THE DARK SIDE OF INTUITION

spiral galaxy M74

 LAST WORDS

“You should have gone into physics –

there’s so much poetry in physics,”

were my father’s last

words to me – a last shining of the light

for a moment, the last time

he recognized me in the nursing home.

My father did not believe in God.

He believed in physics,

the greatest poem of our time –

But I wasn’t a poet enough

to ride on the lip of infinity,

the event horizon before the birth of stars.

Leaning forward with slight menace,

my father would remind me,

“An electron is not a thing.

It can be described only in mathematics.”

“It’s not about numbers,” he insisted.

“Mathematics is about beauty.”

Everything’s mainly nothing,

a black hole of whirling metaphors.

One time, an impatient schoolgirl,

I asked, “How do you know

how to solve this equation?

He replied: “Intuition.”

One night I will go leaping

from moon to moon to star

to test the curvilinear

poetics of space-time.

Somewhere along a nebula,

in fluent mathematics,

I’ll wave to my father who told me

not to worry about the universe –

the red shift of receding galaxies,

silent music where nothing is lost.

~ Oriana © 2012

**

Intuition. We know that writers are guided by it, that all artists do. But mathematicians? I instantly knew that my father told me the truth. How did I know? Intuition.

Cormac McCarthy, a novelist known chiefly for “No Country for Old Men” (ironically, he first penned it as a film script, which got rejected) and one of the chief figures at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute, has noted a deep similarity between writing and science: “Major insights in science come from the subconscious, from staring at your shoes.”

My father, a physics and mathematics professor at the University of Lodz, didn’t stare at his shoes. But he did at lot of staring – mostly at a page with an equation on it. Now and then, that page would be presented to him by me as a high school student who had only so much patience (about five minutes) with any math problem that resisted a quick solution.

After duly noting my mental laziness, my father would take a look at the equation, pick up his pen and scribble the solution. Now and then, however, an equation would prove resistant. That’s when the staring happened, of varied duration. In the end, there was the familiar reach for the pen and quick scribbling. No cold sweat of laboriously trying this or that. He “saw” the solution. Intuition.

Of course, mathematical intuition takes years of study and practice to develop. The same goes for a mechanic’s knowing in a flash what’s wrong with the engine, a pilot’s “intuitively” knowing how to react to an emergency, and so on. The list goes on. My ability to understand poems seemingly without effort came only after reading thousands of poems – slowly and with effort at first (I found the language contorted, but that’s precisely what intrigued me; the difficulty drove me on). There is no need to belabor the point: like talent, arriving at effortless intuition takes time and effort. And even after you sense that you are there, if you continue engaging with the work you love doing, intuition continues to grow (“you arrive in magic, flying”)

Below: my father at fourteen. He studied mathematics textbooks for classes ahead of him and tutored mathematics at all levels to help support his mother and five sisters.

FREUD'S COGNITIVE REVOLUTION

In his article “Freud’s Cognitive Revolution,” David Livingstone Smith (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/philosophy-dispatches/201202/freuds-cognitive-revolution-0) states that Freud “cut the Gordian knot by discarding the entire Cartesian package, beginning with body-mind dualism. Freud became what is nowadays called a physicalist -- that is, he came to assert (many decades before this was intellectually fashionable) that mental states are brain states.

He also jettisoned the view that all mental phenomena are conscious. In fact, Freud argued that all cognitive processes are unconscious, and that the outputs of some of these processes are secondarily displayed in consciousness. So-called conscious thoughts are merely representations of unconscious thoughts.

Freud's philosophically momentous change of mind anticipated much of what occurred during the cognitive revolution of the late 20th century.”

All cognitive processing is unconscious? Or just unconscious at first, but then partly conscious? Have patience – we’ll consider a more complex picture when we get to the “two systems” posited by Daniel Kahneman.

But first, let me repeat what I’ve said in response to Rae Armantrout’s clever lines: 

There are two kinds of choices: 

unconscious and desperate

~ As Freud first posited already in 1895, all cognitive processing, including choices, is unconscious. Some “answers” are then transmitted to consciousness (of course we have no choice other than to believe in free will). This is not a cause for despair. The process is affected by endless variables, more than we can consciously know (or would want to; part of the wisdom of aging is that we don't crave to know everything there is to be known; you come to understand that knowing can be a greater burden than it’s worth carrying). Our brain tries to make it easy for us. Having too much information and too many choices is stressful. Simplify, simplify! Reach for a book by your favorite author, and dive deep.

THE FAST AND THE SLOW

Nietzsche called a human being a dark and veiled thing; and whereas the hare has seven skins, the human being can shed seven times seventy skins and still not be able to say: This is really you, this is no longer outer shell. But current thinking is that it’s not some hidden sexual secrets that make us so ignorant: it’s rather that we are “dual-process thinkers.” 

Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, and unexpectedly also a author of psychology books, described the fast system as intuitive, associative, metaphoric, impressionistic, and automatic. It can’t be switched off. It’s like the parallel processing in computers. The slow system is deliberate and effortful. It’s analogous to serial processing. An example would be doing some calculations by hand, or trying to find the documentation you need for the IRS. (Jung was groping toward that dual system when he spoke of Eros and Logos, Eros being metaphoric, the language of dreams and human relationships. Kahneman’s two systems are more encompassing, and have neuroscience behind them – and besides, to me they feel intuitively correct.)

I remember taking a class in cognitive psychology, and the professor asking, “Which American city is also the name of a large hoofed mammal?” I answered instantly: Buffalo. “Did you make a list of all the names of American cities, and another list of large mammals, and compare to see which word was the same on both?” Of course not. That would have been the slow, serial processing. The brain prefers parallel processing, or something like it – the brain isn’t conscious of how it’s accomplishing its miracles. Personally, I love it – what writer doesn’t love mysteries and paradoxes? What scientist?

Niagara Falls; the cruise ship might be Miss Buffalo. I can’t forgive myself for not having taken that little cruise on Miss Buffalo. It’s what we haven’t done that we tend to regret most.


A MATHEMATICIAN KNOWS


It’s obvious which cognitive system is the brain’s preferred one – just as it’s immediately obvious which kind of writing is “inspired,” and which is the dull, belabored product of the slow system. Generally, the less you push and strive at the conscious level, the more you “stay out of your way,” the better the results.

Once, talking with a mathematics professor, I remarked that novelists say that they work out a deliberate detailed outline, but at some point the characters “start acting on their own,” saying and doing things the author didn’t plan. The mathematics professor smiled. “That’s because writing comes from the unconscious,” he said. Not something I expected a mathematician to say, but should have, given my father’s reply about intuition. Mathematicians understand about intuition, also called parallel processing or “fast thinking.”

The irony is that we tend to give slow thinking the credit for making most of our choices and generally for “being who we are.” But writers know that they don’t choose what they write about. And mathematicians and physicists? One thing I’ve noticed, and this is also true of many scientists, is that they are constantly cracking jokes. And getting them in an instant. All those puns and metaphors, all that parallel processing . . .   


THE DARK SIDE OF INTUITION

The brain evolved to give us quick, effortless answers. “The quick and the dead” comes to mind as an easy rationale for this evolution. So, should we just forget about slow thinking? Alas, that would be the kind of mistake that our intuition is prone to making. Yes, there is a dark side to intuition. The price of speed is jumping to conclusions, falling for all kinds of myths and illusions, and often being biased – with an absolute sense of certainty that we KNOW. System I, the fast (parallel) unconscious cognitive processing, has sent an email to our consciousness, a message of bone-shaking clarity. We stand by our deepest knowing even though we can’t provide an iota of evidence, or else our evidence is dubious at best. Never mind: we simply, suddenly KNOW.

Still, every writer (and mathematician, and scientist) knows how wonderful it feels, that high of a Eureka! when intuition relays the high-voltage answer. But mathematicians and scientists have to verify their intuition, to prove its validity. Lawyers have to win their case. Writers, preachers, politicians – they can cling to intuitive certainty, and it can be harmful.

Poets’ intuition generally does no harm, but it can be blind the person as to why certain lines should be left out of the poem. I remember a workshop where most participants strongly urged a certain woman – a radical feminist, certainly non-religious – to drop two lines that were interesting in their of-the-blue strangeness, but didn’t fit with the rest of the poem. The poet tossed her waist-long hair and reduced us to silence by declaring: “I can’t drop these lines because they were given to me by God.”

Yes, that’s how absolutely correct, how “sacred” inspiration can feel, even if it’s . . . ahem . . . wrong. 

In case you think that this example is invalid because poets are lunatics anyway, let’s turn to science. During my years as a journalist, I attended a gerontology conference and was privileged to hear Dr. Denham Harman describe his experience of hitting on the free-radical theory of aging. He used to work for Shell Oil before switching to biochemistry research at the University of California at Berkeley. He was particularly interested in the cause or causes of aging. One night, he told us, he started thinking about it so intensely that he couldn’t fall asleep. The few existing theories were full of holes, and he rejected them one by one. After some fitful sleep, he woke up and KNEW: it was the same as the “aging” of rubber that he studied at Shell Oil. Free radicals.

He became so excited that he got up early and rushed to the campus. He accosted every scientist he ran into, saying “I know why we age. It’s the same as with rubber: free radicals.” And, wild-eyed, he’d proceed with a short lecture. His startled colleagues would then mutter something like, “Are you sure there is enough evidence?” Harman could only shrug. He already KNEW.

We loved the story. Some time later, however, a big problem came to light, thanks to that inconvenient question that science must ask: “What’s the evidence?” The evidence turned out to be inconsistent, and the administration of antioxidants did not slow down aging. Harman tried more potent antioxidants, and modified his theory, but it wasn’t enough. Other processes, such as a genetically determined biological clock (clearly seen when it comes to puberty and menopause), were at work. Free-radical damage could account for some of what we see in aging, but ultimately it wasn’t the answer.

Science is self-correcting. The role of intuition is enormous, and there are more wonderful stories than Harman’s – stories with a “happy ending,” since dull, laborious experiments proved the intuition to be right. And mathematicians? They may see the answer in an instant (or after prolonged staring, and then in an instant), but they still have to work on that equation step by step.


NEGATIVE CAPABILITY

And . . . artists? Here I am reminded of something I witnessed at the Blue Mountain Art Colony, back when I was still able to go for long walks. At the start of my walk, I passed by an artist’s studio. I peeked in through the large window. She was sitting across from a freshly painted canvas, staring at it. On the way back, an hour later, I peeked in again. There she was, frozen in the same posture, staring at her painting. Later she explained, “I spend a lot of the time just staring until I know what in the painting doesn’t work and what to do about it.”  

Why go into all this “staring” and “knowing” in a post that’s supposed to be, in some way, about poetry and writing? Because pondering both the wonders and perils of intuition – the jumping to a conclusion, to a premature closure – made me remember the wisdom of Keats about “negative capability” – the patience we need when facing the “Penetralium of mystery” (Keats’s phrase). The human brain may be the most magnificent thing in the universe, but it is lazy. It loves a quick answer. Many times it’s right on the first try: “First thought, best thought.” But not always. 

Kafka had a sign over his desk: WARTEN – wait. In my experience, you have to do some ground work first to get the process started. But don’t push too hard. Lie down and stare at the ceiling a little – or a lot. Take a shower. Take a walk. Sleep on it. Sleep on it for a week, months, years. Typically when you least expect it, a deeper answer will come. Suddenly.

“I JUST KNOW”

John Guzlowski:

From the film A Beautiful Mind, a piece of dialogue.

"Did you ever just know something?"

~"Constantly."

Oriana:

Wonderful, thank you. A Beautiful Mind was one of the most inspiring movies I ever saw. It hit home. If schizophrenia could be kept under control by the “sane” part of consciousness, how much easier in the case of mere depression . . . I was just beginning to recognize the false, delusional nature of depressive thinking. However, at the time I saw the movie, I still didn’t have the motivation to stop going into depression. But I saw that an exceptional person could control a much worse dysfunction.

Back to intuition – or, since that word is contaminated with what Freud would call the “black mud of occultism,” to the fast, parallel-processing System I that gives us the quick answers tinged with a strong sense of certainty. We “just know.” That system of cognitive processing has both advantages and the perils (especially if brain function goes wrong, as in schizophrenia; the so-called “psychotic insight” is the sudden unshakable knowledge of the sort: “only I can save the world”).

A quick synopsis: John Nash, future winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics for his win-win game theory, develops paranoid schizophrenia. Treatment works poorly. But John has a breakthrough when experiences an insight: one of the people in his hallucinations, a young girl, the niece of his supposed roommate, never grows older, “so she can’t be real.” He discovers who else can’t be a real person. The moment he labels his hallucinations as just that, hallucinations, he chooses the reality-based side of his double consciousness.

Some film critics pointed out that perhaps the best thing the movie portrayed was the Cold War as a collective paranoid delusion. Alas, all I can say is that this “makes intuitive sense to me.”

John:

Here is a quote from Jung you may find interesting:

Analysis of artists consistently shows not only the strength of the creative impulse arising from the unconscious, but also its capricious and willful character. The biographies of great artists make abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness.

The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle.....the creative urge lives and grows in him like a tree in the earth from which it draws its nourishment.  ~ Carl Jung

  

Oriana:

I think Jung is guilty of reifying the creative impulse when he calls it “capricious and willful.” It may seem that way to those who are not familiar with how the brain works, and how the automatic background processor provides answers to the consciousness when the answers are ready. Not that Jung, writing long before neuroscience at least partly described cognitive processes, should be blamed for speaking of the “creative impulse” as an entity with its own capricious “will” – we don’t blame Darwin for not knowing genetics, and thus not being able to give a more complete account of the mechanisms of evolution.

What we still do not fully appreciate is the extent to which artists, like other achievers, tend to be workaholics. Here is Nietzsche on the complexity of the creative process:

Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration… shining down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects… All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering. ~ Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

Ursula:

That's a wonderful poem and full of history and meaning for me. My father was a professor of chemical engineering who later was one of the pioneers of computing. He said mathematics was the only perfect language and, of course, told and sought endless jokes and was particularly fond of puns.

I never thought of his work as being intuitive, but it must have been. He always had his yellow legal pad and no #2 pencils. Total silence came out of his home office. Whatever he was doing brought scientists from Moscow to Michigan in the 1950's.

Oriana:

Thank you, Ursula. Interesting about your father! Sense of humor has a high correlation with IQ.

I always carry a notebook and pen and keep paper and pencil by my bedside – intuition-insight-inspiration (it’s difficult to separate these concepts) can strike any time. They are not under voluntary control (Kahneman observes that System I is on automatic and can’t be switched off) – which is both wonderful and frustrating.

Hyacinth:

I have always thought I didn't have intuition, confusing it with instinct?? The only time I let my "intuition" mean anything is when I meet someone and have bad feelings for no reason. When I don't go with these instincts I am usually sorry.  My intuition about people is usually right.

Oriana:

I realize that I never defined intuition, and the term has some fuzzy connotations, including “mystical knowledge.” I mean the fast “system I” as described by Kahneman.

Though you are aware only of your social intuition, in fact, like all of us, you operate chiefly at the “fast” level. We don’t know why we think what we think, why we write about what we write about. We make up reasons to uphold the image of ourselves as making rational choices, but in fact we have little clue about the “real” reasons. System I has its reasons of which System II knows nothing – this is a steal not only from Pascal, but also from someone else who was commenting on the two systems.

Scott:

A very intriguing post, it hits very close to home. As you are very much aware Moby Dick is my obsession, at least literary. (By the way, Cormac McCarthy's on record for stating his favorite book is...you guessed it...Moby Dick.) And Nietzche's quote brought to mind a favorite Melville quote of mine:

'Lord, when shall we be done growing? As long as we have more to do, we have done nothing.'

And when I came across Carl Dennis's poem 'Not the Idle' with his line on Moby Dick I knew, by intuition, I had 'solved' Moby Dick. Now I could focus on it's further treasures but the source itself had been  found....at least for me. Intuition is, and has been, a 'firm foundation' for me for some time. Its very nature of not being able to nail it, like the coin to the Pequod's mast, as a firm fact further attests to its truth! Paradox I know, you are so on the mark; what writer or person who loves to dive deep does not love a paradox?

The Quaker whalers are that paradox to me; the most pacifist sect of Christianity engaged in a holy war against the largest animal on earth and employing some of the roughest set of rouges to man their ships that ever sailed the seas. Lowell's 'The Quaker Graveyard on Nantucket' again attests to this paradox and he does it in verse! (I must one day visit Nantucket and see that magical isle for myself). 

Who can truly explain what they know and what they believe, the paradox of paradoxes.  To me, poetry explains it all and it took nearly 50 years to realize it. I would not have been ready for verse at 20 and your blog would have been an enigma. Not that I have you pinned down or  pigeonholed, you are too deep for that – as the Quakers called those of deep thought and true heart you are a 'Weighty Friend.'

Oriana:

I love being a “weighty friend” – strictly in the intellectual sense; I hope that I’m not intellectually overweight. Your reassurances have been helpful. My blog is a kind of Moby Dick, I feel, with tone and texture as important as the intellectual “plot” – the unending thread of the argument. My blog as a whole is like a huge 19^th century novel. Everything connects with everything; digressions open up infinities. Adam Zagajewski called these infinite connections the “jungleness” of a piece. He saw me as a kindred writer, trying to balance a narrower focus with the tendency to write about everything at once. And that everything is in flux, a Heraclitean river always near flood level. 

A favorite college instructor once said that I can’t be pigeon-holed, and that’s why most people are not comfortable with me – they can’t put me into a familiar slot. “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Intuition thrives on that; it plays like a dolphin in the waves of several disciplines: psychology, philosophy, comparative religion, science, literature, history, and more. 

As a writer, I find that there are gradations in intuition. What gets instantly transmitted to consciousness may turn out to be too glib. I click “delete” on that “first thought” and wait for the next (and presumably more-searching) wave of unconscious processing to signal its findings. It can take a few minutes, but it can also take decades – I’ve waited 25 years or more for some of my answers, especially endings to certain poems. 

Scott:


Yes, YES, THAT'S IT! Your blog IS like Moby Dick in its digressions 
and wide reaching topics, I can't believe I have not seen that before. 
Just came across a great article on the Irish poet Paidrac Colum and his appraisal of Moby Dick not as a novel but as an epic poem; I think he's right on the mark.

Oriana:

Yes, my blog is in some ways like Moby Dick. Furthermore, I am Ishmael. Think of my journey to America, and my continuing journey through America, so to speak. The commentators have become my shipmates. But there is no Ahab, unless to some extent I am Ahab – in moments of resentment, perhaps. Is either the Catholic Church, the religious right, or the Hebraic god my White Whale? On the whole, by now I’m too mellow for any revenge plot. Even my hostility toward organized religion isn’t so intense that I don’t at the same time think, “Whatever works. Some people need that.”

To the objection that humanity will never grow up unless there is a concerted effort to expose religion as fairy tales, and I’m not doing enough toward that, I say that I am still too much a poet, interested in creating beauty more than in carrying on an argument. I refuse to narrow myself. Others are better at marching with banners.

One of my conscious goals is to show atheism as a life-affirming philosophy. Just how well I fulfill that goal is another story. The writing takes me all over the map. I do it intuitively and don’t try to force a preconceived agenda.

But that’s my quick intuition speaking. Who knows, my deeper intuition may find something else. 

Steve:

As usual, I LOVE your blog--and the poem about your father is exquisite. Also as usual, your thinking and discernment amaze me. What wonderful insights on the nature of intuitive versus linear thinking. ("Versus" is not really the right word, as your blog demonstrates so well. The "partnership" of the two might express the relationship you delineate so clearly. Maybe even the "dance" of the two.)

Oriana:

Thank you for pointing out that indeed what we have here is a dance of the two cognitive systems. And the credit goes to Daniel Kahneman for going through neuroscience studies and distilling the description of each system. I dressed Kahneman’s theory in poetry and images. By the way, someone just expressed surprise at how quickly I can revise a poem. It’s the same phenomenon as my father’s ability to look at an equation and see the solution. He just knew. I just know. After many years of practice, of course; nor am I done learning. 

MILOSZ: LOVE AS NON-ATTACHMENT

Michał Chruściel wearing a T shirt with Milosz’s poem “Love.”

Photo: Ewa Chruściel

LOVE

Love means you look at yourself 
The way one looks at distant things 
For you are only one thing among many. 
And whoever sees that way

Heals his heart from various ills. 
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend. 

Then he wants to use himself and things 
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness. 
It doesn’t matter if he knows what he serves: 
Who serves best doesn’t always understand. 

~ Czeslaw Milosz, Warsaw 1943

**

ST. FRANCIS OR NARCISSUS?

This is the translation in Milosz’s Collected (Ecco Press, 2001). I touched it up very slightly. I was tempted, however, to render the last line in a way that would be more faithful to the Polish original, with its different emphasis: “The one who understands is not the one who serves best” (Nie ten najlepiej służy, kto rozumie – literally, “Not he serves best who understands”). It sounds awkward in English, but it’s an interesting statement, possibly an expression of a certain disdain for intellectuals, including theologians and ideologues and all those who are dogmatically committed to serving this or that grand cause. In fact the rationalist mind can easily end up serving evil, as Milosz discusses in The Captive Mind. The real cause we serve remains obscure to most “workers in a vineyard,” as Milosz was to say decades later in the great poem of his old age, “Late Ripeness.”

          Giotto: St. Francis preaching to the birds, 1297

But I digress. The last line is fairly marginal to the impact of the poem, which derives from the surprising first two lines, followed by a third with which there can be no argument. Is that what love means? the startled reader asks. Looking at yourself with detachment, knowing you are “only one thing among many”? And if you see yourself as “one thing among many,” then your beloved too is “one thing among many.” Don’t lovers adore the person their love and also themselves as reflected in his or her eyes? Don’t they adore even the little quirks and flaws (my favorite here: “I love your sweet little neuroses”)? Isn’t love closer to what Lorca means when he exclaims: “Flower of love: narcissus”?

But if the flower of love is narcissus, next we have the earth opening up, the black horses of Hades, and an abduction to the country of the dead. Or, to switch to the actual myth of Narcissus, we can’t see anything except our own reflection, which also leads to losing the world. Milosz claims that to love, to be genuinely loving, we need to drop the attachment to the self as special; we need to see ourselves from a detached perspective, humbly acknowledging that we are only “one thing among many.”

Milosz further claims that seeing oneself with detachment is a way to heal one’s heart of many griefs (the Polish words could be literally translated as “worries,” but that word contains the root of “death” [think of “mortification”] – worrying is a degree of dying). After all, our troubles are only part of that sea of troubles that life is for everyone.

It’s only after we have achieved this detachment, this humility, that we are capable of loving kindness and selfless service. Furthermore, it’s not necessary to know what it is we are serving – in fact, the person who understands is not the one who serves best, Milosz claims. When we aren’t self-absorbed, we feel united with others and with nature. My favorite line in this poem is “A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.”  

I am glad that I discovered this poem only recently. Years ago, I would have shrugged it off. My thinking was opposite: love (and not only romantic love) is passionate attachment, a total giving of oneself that paradoxically serves to shape individuality. Nothing could lessen my intensity. As my mother kept observing since my early teens, “You are a fanatic.”

I had to agree. I saw myself as an extremist. Only extremes interested me: the saints and heroes, the supreme workaholics, the wild-eyed “intensives” who had no fear of going too far. I rarely met people who had my kind of intensity, so for a long time I didn’t realize just how overwhelming and often stressful such intense emotional energy can be to those who seek relaxation instead, the sweet chirp of meaningless chatter. (I don’t mean to put down that kind of soothing chatter; it took decades, but I did come to appreciate it myself. There is a time for intensity, and a time for peacefulness.)

Love as non-attachment, an erasure of the special, unique self? I wasn’t able to understand the idea. One aspect of new love or friendship or a new creative project or an intellectual pursuit that I particularly enjoyed was discovering a somewhat different self emerge in the interaction with that person, or as a result of the new engagement with work. “Oh, so I can be that calm,” I’d think with joy. Or, “So it’s true: I can listen with great empathy; people are attracted to my warmth.” “I’m capable of being very meticulous,” I’d conclude, amazed at how I could integrate and organize a complex article.

In was through a process akin to falling in love that I’d discover my positive traits, for instance a new kind of patience and wisdom that I didn’t yet know I possessed. I’d surprise myself, and I confess that I’ve always loved being surprised by myself. In the presence of someone accepting, or in response to the challenge of a work project, I’d be bolder and funnier than I thought I could be. If I felt valued, I blossomed. All this helped my self-esteem, shredded by earlier rejection and misfortunes, the persistent sense of being a failure and not living up to the social and parental standards (later in life I made the unsettling and liberating discovery that in terms of social standards, once I left Warsaw and was no longer seen as the “bright child of educated parents,” practically nothing was expected of me. I was a small woman from Eastern Europe; nobody cared if I accomplished anything; it was all in my head).

(By the way, if my examples of self-discovery sound like narcissism, I echo Tony Hoagland’s What Narcissism Means to Me, and state that in my case any degree of positive narcissism was a heroic achievement. Masochistic narcissism, better known as self-loathing, came naturally. I am afraid that only depressives and lapsed Catholics can understand this.)

None of that has changed. I value non-attachment, but I continue to value passionate engagement. And for that matter, those who’d cite “Love” as evidence of Milosz’s early awakening to Buddhism – in wartime Warsaw, at that – would have to deal with those poems and essays of his that assert the unique and infinitely precious value of each personality and each thing, no matter how ordinary. Worse, he explicitly states his desire  to have them preserved for eternity, be it in some transcendent realm. He could not endure the constant, massive vanishing that he experienced with special acuity. The promise of early Christianity was, after all, total resurrection. Milosz rightly insists that if a person is to be properly resurrected, then his or her entire context must also be resurrected; not just a particular woman – let’s call her Tamara – but also her nightstand, her tube of  lipstick. All, all must be preserved.

His love for Lithuania and especially for his grandparents’ estate was also legendary. And yet Milosz also wrote one of the most moving examples of non-attachment, “The Manor” (a subsection of the sequence Lithuania, after Fifty-two Years). The poem starts:

There is no house, only the park, though the oldest trees have been cut down.

And a thicket overgrows the traces of former alleys.

The granary has been dismantled, white, castlelike,

With cellars where the shelves harbored winter apples.

~ The linden alley is gone, and the orchards. The river is unrecognizable, reddish with pollution, without rushes and lily pads. He stands looking at his lost paradise, now reduced to thistles and nettles. And he blesses life, and the vagrants in a shack with a metal pipe instead of a chimney. He’s glad that there is enough wood left for them to cut down for fuel.

As Robert Hass observed, a small truth is either a yes or a no, but a great truth is both a yes and a no. And Milosz too knew that he lived in contradictions. His poems and essays were a polyphony, one voice contradicting the other. In the past, I could understand that side of him that was love as passionate attachment (to nature and to ideas more so than to people, I thought). It took me a long time to accept the side that assented to the passing of things and to personal dissolution.

Now I can finally understand Milosz’s non-attached perspective as well. That’s because my relationship with poetry has changed. When a friend once remarked, “It’s only a poem,” I felt furious. What could be more important than a poem? Or even a single word in a poem? Years passed, and suddenly I understood: it is only a poem. And that turned out to be my salvation. From a non-attached position, I could view several variants of the same poems, each with some merit. I also realized that a poem either has magic, or it doesn’t. If it does have magic, it doesn’t matter all that much if it’s in couplets or tercets, short lines or long lines. As long as a poem has magic, it can even afford to be flawed here and there – no need to agonize.

Milosz also remarked, “The secret of poetry is distance.” This can be understood both in the sense of the Joycean insistence on exile as indispensable for an imaginative account of that which one has lost, and Proust’s emphasis on the importance of distance in time – but also, more importantly, in terms of aesthetic distance. Screaming in pain is not art. The same pain, skillfully transmuted into images, metaphors, and form, can be art. Only as art it has a chance to last for centuries and be part of the collective psyche – no longer as pain, but as melancholy beauty.

And yes, we also have Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility.” It may not be the only the origin of poetry, but there is something striking about the phrase. Tranquility – a meditative mood, doing nothing in particular, staring at the ceiling, strolling in a park, browsing idly in a book – is often the first step toward finding the necessary distance from the subject. In order to remember in a manner that might lead to art, we first need to forget – to let the scene settle in the mind.

   The Lake District

Tangentially, writing about oneself in the third person has been found to help with recovery from trauma. Writers know this: they tend to be all the characters in their book. This freedom and multiple points of view can be healing. It’s a transpersonal and imaginal perspective, a polyphony rather than the plaintive song of oneself and “what really happened.”

A GIFT FROM THE MEN’S MOVEMENT

As I pondered this matter further, it occurred to me that distance is the secret of everything. A teacher, for instance, needs to learn that her class is only one among many, and the subject is not likely to be a fraction as important to the students as it is to the teacher. And that is fine. Nor is a student’s mistake a reason to lose one’s temper, as I learned from my own teachers through a negative example. And my own experience taught me that the less I cared about lateness, missing assignments, strange excuses, bizarre spelling and grammar errors, and other typical problems, the more I enjoyed teaching.

I remember a mundane example that helped me understand the beauty of the detached perspective. I came across a men’s movement manual trying to teach men how to deal with women. One section was titled, “Do not burden the female with decision making.” Many men make the mistake of refusing to make a choice that a woman obviously wants them to make, to spare herself from the torment of choosing, the manual said. I quote from memory:

When a woman asks you, “Should I wear the red dress or the blue one to the party?” do not reply, “Either one looks fine” or “Whichever you prefer.” Without a moment’s hesitation, say, “The red one.” After all, it doesn’t matter.

It was a revelation: “After all, it doesn’t matter.” Who could argue with that, especially from a larger perspective? The red dress or the blue one, it’s completely immaterial. It’s only a dress. Why waste the precious time of our lives putting one dress on, taking it off, trying the other one on, taking it off, trying on the first one again, and so forth, working yourself into an agony? “After all, it doesn’t matter.” After a stunned moment, I loved it: it was a pure gift from the men’s movement to this choice-burdened female.

Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich advised dressing in black and white – you eliminate the whole trivial question of color coordination. Which brings me back to the beauty of distance, and “It’s only a poem.”

IT’S ONLY A POEM – AND I’VE WALKED THROUGH HELL TO BRING IT TO YOU

Somewhere I read a Buddhist saying, “No self, no trouble.” Again, it’s impossible to disagree. Who wants to be self-conscious, stumbling over words? Don’t worry about how you look, how you sound – that’s mortification, that’s dying instead of living. I wish I had known this saying much earlier in life. To show a glimpse of my younger, over-involved, non-detached self, let me quote a poem that goes back to a relationship I had in my twenties. The man was eighteen years older than I. I loved him the way one can love only once. 

Self Is a Metaphor

In an old dresser in the garage

I find a tape with his

name on the label

I hold it by the edges

like a photograph

I must believe

that I will not break

I take the cassette

from its plastic case

clouded with twelve years

that voice I loved so much

on the cheapest tape

it’s hours before I can bring

myself to press

the button that says

Play

We must remember words

do not correspond

to anything real

everything is against us

knocks rattles buzz

the hiss of passing cars

It horrifies me, the accidental

nature of language

I despair we can ever

think precisely

his words quiver around him

like a nervous halo

Do we really like

to share our experiences?

I think it rarely happens

I think we dislike it intensely

his viscous voice  

as though filled with smoke

The self is a metaphor

we are fictions

in each other’s minds

look little mouse

I keep telling you

I don’t even exist

and suddenly we talk

as only lovers talk

pretend to argue, laugh

there is the sound

of a kiss

Once when we were making love

I started breathing fast

through half-open mouth and he

began breathing in rhythm

upcatching my breath

the warm moist air

like another body between us

our body, little soul

made of air 
When I was a child

I wanted to know

the difference between

an ocean and a sea

Here the tape

breaks 

I throw it out

~ Oriana © 2011

**

This tape was the result of a taping session was supposed to be the first one in a series. Caught up in my dream of helping a man I loved toward greatness, I conceived the project of taping this particular man’s brilliant (I took that as a given) discourses on various subjects; I was then going to transcribe the tapes and shape them into a book manuscript. But he lost interest after the first session.

He wasn’t the only man whom I vainly tried to “help toward greatness.” Time and again, I was to be Calypso offering immortality, only to have this or that Odysseus, who washed up on my shores and whom I lovingly nursed back to health, prefer to go home to his small barren island. I know what feminist would say about my pattern, but that is an old story that no longer interests me. Life has indeed forced me to focus on my own development. What interests me now is the issue of over-involvement, not just with a lover, but with anything.

I’ve considered using the following epigraph with this poem:

I remembered why I liked Buddhism, despite being unable to adopt it: because there is no drama of love at its heart. ~ Lawrence Osborne

I think the West is unable to fully embrace Buddhism because the West is on the side of love, for all its dark side. I am drawn to the serenity of Buddhism, but my emotional intensity and what might be called my "individuation" also make me unable to adopt it – even though I find its teaching on detachment quite useful, a warning against getting over-involved. Milosz writes about his rejection of the Eastern tradition in his Berkeley poem “To Raja Rao.”

No help, Raja, my part is agony,

struggle, abjection, self-love and self-hate,

prayer for the Kingdom

and reading Pascal.

Yes, sooner the pierced heart of Catholic mysticism.

Buddhists might object to Osborne’s statement by pointing out that compassion is very important in Buddhism. But Osborne doesn’t mean compassion; I’m pretty sure he means romantic love, or any other kind of love that involves intensity. The West has not been blind to pain inherent in romantic love, but has found the gifts of this love to be so great that falling in love worth the inevitable suffering. Jack Gilbert, at the threshold of old age, pleads with the gods: Let me fall in love one more time. A friend of mine who is 85 recently said the same thing: love is worth all the pain that may follow. And looking at my own most traumatic love experience, I was finally able to say, “But the gift was so great.” Only then I was at peace. For me that gift was and is personality enlargement, the intellectual and experiential expansion.

I suppose it all comes down to the attitude toward individuality: the West treasures individuality and a rich, differentiated self. “Life is suffering” seems a partial truth, just as “life is happiness” would be a partial truth. I appreciate both peacefulness and passionate intensity. Sometimes I want peacefulness; at other times, passion.

I realize that in the recent decades Buddhism has had a huge impact on the Western culture, including even Christianity. Father Thomas Keating, a Cistercian monk, asserts that our deepest self is the Christ. The personality does not survive death; what happens is that the Christ consciousness chooses another container. But that is the opposite of the promise that meant so much to Milosz: all, all will be preserved. The flowers on the table, the tube of lipstick on the bed stand, even the “sweet little neuroses” of our beloved. And even in Hell (as well as in Purgatory and Heaven), Dante shows the personality as preserved; his dead are as individual and recognizable as Homer's and Virgil's shades in the Underworld. 

Romantic passion has often been called a delusion, and there is really no arguing with that. Passion can’t stand up to rational scrutiny. The beloved is a flawed human being, and not an almost supernaturally wonderful person. So let’s admit that it’s a delusion. Ah, but it’s a glorious delusion, often transformative, a driving force of growth. And yet, and yet . . . excess intensity can ruin everything.

Introverts are prone to this excess intensity, both in relationships and in the kind of work that they perceive as their vocation. Until they learn the value of distance, they are apt to overdo it, to try too hard. In romantic love, the introvert’s fantasy life is vastly more rich and satisfying than reality; sometimes so much so that reality comes as an unpleasant jolt. “Unpleasant” is an understatement; ultimately most such love is unrequited and becomes synonymous with pain.

CULTIVATING OUR SECRET GARDEN

In spite of the pain, and also because of it, and mostly due to luck, both genetic and circumstantial, I slowly developed a reliable source of happiness outside of romantic love. True, I always had my love of books and learning; but writing became my secret garden, my private paradise beyond the passive pleasure of reading. This hidden life, once I knew it was primary, helped me develop distance in relationships. I remember the first time I turned down a date because I preferred to have those hours for writing. It was like walking out of a slave camp. Or, to use a more pleasant metaphor, it was like finding myself married to Dionysus, the god of ecstatic art.

That, of course, is the happy ending of the story of Ariadne. Even though she did succeed in helping her love object to greatness, and maybe because she succeeded in helping him, she was abandoned by him on the nearest island. But as a result of losing that dubious fiancé, she became the bride of a god (which can be translated as finding her art). I have two poems about it.

Ariadne Thanks Theseus for Abandoning Her

I was the path home

that unwound behind you.

I held you by the thread

of breath – who could endure

such love? Your ship

growing smaller,

its tapering black sail,

tried to teach me

the essential stone,

but I only cried.

Then among the lament

of the waves I heard

my childhood name,

calling me home. If you

hadn’t left me,

I’d never hear,

laughing in the wind,

serving heated wine.

If you hadn’t closed

the small doors of mirrors,

I’d never see beyond.

If the horizon

hadn’t swallowed you,

I’d believe in it still,
let it hold me in like a wall.

Deceiver, I thank you.

betrayer, I bless you.

You can’t imagine

the labyrinths I travel.

I’m entering

such music, such light,

you seem no longer a giant.

Time smooths you down

to a roadside post,

a place I had to pass.

~ Oriana © 2011

**

Ariadne on Naxos

On this island it is always dawn.

I stand, a stone

on a beach of stones

the surf rattles and drags

and spits back.

foam slimes my feet with seaweed.

A sail unravels

the hem of the horizon.

The wind tangles me, frays me.

grains of salt rim my mouth.

waves gather their white veil,

breaking with a why? why?

I am neither the first

nor the last, only another

crying, crushing petals 
of red flowers. The name of all 


women is Ariadne,

Ariadne with a snarled

skein thrust 
back into her hand.

*

The waves die and hiss. But I

I hear another sea, 

an overlay of sound

preparing for its meaning.

Look how a forest rises
from salt-crusted sticks,
green flame of cypress and pine.
And far, a ship sails toward me,

a luminous cloud,

its wind the breath of a god.

It's endless to love what’s immortal.

It does not take being loved.

~ Oriana © 2011

**

I wish to thank Megan Webster for telling me, “It’s only a poem,” and Sarah Luczaj for making me feel more confident about the statement, “Distance is the secret of everything.” 


BUT NOT SO MUCH DISTANCE THAT IT'S COLDNESS

Mary:

About nonattachment: is it the relinquishment of the attachment to oneself as special and unique? Or is the recognition that all beings including oneself are special and unique? I'm inclined towards the latter.

Oriana:

Mary, I am so grateful to you. The post turned out to be very difficult to write, more so than any other, since I was doing that difficult dance of yes, he’s right, but this is only a partial truth . . .  And yet I couldn’t quite formulate a clear response, an alternative view. You have just provided it.

There is a coldness inherent in just seeing yourself as “one thing among many.” We need to keep humble, and we need to achieve some distance if we are to think clearly, but overdoing this attitude is harmful. Recognizing how precious and lovable things are, including yourself, strikes me as the more appropriate attitude. Thank you for this insight. 


To be fair to Milosz, most his poems, especially the later ones, but not only, also incline to the view that everyone and everything is unique and precious. The hunchbacked librarian who could not be saved after a bombing raid is special, hardly one of the millions of forgotten victims. Her presence is resurrected, her heart-rending wanting to live. Even a fictional character can become special, can enter our psyche like someone we love. Anna Karenina is not “one thing among many.” Even the old pawn-broker, that “useless old woman,” killed by Raskolnikov, lives on forever.

To be sure, one can overdo both attachment and non-attachment. Perhaps the crucial question is timing. There is a time for strong coffee and a time for chamomile tea. The gift of non-attachment is peacefulness, and peacefulness is immensely attractive during a period of turbulence. The gift of attachment can be immense energy (Blake: “Energy is eternal delight”) that can be channeled into accomplishing something extraordinary. We need both modes, in the right proportion. 

    Julio Romero de  Torres: Femme, ca 1930


THE SELF: BOTH HUMAN AND DIVINE, OR A FICTION?

Michael:

I've read that the great fear of the narcissist is that he might look in the mirror and no one will look back. This last year, as I chased after my self/Self, my great fear was that after all the stumbling in the dark cave of the self, hearing the torturous cold drip of far-off moisture (yet never slaking my thirst), and driven by the possibility of deep treasure, I'd get to the bottom and find nothing there. And in a sense, that is what happened. 

I speak of this in different terms than Milosz, but I think we may mean the same thing --there isn't a self, per se, at least not one apart from everything else. The small s self is nothing more than incestuous chatter among my archetypes, the erstwhile heroes of my soul. When I first became aware of the chatter, it was interesting. Now I know it as a repeating, endless, unnecessary, mostly meaningless conversation, and it is tiresome. So I concluded this about self -- self is the act of organizing experience, and there is no essence (rise up philosophers and take me on!).

Self, my big S self, on the other hand, is an amalgam, constructed by my past experiences, education, awareness, and a mindfulness of my interconnectedness -- Milosz's love. I am then, essentially, nothing apart from everything, and I love the view of this "distant thing." The Self is not lonely, as is the self, nor does the Self carry the ridiculous burden to inflate. Quite the opposite.

And it may be the self that carries the death wish (and understandably), it may be the self that Rilke alluded to, "No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond, no belittling of death (all small s self talk), but only longing for that which belongs to us, and serving earth, lest we remain unused (big S Self desire, as Milosz recognized).

But now that the self/Self has been dissected, we must stitch the incision together and hope we will still have a pulse.

I agree that writing of the Self or self in the third person has an interesting therapeutic benefit, a necessary distance-making to aid healing if or when wounded. I recently heard a traumatized vet recounting his experiences in the quickly tiresome 2nd person, a necessary distance to keep himself from crying. But I impoverish myself if I speak of my Self in the 2nd or 3rd person. I want to value me with 1st person status, remind my self, my Self, that I am mine. The Self is far, while not so far away. I want to hold the distance closely, .

Milosz's first line love must be kin to phileo or agape love, because eros cannot be found in the distance, it knows nothing of detachment. So when speaking of intensity, or passion (at least of the sexual variety), we'll have to leave him out of the discussion. I've tried to find the connection to introversion that you write of but I can't make it out. It seems to me that the kind of intense, extreme, beyond-bounds passion you experienced (as I do) is born out of the intuitive-feeling combo (to stick with Jungian terminology--those with this combo travel in the dark, groping...and with touch find the way). (Yes, I just distanced myself with the 3rd person... It's a little hot in here...)


Oriana:


Thank you, Michael, for your rich response. I loved the opening about Narcissus looking in the mirror and finding no one looking back -- that's a poem. And I was thrilled by this statement: When I first became aware of the chatter [of the self], it was interesting. Now I know it as a repeating, endless, unnecessary, mostly meaningless conversation, and it is tiresome.

This was my crucial discovery not about the self, but about the automatic negative thoughts that accompanied (cognitive psychologists would say “caused”) my depressive episodes. At first those thoughts seemed interesting; I assumed I was discovering something profound; I was “learning from depression.” But in the end I recognized those thoughts as repetitious and delusionary drivel. I was learning nothing, except – in the sense that practice makes perfect – how to produce more such drivel at the slightest provocation (e.g. missing my exit while driving on the freeway – another proof of what a failure I was). As you state it: repeating, endless, unnecessary, mostly meaningless, tiresome.

Your experience of “no essence” reminds me of the time I was driving past one of our marvelous lagoons and was privileged to see what’s at the end of a rainbow. Nothing. Just air. The color bands visibly oscillated (I’m tempted to say: twitched), unraveled and disappeared an inch or two above the surface of the water. I did not expect to see a pot of gold, but I was still stunned to see with such clarity that there was nothing at the end of a rainbow. (Yes, I do have a poem about it, but will exercise self-restraint.)

As for Jung’s Self, my understanding of it changed once I heard Father Thomas Keating say, “Our deepest self is Christ.” This was obviously a variation on the Eastern belief that each person is both human and divine. Jung was very influenced by Eastern religions (even his near-death experience was an interesting mix of Eastern tradition and the Swedenborgian system). I remembered the initial excitement when here in Southern California we discovered the phrase, “The divine in me bows to the divine in you.”

Before hearing Father Keating, I was rather confused about the Jungian Self. Now, I’m not saying that to Jung the deepest Self was Christ, but the label of “Christ” can be understood at the generic rather than specific level. And I said, “Oh!” And “You are That” from my comparative religion class bowed to me.

This brought back the memory of a New Age woman who said, “All my friends can’t wait to disincarnate.” I have always been in the opposite camp. Even at my most suicidal, I never imagined a happy afterlife. Once I left the church, I had no doubt that heaven and hell are here and now, as well as the purgatory of learning “life lessons.”

The divine has been a slippery concept – was it a cosmic force, like gravity? Was it beauty? I worshipped beauty, but I knew that wasn’t what most people meant by the various god terms. Rather than speak of the human self as opposed to the divine self, I have found it more useful to speak of the depressed self, which I also call the anti-self, and the sane self, meaning those neural circuits that reorganized my perception (what cognitive psychologists call a “paradigm shift”), and the anti-self drivel fell silent. And there was no going back.

This is a bit scary: once you have an insight, there is no going back. “I miss the drama queen,” a Buddhist Jungian admitted about her journey toward less attachment. “Sometimes I miss depression, but there is no going back,” I sighed. “No, there is no going back,” she confirmed. “But the world becomes such an enlivened place.” She was right. It’s just that the process takes time.

“Everyone’s life could make a novel,” my father told me when I was eleven or twelve. Instantly I sensed the truth of it; later, when I began writing, it was glaringly obvious that the novel based on anyone’s life could exist in many (endless?) versions. Thus, I feel an enrichment rather than impoverishment if I speak of myself in the third person. It’s an exhilarating experiment to be your own omniscient narrator (though in fact you are what critics call an “unreliable narrator”). I realize that I started playing at being a writer already in childhood, almost as soon as I started reading fiction – making a statement, then adding something like, “she said, glancing at the pink peonies in the vase. She called them ‘fake roses.’ She wanted real roses, the reddest red. ‘Angela!’ Peter rudely intruded on her thoughts. ‘These peonies are full of ants!’” And on and on, usually turning to humor, the real undercutting the ideal.

Ah, the beauty of multiple perspectives! In Milosz’s poem, I was particularly struck by the phrase “one thing among many.” We’d have a different world if nationalists managed to see their country as one among many, and religionists, likewise, saw their religion as one among many. I think it’s slowly happening. Absolutes have been falling like dictatorships. 


One of the men in my past was startlingly double, as if to prove that astrology is right on about Gemini, the Twins. He was both a flamboyant social charmer and the hidden solitary artist who suddenly emerged when I touched his hand, very lightly, and he reacted as if to a jolt of electricity (“as if touched by another Power,” he later wrote me). His voice changed too, suddenly hushed and soulful. There was depth, privacy, feeling, sensitivity.

You have two selves, I told him,

a lawyer with his exit

strategy, and Orpheus.

And you have two voices, he said,

a dark one from a Slavic forest,

and one like bright wine,

Hispanic. Barthelona, I said

*

Of course it was the artist self that I fell in love with. I knew it would be brief, so I didn’t have to wrestle with the other self.

It’s interesting that he said sometimes I sounded Hispanic, since I think the only happy immigrants I know are Hispanic. His two selves were dramatically obvious, but my two voices? I assume those go with different selves too, perhaps the sad one without hope, and the radiant, happy one, the highest degree of the sane self.

In “I Sleep a Lot,” Milosz posits a pagan soul and a Catholic soul.

http://oriana-poetry.blogspot.com/2011/05/miloszs-two-souls.html

And alcoholics seem to have a sober self and a drunken self. The sober self is not necessarily all positive; both selves dance a maddening tango of generosity and cruelty, sensuality and repression.

In summary: for myself, without universalizing, I posit not the human self and the divine self, but the depressed self and the sane self. The depressed self was a lot more about ego, since low self-esteem is all about ego; to universalize it after all, I could call it the egocentric self, in my case the masochistic narcissist. The sane self has an interest in the world and in others; it has connectivity and a larger perspective. (How come the good self sounds so boring? Maybe art has conditioned us to the seductions of badness, which sounds so daring, so gloriously different: an illusion.)

I keep congratulating myself on having chosen the sane self, which fortunately is not as dull and pedestrian as it used to seem to my agitated depressed self. At the same time, a teeny part of me is still surprised by the choice, because isn’t passionate turbulence always to be preferred? And sanity, isn’t that a synonym for artistic decline? (As the Buddhist instructor said, “I miss my Drama Queen.”) (And Milosz said that after the poetry of vitality [i.e. youthful levels of sex hormones], there comes the poetry of the mind.)

I stand by what I said about introversion and low self-esteem, and excessive, obsessive, self-destructive love. I sensed the truth of the advice to “get a life” and be “more in the outer world,” but those words didn’t seize my imagination. A friend said, “You need to spend more time with people, revolting as it sounds.” I instantly knew he was right; alas, my imagination didn’t budge. “Do more things!” he screamed, exasperated by my lack of interest in what others call a “balanced life.” But a “balanced life” never interested me. "Things” was an empty term.

I found the right metaphor by remembering the title of one of the favorite novels of my childhood. I needed a “secret garden,” which for me turned out to be writing. Finally I had something more important than romance. If anyone disrupted my writing, he or she had to go (this included friendships). Once I had total clarity about what mattered to me most, letting go of certain people was easy. The real challenge was gaining distance in relation to writing as well, or else one’s art also becomes a “cruel mistress.” Distance is sanity; but as Sarah wisely observes in the Comments section, it has to be the right amount of distance.

I will end here, knowing that another infinity has just opened up, and the Unseen Reader for whom I write is getting tired. 

THE PURSUIT OF PEACE

Kristen:

Milosz claims that to love, to be genuinely loving, we need to drop the attachment to the self as special; we need to see ourselves from a detached perspective, humbly acknowledging that we are only “one thing among many.” This is profound Oriana. I enjoyed your entire blog post, and agree that attachment has to do with Ego and acceptance with spirit. When we are in acceptance, new roads of opportunity and possibilities can emerge...it is a change in perspective of how we see others..I correlate Ego with darkness and negativity. Acceptance brings positive, love, and light...So, why do we hang on as we do..when such gifts are waiting in the wings..?"

Oriana:

I love what you say here: “When we are in acceptance, new roads of opportunity and possibilities can emerge...it is a change in perspective of how we see others.” Yes, definitely.

But note that Milosz uses the word “things” a lot, and then bird and tree. He does not mention a woman – since he knew he couldn’t be a sage and saint enough not to want to be special in a woman’s eyes. He got himself into plenty of romantic messes and had an unhappy marriage. Still, it’s not necessarily the humble who can write so well about humility. And it could be argued that his deepest love was for nature, and that he loved people “in general.”

I think it’s actually low self-esteem (or call it masochistic narcissism) that is the worst trap when it comes to love. You worship someone, but you’re really constantly thinking, does he love ME? It’s insecurity that breeds pain.

Kristen:

I understand what you are saying about Milosz, "things," "birds." And, I agree about the low self-esteem and worship in sexual love. When two people come together selflessly in the attitude of acceptance with one another, it can take you to new heights together in your relationship, because you are joining body, soul, and spirit . . .

Oriana:

Selflessness is an ideal for me, like “love thy enemy, pray for those who persecute you.” Few people can, but I love those “over-the-top” ideals as a challenge, a reminder to go against our innate aggression (harder for men, whose brains get “virilized” for sex and aggression already in the womb). But acceptance, oh how I love acceptance. I love being valued, and making another person feel valued also. That’s what makes human blossoming possible, the security of being accepted and valued.

Ideally, the union of the bodies should be a celebration of the union of souls (in the broadest sense of the word) that has taken place first. I’m reminded of Rumi’s claim that lovers don’t meet without preparation; they have already lived in each other. They have shared similar values and interests, a similar level of intensity and complexity, the same love of music and/or whatever else spells beauty for them. For me the intellectual connection is primary (but “intellectual” may not be the best term for that realm). And the fascinating thing is that if the intellectual connection is deep enough, the sensory stimulation is also heightened. Then yes, those heights that you mention.

Kristen:

Dear Oriana, So many great thoughts here; I'm loving the synergy. "But acceptance, oh how I love acceptance. I love being valued, and making another person feel valued also. That’s what makes human blossoming possible, the security of being accepted and valued." Yes, the most important aspect I think, then everything else just falls in line. But, when one partner falls into the Ego, then there can be no relationship without the acknowledgement and correction of it. Then, it is not about you and your partner but, between your partner and spirit. You must detach and let spirit, divinity, God, do the work, whatever the outcome. Also, loving the Rumi quote. I hadn't heard that one before...very enlightening!

Oriana:

The greatest thing to have come out of the 12-Step programs: “Let go and let God.” In secular terms, this can be translated as Let go and let life. I find life is already such a mysterious process, with so many factors beyond our control. In painful situations, letting go and letting God/life take care of things is the kind of surrender that at least leads to peace, and with peace, everything is possible.

A friend of mine said that for her it’s neither the pursuit of happiness nor the pursuit of excellence (a motto I was trying to use instead, when I was desperately hanging onto living for achievement). What she practiced was the “pursuit of peace.” She said, once you have peace, everything else follows – close to what you and I are saying about the security that comes from acceptance: both the acceptance by another person, and/or the acceptance of the mystery of life. 

Kristen:

I agree, arriving to the place where we can let go in painful situations, requires letting go of our beliefs and remembering that it is not about us and the person/circumstance but god the person/circumstance. When we can come to that place of acceptance, then as I said before, new roads, possibilities, etc. and new rivers pull us back into the stream of life. "the pursuit of peace" is what I also try to follow. I know when I am in the right space in my mind and body when I have that knowing and peace...

Oriana:

Twice, at the beginning of two very important relationships in my life, I experienced great peace instead of the usual storm of emotions. I was almost in a trance, and knew with mystical certainty that this was to be, this was FOR me. Maybe the closest I’ve come to having a mystical experience. Thank you for sharing your wisdom about peace and the greater dimension than just "us."

Robert:

Love brings peace and serenity, infatuation brings chaos...

Oriana:

Yes, Robert, I agree, but love starts with infatuation. We are wired to be set on fire – there seems to be other way.  Then the infatuation either burns out or gets transformed into the kind of serene love that takes a while to grow. The glory is that it can keep growing. Long-term love evolves – every few years it’s a different stage, a different marriage (I’m using the term to cover any significant partnership).

The main point of my response to Milosz was that it’s not either/or: it’s both. Both passion and affection are a treasure. The more I think about infatuation, the more exciting it seems, in spite of the chaos and havoc it can cause. It’s the unpredictable nature of it, the uncontrollable nature of being swept away. And of course the high, so often resulting in poems later.

In brain imaging, the brain on love looks just like the brain on amphetamines; the dopamine pleasure circuits are all lit up. It takes a more discriminating analysis to see that it’s not all the sex and pleasure centers; the frontal lobes are active too, since we are processing not just the love object’s body, but also his/her mind. Personally, I am turned on by intelligence more than anything else, and if my love object can make a reference to Homer, say, or recite two lines of poetry – OK, one line is enough – I’m a goner.

I think, though, that there is a significant difference between what we know will (with luck) be a dazzling three-night affair, and falling in love with the “right person” and playing for keeps. I think it’s something we sense very quickly. Or at least we the intuitive types. That doesn’t mean that a brief intense encounter is not worth it. With maturity comes more emotional security, and then we see that every kind of love, from whirlwind passion to sweet and steady affection, is a gift, perhaps the greatest that life has to offer.

Marjorie:

I took love in Milosz’s poem to mean spiritual love, something like the Greek agape, not erotic love.

In your poem about Ariadne and Theseus, I don’t understand the reference to the essential stone.  But I love that poem’s last 3 lines.  And in the next poem, I love the image of the sail opening the hem of the horizon.

Oriana:

By “essential stone” I mean the essential hardship of life. At some point or another, usually many times over a lifetime, we come up against a stone wall that we can weep against, or beat our heads against. Milosz says it best in his late poem “This”:

This. Which signifies knocking against a stone wall and know that the wall

will not yield to any imploration.

As we read Milosz’s “Love,” it becomes obvious that he means what I’d call “loving kindness.” And he could have certainly used a different Polish word than “love,” which in Polish is not for everyday use as is more common in English, but is more restricted to romantic love (though, by using qualifiers, you can indicate parental love, or the “love thy neighbor” meaning). So the opening three lines are all the more startling in Polish: the title and the first word set up the reader to expect a little discourse on romantic love.

While Milosz’s poem is both surprising and quite wonderful, I have to admit that I find erotic love fascinating in ways that do not apply to spiritual love (which I value). Erotic love is powerful and exciting because it’s unpredictable and largely uncontrollable. We are “swept away” for reasons we don’t understand, shaken up to our psychic depths. Erotic love can be transformative in the most positive sense, or it can be traumatizing,  catastrophic. The great love of my youth (“The Self Is a Metaphor”) was both. In spite of the pain, I am enormous grateful for having gone through it. 

John Guzlowski:

In response to Cecilia’s comments: Yes, poetry gives us something--the resurrection of presences. I like that. Yes, why not? For me, it slows down time, opens time up, gives me so much time – all in the same way the act of love slows down and opens up time, gives us the time we need for understanding and healing and closeness and understanding.

Oriana:

That’s why I started saying that poetry is about love. Aesthetic distance is necessary to convey that love, but love must be there to start with. Perhaps a better term is tenderness.  Galway Kinnell: “Tenderness towards existence.” Adrienne Rich: “Without tenderness, we are in hell.” Poets remind us of that.

Scott:

'Ye Gods', that is profound. If we could learn to accept that it would be the alleviation of many a sorrow. I have you to thank for introducing me to Milosz, incredible poet. Your blog is akin to sailing with Reep on the Dawn Treader in the Last Sea, very serene and a pool of sanity in an increasingly insane world. The recent tragedy in Norway reminds us so well that as Melville stated in Moby Dick, 'it's  a wicked world in all meridians' Next to Hawaii, Norway is the most  beautiful place I have ever seen, it's straight out of Tolkien). In another aside, if ever I could truly get to the heart of Moby Dick, all would be solved. I think I'm close though, one school of thought is Ahab's end resulted from revenge and hate and the absence of the  female presence (many whalers did indeed bring wives aboard in the latter half of the 19th century...sorry for all the digressions!) As usual, your blog is timely, the pictures are incredible and your commentators thoughtful. As I have often said, your blog with a good cup of coffee is time well invested.

Oriana:

Thank you, Scott. I've always dreamed of going to Norway, precisely because of the legendary beauty. I also thought it was one of the safest places in the world. I feel very unsettled by the recent tragedy.

Interesting how Moby Dick keeps coming up for you . . . Ahab's pathology is not very different from those people who keep calling for justice, but what they really mean is revenge. Hatred is an energizing passion, and I think the West has always been in love with energy rather than any Buddhist serenity. I hope we'll move toward balance. Milosz's amazing poem (written in war-torn Warsaw of 1943!!) is a good reminder that it's good to step back and see things from a larger perspective.