John Philip Johnson has recently finished one novel and is at work on the second. He is also involved in a devotional art book project on statues and figurines of the Virgin Mary. He has published poems in academic quarterlies, and has had his name near Ted Kooser's and William Kloefkorn's in an anthology table of contents, in part because J is next to K.
John's degree in English and philosophy was earned in Lincoln at the University of Nebraska. He and his wife Sue Kouma Johnson live there still with their five children.
excerpts
from Hard Lights of Eden:
What was it? It was to awaken a little, then sometime later, to be awakening again. It was like waves breaking on a shore, waves of light, of dark, breaking on a shore that didn't quite exist yet. Waves of on breaking on a shore of off.
And then there was light and dark, now clear and distinct. Not waves. Now it was more like a river. A river of shapes. They were changing, passing by. There were other things, too, in the background, but those things were barely over the threshold of what was noticeable. For the most part, it was shapes. And wonder. Wonder that there was anything at all. The shapes themselves, the light and dark, it hadn't occurred to her to wonder yet what they were. It was just a wonder that they were, that they were at all. It was amazing.
How long this went on is hard to say, because she was not counting time, or marking time, nor did she know yet that there was time. Increments to the pace of change. It was just change. In a way it was a static thing; a thing of changing.
And then, later, the other things began to be noticed over the threshold. Sound. It was like static, or rain, or applause from the unseen hands of angels. It, too, was like a river, and it, too, was moving, though it seemed not to move.
The all-at-onceness of things, rushing and immediate.
She began to discern more and more things. The two rivers, light and sound, were separate things, but they were related. She could think of one and forget the other; and yet, as she forgot it, it was not lost. For she could turn to it again, and - such wonder - there it was. And if she kept them both in mind, it was a strange harmony. Two separate things, yet related.
After a while it became a moment. After a while she began to notice that here and now changed a little from here and then. There was no holding it. It just moved. And she noticed differences in the shapes. Some were long and thin, some were round and bulky. Some moved yet were the same; they were the same even though they changed.
Some of the shapes she began to think of as things. Some of the shapes were the background.
Then she began to notice colors.
Then she began to notice textures of light, and textures of sound.
And so it went for a long while, of noticing things, noticing sounds, colors, shapes, and the way things were connected. Noticing, not noticing, noticing again, and accumulating in memory.
And then something very strange happened. She noticed she was noticing.
She noticed herself.
This was the strangest thing of all. You might say it was like discovering a huge, empty door behind you. A door you couldn't see. A door you didn't know. And to notice with strangeness that the door was you, and yet it wasn't quite there, and all the beautiful things you had been exploring, they were no longer quite you. It was kind of like falling. It was the first shadow, the first bit of separation.
And that took some getting used to.