Saturday Solitude

Welcome to Saturday Blog #250 on the subject of solitude, which most dictionaries (reasonably enough) define as a state of being alone, both mentally and physically. Some definitions elaborate, listing isolation, seclusion, a sense of being cut off, existing in a lonesome place. Few of them are pejorative (i.e. with a connotation that solitude is bad or unhealthy) and yet it does seem to be the consensus that solitude for any length of time is an unnatural state for human beings - as social animals - to be in.

I rather think it depends on where one is in the arc of life and on how much choice is involved in the matter (among other factors). Children absolutely need adults and like having other children around them. It's how they feel secure and how they learn, including how to socialise. I didn't experience much of the latter (other children to play with) as a youngster in a mission house on the edge of an African village, which possibly accounts for my somewhat reserved manner and the fact that I am perfectly happy with my own company for long periods of time, having got used to it from an early age.

That said, I've actually been in long-term relationships (co-habitations or marriages) for the majority of my adult life and I've only actually lived on my own, here in the house on the strand, for the last six years of that span. Being intimately close with someone all the time has its delights and of course its drawbacks. Living on my own has certainly proved less stressful than the emotional rollercoaster of the previous ten years with a high-maintenance spouse. I don't know that I will always live on my own from now; but whatever transpires, I think I shall always want recourse to a certain amount of personal space/solitude as a matter of choice - it's the healthy option.

For the very old, those whose life partner and perhaps the majority of their friends have passed away, isolation and its concomitant sense of loneliness or desertion is a serious challenge to the very quality of life. I re-watched the sci-fi movie Contact the other night, Carl Sagan's story starring Jodie Foster as the single-minded astronomer searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence among the millions of galaxies, billions of stars and trillions of planets populating the omniverse. As I've commented before in blogs on the theme of 'Are we alone?' either intelligent civilisations are ten a penny out there or we're unique - and someone in the movie remarks at one point to the effect: "Supposing all we have is each other."

Indeed. Maybe that should be our guiding principle unless/until proved otherwise and the acid test of our success or failure as a 'caring' society.

And so finally to this week's piece of politically pointed poetic allegory, fresh from the imaginarium and prefaced by an epigraph from Rumi's Spiritual Verses. Once again, I'm not sure if this is its final form but it will have to serve for now:

I am his servant who at every hostel
does not claim he's enlightened at the table.

And many's the hostel must be left behind
so that one day the man will reach his home.

Scintilla
The rates are cheap,
room service non existent
in this Hotel of Lost Souls
and so here we all are, ensconced
each in our own drear, dysfunctional lives
yet having this in common -
the poet, the priest, the alchemist and courtesan,
mechanic, logician, painter and musician,
nurse and teacher, the merchant and the sage -
our isolating, stultifying fear.

We hardly greet each other
if we pass upon the stairs,
guarded eyes cast down for worry
of giving anything away,
some spark of recognition,
a complicity which might betray us
to the dark informers in our midst
and leave us prey to undercover soldiers
and those rabid politicians who rage
against all better instincts.

It doesn't have to be this way.
We need to search inside,
re-find and nurture that bright spark
which fired us all upon our chosen path,
check out of this third rate
accommodation to an austere status quo
and boldly go together
where our moral compass leads,
lighting by example so others can follow
the route to a more fulfilling tomorrow.

Thanks for reading. Don't forget to register to vote! Until next time, S ;-)

Read More

What you seek is seeking you.

There's a strange circularity to learning and teaching.  Just as my daughter discovered that she would retain more information for her pending exams by teaching that information to someone else, I feel that I have learned more about poetry through teaching it to others.  It's as if there's a survival mechanism built into knowledge that ensures it will exist beyond a single mind.  In order to retain details in the long term we must, ironically, give them away.

With this in mind, I have decided to teach you about something because it's something I'd like to learn.  I have chosen Ecstatic Poetry.

The Greek ekstasis, from which the word ecstasy is derived, translated as 'standing outside oneself'.  This, to me, means that when you enter an ecstatic state, you step outside your normal framework and experience and are transported to a state which is separate from that state of mind, however temporarily.  This needn't be as extreme as a Bacchanalian frenzy, or a drug-induced stupor.  It can be that small shift in pace coupled with a flash of perspective which forces you to pause and re-read that last line, while your world moves a fraction to the left.

Bacchanale by Lovis Corinth (1896)

Paul Valery, in Edward Hirsch's How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, is quoted as saying, "A poet's function- do no be startled by this remark- is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others."  There are a range of poetic effects at our fingertips to invoke this ecstatic state in our readers.  These tools are similar to those used in traditional prayer and hymn: the incantation of a poem in its rhythm and music, the momentary pause brought about by paradox, or the displacement of words, their rearrangement, that gives a fresh reading to a familar phrase. 

The Sufi Poets are perhaps the best known of the ecstatic poets.  And of the Sufi poets, Rumi is perhaps the most famous.  His work has a transcendental, mystic quality to it but it is grounded in nature.  In 2007, he was named the 'most popular poet in America,' - not bad for someone who was writing in the 13th century on the other side of the world. 

Having done a little research now, I find I am quite fond of Daniel Ladinsky's interpretation of Rumi's The Way Things Should (2002).  You can read the full poem online here.  Here is the part of the poem which I find induces a feeling of ecstasy in me:

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky’s mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I sing those words.

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?

The shift, for me, from a traditional, inspiring verse to something which is ecstatic comes with the words 'the sky's mouth'.  The words sink in up to that point but at this moment I pause.  The voice becomes not that of the poet, but of a universal humanity.  It's an invocation of universal love, or God.  In that moment, when I sense the shift from the poet's voice to something bigger, that attempt to channel the universe, I feel my own heart lift.  It's as if the poet's intention has travelled those 800 years to find me, right where I am, and remind me that I am loved.  The directness of the intention directly affects my emotional state.  This is Rumi.  This is ecstatic poetry.  I stand outside myself.
 

Read More