{"id":7923,"date":"2010-10-22T06:58:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T10:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7923"},"modified":"2010-10-22T06:58:24","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T10:58:24","slug":"un-momento-por-favor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/un-momento-por-favor\/","title":{"rendered":"Un Momento, Por Favor<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

[Image found at <\/em>What My World’s Like<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Visiting the Graveyard<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I think of death
\nit is a bright enough city,
\nand every year more faces there
\nare familiar<\/p>\n

but not a single one
\nnotices me,
\nthough I long for it,
\nand when they talk together,<\/p>\n

which they do
\nvery quietly,
\nit’s in an unknowable language —
\nI can catch the tone<\/p>\n

but understand not a single word —
\nand when I open my eyes
\nthere’s the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.
\nThere are the stones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Oliver, from Red bird<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…Time is a measure of energy, a measure of motion.<\/p>\n

We have agreed internationally on the speed of the clock. And I want you to think about clocks and watches for a moment. We are of course slaves to them. And you will notice that your watch is a circle, and that it is calibrated, and that each minute, or second, is marked by a hairline which is made as narrow as possible, as yet to be consistent with being visible. And when we think of a moment of time, when we think what we mean by the word now<\/em>, we think of the shortest possible instant that is here and gone, because that corresponds with the hairline calibrations on the watch.<\/p>\n

As a result, we are a people who feel that we don’t have any present, because we believe that the present is always instantly vanishing. This is the problem of Goethe’s Faust. He attains his great moment and says to it, “Oh still delay, thou art so fair.” But the moment never stays. It is always disappearing into the past.<\/p>\n

Therefore we have the sensation that our lives are constantly flowing away from us. And so we have a sense of urgency. Time is not to waste; time is money. And so, because of the tyranny of clocks, we feel that we have a past, and that we know who we were in the past — nobody can ever tell you who they are<\/em>, they can only tell you who they were<\/em> — and we believe we also have a future. And that belief is terribly important, because we have a naive hope that the future is somehow going to supply us with everything we’re looking for.<\/p>\n

You see, if you live in a present that is so short that it is not really here at all, you will always feel vaguely frustrated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Alan Watts [source<\/em><\/a>, in slightly different form])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

It is hard to feel affection for something as totally impersonal as the atmosphere, and yet there it is, as much a part and product of life as wine or bread. For sheer size and perfection of function, it is far and away the grandest product of collaboration in all of nature. It breathes for us, and it does another thing for our pleasure. Each day, millions of meteorites fall against the outer limits of the membrane and are burned to nothing by the friction. Without this shelter, our surface would long since have become the pounded powder of the moon. Even though our receptors are not sensitive enough to hear it, there is comfort in knowing that the sound is there overhead, like the random noise of rain on the roof at night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Lewis Thomas, from “The World’s Biggest Membrane” in Lives of a Cell<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Wild Gratitude <\/strong><\/p>\n

Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
\nAnd put my fingers into her clean cat’s mouth,
\nAnd rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
\nAnd watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
\nAnd listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
\nI was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
\nWho wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
\nIn everyone of the splintered London streets,<\/p>\n

And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke’s
\nWith his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
\nAnd his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
\nAnd his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
\nAll day today — August 13, 1983 — I remembered how
\nChristopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
\nFor its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.<\/p>\n

This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
\n“And all conveyancers of letters” for their warm humanity,
\nAnd the gardeners for their private benevolence
\nAnd intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
\nAnd the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
\nThis morning I understood that he loved to hear —
\nAs I have heard — the soft clink of milk bottles
\nOn the rickety stairs in the early morning,<\/p>\n

And how terrible it must have seemed
\nWhen even this small pleasure was denied him.
\nBut it wasn’t until tonight when I knelt down
\nAnd slipped my hand into Zooey’s waggling mouth
\nThat I remembered how he’d called Jeoffry “the servant
\nOf the Living God duly and daily serving Him,”
\nAnd for the first time understood what it meant.
\nBecause it wasn’t until I saw my own cat<\/p>\n

Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
\nThat I realized how gratefully he had watched
\nJeoffry fetch and carry his wooden cork
\nAcross the grass in the wet garden, patiently
\nJumping over a high stick, calmly sharpening
\nHis claws on the woodpile, rubbing his nose
\nAgainst the nose of another cat, stretching, or
\nSlowly stalking his traditional enemy, the mouse,
\nA rodent, “a creature of great personal valour,”
\nAnd then dallying so much that his enemy escaped.<\/p>\n

And only then did I understand
\nIt is Jeoffry — and every creature like him —
\nWho can teach us how to praise — purring
\nIn their own language,
\nWreathing themselves in the living fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Edward Hirsch [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

This week, we had our household’s customary routines and daily pace overturned by the installation of wood flooring in a couple of rooms, replacing the wall-to-wall carpet. This took the installers a couple of days: they not only had to take up the carpet and lay down the wood, but in between those two steps they also had to “re-grade” the sub-flooring so it was as flat and level as possible. On Wednesday night, therefore, our activities on the ground floor were limited to just the kitchen and the master bedroom\/bathroom.<\/p>\n

This must be how colonists of other planets will someday feel. Of course, we had to keep the inner airlock closed, lest The Pooch wander out and pick up spackle and dust on her paws and tongue. (Full-grown at maybe eight inches high, she tends to pick up all sorts of debris just standing still on any less than immaculate surface.) So we stayed in our little two rooms watching TV and reading, as alien echoes filtered through the door. Occasionally one of the humans would venture forth out the airlock to hunt for food or beverage. The Pooch accompanied one of us on a little foray to the front yard; she floated maybe four feet above the planet’s surface until reaching the outermost airlock, at which point the gravity of the situation (ingestion of water and foodstuffs, the passage of time) took over.<\/p>\n

We do love our little adventures.<\/p>\n

I think I first saw Jim Henson’s 1965 short film\u00a0Time Piece<\/em> during a film course in college. It’s a small, jeweled classic, in which not a single Muppet makes an appearance. During its limited theatrical run, it reportedly played in New York on a double bill with the French tragic\/romantic film\u00a0A Man and a Woman<\/a><\/em>. Those theatergoers may have felt like they’d wandered into the wrong theater.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

P.S. At the What My World’s Like<\/em> site where I found the image that opens this post, I found an interesting couple of quotations from filmmaker Paul Schrader, in an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross:<\/p>\n

The secret of the creative life is often to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We are paid to take risks, to look silly. Some people, like racing car drivers are paid to take risks in a more concrete way. We are paid to take risks in an emotional way.<\/p>\n

The film critic is like a medical examiner. He gets the cadaver on the table, he opens it up, and tries to figure out why it died. The filmmaker is like the pregnant mother who is simply trying to nurture this thing. You have to keep the medical examiner out of the delivery room because he will get in there and he will kill that baby.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This doesn’t have much to do with the week’s nominal topic, but I like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image found at What My World’s Like] From whiskey river: Visiting the Graveyard When I think of death it is a bright enough city, and every year more faces there are familiar but not a single one notices me, though I long for it, and when they talk together, which they do very quietly, it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","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":[183,16,247,1393,405,53,50,36,251,713],"tags":[178,595,1211,1987,2023,2024],"class_list":{"0":"post-7923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-themissus","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-nature","11":"category-movies-media","12":"category-language-writing_cat","13":"category-reading","14":"category-poetry-writing_cat","15":"category-humor-writing_cat","16":"tag-whiskey-river","17":"tag-mary-oliver","18":"tag-alan-watts","19":"tag-edward-hirsch","20":"tag-lewis-thomas","21":"tag-jim-henson","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-23N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7923","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=7923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}