“Beauty is a
threshold event: it may make use of ordinary and uncomplicated things, but
these serve as the bridge to a domain of meaning and significance.” (xx)
-
Robert
P Crease
The Prism and the
Pendulum: The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science (2003)
In
the turning of the seasons there are many thresholds; many events that mark the
passing of time in its spiral dance; the onward movement of existence through
the inevitable march of moments. These
moments may pass without ceremony; our lives slipping into the void slowly
without notice or remark. Or, we can
mark these moments of transition; thresholds in the pattern of the annual
cycle—and make our lives more distinct, more earthen, more tied to Earth &
Cosmos. By establishing markers for
these thresholds, we can note time’s passage, nurture a quality of
self-awareness that enables us to remember seasons that have passed, and plot
out future directions and explorations for ourselves with conscious
intent. This ‘active pathing’ through
the seasons lends vivacity to life in its inevitable passing, facilitating the
generation of meaning out of what-is.
We
are now in the cusps of Autumn, and I am marking time by engaging with touchstones,
icons and familiar experiences related to the coming season. The turn towards Autumn is usually first
intimated, for me, with the coming to fruition of wild apples in the fields &
woods through which I path in late summerwood saunters. The smell of ripening apples is an early earthen
sacramental of the onset of Harvest.
Then, in the latter part of August, I will always find that first leaf
that has gone red and fallen onto a path where I am hiking, as if to say, “time
is shifting; Autumn is coming.” It’s
always a leaf from the same species of tree: a longish, oblong leaf – three
inches long or so – with barely discernible ‘teeth’ along its edges. I pick one up, bring it home, and insert it
in a book that I’m currently reading. As
I go back to books I’ve read over the years, I find these artifacts of earlier
Autumns, dried between the pages where I left them, sometimes slightly
discoloring both paper and text. Time
passes. A final cue in Fall’s overture
is when I come across the first ripening acorns in early September. I always pick up three or four of them on a
hike and bring them back to the house, where I place them on my meditation
table. There they stay until, in the
weeks after Samhain (31 October), I start moving – spiritually; aesthetically –
into the eaves of the Yuletide Season.
Once
the overtures are concluded and I enter into the pathways of Autumn proper, two
themes seem to recur annually in my poetic experiences, spiritual adventuring
and aesthetic moods: Harvest and Ruins.
Summerwood
passing; the time for Flourishment and Fructification have come and gone, and
now Fruition is giving way to Harvest. Summer
is a time for ‘growth,’ ‘ripening’ and ‘bearing fruit.’ Autumn, thought of poetically and
symbolically, is a time for Harvest, after which come the annual transition
into dormancy and death. Life ends, but
first – if conditions have been right – there can be a culling of all that has
been gained; a ‘gathering up’ of the fruits of living, and a storing away of
its bounty in anticipation of the cold, dark journey to come; Winterwood –
which looms on a not so distant horizon.
Though
there is a ‘coming to fruition’ all summer long, many growing things have a
longer time of maturation and only come to fruition in September or even October. Where I live, the crops most indicative of harvest
are wheat and grain corn, soybeans and pumpkins. You see them in fields wherever you go,
stretching out over the hills. Beginning
at the end of August, mechanical reapers can be seen moving through the varied fields. All through September, harvest continues.
I
experience a deep paradox between bounty
and consummation at this
time of year. Fields as well as
house-gardens are being harvested. Nature’s
fecundity is evident in the way that seed, once put in the ground, grows to
maturity and bears fruit—assuming the right environmental conditions prevail. Bounty, however, is always coupled with
consummation. While there can be
repeated consummations throughout the growing season each year, there is a finality
to the harvest (at least in the temperate zone where I live); a sense of mortality
coming to the fore. Harvest was long a
time for celebration; especially in farming communities. At the same time that we celebrate the
harvest, however, an awareness of the consummation that it implies foreshadows the
dormancy and death – actual (in the plant world) and figurative (in our spiritual
lives)[i] – that
inevitably follow the harvest season.
While
‘Harvest’ describes what is happening in the external world, it also metaphors a
fact of our lives. We have our own cycles
of growth & fruition, followed by a settling into repose and finally death. The seasons – Spring—Summer—Autumn—Winter
– are an apt metaphorical parallel to the full cycle of a human life, and it
may also accurately describe different phases within the space of a life. Many of us go through cycles as life unfolds. At different times in our lives, we start off
on a particular path. We path as far as that
direction may allow, and then we may change course. We may find that some other direction seems more
fruitful, or we may be forced into a different life-course by circumstances
beyond our control. We may then ‘die’ to
the previous phase of our life, and experience a new birth to a different
direction. Life, in this sense, is full
of smaller births—deaths—rebirths. A
human life, however, assuming it is allowed its natural course and is not cut
short by violence, disease or tragedy, may ultimately go through a final consummation
before ending in the repose of the final death; the death of the body.
After
Harvest each year, Nature comes to rest in the darkening, shortening of days,
until Winter commences. It is this ‘coming
to rest’ that inspires my reflections on Ruins.
Ruins are to human culture what the
reaped fields, denuded trees & bushes of wildwood & field are to
Nature. The red leaf and the acorns I
pick up each Autumn intimate not only the coming Harvest but the fact of mortality. The leaf is dead. The chlorophyll in the leaf has stopped
processing sunlight and thus stopped reflecting light from the ‘green’ range of
the spectrum. Thus, the leaf takes on
the color characteristic of its physical structure; its ‘corpse’ – yellow, red,
orange or brown. The death and falling
of the leaves can be taken as symbolic of the death of all of the vines and
stalks of all the growing things that have made Summerwood green and lush. It is also analogous, symbolically, to the
‘death’ of human structures. When humans let go of things they have made; when
these things are abandoned or become neglected—they go into decline and become
‘ruins.’
BIRTH—LIFE—DEATH
is the way of all animals. We are
animals, and as such we undergo this journey.
In the wider frame of human culture and history, what our species brings
into existence also goes through stages like that of a life. We build, we dwell in what we have built, and
then we eventually abandon our constructions and move on to new horizons; we indwell
new places and recreate ‘home.’ Once we
have moved on, what we have previously built dilapidates_ and becomes a
ruin. Entropy wins out_ just as it
eventually does with animals, plant life and all physical systems_ returning what-once-was
to the Earth; to non-being. Virtually everything
on this planet comes from the Earth, and returns to it, eventually. Ruins, for me, are intimately linked with the
Autumn. They evoke meditations on
mortality. Though I may visit ruins I
know of all year long, during the Autumn I intentionally make time for this
kind of personal poetic pilgrimage.
I’ve
always been fascinated with ruins, and over many years I came to see them as an
apt metaphor of mortality. They are an
analog to the end-phases of human life. A
ruin is a structure that has been let go; it is no longer being kept up, or it
simply cannot be kept up any longer. It has been ‘handed over’ to entropy.
Nature brings about the ruin of human artifacts once they are abandoned, and to
reflect on this process of decay in its various stages is to find an analogy
for our own eventual decline, decay and death.
As we come from the Earth, so we will someday be reunited with it in
post-conscious states, the nature of which we can only speculate about until we
experience them – or not – for ourselves. A house or other structure,
abandoned and returning to the Earth, goes through Stages of Decay,
recognizable to anyone who has long visited some particular ruin, and that are
as indefatigable as they are beautiful, in a certain ‘melancholy’ sense of that
word! Many ruins decay over time-scales
longer than a human lifetime (stone and metal structures especially) while
others seem to age and decay and fall to Earth even as we do ourselves, or even
more quickly.
Ruins
inspire in me what poets and other artists have long called ‘melancholy.’ The melancholy is a ‘beautiful sadness.’ It is an emotion characteristic of spiritual
reflection on mortality. It is not mere
‘sadness,’ nor is it a state of ‘depression.’
It is a manifestation of our awareness that all things must pass; that
nothing is permanent—not even ourselves, much less the things we leave behind
after we are gone (children, works of art, things we have built or created,
maintained or reconstructed, etc.). Nothing
is immortal in the Earth & Cosmos—maybe not even the Universe itself. Death is as natural as birth. The end should be just as expected – and is just
as surprising – as the beginning. An
existential melancholy tinges all genuine self-consciousness.
Over
the course of my life I have had the good fortune to happen upon a number of
ruined places; usually old houses, though sometimes relics of a more industrial
time. I have visited these ruins as
frequently as I was able and came to have a kind of ‘friendship’ with them. They became familiar to me. I felt a certain melancholy ‘comfort’
sojourning amidst their wooden walls, bricks, broken windows and the artifacts
of what once must have constituted a home or other human habitation and in this
way have come to ‘know’ them in a poetic way.
I tried to understand their symbolic presence and was often led into
interesting re-imaginings of their past; who were the people who lived or
worked there and what kinds of things happened that led to the abandonment of
this place? Through all my experiences
at ruins, I was reflecting on mortality.
There
was once an old tool shed on the edge of a local wood, near where I grew up,
that became a frequent haunt; a place that drew me to it when out on hikes. I discovered it on a walk down a disused
section of the old railroad near where I lived.
Just beyond a small trestle over a rural stream, a little foot-trail led
off to the west from the tracks. I was
enticed to follow the footpath, which took me directly to the old toolshed. It was quite a surprise the first time I
happened upon it! The path did not
continue-on from the toolshed, which I thought was odd. Whoever had walked that footpath – over and
over again? – had gone from the railroad to the toolshed and back, but nowhere
else? The wooden shed was on the edge of
an overgrown farm field; one that must not have been planted for many years, as
there were young trees growing up here and there within it. The shed was enclosed on three sides. In front of the open side was an area that
was also under the roof, which was slanted from the front to the back of the
enclosed area. Within the enclosed area was
an old iron plough and a couple other farm machines, rusting away into the
earth. It was a lonesome place, and I
loved standing by one of the posts that held up the old sagging roof at the
front of the shed, listening for poetic echoes of human dwelling.
I
never met or saw another human being there, though I saw numerous deer in the
old field, saw ground hogs and squirrels and other small animals. There was a conspicuous absence of “No
Trespassing” signs. The ruin seemed to
have been lost to the web of human connections.
The shed was surrounded by Dame’s Violets in May, by Black Snakeroot and
Thistle at High Summer, and by Goldenrod, Ironweed and New England Asters in
the Autumn. Autumn was my favorite time
to sojourn there. I was a visitant through
a dozen years, quietly listening and watching as the structure dilapidated and finally
collapsed, ultimately being covered in leaf mulch, under which I knew it would eventually
become but a small ‘mound’ in the landscape.
On my last visit, I said my “goodbyes” as I left. _A melancholy moment. I missed it once it was finally gone, and I
still remember the place fondly for the quiet lonesomeness I was able to
experience there.
Ruins
not only represent a ‘natural’ mortality but sometimes reference a more tragic scenario;
a letting-go of something at the height or in the prime of its existence.
A house that has burned down, for instance, and now stands lonely in ruins on
an abandoned property, ignored and forgotten, may remind us that life doesn't
always end well, and that many things can befall us that we wouldn't have
wished for. Not everything in life works
out for the better; disasters and disease undermine our ability to flourish and
even to continue to exist. Some people
get caught in cycles of self-destruction or victimization from which they unfortunately
never escape. Many human lives have been
wasted or are so tragic as to inspire only despair upon reflection. Such has been and always will be, once
dimension of the human condition. Much of
human existence has been lost or wasted that might have been saved, had the
right set of circumstances prevailed; if love, justice and compassion had come
to the fore instead of other forces.
Ruins sometimes inspire reflection on this darker dimension of the human
situation and may inspire a humanizing hope which, if realized, might at least
curtail much of the suffering we bring upon each other; though it would not end
the suffering that results from the action of natural forces, nor bring an end
to death itself.
To
visit ruins is one way I’ve long found of engaging actively in a meditation on
the decay and death that ultimately overtakes us. Just like the
structures we have built and dwell in, we may keep ourselves fit and healthy so
long as we can, but – at some point – all our self-maintenance will fail, and
death will become our imminent destination.
Hopefully, it comes after a life lived to the full; a fortunate
flourishment and a culling of everything one can gather from one’s life-situation. Yet we may find intimations of our fragility
as well as the touchstones of flourishment in the ruined structures we visit.
A
few years ago, an old student of mine emailed me pictures of a ruined church
that he and some of his friends had come across near where they were in the
habit of hiking. He reflected in his email on the many times that we had gone hiking together down the
railroad tracks south of the town where I was living at that time, to an old
house, abandoned and decaying. There, we would sit together on the
weathered and moss-edged stairs of the back porch, talking for hours about
spirituality and mystical experience, often engaging in devout storytelling and
then a period of quiet meditation and reflection before returning to town. My own experiences at that house –
dilapidating over the course of the 30 years that I was a visitant there –
became the inspiration for the Whittiers; the central family in all of my
storytelling and the main focus of my book, Heart
and Hearth (2009),[ii]
which explores the subject of the loss and reclamation of a home; a house, a
property, and of a family’s vision of life-together-in-Earth-&-Spirit.
I
first discovered what came to be known to me as ‘The Old House’ when I was 12-years-old. I’d been told of it by some older friends,
who in the years to come often rendezvoused with me there. Adventuring down the old abandoned railroad
tracks, I arrived at the house, and was immediately captivated with it and its
environs. There was an old wooden bridge
over a creek that came to be known – in my imaginative world of Ross County –
as “Willow Creek.” The house had burned
but had not been fully consumed. While the
attic was gone, the first floor was relatively intact and safe to walk around
in. The ceiling of the second floor was
charred, but the floor was relatively sound, though decaying owing to the rain
let into the house through the roof, about one-third of which had been destroyed
in the fire. The cellar – lined with
stone – was a cool, cave-like space, and always felt haunted to me. There were old pieces of furniture and other
bric-a-brac of a home scattered over what was once the lawn. There was a spring down to the NW of the
house, discovered a decade after our initial visit, and another small wooden
structure near the access road as you went in.
This initial impression of the place became the template for the tragic
fire that destroyed the first Whittier house on Deer Hill in 1949.
We
often had the sense of tragedy at The Old House, though we never heard tell of
who had lived there or why it had been abandoned after the fire. We explored each room and became familiar
with the artifacts of human dwelling left within its now empty spaces. The idea of an empty old house; lost to human
habitation though ‘haunted’ by memories of past dwellants and the experiences
had within its walls, germinated into the poem I wrote in 1982 called “Empty
Boxes.” There was a sadness about the
house, especially in the Autumn, that I did not experience at the tool shed. This sadness affected us narratively and
imaginatively, and it became manifest in the sense that there were ‘ghosts’
thereabouts. A couple of us believed we actually
saw a ghost of a woman at The Old House, once upon a time. She ‘appeared’ to a friend of mine who was
circling around the back of the house on one of our ‘explorations.’ He said she was elderly and she was standing
in the doorless doorway that opened into the little hallway between the
stairwell and what we called the ‘little back room behind the kitchen’—for lack
of understanding of its purpose in life.
Another friend with us went to see what had happened when he heard our
friend let out a little gasp, and thought he saw a bit of fog or mist spilling
out of the doorway. It was a damp and
rainy day, so such a natural phenomenon was not beyond possibility. But our mutual friend said he saw a ghost, and not a fog or mist.
What
is a ghost but a memory of human dwelling?
What do they portend but our own end? _Whatever they actually are. I have no beliefs, though in my life I have
seen two phenomena that meet all the usual the characteristics of a ‘ghost.’
I
often met with mentors and friends at The Old House over many years and had
great conversations about life, mysticism and spirituality. Over the course of a decade and a half, as I
matured and discovered my poetic vocation, a series of friends watched with me
as the house dilapidated; ultimately returning to the Earth. This reflective watching became manifest in
my poetry in the early 1980’s as the theme of “Stages of Decay.” It fostered reflection on the impossibility
of returning to the past, about which I wrote one poem by that name, and
another poem and two or three short stories dealing with it. The decay of the house marked the passing of
time for me, and it taught me that the past is ever receding from us. The past no longer exists. It is only maintainable through memory; only
touchable via the artifacts left behind.
More than anything else in the first three decades of my life, the decay
of ‘The Old House’ schooled me in the fact of mortality. No one ever reclaimed that house, and by the
early 1990’s it was entirely collapsed.
When I revisited it in 2005, it was entirely covered with leaf-mulch and
fallen branches. It had collapsed into
its interior space – the once-upon-a-time space of human dwelling – its stone
foundation barely discoverable amidst the bracken that blanketed it all around.
While
ruins are a touchstone of the spirituality and mysticism of Autumn, sometimes,
out of ruin, there does arise new life. The
plant world is an icon of this possibility, where rebirth often follows upon
death in the turning of the seasons. There can be a resurrection; a
reformulation of life and a regeneration of hope and energy and possibility—and
this is the second of the narrative themes explored in Heart & Hearth (2009); the reclaiming of home and the
rebuilding of an authentic life after great loss. Symbolically, this process of reclamation can
be seen in Spring following Winter after the death of Autumn, but that is the
subject for another blog.[iii]
[i] When I
first posted this blog, a reader asked about the ‘figurative death’ to which I
was referring. I explained that, in a
spiritual and poetic sense, the year begins for me on the day after Winter
Solstice (22 December) and that it ends the next December at midnight on Winter’s
Solstice. Birth—Growth—Maturity—Repose
and then a settling into a devout anticipation (during November) of a symbolic death
and rebirth at the next Winter Solstice.
This is the Wheel of the Year that I follow, year after year. You cannot be spiritually reborn unless you ‘die’
first. For me, an earthen spirituality
is a spiral journey through the seasons, over and over again, learning from Nature
and experiencing your own transformation via metaphors drawn from the seasons.
[ii] Heart and Hearth (AuthorHouse, 2009) is available online at
Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and at Authorhouse.com]
[iii] See “A
Revel Towards Spring” (27 February 2011) and “Resurrection and Rootedness: A
Beltaine Blog” (1 May 2011) at this blogspot.
