{"id":8805,"date":"2011-10-28T11:25:49","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T15:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8805"},"modified":"2011-10-28T11:25:49","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T15:25:49","slug":"ruminating-in-place-with-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/ruminating-in-place-with-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruminating in Place (with Company)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: cartoon from <\/em>Bizarro, by\u00a0Dan Piraro. Original (in color!)\u00a0here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Sigh. After an unexpected and almost complete Internet blackout Monday through Wednesday, I couldn’t get to it from home<\/em>\u00a0at all this morning.<\/p>\n

So… In lieu of a regular Friday post<\/a>, then, I thought I might just share with you — anyone who’s reading this — the whiskey river<\/a><\/em>\u00a0selections I culled from this past week. And then I’ll turn the comments over to you, to share any quotations (from any source, but please provide it!) which these<\/em>\u00a0items put you in mind of. If you don’t feel comfortable copying’n’pasting, and\/or don’t want to key something in, a link to the item will do nicely.<\/p>\n

(If you offer up a YouTube link, I’ll come back to embed the video itself for you. Audio is trickier, but we can work something out.)<\/p>\n

Got it?<\/p>\n

Okay. Let’s try it, this once: a Friday whiskey river<\/em>\u00a0interactive group meditation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

All houses are haunted. All persons are haunted. Throngs of spirits follow us everywhere. We are never alone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Barney Sarecky)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

I feel as if I am an ad
\nfor the sale of a haunted house:
\n18 rooms
\n$37,000
\nI’m yours
\nghosts and all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Richard Brautigan)<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog’s yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum’s scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother’s retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we.<\/p>\n

That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what’s brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

Here’s one from me to get the ball rolling. Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

For the Chipmunk in My Yard<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think he knows I\u2019m alive, having come down
\nThe three steps of the back porch
\nAnd given me a good once over. All afternoon
\nHe\u2019s been moving back and forth,
\nGathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,
\nWhile all about him the great fields tumble
\nTo the blades of the thresher. He\u2019s lucky
\nTo be where he is, wild with all that happens.
\nHe\u2019s lucky he\u2019s not one of the shadows
\nLiving in the blond heart of the wheat.
\nThis autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires
\nOf starlight, he\u2019ll curl among their roots,
\nWanting nothing but the slow burn of matter
\nOn which he fastens like a small, brown flame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

And now: your turn. Go<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: cartoon from Bizarro, by\u00a0Dan Piraro. Original (in color!)\u00a0here.] Sigh. After an unexpected and almost complete Internet blackout Monday through Wednesday, I couldn’t get to it from home\u00a0at all this morning. So… In lieu of a regular Friday post, then, I thought I might just share with you — anyone who’s reading this — 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":[247,1393,19],"tags":[1081,2651,2652,2653,2654,2655],"class_list":{"0":"post-8805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-internet","9":"tag-david-foster-wallace","10":"tag-barney-sarecky","11":"tag-richard-brautigan","12":"tag-robert-gibb","13":"tag-group-meditations","14":"tag-the-internet-gods-are-feeling-larky","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2i1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805","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=8805"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8816,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805\/revisions\/8816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}