, only writers hunched in chairs from here to China. There was little income and only passing public mention of the scheme. Pictures of most of the writers would appear exactly nowhere, often in obscure journals and directories. She was the person who traveled compulsively to photograph the unknown, the untranslated, the inaccessible, the politically suspect, the hunted, the silenced. So it was a form of validation, a rosy endorsement, when a writer like Bill offered to pose for her. Then why this strange off-balance mood? She ran more hot water. She knew it was him down there, breathing hard, chanting with the effort. First the crack, then the soft topple. Keep a distance. He is on some rocking edge. The temperature of the bath was perfect now, almost too hot to bear. She felt sweat break out on her face and she moved more deeply in. Isn’t this why picture-taking is so ceremonial? Steam hung in the room. The heat was profound, deep-going and dulling and close to stopping the heart. She knew he was strong, saw it in his hands and girth, that dockworker’s density of body. She reached for a towel and wiped her face and after a while she stepped out of the tub and went to the window, using the towel to rub vapor off the glass at face level. How could she keep a distance if she’d already taken his picture? This was the partnership, the little misery. Bill was tossing split logs toward the corded wood set under a sagging canopy at the site of the house. The announcement of my dying. She had to rub away vapor several times, standing by the window looking down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Don DeLillo, Mao II<\/em>)<\/p>\n

(According to some interpreters of Mao II<\/em>, Bill Gray is meant to resemble J.D. Salinger, although when I first read the book I thought he was a Thomas Pynchon figure — his books sound to me more like Pynchon’s than like Salinger’s.)<\/p>\n

The first ten-plus minutes of the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi<\/em><\/a>. According to Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi<\/em> means “crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living,” and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n