![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/timetravelbrain.jpg?resize=600%2C331&ssl=1\" "\\"The")
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[Image: illustration from a December 20101 post, “The Time Travelling Brain<\/a>,” at the <\/em>Neuroskeptic\u00a0blog. The orange-highlighted region of the brain is apparently used both in remembering the past, and imagining the future. See also this article<\/a>\u00a0in <\/em>Discover.]<\/em><\/p>\n in spite of everything — before leaving my room (E.E. Cummings)<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies in the perfumed heat of summer night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Mark Strand)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n It’s like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it’s dense, isn’t it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you’re a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don’t feel that we’re still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually — if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning– you’re not something that’s a result of the big bang. You’re not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as — Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so — I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I’m that, too. But we’ve learned to define ourselves as separate from it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Alan Watts [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n Waving Goodbye<\/strong><\/p>\n The world bends us to its purpose. Trees bent toward us, mere shadows We looked out to the future. Our future (Elizabeth Spires [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n In the history of dropping things — as distinguished from simple falling things — it must be said I think that this is the easiest of all human activities ever invented, and people have been trying to improve on this creation ever since. After all, almost anyone can do it and — if you include pushing things over a ledge so that they might fall — most complex life forms can do it, too.<\/p>\n …another strange bit: dropping women on Manhattan. The image comes from 1904 and — when taken out of context — it seems as though Manhattan is in for the worst of it, with a view in front of the Flat Iron Building of an aerial bombardment of women. This is probably one of the few bad things that weren’t done with\/at women, and would actually significantly predate the first use of explosives being dropped from aircraft. Unfortunately the original, intended image was a poke at crinoline and featured women being blown up into the air rather than the other way around, though I like my interpretation better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nwhich breathes and moves, since Doom
\n(with white longest hands
\nneatening each crease)
\nwill smooth entirely our minds<\/p>\n
\ni turn, and (stooping
\nthrough the morning) kiss
\nthis pillow, dear
\nwhere our heads lived and were.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nIn the public gardens, we found
\na “gazing globe” balanced
\non a waist-high pedestal,
\na silver ball a foot in circumference,
\nreflecting sky and ground,
\nourselves as we stood above it.
\nWe stared into its depths,
\nas in a crystal ball,
\nour faces large and wild,
\narms and legs unnaturally small,
\nas if a spell were on the world,
\nor, finally, we clearly saw the world
\nfor what it was: too brightly
\nshining, circular, unadorned.<\/p>\n
\nof themselves, their shadows
\nmore substantial than the trees themselves.
\nThe sky at one o’clock
\na milky white, light-filled,
\nyet without sun or cloud. And beds
\nof tulips rising from the groundswell,
\neach one a little mouth.
\nI knelt beside you on one knee,
\ncaught up in walls of air
\nI couldn’t touch or see, the outer world
\naround me wavering, as on a hot summer day.<\/p>\n
\nselves. You stood dead center
\nin the globe and raised your hand to stop
\nthe scene, your palm enlarging
\nuntil it dwarfed the tallest trees.
\nThen waving goodbye, we walked,
\nas a joke, backward and away,
\nfarther and farther away—
\nthe globe still gazing on us—
\nleaving ourselves behind
\nto live forever in that silver room,
\nto watch and spy on lovers like ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/womenblowingupnotfallingdown_sm.jpg?resize=525%2C761&ssl=1\" "\\"Women")
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