One question that we will ask as we begin to develop characters is: why is this hermit here? What is attractive about this space? What does s/he hope to find here? What is s/he with in this space. Just because we are absent human company doesn't mean we are alone--we may be alone with our thoughts, we may be waiting for something/someone, we may be very busy occupying the space that we are in and/or maintaining full residence in our bodies. We may be working something out, remembering something so tender and profound that it trumps the present tense...or we may be so alive in our sensory lives that the company of another human would be too much. True, we may also feel lonely...but one of the building blocks for strong hermiting is sensing the value of the hermitish life.
I think about the first few lines of this Rilke poem (I have been thinking about Rilke a lot, FYI).
I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough
to make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your old and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother,
like a ship that took me safely
through the wildest storm of all.
~ from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke,
translated by Robert Bly (Harper & Row, 1981)
In this same vein of thought, the following poem made me think about the possibilities of the richness of being alone:
ReplyDeleteLittle by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food,
to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say ‘The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.’
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.
Listen to the answer.
There is no “other world.”
I only know what I have experienced.
You must be hallucinating.
- Rumi (from We Are Three, translated by Coleman Barks)
It's interesting how being alone is often synonymous with being lonely or isolated. The loneliness is one perspective of taking how we are alone. That's not to say that loneliness can't be experienced while being alone - there are ways of being your own company even among throngs of people.
ReplyDeleteThere's a nice poem by Tanya Davia and performed by Andrea Dorfman called "How to Be Alone". I admit - I already do some of these things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs