ROMANESQUE ARCHES: IN PRAISE OF THE HUMAN

interior, Norwich Cathedral

Romanesque Arches

Inside the huge Romanesque church the tourists jostled in the half darkness.

Vault gaped behind vault, no complete view.

A few candle flames flickered.

An angel with no face embraced me

and whispered through my whole body:

“Don’t be ashamed of being human, be proud!

Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.

You will never be complete, that’s how it’s meant to be.”

Blind with tears

I was pushed out on the sun-seething piazza

together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Mr. Tanaka, and Signora Sabatini,

and inside each of them vault opened behind vault endlessly.

~ Tomas Tranströmer

**

I particularly love this passage:

An angel with no face embraced me

and whispered through my whole body:

“Don’t be ashamed of being human, be proud!

Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.

You will never be complete, that’s how it’s meant to be.”

We will never be complete because we are a part of a larger whole and of the on-going process of constant evolution of human culture. It takes a village; it takes a city; it takes humanity. Ancient cathedrals have those stunning ceilings, “vault after vault.” And yet that architectural marvel is simple compared to the complexity of a single human being. That complexity is heightened by our being a part of a larger organism, our minds part of the collective psyche. Poets remind us of that.

But let’s not ignore the fact that the insight presented in “Romanesque Arches” is related not just to church architecture, but, I dare say, to Christianity. One positive thing about Christianity is that it recognizes and values the individual. It says to a person: “Your life is sacred and of infinite value to God.” That Christian practice has often contradicted this message is another matter. For the moment, I want to concentrate on the ideal.

This ideal meant a lot to Milosz. In a poem about one of his lovers, he lamented that she gave herself to men too easily, forgetting she was the daughter of the King. Most notably in “Late Ripeness,” he tried to remind us that we are all royalty – the children of the King.

That’s wonderful, we may say, but now that Christianity is in decline, can we still say to someone in suicidal depression, for instance, “Your life is sacred and of infinite value” – and just leave out “God” out of it? Can we insert “humanity” in its place? Given all the atrocities of the past and present, and those yet to come (is there any doubt?), can we be proud to be human? 

In spite of the atrocities, I think the answer is yes. For me, the greatness of the accomplishments prevails. But there is so much to be done to better this world, once we start from the framework of respect for human beings. The sooner we transfer reverence from deity or deities to humanity, the better.

Someone may ask, “But what about the afterlife? If we revere this life, on earth, what about all those who live hoping for another existence, in heaven?” It’s been pointed out that there are virtually no atheists in sub-Saharan Africa; atheism seems to be the luxury of people who live in relative security and comfort. Thus the prevalence of secularism in Western Europe, in countries with a social security net. The yearning for heaven seems to be related to the hardship of earthly life. In fact, already Karl Marx, endlessly quoted as having called religion “the opium of the people,” also remarked that it is the “sigh of the oppressed creature.”

The sociological explanation may explain averages – yes, the poor and uneducated are more likely to be religious – but not individual cases. Some people seem to have a natural tendency to mysticism, regardless of education (I see that among poets all the time). The yearning that something of us continue after bodily death is understandable.

No one can speak of the afterlife with absolute certainty. I've been trying to “live the question” for many years now, with little benefit. What changed my life was rather accepting this answer: The only paradise we will experience is here now.

Only moments of paradise, of course, just glimpses. But to miss those moments is to lose everything. That insight (not original to me – it’s the message of countless poems) was not the one that closed the door on depression, but it reinforced it.

Can there be a non-theistic sense of the sacred? Even when we see the universe as self-evolving and self-organizing without any need for a supreme being, the “king of kings,” we can still be in awe of its beauty and mystery. Neither the “starry sky above me” nor the “moral law within me” requires a theistic foundation. And we can also be awed by the amazing feats accomplished by the human brain, especially when people co-operate. Nor do we need to invoke antibiotics, the cell-phone, or the Moon landing; the accomplishment evident in medieval cathedrals is already a stunning testimony to what humans can achieve (when not engaged in killing one another, a contrarian voice adds – and that voice has to be acknowledged; moral progress is happening, but it has been slow).

Reims Cathedral 

THE HUMANITARIAN ORIENTATION

At a poetry reading I recently attended, soon after the announcement that Tomas Tranströmer won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature, someone remarked, “American poets have no chance of winning the Nobel Prize because they are always gazing at their navels.”

But I don’t think the reason that an American poet has practically no chance for the Nobel Prize is self-centeredness. It’s rather that European judges/literary critics see poetry as a genre of wisdom literature, a kind of philosophy with imagery and metaphors thrown in. They do not recognize that "the personal is philosophical," to use a twist on an old saying. The tradition of poetry as wisdom makes it harder for European critics to recognize wisdom when it’s implicit in a personal narrative. But Robert Cording, for instance, is actually pretty explicit (“grief is endless, delight is inevitable”). He’s still probably too personal for European standards, misguided as those are in my opinion. Just telling a true story is incredibly demanding, no matter how narrow the slice (and it’s precisely the “narrow slice” approach that can yield huge truths).

Now, the skeptic in me asks, “Are you sure that the personal is philosophical? Does Sharon Olds have an underlying philosophy that you find nourishing?” I think it’s safe to say that she does cherish the body and love at all levels, and now and then we can get some psychological insight from her poems, but no one would call her a philosophical poet. Her excellence lies in providing vivid details. And I am forced to admit that the personal, when not illuminated by insight, can remain on the level of gossip, of a colorful story that we don’t know what to do with other than maybe say, “That’s life. Those things happen.” As Olds said, “I am not a thinker.” Maybe a little more thinking would be a good thing.

But ultimately it’s pointless to speak about European poetry versus American poetry. There are great poems, and those rise above any categories. Great poems are both personal and philosophical, both lyrical and narrative (though it may be only a tiny wisp of a narrative). Po-Chu-i’s gems delight us not solely because they are illuminated by the wisdom of Zen, but because PCI’s personality is so evident in them, and always, always, he brings in the mysterious beauty of nature.

That mysterious beauty of nature includes the beauty of a human being. When we look at others with the eyes of tenderness, how beautiful a human face is, a human body! In his poem "At Baths at Esalen," Stephen MacDonald writes:

This evening, in the baths at Esalen, I open
my eyes to find light creeping like resurrection

under the pall covering my face. I lift
my oiled and massaged flesh from the table
to find myself in a world of naked human bodies,

silent in the mist, slick with the waters
of the baths, the beauty of each limb, each wrist

and ankle, almost more than I can bear.

Perhaps a factor other than the presence of overt philosophy is even more important. Poets who win the Nobel Prize tend to have a humanitarian attitude. They show reverence for the human. They say each life is sacred and of infinite value, and we are all a family. Milosz had that attitude. He loved people and could never really get over what he witnessed and experienced during WWII. And for all his religious struggles, there was one thing he could admit: that he knew a statue in a church would never nod at him, never give him what he constantly prayed for: a sign confirming the existence of God. In the end he became reconciled to the thought that the only trace of something we might call sacred or divine could be found in the human community: in a kind gesture or smile.

But wait: shouldn’t it be “something we might call sacred and human”? Human, that is, in the best sense of the word, as in “the human spirit.” That spirit, the human spirit, has manifested itself in deeds of magnificent courage, heroism and endurance. We can feel proud that we as humanity are capable of what first seemed impossible.

Philip Levine is a humanitarian with a special focus: he insists that we respect the working man and woman. I remember, in one of the articles about him (I think in the New York Times), the author exclaiming that there are people in Levine’s poems! There are people in Tony Hoagland’s poems too. With some effort, we could come up with other names of poets whose poems are “populated.” But is that a typical contemporary American poem? Now, there is nothing wrong with introspection; without introspection, there would hardly be the kind of poetry we call lyrical. I think the charge of self-centeredness comes from the sense that there isn’t enough sense of connection with others. Obviously, there needs to be a balance: solidaire/solitaire. It’s not easy because the digital age makes us interact with computer monitors rather than have face-to-face encounters.

It is a challenge. Before that post-Tranströmer/Nobel Prize news poetry reading, I was thinking of a dog I met on my little walk the day before, and how delightfully affectionate the dog was toward me, a total stranger. If only people could be so affectionate! But we aren’t at that level of enlightenment. Great poets help us enlarge our empathy.

Tomas Tranströmer and his wife Monica. Note the odd way he holds his right hand – this is characteristic of stroke victims. But I don’t want this to be the last statement in this post. Note, above all, the love that one can sense looking at the photo of this couple.

Steve:

I'm pleased that you commented on the importance of the beauty of the human. The image of the human as a portal to an endless opening of vaults – always growing, never complete – is stunning, and completely congruent with my own perception of who/what we really are.

And here is the truth of truths: "The statement 'Your life is sacred and of infinite value' is sufficient unto itself simply in the context of humanity – because being human is such a grand thing." What a powerful realization that is – and what significance it holds for a way of living life that brings peace, acceptance, and joy – even amidst the inevitable sorrow and suffering that are also a part of being human. Very powerful!

Oriana:

Ginette Paris commented that it’s still very soon after the death of god; it will take several generations to formulate a life philosophy that fully affirms the human, without denial or wishful thinking – including mortality, suffering, and our capacity for evil as well as for affection, altruism, and immense achievement. I think we are slowly moving toward the position that human life is sacred and war is unacceptable, famine and torture are unacceptable. Obviously we are not there yet, but I see the “writing on the wall.”

Instead of an invisible being somewhere out there (or everywhere, which is just as nebulous), we can gain a sense of pride when we remember that we are part of humanity. Instead of the “holy spirit,” we will speak about the “human spirit.” That’s the spirit we saw in action when the astronauts landed on the moon – an act of incredible courage – and also whenever we hear yet another report of someone risking his life to save a stranger. 

While I favor the translation of “sacred” as “human in the highest sense,” I also favor taking what is best from each religious tradition. Parables teaching compassion – no, we don’t want these stories to be lost. Buddhist wisdom of detachment and serenity – of course we can use it. But that will happen automatically, I think: the chaff will fall away, and what is nourishing will remain.

Hyacinth:

The photo is sort of like the vault goes on and on. The blog is delicious. I'm beginning to like Tranströmer more and more, and I like the idea of the human in poetry being is as important or more important than the sacred.

The picture of him is charming and I saw several others all like in that he has a twinkle in his eye.

Oriana:

I think the word "sacred" need not and should not be confined to religion. It can and should be used in reference to nature and human beings (we are of course part of nature). We can indeed say to someone, "Your life is sacred." It's sacred because it's a human being, with all the fantastic human abilities. My mother used to say, "The most wonderful thing in the universe is the human brain."

I'm particularly against the idea that we receive "divine love." The love we receive is human love and canine love -- there is no doubt about those two kinds, and I'm including dogs because sometimes, sadly, that's the only love that a person living alone receives.

Now, perhaps there is some sort of caring from the universe -- so many people want to believe that. But let's face it, there is no proof of it, while tsunamis and other natural disasters that used to be called "an act of God" certainly do happen. So let's give credit where credit is due: human love, canine companions. Maybe dolphins, but how many of us get to establish a relationship with a dolphin (or an elephant etc -- social animals with large brains can be said to be capable of the kind of attachment we'd call love). Any other love is conjectural.

Charles:

Love the symmetry and light of the photograph.

Re: divine love, I always feel better when I consider that god is a verb.

Oriana:

I could call myself a church junkie. I’ve always loved the cavernous twilight of old churches, and have spent hours sitting in a pew (what happened to wonderful old pews?), just soaking in the quiet and that special architecture, arches upon arches. In Warsaw especially, it felt so soothing to step out from a noisy street into that other realm. We need all the paradise we can get.

I don’t mind it if people claim to sense the presence of something divine. As long as we drop the archaic image of the Bully in the Sky who tosses people into hell, and get closer to the Sufi idea of an accepting Friend, even Lover, mental health may well benefit from some feel-good prayer and/or meditation. Recovering addicts in particular need a “sinners welcome,” unconditionally loving Someone. This Friend is also constantly developing, maturing (in Rilke’s words, “we are building God” – this certainly applies to any concept of God). Furthermore, as for the god-is-a-verb, the actions of feeding the hungry and being kind to the stranger mean so much more than ritual and keeping a special diet. If it’s helpful to a person to see Christ in the homeless man they help, then I say, “Whatever works.”

Scott:

Once again you have introduced me to an interesting poet, have now 
read several of his poems. And his life is fascinating as well; 
doctor, poet and recovering stroke victim....thankfully it did not 
silence his pen. The biographies of poets are as intriguing as the 
poems themselves; your blog is a great education in the art of verse 
and I never fail to take away a great deal. Currently at the bedside 
of my 90 year old father-in-law, hope he can go home soon from the 
hospital, he's had a blood infection. He's been Dad, Father in law and 
Grandfather all in one.

Oriana:

My best wishes of speedy recovery to your father-in-law.

One interesting thing about Tranströmer is that he used to work as a therapist with juvenile delinquents. He said that he got always asked if his work as a therapist influenced his poetry, and never if his poetry influenced his therapy practice.  This made me aware that it’s a two-way street: it’s not only that our experiences influences our writing; our writing can also influence our experiences.

Lilith:

Your blog on the Romanesque Arches was wonderful....I will ponder it a long time.

About the recent death of Steve Jobs, there was a quotation from him about how knowing he was going to die freed him to realize he had nothing to lose. Heaven on earth, so to speak. I've been absorbing everything I can find about this amazing human, including everything I hadn't known about him before.

Thanks again for all your blogs.

Oriana:

Steve Jobs was one of the people who make us proud to be human. But many outstanding individuals never get famous. If we look around, we see greatness and quiet heroism all around.

Full acceptance of death, without kidding ourselves that paradise is somewhere else, and can be experienced only after dying, means a fuller embrace of life. Hey, we better stop wasting time! All kinds of nonsense falls away, just as Steve Jobs said. True priorities remain.

As Keats said, this is not the Vale of Tears, but of Soul-Making – what Jung would call “individuation.” We are always creating ourselves: that’s why it matters how we live, even what we read and watch. Life is sacred and not to be wasted. It is to be maximized and enjoyed. I think more and more people are accepting this (though it’s harder for the young; experiencing the progress of aging “wonderfully concentrates the mind”). 

RETURN TO KOLUSZKI

Return to Koluszki

If there is an afterlife, there will be no
angels. Winged desire will return
to Koluszki, Skierniewice,

towns I never knew
except as train stations —
yet it seems I stood forever

in the Market Square at noon
on brick pavement smooth as bones
turned into an alphabet.

Meanwhile scattered in space-time,
memory’s mass grave,
it’s my sweet abusive lover

speaking his last words:
To succeed, you must be willing
to wear uncomfortable clothes —

but before he pulls the trigger,
turns to me and says:
Remember only the beauty. 

We few, we happy few
who’ve danced on the floor of hell
in the arms of crematorium smoke.

Let us build Socialism,
he dead sing from cathedral clouds,
and Kafka has beautiful hands

when he gestures like rain.
Let us ring all the bells,
let us hold a grand ball

at the railway station.
But for now or eternity I stand
a few steps beyond the known,

feeding crumbs of my soul
to the insatiable angels.

~ Oriana © 2011

**

Recently I heard this on the radio: “It’s OK if there is no heaven. I can live with that. What I can’t endure is the thought that there is no hell – because then what about Hitler and the other bad guys? Where is the payback?”

I was completely amazed that anyone was so concerned with “payback.” Apparently the god of vengeance is not dead. To me the notion of never-ending "payback" has no appeal. Even if Hitler deserves eternal torture, punishing him in this manner would not restore a single life. It would not make a grieving mother glow with happiness again.

But let me address the opening statement: “It’s OK if there is no heaven. I can live with that.” Personally, I’ve lived with that since the age of fourteen. In any case, heaven has always been too high an aspiration. It astonishes me that so many people assume that they deserve eternal bliss (and in old-style Catholicism you really had to deserve it – Christ’s merit was not enough. If you didn’t deserve it, and the nun strongly implied that you didn’t, you would have to be purified by centuries -- centuries! -- of punishment in Purgatory).

There is also the problem of location. As Milosz observed in one of his late poems, “Second Space,” Western culture has essentially lost the idea of heaven in the clouds and hell blazing inside the earth. It is hot deep within, but the furnace is not stoked with sinners. What we have come to know, and it's no joke, is "hell on earth." And only half-joking, we’ve begun to speak of heaven as returning to a place we loved. When one of our San Diego poets suddenly died, eulogies and memorial poems mentioned that “Linda is now in Paris.” I imagined her in a different paradise, the Meditation Gardens at the edge of the world, on the cliffs over the Pacific.

But it’s OK if there is no heaven. I too can live with that. What I’d settle for is simply continued conscious existence, not in paradise, but in a much more modest place. That’s why I chose Koluszki, a small town in Poland that, because of its central location, had a huge train station – and still does, but now it’s been modernized. To return to something similar to the legendary railroad palace of my childhood, I’d need to get off at the station in nearby Skierniewice.

All the quotations I use in the poem are literal. You may well wonder about what kind of people I attract as friends and lovers. Certainly not what is glibly described as “normal” or “average,” even if no one has ever been able to define those terms as they apply to our complicated species. Still, I admit that a lover who says, “To succeed, you must be willing to wear uncomfortable clothes” (I think he did hit on something there, especially if we metaphorically extend “clothes”), or a friend who shouts at landing jets – I admit that I’ve been particularly blessed or cursed to be a magnet for the unusual.

I used to say, with Bukowski, “The insane have always loved me,” but that’s too strong, no matter how many of my friends and acquaintances have been on a psychiatric ward. Rather, I have been blessed to have known some colorful people. How did a couple of them (not counting Kafka) get into my Koluszki poem? “It’s all grace.”

It’s only after writing this poem that I realized that the task of my life as a writer and teacher and friend has been to feed the crumbs of my soul to hungry minds/souls out there. I haven’t fed meals to orphans or the homeless, but I have seen satisfied smiles on the faces of my students and audiences. That is reward enough. And it would be lovely to be able to continue this work in the afterlife . . . but I don’t insist. To have experienced it even once makes me happy.

But if I let my imagination roam free, then heaven would be a return to Warsaw, and especially to my favorite part of it: Aleje Ujazdowskie and Lazienki Park, with its statue of Chopin and the classical-style royal palace of the last Polish king – exquisite compared to the restored royal palace in Old Town. And of course the statue of Daphne changing into laurel, and the weeping willows and the swans. But I’d be happy just to walk under the huge shade trees, even in spring drizzle, when lilacs are in bloom, and later, the chestnut trees. Or in autumn, with maple leaves performing their ballet of falling.

Here is an excerpt from Cecilia Woloch’s marvelous piece set in Lazienki:

(For the Man Who Speaks with Trees)


Thin moon over Warsaw tonight. A haggardly golden half moon in a milky haze, slipping behind a cloud. “This tree saw the last Polish king,” he said of the giant oak in Lazienki Park. It was still early evening then, the deepening blue of summer dusk. The old palace shimmered over the lake and he walked right up to that tree, as if to kiss it, his nose to the bark. I stood next to him, face to the bark. “It doesn't speak Polish or English,” he said, “but the language of trees.” I heard it, too. His breath or my breath through the wood, or both; the breath of something else . . . When we kissed goodnight in the street, my lips were sticky, as if with sap.

~ Cecilia Woloch, © 2011

**

And let me quote the opening of a short story I once wrote, in the form of a letter from my double – that ghost woman, my Penelope, my divergent twin who’d stayed behind in Warsaw. 

LETTER IN OCTOBER

Leaving creates an undertow resplendent with abyss.

                                       ~ C. Eshleman

Dear Sister, My Dearest Twin,

Yesterday I walked down your favorite street, on the side opposite the American embassy, with the huge trees and the long wrought iron fence. I sat on a bench – perhaps the same bench where a man once sat down next to you, tall, silver-haired, neatly dressed and crazy, and sweetly asked you to help him write a letter to the Prime Minister to complain about a mistake he found in a newspaper: the name of a certain town in the Soviet Union was incorrect. “I know because I was born there,” he wanted to assure the Prime Minister. I didn’t yet exist, not in that simpler geography of time. You think only you attract the bizarre; I sit on the bench and watch the leaves fall. You and I like it best when a leaf falls slowly, rocked by the wind back and forth, back and forth. It's a long way to fall, across twenty-five years.

See, you forgot it’s autumn. I know your mouth has just twitched slightly, your teeth clicked with irritation – you are forbidding me to use that worn-out phrase, “the golden Polish autumn.” You loved the passion of red: old walls scarlet with ivy, the red burning along the veins of maple leaves. Yet I remember what you thought during the trip to West Virginia that astonishing October when you were seventeen: a fabulous blaze, but those were not real trees.

~ Oriana, © 2011

**

I don’t believe in any traditional afterlife, but I do believe in leaving behind us something of value to others. It’s not necessarily anything we leave intentionally. It can be something we said that lent itself to a soul-nourishing interpretation someone else needed at the time.

DRIVING FROM THE AIRPORT

           

past the blind mirrors of downtown,

I see you again: you and I

by the side of your car, our last goodbye –

the bellies of incoming jets

swooping over us,

your head in a halo of drizzle,

tilted as you shout,

Keep your nose up!

You show me how a plane

descends, its nose pointing

up – it mustn’t nosedive.

Your arm goes down and

down, precise, horizontal,

landing in the most dangerous

airport in the country.

No one foresaw, everyone was blind

about the coming wreckage, 

your body found

alone in your condo.

But I always see you

as you stood back then,

mantled in fine rain,

shouting, Keep your nose up!

The jets' shark shadows cross

the mirror drizzle of time.

It’s to me you gesture,
it's to me you shout –

showing me how to land,

how softly to arrive.

~ Oriana © 2011

in memory of Linda Brown, a San Diego poet, December 14,1941- February 14, 2006

Linda Brown, her high school graduation photo, 1959

Ewa Parma (in Poland):

Fantastic. So, you miss even Koluszki, Oriana. And Lazienki Park is your personal heaven. Immigration must be Inferno then. I couldn't stop smiling when I read: "The insane have always loved me." True. And about feeding the angels with crumbs of your soul. That's what poets are for. Thank you.

Oriana:

I miss the old Koluszki train station. It was part of every summer. Lazienki and Aleje Ujazdowskie are indeed my heaven, starting at the Square of Three Crosses. I could walk there for eternity, especially when lilacs are in bloom . . .

Immigration was definitely Inferno at first. The Untermensch feeling is unavoidable, I think.  And if the milieu you grew up in was radically different from where you end up – and I went from an intensely intellectual milieu to an anti-intellectual one, or at least one where it was difficult to find intellectual peers – alienation is unavoidable. Even without that, I’ve met so many bitter, unhappy immigrants, it seems an endemic condition. As Danusha Goska said, Don’t ever be an immigrant. I second that. Not unless your life is in danger.

Having said all this, I’ve been inclining to the view that, past the Inferno stage, immigration is a Purgatory. It would take another blog post to explain.

I’m thrilled that you understand the part about the poet feeding the world with crumbs of her soul.

Steve:

Thank you for "Return to Koluszki." I was very moved by it – on a number of levels. And, as in all really excellent poems, I was moved more deeply each time I re-read it. The opening lines involve me at once: 

If there is an afterlife,

there will be no angels.

Winged desire will return

to Koluszki, Skierniewice,

towns I never knew

except as train stations –

I love the image of a "winged desire" rather than angels in the afterlife--although I'm intrigued that at the end of the poem you are feeding crumbs of your soul to "insatiable angels"--an ending image, by the way, that is stunning in its accuracy. Don't we all do that as we create art? The angels are insatiable, just as our own inner vaults are endless. There are beauty and terror in those lines, as is true of all spiritual encounters, I believe.

And the music of standing in the market place in the "sway of the Angelus" is gorgeous, especially followed, as it is, with the haunting reminder of what humans can do to humans in "pavement smooth as bones" and the evocative "memory's mass grave." Given the location of the poem, these lines carry some precious and powerful freight.

And then the appearance of your "abusive lover" and Linda add a drama and presence in the poem that work very well. "Remember only the beauty" is truly a haunting line, especially from someone about to pull the trigger (in a suicide, it seems?). Such amazing combinations of beauty and terror!

I really can't tell you how moved I was by this poem. It is so beautiful. What a wonderful statement of the artist's condition:

But for now or eternity I stand

a few steps beyond the known,

feeding crumbs of my soul

to the insatiable angels. 

**

Oriana:

All I can say is thank you, from the bottom of my heart. It’s wonderful to see that a reader understands a poem of mine so well, finding a layer of meaning that actually escaped me. Coming from Poland, I can easily think of mass graves (I even have a poem about seeing them as a child in a Pomeranian forest) – but as so often happens during the creative process, the line with “mass grave” came on automatic. Thanks for pointing out that the location of the poem adds a historical dimension to that. 

Lucrezia:

[Oriana wrote: One obvious Q is where you'd like to go/return for your "heaven." Would it be Berkeley? Oregon? Egypt? Or maybe more than one place.]

Definitely not Egypt, but the others are appealing.  But everything one imagines about heaven is something one knows from this life.

"Good-by, good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners. Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths. And sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."

Oriana:

I agree: Everything one imagines about heaven is something one knows from this life. Even science fiction can’t seem to get that far away from earthly reality. When it comes to heaven in particular, the Christian variety has been dreadfully colorless and unappealing because what we really want is a wonderful cup of coffee, great food, and, why not, finally finding that soulmate or missing half. And pets, absolutely. And friends – some of whom may have wound up in the other place, which wouldn't make us happy. 

Actually I startled myself with both my Warsaw as heaven and Koluszki as “modest afterlife” fantasies, since in both places I remain solitary. In Warsaw, just the city was fascinating enough and I can imagine myself blissed out on my favorite avenue. In Koluszki I’d miss friends, I suspect.

And yes, we already live in paradise. Without denying suffering, this is still paradise, nor have we been exiled from it. It also strikes me that the synonym of heaven is “life everlasting,” while hell is occasionally called “death eternal.” As I say in one of my poems, “We don’t want heaven, we want life.”

Scott:

I can't recall a single blog posting when I have not found something of interest; from religion, Greek myth or philosophy your musings and reflections are great to ponder over a good cup of coffee. What a great question. I could easily spend my afterlife in a small house by the beach in Hawaii, specifically the North Shore of Oahu. It would be nice to have an eternity to explore the other islands or all of Polynesia for that matter, much like Robert Louis Stevenson, Melville and Jack London did. Of all the places I have travelled to, Hawaii meets all my expectations and then some: mountains, beaches, warm weather with plenty of interesting plant and animal life.

As for Melville, pondering the next world was a lifelong obsession as Hawthorne noted in a famous journal entry. I would bet he too would have chosen somewhere in Polynesia to spend eternity, or if not there his home in the Berkshire Mountains where he penned his classic Moby Dick; I hope to visit it one day.

I was going through some of your older blog entries and as I mentioned earlier it's just amazing how your postings are full of some of the deepest thoughts yet I never feel it's over my head or too lofty; it hits just the right mix of scholarly and 'neighborly'. I was looking over your post on the Odyssey and it brought to mind Kazantzakis' epic; he and Melville were kindred spirits indeed. If ever you get a chance, Melville's novel 'Mardi' is time well spent, a grand sweeping journey through the mind; a dress rehearsal for 'Moby Dick.' Thanks again for posing such a thoughtful question and rest assured, your thoughts and poems have indeed brought many a smile and appreciation to me and all who follow your blog; if a poet’s mission is to bring enjoyment and thoughtful reflection you have met that and more.

Oriana:

Your comments certainly bring me a smile every time. I was just reading, on another blog, of a restaurant menu listing “harpoon-caught swordfish,” and immediately thought of Melville, Moby Dick, and you. And when I opened my email, there you were, with Melville not far behind.

Do you by any chance have a link to that journal entry you mentioned, Hawthorne’s commenting on Melville’s obsession with the afterlife?

Thanks for recommending Mardi. I now remember that an English professor highly recommended it. Needless to say, I love the sermon on Jonah in Moby Dick and Melville’s courage to philosophize rather than be a shallow entertainer.

Scott:

This can be found at www.melville.org/hawthrn, from a journal entry Hawthorne made after a visit from Melville;

"Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner.... [W]e soon found ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; ... and no doubt has suffered from too constant literary occupation, pursued without much success, latterly; and his writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of mind.... Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists – and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before – in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us."

Oriana:

Oh, thank you, this is wonderful! This is so much like Milosz's struggle to believe. Milosz was an atheist in his youth: I guess he too “pretty much made up [his] mind to be annihilated.” And later he was too intellectually honest to accept the Catholic doctrine without questioning, which he knew would lead to heresy. But then each person’s belief or unbelief is personal. I agree with what Michael said once, that one’s religion is autobiographical.

Hawthorne's prose here sounds somewhat like Melville's – I guess it's the period, the interesting roll of those long sentences, before the era of sound bytes.

“Better worth immortality than most of us” – and this he achieved, in the sense of a literary afterlife.  

Scott:

Hawthorne was right on the mark as Melville truly never got free of the struggle he had regarding these matters. He read widely on Buddhism late in life and while he found much to admire in its lack of an uncompromising creed, he did not adhere to its total resignation of self and quest for Nirvana.

Oriana:

Milosz too could not really embrace Buddhism. He knew he wasn’t really able or willing to renounce desire, especially the desire that things wouldn't perish totally. He kept hoping that everything, absolutely everything is preserved somewhere in another realm.

Re: finding some peace in the face of all this vanishing. It took me a long while to “rest in that anticipation [of annihilation],” i.e. to feel how the world becomes enlivened once we look around and say, “This is it. Let’s make the best of it while it lasts.” Heaven, according to the new Catholic definition, is not a place but a state of mind, and hell likewise, and both can be experienced on earth. Am I ever completely separated from beauty, from great books, great music, human affection, and all the other things I love? If not, then I am in heaven. Thank you, John-Paul II, for pointing out that I am already in heaven! Sometimes to a greater degree, of course, but I find variety desirable, even in heaven. Even an occasional dose of hell is refreshing in its own way, to make us love the heavenly state all the more.

John Guzlowski:

“Koluszki” is a great poem, Oriana.

Oriana:

Thank you. I was worried if the reader needed to have grown up with the meaning of Koluszki, simultaneously “nowhere” and a legendary train station. In Poland, all trains go to Koluszki.

John G:

I didn't know that but sensed something of it in the poem--the impossibleness of the place mixed with its reality – a sort of magical realistic moment in the poem.

Oriana:

This is probably the most "magical realistic" poem of mine -- thanks for pointing it out. Koluszki figures in popular songs and in the legend (it's probably a legend) of a grand New Year's Eve ball at the station when a blizzard stopped a train headed for Warsaw. Thus everyone knows the name of the town because it's such an important railway station, but nobody I knew had ever been to the town itself. The station could as well have been a portal to nowhere. Ewa Parma inspired my post with her poem "The Last Station," which warns against getting stuck in Koluszki.

Marjorie:

This latest blog is particularly good. I like the poetry — yours and Cecilia’s both. Re: the attraction of bizarre people, paranoiacs are attracted to me, and I to them. That was a worry until I found out that on a Rorschach Test they will see in the blots not only the many disparate objects intelligent people see but will put all of these together in a coherent story. It’s obviously that quality of imagination in paranoiacs that make them appealing. Poets and paranoiacs both find resemblances in basically unlike things. The difference is that poets (provided they’re not mad) know that they’re making metaphors, while paranoiacs mistake their metaphors for reality.

Oriana:

Joseph Campbell said that “essential schizophrenics” (but not paranoiacs) were on a hero’s journey – note, he said, the elements of withdrawal from society, initiation, and return as a more aware, self-confident person with a gift for the community (the question of return is not entirely clear, though perhaps near-death experiences are a new model). As the saying goes, the typical distinction between “artists and madmen” is that both dive into the waters of the unconscious, but the artists “know how to swim.”

Sink or swim, humans with their immensely complex, pattern and meaning-seeking brain, risk reading too much into everything that happens. Schizophrenics, creative people, and Jungians can easily find meaning in practically everything. Also, people in these three categories are drawn to more cosmic meanings rather than the mundane. I suppose we need to add religious mystics and New Age “psychics” to the category of people who can read a larger meaning in what others would see as quite ordinary. 

Lilith:

What a surprise to see Linda Brown on your blog!  But that does fit with your talk of immortality, she who put her book together just in time before her death.

Oriana:

Yes, if not literary immortality, then some measure of a literary afterlife – even just a decade or so – even that is an amazing thing to contemplate. And just the endurance of books as books, not necessarily one’s own, brings us certain emotional comfort. This is also in line with Milosz’s poem about books having their own life, “And Yet the Books.” Let me quote the ending:

I imagine the earth when I am no more:

Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,

Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.

Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,

Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

**

I think this is also a chance to give the reader a tiny taste of Linda’s own poetry. Beset with many problems, a spiritual seeker drawn to Eastern traditions, Linda saw meaning and comfort in what others might find ordinary. Here is the first stanza of “One Leaf”

A leaf from a liquidambar tree fell

out of a blue November sky

toward the ground below. It caught

in a series of oak leaves, did not

make it to the canyon floor. The sound

of one leaf falling, like a circus acrobat

into a safety net, is what I came here for.

~ Linda Brown, Journey with Beast


**


Finally, Gloria Hajduk, a visual artist who resides in New Mexico, sends us this gem: