Desperation

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

--Stevie Smith, 1972

How long can one flail about, searching for a hand to grab onto before giving up and sinking under? That old trick where you kneel in the lake, water up to your chin, appearing about ready to drown, and then, just as you gain attention, just as you draw somebody's eye, just as a hand is reached out to you, you stand up, and your savior feels a twinge of irritation, an urge to scoff. How many times can you cry wolf before everyone in town stops listening to you? You use up the chances, thinking each time this is the last breath of air you will be able to gasp before you go under, and no one is more surprised than you that you've surfaced once again. Then, when you get into really deep water, you regret those previous larks, those little experiments in how to lose your credibility.

Maybe you stop waving. Maybe you don't want to pull anyone down with you or maybe you don't think anyone has noticed at all how far out you've drifted, how big the waves are out here, how stiff the undertow.

The struggle to keep your head above water is tiring, never-ending, cold, numbing. You tire of hearing your hands splash the water, you tire of the seaweed tangled around your ankles, you tire of spluttering to stop yourself from swallowing the water. Maybe you could float, relax, allow yourself to drift. If you could just find a calm patch to rest in, lying on your back, looking up into the sun, stop trying to make way and instead just be.

Would the waves push you gently on to shore, or pull you under to roll along the bottom in the sand? Either way would be a relief.

Sodality

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

I saw in Lousiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of
       dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone
      there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it,
      and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly
      love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana
      solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.

Walt Whitman 1860

Lately I, too, have thought of little else than my friends. Friends near and far, some known to me for decades, others only months, friends who have cried with me, and laughed with me, those who have supported me, and those to whom I have lent what support I could--I hold them all in my head and my heart. In times of celebration and contentment, I take joy in their happiness, in times of fear and anxiety, I offer my ear, hoping to soothe them, and in times of loss and sorrow, I mourn with them in hope that they feel less alone. The friendship they have offered me in return gives me the strength and the desire to utter my own joyous leaves. Without them, my branches would be bare.

Winter Continues

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens, 1923


I did have a mind of winter, many long years, and when winter came, I did not mind. It was all winter to me, then, so what did it matter that the ice outside reflected the ice within me?

Then I experienced a thawing and meltwaters carried the snow and ice away. And now I feel the cold wind and the ice approaching once again, and it is so cold it burns.

The difference this time will be, I hope, that the winter is only temporary. Some day, sooner or later, the wind will shift and blow mildly from the south, and the grass will be uncovered and the daffodils will push their way out of the earth. When that happens, I will drink it in, and welcome spring into myself, and I will make room for all the seasons within me.

Nothingness

When I Have Fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piléd books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance,
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! --then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats 1818


In fact, John Keats did not have time to glean his teeming brain. He died in 1821, at the age of 25, which only adds to the wistfulness of this poem.

I have sometimes felt the pressure to describe all that roils around in my head, and feared I did not have the time to say it all. Life, whether it is lived for 25 years or 85, sometimes seems too short to see everything, learn everything, feel everything I wish to see, to learn, to feel. And I, too, sometimes crave Fame, or at least to know that what I have to say has been heard. To be heard, and understood, to know that the words and thoughts I cast out upon the world do not fall upon unhearing ears; I do crave that.

But then come other times. Other times when I seem to be standing alone upon the shore, and all seems so insignificant. What does it matter what thoughts I have had, what words I have written? All is fleeting, in the end. Every word and thought will surely be erased as though I had written them in the sand, and watched the waves smooth them away. In the end, come sooner or later, I will be forgotten. The joys and sorrows that are felt so keenly to me today will be gradually wiped out, filled in by the inexorable tide. The impression I leave behind will slowly fade, until it is as though I have never been, and no one will remain to think of me.

I am not sure if these thoughts are comforting, or terrifying. I suppose they are a bit of both.

Winter

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanket whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert spaces.

Robert Frost


Winter is a struggle for me. It is the time of year when it is easiest to dwell upon my own desert spaces within me. Spring, summer, fall all bring with them opportunities to fill myself in the joy and beauty of nature. But when winter comes and that blankness seems to fall across the land, it also falls in me.

I do my best to keep it at bay. I have my little interests and my daily escapes, into books, or handiwork, or entertaining friends. But the little shocks of horror that come when I glimpse the stretches of expressionless blankness come more frequently in winter. The silences that in spring are drowned in rushing streams and in summer are eclipsed by the buzz of the locust and in fall are masked by the crunching of leaves underfoot are allowed to ring in the silence of falling snow. And the emptiness that is filled in spring with new green grass and in summer with riots of flowers and in fall with the blaze of the turning leaves is in winter echoed everywhere by white blank snow and a grey blank sky.

But although it is harder in winter to resist the desert places, it is not impossible. It is just necessary to look harder for the beauty to escape them. One morning, I went out after a snowfall, and I expected a world of blank whiteness. What I found instead was a world of color just awaiting my eyes, should I trouble to see. And I saw the snow at dawn was clear blue, not white. And the vibrant red of the crabapples and the solid, reassuring brown of the branches were all willing to be seen.