Wednesday, October 10, 2012

This particular loneliness


No one understands
this particular loneliness—

The crow
hopping aside
when traffic comes
then hopping back
to what is dead or

A chair
at the window
where one ever
looks out at the many or

Power lines
like single black notes
connected at electric nodes—
everyone is linked but

Are ghosts to each other
in these houses, guests
on a common field
with occasional attempts

at translation
in this air where
every tongue is foreign
about what electrifies the heart

37 comments:

  1. I love this poem, Ruth! So, so deep in a an inconvenient truth—"guests on a common field," with "occasional attempts at translation," where "every tongue is foreign about what electrifies the heart." It's one of you best, my friend, and certainly one of my favorites.

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    1. Many thanks, George. It means a lot that you are drawn to this poem especially. It came from a painful place, and though I didn't know how it would come out, it is gratifying to know that it resonates for you. No matter how much we touch one another in this life, the truth is that we are utterly alone. And yet we share so much, apparently!

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  2. I too, really love this one Ruth! I guess the idea of loneliness speaks to all of us. I can remember feeling the most lonely in my life when with my husband.

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    1. Rubye, I need this reminder that we are all lonely. I needed it this morning, and so I wrote it. I wasn't sure anyone else would feel it, and though I don't want you lonely, I am glad you feel it to.

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  3. It really is frightening to realize that even those who love us best often don't really "get" us - such a lonely feeling when I'm unable to make myself heard. Although frankly I don't really know what electrifies my own heart so I'm not sure I should expect others to get it.

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    1. Dana, in some ways it is constantly disappointing, if I forget and set myself to wishing to be "got". Of course I know (we know) that no one person can be all to anyone, nevertheless there is that secret hope that I might be witnessed as I truly am. But as you say, understanding one's own soul is enough of a challenge! I think I hope that if someone loves me enough, they will see what even I cannot.

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  4. No one can escape our human plight, the need to be fully seen and understood.
    It resonates with each one of us, a hunger that can't be satiated.
    You lay it out beautifully here, Ruth, each image so poignant.

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    1. Rosaria, the more I accept this, the more connected I feel, and less lonely. Thank you.

      What strange loops we humans follow.

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  5. Life/love so often a struggle between affinity and repulsion, so hard to sync, impossible to hold on to and wishing won't make it so, no matter how sincere the wisher, or how deep the well into which one throws the pennies. You are not alone here, Ruth, even though the sort of union these feelings produce is a tenuous and flickering one compared to heart's desire. This was a deeply resonant poem for me--the first two stanzas, especially.

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    1. Hedge, tenuous and flickering is just it. I sense your kinship here, and also with the crow. Like Joni, I think. We each have a lonely road to travel, on and on we go. We are driven perhaps, or maybe seduced, by the hope for union even while we follow the path we know we must find individually.

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  6. This is very beautiful Ruth, and I take from it that it is the hardest to talk about 'what electrifies the heart' because that requires poetry rather than pleasant chat. A different kind of conversation which requires a different mood. And it's almost as if we need to be lonely sometimes, in order to turn to that, which I find anyway, is what removes loneliness, connects us to that 'something'. Necessary solitude as Rilke often talked about. Thank you for this.

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    1. Morelle, yes thank you for your insight, it is a delicious mystery, ironic and loopy. I adore poetry for its slant gazes; I adore metaphor for the way it releases understanding as direct language cannot. And perhaps I should adore loneliness for the beam it shines into the poetic soul as a guide for this release. And I am so with you about this practice removing loneliness! It is my one solace, and yet I forget! I forget.

      I read Clarissa recently and love a quote from it: Sorrow wears, grief tears, melancholy soothes. Maybe poetry allows us to alchemize sorrow and grief into melancholy.

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  7. ruth, it is a gorgeous poem. whatever was halting you, whatever obstacle was holding you from poetry, it was breathing into you, grooming you to receive these words and bring them to us released.

    but don't we all know this particular loneliness? isn't this particular loneliness existence itself? what grants us our form, demands of us our separation.

    but - but but but:

    from kahlil gibran's, Secrets of the Heart:

    All things in this creation exist within you, and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things. In one atom are found all the elements of the earth; in one motion of the mind are found the motions of all the laws of existence; in one drop of water are found the secrets of all the endless oceans; in one aspect of you are found all the aspects of existence.

    so why then these difficult times?

    but what riches flood us afterwards that we would otherwise not garner? we suffer so that we might receive)))

    i see you from all these miles away. i witness you, ruth. i feel you. and when you feel your most alone, know i love you)))

    xo
    erin

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    1. Thank you, Erin. Thank you for everything.

      And what is "everything"? It's all that you wrote here, and what you do in your work, which is to turn inside out so that we can see the underside, which is where all things exist.

      I don't know the answer to so why then these difficult times? Some of it is resistance, I think. And also we are mind, heart, spirit—such complexities! And in the mind we create "realities" that don't exist anywhere else. Beliefs about ourselves and others that warp and bend our synapses into patterns of behavior that shape us; they shape us! And these in turn prompt emotional responses that feel real but are founded on creations of our own.

      And that is only part of life, right? The part that I control, the stuff in my head. And then what of the real suffering of life that we can't control? Yes, we are stretched and enriched by what we receive in its wake.

      And then there are those who suffer so much, so much more.

      One of my deep joys is that you and I witness each other. Do you remember when I first visited and asked, Who are you? What delight to gaze out my window upon you, and know you are also gazing upon me. Much love, my friend.

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  8. Yes, I agree with the others that this is a fine poem, and I specially like dritanje's comment on it. Particular solitude, necessary solitude — universal solitude, as we can all identify with what you write. Yet, kind of paradoxically, out of this solitude, as dritanje says, we actually may achieve connection. It's a profound truth. We sometimes meet people, don't we, from time to time, who seem independent, self-sufficient, able to bear their own existential solitude with ease, humour and relish, able to be themselves and be on their own, happy in their own body, mind and thought for long periods of time. And these are often the very people who can connect the most fully and deeply, sensitively and openly, with others, with nature and with the universe.

    Through the deeper connection of poetry we can express these universal feelings which are not normally talked about in the general chit-chat of day-to-day life — and others will empathise. It's inevitable. And so we connect. "No one understands / This particular loneliness —": however, through the poem we do understand, at least partly, and the particular, though it remains particular, also becomes universal.

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    1. Robert, it is agonizingly delightful to be human. Or is it delightfully agonizing? Either way, it is the other side of this, whatever this is in the moment, that we know will always come. The ironies, the cycles, the yin and yang, the needful balance. The suffering doesn't feel good, but as several have said, it is necessary for the deepest joys.

      To be like the people you enticingly describe is my aspiration. To be free like that. To be so well watered that others come and partake, and nothing is diminished. I know when I have glancing moments like this, and I feel as large as the world. But even though I know it, I do not seem to have capacity to live it moment by moment. Well if I did, or if most people did, there would not be so many books on the topic of enlightenment, would there.

      I am glad the poem perhaps managed to do what you say, which is to show what is true for everyone, even while it feels excruciatingly personal.

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  9. Dear Ruth, isn't it touching, even though there's irony, that we recognize in another's loneliness, when it's presented simply and honestly as in this poem, our own loneliness? Existence is saudade (missing what can never be "got") and we all think we feel it alone because we do, but in tandem.

    I seem to have lost my ability to experience and be touched by the images in my life that would, could I let them, make their way as metaphor in order to "release understanding." I don't know if this even says what I mean, lately I'm in-eloquent, my writing muddled. Maybe mostly:

    I like this poem. A lot. It speaks to me.

    When you are open to taking students, please let me know.

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    1. Dear Wendy, yes it is touching that we are individually lonely, together.

      You are generous to me, but I have been in much the same place myself for some months: tongue tied and ineloquent. We need seasons of quiet, fallow hours, it seems, though it doesn't necessarily feel good. But I think I had not accepted it, and now, looking back, it was when I began to let it be as it was that something was released. Something very close and almost silent.

      Thank you so much.

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  10. Does any one person truly understand us? Our insecurities, our fears, our hopes? I often think so many people are so unhappy because they spend so much time worrying about what others think that they don't quiet themselves and find out who they truly are.

    I think a person who allows solitude in, often is able to share more of himself when needed. Sitting in that "empty" chair is sometimes necessary.

    As always, I enjoy your poetry. (I forgot you were here and was missing synchronizing and then remembered... you are back! :)

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    1. Margaret, I'm glad you remembered and came here.

      Identity is a peculiar thing. It is singular and yet tied up with everything and everyone. Is it really only our perception that alters things? You point this out, and rightly I think.

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    2. I was in church and it was pointed out that our need for "approval" often is a vice that keeps us from speaking up or stops us from doing... Once we detach ourselves from "needing" to be approved, we can then truly follow our own conscience... (or something like that as I have totally paraphrased it ... as Catholics often do :) But it made me think of this "conversation"... :)

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  11. What great insight Ruth. I enjot reading your poetry.

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    1. Thank you for stopping by, for reading and for your gentle praise, Music.

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  12. sometimes I'm afraid to be elated over some happening as all too often the end result as your poem says,is this "peculiar lonliness"...so human and yet so hard to understand why it is within so many.

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    1. Hello and welcome, Gerry. There is melancholy in that holding back, isn't there? If only we could live entirely, wholly. Balance is necessary, and Life gives it to us whether we seek it or not.

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  13. This is such an October poem Ruth...it is of the loneliness I feel when walking around the pond with the leaves falling.

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    1. GailO, there is beauty and even joy in melancholy, I think. Sorrow and grief are different, full of pain. But these can be transformed into melancholy over time, like the saudade that Wendy wrote of, the loss of something that can't be retrieved.

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  14. This from John O'Donohue, thanks to beautywelove.blogspot.com:

    We are no sooner out of the womb than we must begin this precarious unfolding and shaping of who we are. If we have bad or destructive times in childhood, we begin to fix on a survival identity to cover over and to compensate for what happens to us. If we are never encouraged to be ourselves we begin to construct an identity that will gain us either attention or approval. When we set out to construct our lives according to a fixed image, we damage ourselves. The image becomes the desperate focus of all our longing. There are no frames for the soul. In truth, we are called, in so far as we can, to live without an image of ourselves, or at least to keep images we have free and open. When you sense the immensity of the unknown within you, any image you have built of yourself gradually loses its promise. Your name, your face, your address only suggest the threshold of your identity. Somehow you are always secretly aware of this. Sometimes. you find yourself listening to someone telling you what you should do or describing what is going on inside you, and you whisper to yourself that they have not the foggiest idea who you actually are.

    ~ John O'Donohue
    from Eternal Echoes

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  15. Might I offer one of my "October poems" (as GailO called it) in return? A little back story: Way back a long time ago, I found you by having found Dan Gurney (A Mindful Heart) by having found Bonnie (Original Art Studio) because Bonnie put one of my poems on her blog. I've never known what to do with the poems I've written, but that one made its way into the world and into a book (!).

    And it strikes me as maybe being a friend of your poem here, and the one that led me to your own times of words and quiet, so maybe they should meet. Dan has it posted on his blog, here: http://mindfulheart.blogspot.de/2010/01/heartsteps-blog.html

    Wendy

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    1. Wendy. Wendy! Thank you for bringing your poem to me (to us). I had not seen it at Bonnie's or at Dan's. There is so much in it, so very much. I feel shy in its presence actually.

      Oh this tender animal, this self, there are a thousand heartbeats in it, as gentle as the rain you end with. I want to read it a hundred times. And what book is it in? And what have you done with your other poems. I want to read more. Good lord I want to read more, and yet this one is enough for now.

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    2. Dear Ruth,

      thank you! I'm happy this poem feels at home with you (or you with it as the case may be).

      It's included in an anthology that came out in 1996 (omg!). I am proud to have a poem presented alongside those of Anonymous and Walt Whitman: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Prayers-Blessings-Affirmations-Celebrate/dp/006251377X

      Others? Well, they sit in various states of disrepair on my hard drive (and on some random sheets of paper at the backs of notebooks). I have no plans for them. We have an odd relationship. I like them but don't work over them to improve them (though they need it with their unkempt hair and sticky fingers). They correctly suspect, though I've never admitted to them, that I think they are noble attempts who don't live up to my expectations (so they run about full of smug self-pride, simultaneously worried they're inferior), and most secret of all, more than cooing over their baby pictures (remembering the delights of their being), I am always pining for their more mature selves to make an appearance and wishing I could commit to their kind more reliably.

      I haven't written a poem since I moved to Germany, over a year ago.

      In some ways all my writing - the daily personal jottings, the work on a fiction project, the (rare) blog posts are an attempt to come up with an actual practice that could lead to more poetry, or if not poetry, poesis (and its accompanying state of being).

      This would be why I said, with all seriousness, that I want to know when you start taking students. :)

      (edited to correct a crucial typo)

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    3. Wendy, how tremendous that your remarkable poem was included in a 365 edition of HarperOne, the same publisher that created the volumes I used for daily readings at rumidays.blogspot.com, and Lorenzo and I used for yearwithrilke.blogspot.com. Thrilling!

      I relate to what you say about revision, utterly. It is the hardest thing to do.

      Again, I think the work must be happening inside you. I felt completely empty for months, and I let it be. Inch by inch I found a new small room to eke out a word or two, and something is coming from it. I feel this is about the spiritual work as much as the writing work. I was ravenously devouring books for understanding a few years ago, and then it slowed. But something shifted inside. That is still there: a new outlook.

      I pray that you will feel contented somehow in this quiet place you are in, and that something will be released in you. That is the most important thing! The writing comes of itself when it's ready, at least the most authentic kind, I think.

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    4. Thank you Ruth, for your wish for contentment in this. Something must be happening, or I wouldn't feel its ... absent presence, so much, I guess. Cultivating patience is impatient work :)

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    5. Wendy, do you know Doris Grumbach's book The Presence of Absence? I have it but have not read much yet. Just the title grabbed my attention, and a recommendation from George.

      Blessings. xoxo

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  16. I wonder if it's the human condition, Ruth. I often think of David the Psalmist. If it weren't for him, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it all. He somehow gives me "permission" to feel "it." Thanks for accepting your own vulnerablity.

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All responses are welcome.