{"id":9158,"date":"2011-12-09T12:32:47","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T17:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=9158"},"modified":"2011-12-09T12:35:19","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T17:35:19","slug":"the-chime-of-the-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/the-chime-of-the-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chime of the Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[Image: night view of <\/em>House Attack, a 2006 installation by artist Erwin Wurm — a real house, turned upside down and embedded in the roof at Vienna’s Museum Moderner Kunst<\/a> (MUMOK). See the daytime look\u00a0here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/a><\/em> (which, I think, offered an especially rich selection this week):<\/p>\n

Everything That Acts Is Actual<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the tawny light
\nfrom the rainy nights
\nfrom the imagination finding
\nitself and more than itself
\nalone and more than alone
\nat the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
\ncan you pull me<\/p>\n

into December? a lowland
\nof space, perception of space
\ntowering of shadows of clouds blown upon
\nclouds over
\nnew ground, new made<\/span>
\nunder heavy December footsteps? the only<\/em>
\n way to live?<\/em><\/p>\n

The flawed moon
\nacts on the truth, and makes
\nan autumn of tentative
\nsilences.
\nYou lived, but somewhere else,
\nyour presence touched others, ring upon ring,
\nand changed. Did you think
\nI would not change?<\/p>\n

The black moon<\/span>
\nturns away, its work done. A tenderness,
\nunspoken autumn.
\nWe are faithful
\nonly to the imagination. What the<\/em>
\n imagination<\/em>
\nseizes<\/em><\/span>
\n as beauty must be truth.<\/em> What holds you
\nto what you see of me is
\nthat grasp alone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Denise Levertov [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The beginning of being fine is noticing how things really are.
\n1. Life is uncertain, surprises are likely.
\n2. If you are alive, that\u2019s good; lower the bar.
\n3. In a dark place, you still have what really counts.
\n4. If you are in a predicament, there will be a gate.
\n5. What you need might be given to you.
\n6. The true life is in between winning and losing.
\n7. If you have nothing — give it away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Time is constantly passing. If you really consider this fact, you will be simultaneously amazed and terrified. Time is passing, even for tiles, walls, and pebbles. This means that every moment dies to itself. As soon as it arises, it is gone. You cannot find any duration. Arising and passing away are simultaneous. That is why there is no seeing nor hearing. That is why we are both sentient beings and insentient beings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Norman Fischer)<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(J. B. Priestley)<\/p>\n

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

Used Book<\/strong><\/p>\n

What luck — an open bookstore up ahead
\nas rain lashed awnings over Royal Street,
\nand then to find the books were secondhand,
\nwith one whole wall assigned to poetry;
\nand then, as if that wasn’t luck enough,
\nto find, between Jarrell and Weldon Kees,
\nthe blue-on-cream, familiar backbone of
\nmy chapbook, out of print since ’83 —
\nits cover very slightly coffee-stained,
\nbut aging (all in all) no worse than flesh
\nthough all those cycles of the seasons since
\nits publication by a London press.
\nThen, out of luck, I read the name inside:
\nThe man I thought would love me till I died.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Julie Kane)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Visitation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last night you called me out to the December dark
\nto look up and see what neither of us had ever seen
\nbefore: a burnished flock of Canada geese, bent
\ninto a flexed bow and heading south across a clear-
\nstarred moonless sky in silence, winging it
\nto warmer quarters, and all lit up — like mystery,
\nI thought, a lit thing bearing nothing but the self
\nwe see and savor but know no more the meaning of
\nthan I know what in the cave of its fixed gaze
\nour cat is thinking. The geese were lit to the shade
\nof tarnished gold or dead oak leaves hanging still
\nin sunshine, or the color tall reeds have when
\ncar-lights stream and splash over them in winter.
\nAnd they were — these beings moving as one —
\na mystery to us: Why, we asked, their color, who
\nby daylight are simply black-winged shapes
\nquickening southwards across a sky-blue canvas?
\nHow could they be lit from below like that, from
\nsomewhere near where we stood on the earth
\nwe shared with them, staring up, the earth that
\nfor this inhabited minute or two must have been
\ngiving off a light that made these creatures shine
\nfor us who were there by chance, with no moonshine
\nto explain it? Then they’re gone, gone dark, gone on,
\nthough in their aftermath the cold dark we stood
\nour ground in was for a little while neither cold
\nnor dark but a place of visitation, and we were in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Eamon Grennan)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

It’s all embedded, the hours and minutes, words and numbers everywhere, he said, train stations, bus routes, taxi meters, surveillance cameras. It’s all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There’s an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away all the surfaces, when you see into it, what’s left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Don DeLillo, Point Omega<\/em>)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Grace Comes Like a Little Bird<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grace comes like a little bird
\nalighted on the tree, or now the grass<\/p>\n

A sudden reprieve from despair,
\nfrom dark thoughts and
\nwords harshly spoken
\nin the deep velvet rooms of the soul.<\/p>\n

Windowless, they go on and on and you get lost there
\nyou begin to forget about day.<\/p>\n

Grace has no reason to come
\nYou did nothing to deserve it.<\/p>\n

The bird becomes a lake
\nThe lake, an open window<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t ask bitter questions.
\nYou step out into it.<\/p>\n

The roadside blackberry brambles
\ndrip with fruit unasked for.<\/p>\n

Nothing holds back
\nAnd you find your arms unfolding
\nbeneath you on the grass<\/p>\n

You give yourself over for the evening,
\nfor however long it might last, without question.<\/p>\n

Oh, please, without question.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Melissa Reeser Poulin [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

Finally: what, you may wonder — well, I<\/em>\u00a0always have — is that tink-tink-tinkly instrument which plays throughout Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”? I thought it was a xylophone, or a glockenspiel. Something like that.<\/p>\n

Something very<\/em>\u00a0like that, as it happens. The score at that point calls for something called a celesta: a sort of glockenspiel housed in a piano-like cabinet. Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal (usually steel) plates suspended over wooden resonators…\u00a0The sound of the celesta is similar to that of the glockenspiel, but with a much softer and more subtle timbre. This quality gave the instrument its name, celeste<\/em> meaning “heavenly” in French.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How about that?<\/p>\n

Anyway, here’s the chime of the moment, courtesy of the London Symphony:<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:16 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:danceofsugarplumfairy_londonsymphony.mp3|titles=’Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’|artists=London Symphony]<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: night view of House Attack, a 2006 installation by artist Erwin Wurm — a real house, turned upside down and embedded in the roof at Vienna’s Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK). See the daytime look\u00a0here.] From whiskey river (which, I think, offered an especially rich selection this week): Everything That Acts Is Actual From 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":[247,1393,74,250,5,251],"tags":[850,1423,2458,2598,2715,2716,2717,2718,2720,2721,2722,2723],"class_list":{"0":"post-9158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-art","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"tag-denise-levertov","13":"tag-don-delillo","14":"tag-john-tarrant","15":"tag-norman-fischer","16":"tag-erwin-wurm","17":"tag-j-b-priestley","18":"tag-julie-kane","19":"tag-eamon-grennan","20":"tag-tchaikovsky","21":"tag-the-nutcracker","22":"tag-celesta","23":"tag-the-all-in-the-moment","24":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2nI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9158","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=9158"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9196,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9158\/revisions\/9196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}