{"id":8001,"date":"2011-01-21T06:11:07","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T11:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8001"},"modified":"2011-01-21T06:11:07","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T11:11:07","slug":"seen-everything-look-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/seen-everything-look-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Seen Everything? Look Again."},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[An “impossible triangle” sculpture in East Perth, Australia. For more information,
\nsee the note<\/a> at the bottom of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Welcome<\/strong><\/p>\n

if you believe nothing is always what’s left
\nafter a while, as I did,
\nIf you believe you have this collection
\nof ungiven gifts, as I do (right here
\nbehind the silence and the averted eyes)
\nIf you believe an afternoon can collapse
\ninto strange privacies \u00a0—
\nhow in your backyard, for example,
\nthe shyness of flowers can be suddenly
\noverwhelming, and in the distance
\nthe clear goddamn of thunder
\npersonal, like a voice,
\nIf you believe there’s no correct response
\nto death, as I do; that even in grief
\n(where I’ve sat making plans)
\nthere are small corners of joy
\nIf your body sometimes is a light switch
\nin a house of insomniacs
\nIf you can feel yourself straining
\nto be yourself every waking minute
\nIf, as I am, you are almost smiling…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Stephen Dunn, from New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994<\/em> [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is — in perpetuum<\/em>. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet. We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.<\/p>\n

One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Henry Miller, Nexus<\/em> [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Seriousness<\/strong><\/p>\n

Driving the Garden State Parkway to New York, I pointed out two crows to a woman who believed crows always travel in threes. And later just one crow eating the carcass of a squirrel. “The others are nearby,” she said, “hidden in trees.” She was sure. Now and then she’d say “See!” and a clear dark trinity of crows would be standing on the grass. I told her she was wrong to under- or overestimate crows, and wondered out loud if three crows together made any evolutionary sense. I was almost getting serious now. Near Forked River, we saw five. “There’s three,” she said, “and two others with a friend in a tree.” I looked to see if she was smiling. She wasn’t. Or she was. “Men like you,” she said, “need it written down, notarized, and signed.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Stephen Dunn [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from\u00a0whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!” thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. “I wonder is that more mothballs?” she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. “This is very queer,” she said, and went on a step or two further.<\/p>\n

Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. “Why, it is just like branches of trees!” exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia<\/em> [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

An Exchange between the Fingers and the Toes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fingers:<\/em>
\nCramped, you are hardly anything but fidgets.
\nWe, active, differentiate the digits:
\nWhilst you are merely little toe<\/em> and big<\/em>
\n(Or, in the nursery, some futile pig)
\nThrough vital use as pincers there has come
\nDistinction of the finger<\/em> and the thumb<\/em>;
\nLacking a knuckle you have sadly missed
\nOur meaningful translation to a fist<\/em>;
\nAnd only by the curling of that joint
\nCould the firm index<\/em> come to have a point.
\nYou cannot punch or demonstrate or hold
\nAnd therefore cannot write or pluck or mould:
\nIndeed, it seems deficiency in art
\nAlone would prove you the inferior part.<\/p>\n

Toes:<\/em><\/span>
\nNot so, my friends. Our clumsy innocence
\nAnd your deft sin is the main difference
\nBetween the body\u2019s near extremities.
\nPlease do not think that we intend to please:
\nShut in the dark, we once were free like you.
\nThough you enslaved us, are you not slaves, too?
\nOur early balance caused your later guilt,
\nErect, of finding out how we were built.
\nYour murders and discoveries compile
\nA history of the crime of being agile,
\nAnd we it is who save you when you fight
\nAgainst the odds: you cannot take to flight.
\nDespite your fabrications and your cunning,
\nThe deepest instinct is expressed in running.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(John Fuller [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The Plymouth on Ice<\/strong><\/p>\n

On frigid January nights we’d
\ntake my ‘forty-eight Plymouth onto
\nthe local reservoir, lights off
\nto dodge the cops, take turns<\/p>\n

holding long manila lines<\/span> in pairs
\nbehind the car, cutting colossal
\nloops and swoons across
\nthe crackly range of ice. Oh<\/p>\n

god did we have fun! At ridges
\nand fissures we careened,
\ntumbled onto each other, the girls
\nyelping, splayed out on all fours,<\/p>\n

and sometimes we heard groans
\ndeep along the fracture lines as
\nwe spun off in twos, to paw, clumsy,
\nunder parkas, never thinking of<\/p>\n

love’s falls nor how thin ice
\nwould ease us into certain death.
\nNo, death was never on our minds,
\nwe were eighteen, caterwauling<\/p>\n

under our own moon that
\nwarded off the cops and
\nfront-page stories of six kids
\nslipping under the fickle surface.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Thomas R. Moore [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

<\/a>About the image at the top of this post:<\/strong> The geometric figures known as\u00a0“Penrose triangles<\/a>,” like certain other optical illusions, appear to follow all the rules of natural perspective when examined in part, but prove to be “impossible” when examined as a whole. Two’s company; three’s a crowd. Their singular impossibility (you might say) springs from their several possibilities.<\/p>\n

A Penrose triangle makes sense to our minds as long as we regard only two sides. Adding a third side — viewed (apparently) from a completely different perspective — presents us with a slippery, vertiginous unworkability. It really can’t exist…\u00a0unless <\/em>you break the object itself, as did the designers of this sculpture. See below two other photos of the same sculpture, taken (at left) “edge-on” and (at right) from sort of a three-quarters view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

For more information about the Perth “impossible triangle” sculpture, see this page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[back to top<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[An “impossible triangle” sculpture in East Perth, Australia. For more information, see the note at the bottom of this post.] From whiskey river: Welcome if you believe nothing is always what’s left after a while, as I did, If you believe you have this collection of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here behind the […]<\/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":[247,1393,251],"tags":[178,179,2161,2174,2175,2176,2177,2178,2179,2180],"class_list":{"0":"post-8001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-poetry-writing_cat","9":"tag-whiskey-river","10":"tag-stephen-dunn","11":"tag-henry-miller","12":"tag-optical-illusions","13":"tag-penrose-triangles","14":"tag-perth-impossible-triangle","15":"tag-c-s-lewis","16":"tag-john-fuller","17":"tag-thomas-r-moore","18":"tag-paradox","19":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-253","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8001","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=8001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8002,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8001\/revisions\/8002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}