![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/wait_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C450&ssl=1\" "\\"'Wait'")
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[Image above from<\/a> <\/em>The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, which observes: From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n The swarm of words (Shitou Xiqian)<\/p>\n …and<\/a>:<\/p>\n O, how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or cow.\u00a0 And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all; but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and looked cunning… or wise… And still one knew nothing perhaps, was still waiting and listening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n “…Will is something very special. It happens mysteriously. There is no real way ot telling how one uses it, except that the results of using the will are astounding. Perhaps the first thing that one should do is to know that one can develop the will. A warrior knows that and proceeds to wait for it. Your mistake is not to know that you are waiting for your will.<\/p>\n “My benefactor told me that a warrior knows that he is waiting and knows what he is waiting for. In your case, you know that you’re waiting. You’ve been here with me for years, yet you don’t know what you are waiting for. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for the average man to know what he is waiting for. A warrior, however, has no problems; he knows that he is waiting for his will.”<\/p>\n “What exactly is the will? Is it determination, like the determination of your grandson Lucio to have a motorcycle?”<\/p>\n “No,” don Juan said softly and giggled. “That’s not will. Lucio only indulges. Will is something else, something very clear and powerful which can direct our acts. Will is something a man uses, for instance, to win a battle which he, by all calculations, should lose.”<\/p>\n “Then will must be what we call courage,” I said.<\/p>\n “No. Courage is something else. Men of courage are dependable men, noble men perennially surrounded by people who flock around them and admire them; yet very few men of courage have will. Usually they are fearless men who are given to performing daring common-sense acts; most of the time a courageous man is also fearsome and feared. Will, on the other hand, has to do with astonishing feats that defy our common sense.”<\/p>\n “Is will the control we may have over ourselves?” I asked.<\/p>\n “You may say that it is a kind of control.”<\/p>\n “Do you think I can exercise my will, for instance, by denying myself certain things?”<\/p>\n “Such as asking questions?” he interjected.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n (Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n In a Country<\/strong><\/p>\n My love and I are inventing a country, which we One day it was snowing heavily, and again we were (Larry Levis [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n Finally… People usually think of Steve Martin’s first film as The Jerk<\/em> or, if they’re Martin uber-geeks, they’ll remember the one which preceded it, the golden turkey Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em><\/a>, in which he played the insane Dr. Maxwell Edison (majoring in medicine). But they were just his first features<\/em>. In 1977, he preceded them both with a little seven-minute gem, The Absent-Minded Waiter<\/em><\/a>, co-starring Buck Henry and Terri Garr. (The film’s director, Carl Gottlieb, remains famous primarily as a co-screenwriter of Jaws<\/em>.) I was delighted (if not altogether surprised) to find it had made its way to YouTube:<\/p>\n
\n“I guess if you don’t just go grab a seat you may never get one.”]<\/em><\/p>\n
\nand little stories
\nare just to loosen you
\nfrom where you are stuck.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
\ncan already see taking shape, as if wheels were
\npassing through yellow mud. But there is a prob-
\nlem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw
\nand begin flooding. If we put the river on the bor-
\nder, there will be trouble. If we forget about the
\nriver, there will be no way out. There is already a
\nsky over that country, waiting for clouds or smoke.
\nBirds have flown into it, too. Each evening more
\ntrees fill with their eyes, and what they see we can
\nnever erase.<\/p>\n
\nlying in bed, watching our country: we could
\nmake out the wide river for the first time, blue and
\nmoving. We seemed to be getting closer; we saw
\nour wheel tracks leading into it and curving out
\nof sight behind us. It looked like the land we had
\nleft, some smoke in the distance, but I wasn’t sure.
\nThere were birds calling. The creaking of our
\nwheels. And as we entered that country, it felt as if
\nsomeone was touching our bare shoulders, lightly,
\nfor the last time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n