{"id":8563,"date":"2011-10-07T13:06:11","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T17:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8563"},"modified":"2011-10-07T13:18:09","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T17:18:09","slug":"you-think-you-know-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/you-think-you-know-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"You Think You Know the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: <\/em>Supper at Emmaus\u00a0(1601-02), by\u00a0Michelangelo da Caravaggio]<\/em><\/p>\n

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

October<\/strong><\/p>\n

1
\nThere’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.
\nA longing wells up in its throat
\nlike a blossom
\nas it breathes slowly.<\/p>\n

What does the world
\nmean to you if you can’t trust it
\nto go on shining when you’re<\/p>\n

not there? and there’s
\na tree, long-fallen; once
\nthe bees flew to it, like a procession
\nof messengers, and filled it
\nwith honey.<\/p>\n

2
\nI said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the
\ngreen pine tree:<\/p>\n

little dazzler
\nlittle song,
\nlittle mouthful.<\/p>\n

3
\nThe shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
\ngrunts into view. There is no measure
\nfor the confidence at the bottom of its eyes—
\nthere is no telling
\nthe suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
\nand yawns.
\nNear the fallen tree<\/span>
\nsomething — a leaf snapped loose
\nfrom the branch and fluttering down — tries to pull me
\ninto its trap of attention.<\/p>\n

4
\nIt pulls me
\ninto its trap of attention.<\/p>\n

And when I turn again, the bear is gone.<\/p>\n

5
\nLook, hasn’t my body already felt
\nlike the body of a flower?<\/p>\n

6
\nLook, I want to love this world
\nas though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
\nto be alive
\nand know it.<\/p>\n

7
\nSometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
\nthe flowers, not the blackberries
\nbrimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
\nfrom the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
\nI won’t whisper my own name.<\/p>\n

One morning<\/span>
\nthe fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
\nand didn’t see me — and I thought:<\/p>\n

so this is the world.
\nI’m not in it.
\nIt is beautiful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Oliver [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know
\nany of us, what happens then.
\nSo I try not to miss anything.
\nI think, in my whole life, I have never missed
\nthe full moon
\nOr the slipper of its coming back.
\nOr, a kiss,
\nWell, yes, especially a kiss.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Oliver [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em> (on the definition of the word information<\/em>):<\/p>\n

In the very first English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall<\/em> in 1604, we see that defining words is not so easy. I quote a few of my favorite Cawdrey definitions (in their entirety):<\/p>\n

crocodile<\/strong>, [kind of] beast.<\/em>
\n vapor<\/strong>, moisture, ayre, hote breath, or reaking.<\/em>
\n theologie<\/strong>, divinitie, the science of living blessedly for ever.<\/em><\/p>\n

The word information<\/em> isn’t in Cawdrey\u2019s dictionary. Our authority, the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em>, now requires 9,400 words for its entry — a multitude of definitions — as I discussed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Words are not meant to be pinned to the mat like butterflies. Also in [my book] The Information<\/em> I explore the ancient dream of a perfect language, a dream of Gottfried Leibniz, of the Esperantists, of logicians like George Boole and Bertrand Russell. One imagines God’s own dictionary, described by the novelist Dexter Palmer this way: “one-to-one correspondences between the words and their definitions, so that when God sends directives to his angels, they are completely free from ambiguity.”<\/p>\n

That dictionary does not exist. Our language is a thing of infinite possibility. We learn to live with ambiguity and with choice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(James Gleick, from “Information Is How We Know” [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The Synthetic A Priori<\/strong><\/p>\n

What objects may be in themselves, and apart from all
\nthis receptivity of our sensibility, remains completely
\nunknown to us. We know nothing but our mode of
\nperceiving them… With this alone have we\u00a0any
\nconcern.<\/p>\n

— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason<\/em><\/p>\n

At a church rummage sale, I study the perfection of shadows
\nin a painting by Caravaggio, although what I hold
\nis only a small print of Christ — its frame broken — dining
\nat Emmaus with three of the Apostles. And because the table
\nis dramatically, if not unbelievably, lit, the bowls & pitcher
\n& loaves send their dark crescents onto the immaculate
\nwhite cloth. When the Savior raises his hand to offer a blessing,
\nits shade deepens further his crimson smock. Tenebrosus<\/span><\/em>:
\nthat rich, convincing darkness. As though the master understood
\nthat the obscured world only seems to us somehow
\neven more familiar, as though our sense of our own unknowing
\nhad at last been made visible — even if what we do not know
\ncannot itself be seen. The future’s drape, the carnival fortunetellers
\nof my childhood might have called it, but also the now’s,
\ndisplayed as it is — so many unmatched cups & saucers, old coats
\n& wicker baskets — all around us. At a party last week,
\nsomeone said verisimilitude<\/em>. We were huddled on a tiny porch.
\nIt was the first cool night & the wine had no conclusion.<\/p>\n

The talk turned quickly to shepherds & the pastoral & then,
\nto opera, before someone recalled a horror film he’d watched
\nlate one night with his brother. In black & white vignettes,
\nan evil tree stump possessed by the spirit of an executed prince
\nhunts the scheming tribal elders who have destroyed him.
\nA former pro wrestler in a costume of wire & rubber bark
\n& wearing a permanent scowl lumbers after vengeance
\nin the confusion & fear of 1957 on a half-dozen root-legs,
\ndriving his victims into quicksand or toppling himself over
\nupon him. Though here the point is the teller’s small brother
\n& the boy’s allegiance, even in a state of suspended disbelief<\/em>,
\nto what we call sense<\/em>. How, he wanted to know, suddenly
\nunusually earnest, did the tree manage to get itself up again?<\/p>\n

Yesterday I spoke to a friend who is despairing: back home,
\nwaiting tables, he’s dating a woman whose marriage has only
\njust come to an end. When he wakes, he discovers he does not
\nrecognize himself. One afternoon, walking home from school,
\nI hit my best friend in the face with a book. It may well be
\nthat she hit me. Thin pages flew out into the street. More punches
\nwere thrown & I came away bruised. In that book, a novel
\nby Emily Bront\u00eb, the land is violent & unjust & we are violent
\n& unjust upon it. Even worse, our greatest passions
\nchange nothing at all. Before one of us hit the other,
\nthere must have been a cause, but I can’t recall it, which makes it
\nseem nonlinear now, &, thus, apocryphal, both impossible
\n& impossibly real. I failed, though I tried, to offer comfort.<\/p>\n

It’s not that our lives don’t resemble our lives. I’ve been alone
\nso often lately I sometimes catch myself watching myself —
\nbreathing in the fresh spears of rosemary or admiring the shallots,
\npeeling their translucent wrappers away, centering one on the board,
\nmaking the first careful cut, lifting the purple halves.<\/p>\n

Before stories, we were too busy for stories, too busy
\nhunting & suffering to invent the tales of our own
\nresurrections. Caught out in the kitchen’s brightness last night,
\nthe handle of the skillet cast its simple, perfected form
\nacross the stove — pierced, like the eye of the needle, so that
\nit can be hung from a hook, as pans, presumably, have always been.<\/p>\n

Outside the wind picked up. Thunder. The dog trotted off,
\nhid her head beneath the chair. But today: a charity sale
\nat Trinity Chapel & sun on the tar of the buckled walks.
\nIn the cracks, beads of water spin into light. Tell yourself
\nit’s simple: this is where it’s been heading all along. Tell yourself
\nsomething you have no faith in has already begun to occur.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Kathleen Graber [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

Finally, Leonard Cohen and Madeleine Peyroux conspire to bring you half a perfect world: the other half’s up to you.<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>Half the Perfect World. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:21 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:halftheperfectworld_madeleinepeyroux.mp3|titles=’Half the Perfect World’|artists=Madeleine Peyroux]<\/div>\n[Lyrics<\/a>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: Supper at Emmaus\u00a0(1601-02), by\u00a0Michelangelo da Caravaggio] From whiskey river: October 1 There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave. A longing wells up in its throat like a blossom as it breathes slowly. What does the world mean to you if you can’t trust it to go on shining when you’re not […]<\/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":[247,1393,74,251],"tags":[475,595,773,2619,2620],"class_list":{"0":"post-8563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-poetry-writing_cat","10":"tag-madeleine-peyroux","11":"tag-mary-oliver","12":"tag-james-gleick","13":"tag-leonard-cohen","14":"tag-kathleen-graber","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2e7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563","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=8563"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8598,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563\/revisions\/8598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}