{"id":6664,"date":"2021-01-06T07:48:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T15:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=6664"},"modified":"2026-11-02T18:11:56","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T18:11:56","slug":"the-william-blake-pickup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/the-william-blake-pickup\/","title":{"rendered":"The William Blake Pickup"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- wp:themify-builder\/canvas \/-->\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was driving in Portland. Rain fell. Gray and black reigned over the landscape. A new year held out potential for a better year, but not a return to normalcy. If I hear the word \u201cnormalcy\u201d again I might kill myself. It ranks as one of the worst words ever concocted in American English. Thank you Warren Harding or more likely his campaign manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A vehicle appeared ahead of me. It was a mid-size pickup from the 90s puttering along five miles under the speed limit. I drew closer and beheld a Chevrolet painted very much in the ecstatic style of William Blake&#8217;s art. Indeed, Blake&#8217;s quote \u201cExuberance is Beauty\u201d was lettered on the tail gate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had read this immortal line from Blake, a mad poet who often sat naked with his naked wife in his backyard, drinking porter and reading Shakespeare to her, but never really understood it until I saw it painted on a tail gate while rain fell in Oregon on a morning the antithesis of color of everything Blake painted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was driving in Portland. Rain fell. Gray and black reigned over the landscape. A new year held out potential for a better year, but not a return to normalcy. If I hear the word \u201cnormalcy\u201d again I might kill myself. It ranks as one of the worst words ever concocted in American English. Thank [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6664"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10401,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6664\/revisions\/10401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}