{"id":7977,"date":"2010-12-24T08:38:38","date_gmt":"2010-12-24T13:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7977"},"modified":"2018-05-28T09:31:59","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T13:31:59","slug":"in-the-dark-unwatching-the-watcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/in-the-dark-unwatching-the-watcher\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Dark, (Un)Watching the Watcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: <\/em>The Night Watch, by Rembrandt van Rijn. Click the photo for a larger view. For more information about the painting, see the note<\/a> at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Desert Places<\/strong><\/p>\n

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
\nIn a field I looked into going past,
\nAnd the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
\nBut a few weeds and stubble showing last.<\/p>\n

The woods around it have it — it is theirs.
\nAll animals are smothered in their lairs.
\nI am too absent-spirited to count;
\nThe loneliness includes me unawares.<\/p>\n

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
\nWill be more lonely ere it will be less —
\nA blanker whiteness of benighted snow
\nWith no expression, nothing to express.<\/p>\n

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
\nBetween stars — on stars where no human race is.
\nI have it in me so much nearer home
\nTo scare myself with my own desert places.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert Frost [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Watch out for intellect,
\nbecause it knows so much it knows nothing
\nand leaves you hanging upside down,
\nmouthing knowledge as your heart
\nfalls out of your mouth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Anne Sexton, from “Admonitions to a Special Person” [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Baba Ram Dass [widely quoted, but I haven’t yet found a source<\/em>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be — I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wendell Berry)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

A Ritual to Read to Each Other<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
\nand I don’t know the kind of person you are
\na pattern that others made may prevail in the world
\nand following the wrong god home we may miss our star.<\/p>\n

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
\na shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
\nsending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
\nstorming out to play through the broken dyke.<\/p>\n

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
\nbut if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
\nI call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
\nto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.<\/p>\n

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
\na remote important region in all who talk:
\nthough we could fool each other, we should consider —
\nlest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.<\/p>\n

For it is important that awake people be awake,
\nor a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
\nthe signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
\nshould be clear: the darkness around us is deep.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(William Stafford [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

So it unfolded, year after year always the same, the precise stately clockwork of Christmas, ticking and tocking all the way down to tonight, the best night of all: Christmas Eve…<\/p>\n

Here, upstairs, The Boy’s siblings slept peacefully, their breathing slow and measured like the imagined sound of all the massed snowflakes now sifting down outside the windows. Even the ghoul beneath the toy chest was quiet tonight, the clicking of his awful claws on the floor replaced, tonight, by the click of reindeer hooves slithering about for a foothold on the icy shingles. Looking from his bed out through the window at the front of his room, The Boy saw once again, this year as every year, the pale steady red beacon (surely from Rudolph’s nose) illuminating the exterior of the house across the street.<\/p>\n

He lay back against his pillow finally, his eyes shuddering closed with the weight of a hundred anticipations. Outside, the snow continued to fall, picking up pitch and rhythm as The Boy’s soft breathing joined that of his brother and sisters. In his now-dreaming mind fluttered the slow easy snow angels of ten thousand memories past and memories yet to be, pressing into the deep drifts of The Boy’s imagination all the permanent outlines, the wonderful forms, of how it always and forever was.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES, from How It Was<\/a>: Christmas<\/em>)<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

<\/a>About the image<\/strong> which opens this post: De Nachtwacht<\/a><\/em> (The Night Watch<\/em>, also known as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq<\/em>, after the patron who commissioned it) is one of Rembrandt’s most famous works. It’s also enormous — something like 10×14 feet<\/strong><\/em> in size — and maybe that is why it has attracted such spectacular acts of vandalism, despite the care taken to preserve it over the centuries.<\/p>\n

In paranoid moments, if he has them, director Peter Greenaway might ascribe that vandalism not to the attention-seeking of random psychopaths, but to dark elements reaching forward through history to seek the painting’s destruction. In his view, after all, the painting not (just) depicts the decadent life of the upper class; it also allegorizes a conspiracy to commit murder, in which his patron may or may not have participated. Greenaway’s theory is explored in his 2007 film Nightwatching<\/em>, and in the 2008 sequel, Rembrandt’s J’Accuse…!<\/em> Here’s the trailer for the latter, a detailed “forensic examination” of the painting’s compositional elements:<\/p>\n