Your Inner hermit

 

Go with your Inner Hermit

Having to live with problems in today's world--war in Europe and a lot of conflict between people in society--I would prescribe gardening for anyone who wants some inner peace and quiet. Go with your Inner Hermit, the eremite gardener, the almost-recluse, the walking in society but not of society... and a few birds along for the journey. Even a tiny garden, a few containers on a balcony, is escape from the world and an invitation to birds and insects to visit. 

Spring Gardening About to Begin

What gives meaning to life? Family, fame and fortune, creativity, and gardening. Said with tongue in cheek... 

The garden survived another winter, soon buds will appear on trees and bushes, the grass will begin to grow and turn green, birds are already at the bird bath (a big red cardinal yesterday), and life returns to our frozen north which is thawing, warming, The Good Earth, is that what Pearl Buck called it?

Sometimes winter seems a short intrusion in life, a few months we don't want off but are forced onto us. After the fact it seems a short intrusion.

So, here is my retreat from politics, war, and the world outside of home.

I have no real desire to go anywhere, I have everything I need, at home. 

Here are photographs I took this morning of the garden, making its appearance as the snow melts and the days grow longer and the sun stronger and warmer. 

On the Solitary Life

I wanted to be a part of something and I thought I was. I thought I was on the great journey of individuation, that I was a part of something connecting me with the great ideas and experiences shared by other people. But, in truth, I wasn't a part of anything. If you believe nothing then all of the old constructs of life, the scaffolding that supported your existence, have collapsed. Belief is, in retrospect, nothing real or lasting, it is a pretence or an illusion of belief—mostly it is a pretence. The doctors are wrong in their diagnoses, the Ivy League educated poets and intellectuals have fooled even themselves with their self-importance, the imams, priests, and gurus are deluded, politicians are obviously liars, social workers want to break up families,  teachers are selling preconceptions based on their idea of what they stand for, intellectuals are filled with book learning but no wisdom or practical knowledge; even shamans are fakes and out for money and fame. I hear Buddhists chanting in their temple and it seems delusionary, what fools! I want to tell them that their hypocrisy appals me. There is no satori, no heaven, no hell, no enlightenment, no god, no prophet, there is nothing and on this basis we begin again, we look for something that transcends the everyday; this is found in poetry, in the fine arts. I asked myself, what if nothing I believe is true? What if all of my beliefs and assumptions about life are wrong? The Emperor has no clothes! He's naked and everything he stood for is a lie and a cheat of belief. I did not decide to believe nothing, I accepted it with difficulty; it was a huge disappointment in life. But then, one day, the scaffolding of belief collapses, there is no free will, there is no certainty about anything except that the Emperor has no clothes. Believe what you want after this, but for now, believe nothing.

Moving towards spring 2021

Back walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course a few days ago, it is a favourite walk because for a few minutes you feel you are in the country. It's + 11 C today, overcast, and rainy; it's not spring yet but we are moving towards spring and all that means (more walks, gardening, birds in the garden and bird bath, longer days, no winter coats or boots, and so on). Two Russian girls were walking ahead of me and this reminded me that there are many Russian immigrants who live near here. I was walking through Montreal West and just as I turned the corner to walk to the golf course a man said Good Morning; this is a community where people say hello to strangers. Maybe there is some winter left but this rather mild winter will soon be over. Unlike some, I believe in the predictable life, I like where I live, I like the people who live here, I like the most conservative, quiet, inward life that is possible in today's world. 

Walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course on March 1st, 2021

 

I'll be glad when I've written my last poem and I can put this behind me

I've been writing poems since I was fifteen years old, over a half century of writing. Writing poems was never a choice or a decision, it was a calling. Where does the "call" come from? It comes from the soul.

-o-

The "call" to poetry came to me in a dream that told me to write down what had happened in my life or my life would be forgotten; waking after the dream I knew that to forget meant to lose my inner being. It is not just writing poetry that was a part of the call, it was also writing a journal and I began page one of my journal on January 14th, 1965; a few months later I began writing poems. Writing my journal and writing poems was a gift to me from the unconscious mind, it began with the dream.

-o-

First you write the single poem and then a lot of poems, and then you gather these poems into a book, and then you have several books and that is one's body of work. If this is your calling then what you are doing is fulfilling your destiny.

-o-

My poetry is concerned with soul making and it is also soul making itself; soul making is concerned with realizing one's potential as a person, with expressing the deeper meaning of one's life.

-o-

The unconscious mind has a proclivity to wholeness. Whether in dreams or day dreams or writing poems or other forms of artistic creativity, we are driven to wholeness. That is the basis of my writing, when I speak of soul making I am also referring to wholeness, life affirmation, and healthy-mindedness.

-o-

I write poems because writing has been a calling for me and one ignores a calling at risk to one's integrity as a human being. You can ignore many things and not damage your inner being but you can't ignore a calling; ignoring a calling is like having a limb amputated; no, it's worse than that, it's like amputating one of one's own limbs.

-o-

I've been fairly passive in life but that may be because I am also introverted. It may also be because I knew all along what I wanted to do in life, and that was to write poems. Whatever poems I've written have been the result of having to write them; indeed, I had no choice but to write. I have been driven to write, but what drove me? What drove me was the urgency of finding meaning and wholeness in my life, of affirming life.

-o-

Writing poems is what I've done with my life. It wasn't my choice since writing poems was a calling. It came to me, not me to it, and if the writing ended this afternoon I wouldn't care. Now I welcome my final years. I've been along for the journey, not in the driver's seat. I've been an observer and not much of an organizer or initiator of events. But I'm getting old and need a rest. In truth, I'll be glad when I've written my last poem and I can put this behind me.

Vision in Poetry

It is a constant struggle to write from one’s vision
when there are so many people who oppose what one has to say.
It is a constant struggle to be true to one’s vision,
to be true to one’s self over a lifetime of writing.

It is a constant struggle
to be strong, strong in one’s vision,
not give up, not surrender, not lose one’s vision.