{"id":7737,"date":"2010-06-18T06:58:33","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T10:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7737"},"modified":"2019-10-12T08:20:17","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T12:20:17","slug":"destiny-has-no-beeper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/destiny-has-no-beeper\/","title":{"rendered":"Destiny Has No Beeper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[See Note at bottom of this post for information about this image.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Pssst that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest<\/em>)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Have you watched your thinking? I watched that car go by, it was a blue car. Can I watch my thought in the same way, as it moves from one thing to another? And if it does, find out if it can end; instead of it being a long thread, break it, see what happens. Can you break a thought and say, “Well, that’s enough, enough is enough” and just end that thought and see what happens before the next thought is waiting. Before it springs on you, watch it. In that space, in that interval, what happens?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jiddu Krishnamurti, As the River Joins The Ocean<\/em>)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The Whitsun Weddings<\/strong><\/p>\n

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
\nNot till about<\/span>
\nOne-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
\nDid my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
\nAll windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
\nOf being in a hurry gone. We ran
\nBehind the backs of houses, crossed a street
\nOf blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
\nThe river\u2019s level drifting breadth began,
\nWhere sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.<\/p>\n

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
\nFor miles inland,<\/span>
\nA slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
\nWide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
\nCanals with floatings of industrial froth;
\nA hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
\nAnd rose: and now and then a smell of grass
\nDisplaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
\nUntil the next town, new and nondescript,
\nApproached with acres of dismantled cars.<\/p>\n

At first, I didn\u2019t notice what a noise
\nThe weddings made<\/span>
\nEach station that we stopped at: sun destroys
\nThe interest of what\u2019s happening in the shade,
\nAnd down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
\nI took for porters larking with the mails,
\nAnd went on reading. Once we started, though,
\nWe passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
\nIn parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
\nAll posed irresolutely, watching us go,<\/p>\n

As if out on the end of an event
\nWaving goodbye<\/span>
\nTo something that survived it. Struck, I leant
\nMore promptly out next time, more curiously,
\nAnd saw it all again in different terms:
\nThe fathers with broad belts under their suits
\nAnd seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
\nAn uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
\nThe nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
\nThe lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that<\/p>\n

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
\nYes, from caf\u00e9s<\/span>
\nAnd banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
\nCoach-party annexes, the wedding-days
\nWere coming to an end. All down the line
\nFresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
\nThe last confetti and advice were thrown,
\nAnd, as we moved, each face seemed to define
\nJust what it saw departing: children frowned
\nAt something dull; fathers had never known<\/p>\n

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
\nThe women shared<\/span>
\nThe secret like a happy funeral;
\nWhile girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
\nAt a religious wounding. Free at last,
\nAnd loaded with the sum of all they saw,
\nWe hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
\nNow fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
\nLong shadows over major roads, and for
\nSome fifty minutes, that in time would seem<\/p>\n

Just long enough to settle hats and say
\nI nearly died,<\/em><\/span>
\nA dozen marriages got under way.
\nThey watched the landscape, sitting side by side
\n— An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
\nAnd someone running up to bowl — and none
\nThought of the others they would never meet
\nOr how their lives would all contain this hour.
\nI thought of London spread out in the sun,
\nIts postal districts packed like squares of wheat:<\/p>\n

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
\nBright knots of rail<\/span>
\nPast standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
\nCame close, and it was nearly done, this frail
\nTravelling coincidence; and what it held
\nStood ready to be loosed with all the power
\nThat being changed can give. We slowed again,
\nAnd as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
\nA sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
\nSent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and:<\/p>\n

Directions<\/strong><\/p>\n

First you’ll come to the end of the freeway.
\nThen it’s not so much north on Woodland Avenue
\nas it is a feeling that the pines are taller and weigh more,
\nand the road, you’ll notice,
\nis older with faded lines and unmown shoulders.
\nYou’ll see a cemetery on your right
\nand another later on your left.
\nSobered, drive on.
\nDrive on for miles<\/span>
\nif the fields are full of hawkweed and daises.
\nSometimes a spotted horse
\nwill gallop along the fence. Sometimes you’ll see
\na hawk circling, sometimes a vulture.
\nYou’ll cross the river many times
\nover smaller and smaller bridges.
\nYou’ll know when you’re close;
\npeople always say they have a sudden sensation
\nthat the horizon, which was always far ahead,
\nis now directly behind them.
\nAt this point you may want to park
\nand proceed on foot, or even
\non your knees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

In Jim Jarmusch’s third film, Mystery Train<\/em> (1989), the stories of three couples with international connections intertwine and overlap. The center of their collective Venn diagram hovers over the Arcade Hotel, a cheap, threadbare lodging in Memphis; during the course of the single night depicted in the film, the couples don’t exactly interact with so much as impinge on one another’s trajectories. (A gunshot in one room affects what goes on in another, for example.) The Arcade’s jaded night clerk is played by — of all people — the late and normally flamboyant Screamin’ Jay Hawkins<\/a>, and the late Joe Strummer<\/a> (The Clash) plays a dissipated drifter with a short fuse.<\/p>\n

Here’s a two-minute Mystery Train<\/em> trailer:<\/p>\n