On Being Alone in the Library: my inheritance

My Inheritance
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

You asked me what is the good of reading the Gospel in Greek.
I answer that it is proper that we move our finger
along letters more enduring than those carved in stone…
Czeslaw Milosz, “Readings” from Bells in Winter.

The other morning as I perused the newest issue of “The Whole Dog Journal,” which I considered safe and grounding reading, suddenly the words were staring up at me: “anticipatory grief.”

Well, I guess that’s what I get for slipping into hospice literature even if it is directed towards dogs. But, it’s also kind of nice to know that there is a label for the waves of grief that have been submerging me.

Last week my siblings and I took turns selecting the items that now constitute “our inheritance”: my father’s Mettlach steins; my mother’s paintings- the watercolors and the oils; furniture we grew up with, containing secret drawers: the butler’s chest that road the ox cart in Virginia before the Revolution; the table the Kearfott cousins, Yankee and rebel, sat ‘round peacefully one evening during the Civil War. We delighted in discovering my father’s penciled comments on 3 X 5 cards slipped inside the steins forty years ago. I jumped on finding that Mom had stashed a packet of Poppie’s ashes inside his first and favorite stein. His 3 X 5 commentary, “… the finest example of inlay work that I have ever seen,” became a bit ironic.

The grief has been coming in waves.

By Saturday, I was in such a state I simply drove to the library, the goal two-fold: to sit there by myself and not to be alone. I couldn’t think of any other activity that allowed me just to be.
The grief has been exhausting, coming in intense waves with very little story, subsuming my body as an almost purely physical force of light and energy.

Is grief different every time?
Last time round I learned that grief can be the darkest bitter chocolate variety of love, and something not to miss.
And grief has always seemed a heart breaker. I learned that my senior year of college.
But, this time round the descriptions don’t seem to hold. I find there’s nothing left to break, no boundary, no container, nothing there inside, no resistance anywhere.
And grieving simply means, “there’s grief.”

But, the process’s intensity has been shifting my consciousness, which is why I want to make this note.
To begin let me be clear, I wouldn’t call my situation anything like a “tragedy.”
On the contrary, Life unfolding naturally pretty much decrees that a child survive the parent.
None-the-less, I do like these words of Eckhart Tolle by way of explanation:

There are many accounts of people who experienced that emerging new dimension of consciousness as a result of tragic loss at some point in their lives. Some lost all of their possessions, others their children or spouse, their social position, reputation, or physical abilities…

We may call this a limit-situation. Whatever they had identified with, whatever gave them their sense of self, had been taken away. Then suddenly and inexplicably, the anguish … gave way to a sacred sense of Presense, a deep peace and serenity and complete freedom...

Or in my case, immense Silence, an ocean of consciousness in which the surface waves dance out the human drama – all the stories, all the pain and joys, the ticking of the days and years and lifetimes. In these waves the “me” resides, continues even as identity withdraws to the silent ocean depths. From this vantage point I see both the surface and the depths.
I am here and I am also “up there.”
And in the next moment it becomes quite clear for an instant, “I do not exist.”

This seems a gentle surprise and I’ll look again.
Sure, enough, there is no “I” which is curious, given that I still have thoughts.
And then, more curiosity kicks in and the moment’s gone.
What had been so obvious is soon too paradoxical to hold on to as direct experience – it becomes a memory.
I let it go and just sit. Observing the surface, observing the room, observing the swimmer in the oceans waves as “me and my life,”
alone in the library enjoying the light streaming through the windows.
Enjoy the waves, enjoying the depths.

When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since the ego is identification with form…
When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment in matter…

Not everybody who experiences great loss also experiences this awakening...
Some immediately create a strong mental image or thought form in which they see themselves as a victim, whether it be of circumstances, other people, an unjust fate, or God.
This thought form… immediately takes the place of all the other identifications that have collapsed through the loss.

In other words, the ego quickly finds a new form…
Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield…
Yielding means inner acceptance of what is.
You are open to life.
Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell of the ego.
…If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in.
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, chapter 2

So, I sat there in the library with a volume of poetry edited by Czeslaw Milosz.
After a while I took up a pen, retrieved a scrap of paper from a trash bin, and jotted down more bad poetry.

On being alone in the library:
How is it possible
when every volume speaks-
“A Book of Luminous Things,”
Czeslaw Milosz
Billy Collins
Louis L’Amour
Susan Sontag

“Sailing Alone Around the Room”
in the cacophony of Silence
drowned in the sunlight
numbed by life’s passing
shadows of heat waves play on the desk top.

How is it possible?
Shadows of heat waves-
“The Incredible Lightness of Being”
being alone in the Library.

In the morning I will insist to my sister-in-law
I must proceed more slowly
That it is indeed proper
that we move our finger gently
over letters more enduring than those carved in stone

as we accept
our heritance.

What Our Lips are Thirsting For

Originally uploaded by akiruna

The Keeper of the Lips allowed as how
I might be
The Holder of the Cup.

I’d call it something of a compromise.
Something concocted to put skittish minds at ease.
You do this and I’ll do that, not unlike dividing up the kitchen tasks.
Not to imply at all, at all, at all
any other housekeeping arrangement.
No. Not That at all.

But still,
Be still,
I am now, officially,
Holder of the Cup.

These words of Czeslaw Milosz immediately came to mind:

You asked me what is the good of reading the Gospel in Greek.
I answer that it is proper that we move our finger
Along letters more enduring than those carved in stone,
And that, slowly pronouncing each syllable,
We discover the true dignity of speech.

I love these words and have absolutely no idea
why they are germane to this moment.

Perhaps Keeper of the Lips
will whisper a hint or two. (She is one most clever bird.)
Meanwhile, I inscribe them upon a piece of mental parchment
And drop it into the Cup; safe keeping.

Of course there is the Cup itself
And the words of Jeanette Winterson that originally defined it:

The best work is a cup that holds the liquid that you are…
We learn about ourselves through someone not ourselves – it is like falling in love – the stranger brings the gift.

I scribble this down too
And in it goes.

And now we’re really talking.
‘Cause love has entered in the conversation.

Yet another “devoted reader” (not her words, but mine)
sent me a Rumi poem today.
It inspired me to collect more snippets of his poetry
creating quite the love fest.

No apology intended,
simply more treasures for the Cup.

Because we need to know, What it's Going to Take.

Last year I wrote,
“Falling in love is how we practice falling into Love.”
Love (with that large-case letter) being just another word for Being.
Falling in love and Awakening: seems to me the first is simply rehearsal for the second.

Rumi’s poetry offers perhaps the best defense of this proposition.

And the Cup will be here too, less there be any doubts
Regarding what our lips are really thirsting for.

~
Someone who does not run
toward the allure of love walks
a road where nothing lives.

But this dove here senses
the love-hawk floating above
and waits and will not be driven
or scared to safety.

~
Flying toward thankfulness, you become
the rare bird with one wing made of fear,
and one of hope. In autumn,
a rose crawling along the ground in the cold wind.
Rain on the roof runs down and out by the spout
as fast as it can.

Talking is pain. Lie down and rest,
now that you've found a friend to be with.

~
The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.

How do they learn that?
They fall, and falling,
they’re given wings.

~
A thousand half-lives
must be forsaken to take
one whole heart home.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the love be.

Lovers don’t finally
meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.