Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

"An empty mind is the devil's workshop", I have been repeatedly told since I was a child. Yet, it was on one of those very empty evenings that it struck me that I could invite a friend, or maybe even three friends to write a guest post. The one thing that I love about my friends, whom you shall meet by and by, gentle reader, is that they are always game for an adventure. This is Part 1 of that enterprise.

I've known Asha for longer than I care to remember. She breezed into my life and stayed back as my rock, my sounding board, and the shoulder on which I would cry on countless times.

Asha is an expert trainer and has worked with some of the world's biggest corporations. Deeply interested in issues relating to the development of self, she writes a wonderfully thought-provoking blog called Self Leadership. In her blog, she manages to raise issues that we all need to ponder on, but about which we rarely stop to think systematically.

However, here on my blog, she writes not on leadership or decisions or self-awareness, but moves to our common love, poetry. Her thoughts are placed below:

Let me start off by saying that poetry is not one of my current ‘can-dos’. Would I like to compose poetry? Yes! Have I attempted it? No! Having said that, I love reading poetry and one volume that I’ve perused a few times ia ‘Ariake’ – a collection of poems of love and longing by the women courtiers of Japan.

The foreword by Lisa Dalby summarises ‘Ariake’ as follows: “Ariake or ‘the waning moon at dawn’ was an image associated foremost with love in the ancient courts of Japan. Few societies integrated poetry into daily life as devotedly as the court of Japan’s Heian era (A.D. 794 – 1192). The most renowned poets of this era were women. They were passionate and demonstrative – a far cry from the typical portraits of passive objects of desire drawn by Westerners.”

A few samples from this rather fascinating collection!

Were you a string of beads

I would wind you about my arm,

But since you are a man

Of the actual, mortal world,

You are hard in the winding.

~ The Elder Maiden of the Otomo of Sakanoue ~

Look at this keepsake

And remember me, my love;

All the gem-bright year,

Long as its thread of shining days,

I too shall think of you.

~ Lady Kasa ~

As night succeeds night,

I seek in vain to decide

Where my pillow should go.

How did I sleep on the night

When you appeared in my dream?

~ Anonymous ~

My favourite Indian poet is Sahir Ludhianvi. A deeply passionate man, he lived and died a tortured soul. A genius with words, he demonstrated how a lot could be said with very few words. There are so many of his poems I love, and here is one of them.

Maine jo geet tere pyar ki khatir likhe

Aaj un geeton ko bazaar mein le aaya hoon

Aaj dukan mein neelam uthega unka

Tu ne jin geeton pe rakhi thi mohabbat ki asaas

Aaj chandi ki taraazu mein tulegi har cheez

Mere afkaar, meri shaayari, mera ehsaas

Jo teri zaatse mansoob the un geeton ko

Muflisi jins banaane pe uthar aayi hai

Bhookh, tere rookh-e-rangeen ke fasaano ke ivaz

Chand ashiya-e-zaroorat ki tamannai hai

Dekh is arsaagahe-mehnaton-sarmaaya mein

Mere naghme bhi mere paas nahin reh sakte

Tere jalve kisi zardaar ki meeras sahi

Tere khaake bhi mer paas nahin reh sakte

Aaj un geeton ko bazaar mein le aaya hoon

Maine jo geet tere pyar ki khatir likhe

Last but not the least is a piece from Harold Monro on ‘Solitude’. I know Geetali has done a post on ‘Solitude’ earlier. I picked this out of An Anthology of Modern Verse that was gifted by my friend Irene Hawkins. If you ever come across this post my friend, know that you are in my mind and that I miss you.

When you have tidied all things for the night,

And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,

You’ll pause a moment in the late firelight,

Too sorrowful to weep.

The large and gentle furniture has stood

In sympathetic silence all the day

With that old kindness of domestic wood;

Nevertheless the haunted room will say:

“Some one must be away”.

The little dog rolls over half awake,

Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,

Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,

That you may feel he is unhappy too.

A distant engine whistles, or the floor

Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door;

Silence is scattered like a broken glass.

The minutes prick their ears and run about,

Then one by one subside again and pass

Sedately in, monotonously out.

You bend your head and wipe away a tear.

Solitude walks one heavy step more near.

Loneliness is solitude with a problem!

I have in the past written on solitude. I have treated mine, as Collette says, like "heady wine". Octavio Paz sums it up so well when he says "Solitude is the profoundest fact of human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone". I have found my mind to sharper and keener when subjected to uninterrupted solitude. And I love Sandburg for saying that solitude is creative if you are strong, for that's what has been revealed to me!

Today, I came across a gem of a video made by Andrea Dorfman based on a wonderful piece written by Tanya Davis. I hope I am not infringing any copyright laws by posting this video, but it is just too beautiful not to be shared. It is called "How To Be Alone".

The text is placed below the video.

If you are at first lonely, be patient.

If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.

Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.

The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and Silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.

And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.

But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.

You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.

But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.

Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it.

If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.

If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.

There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

~ Tanya Davis ~

Embrace your solitude... and try to sing out with it.

"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."

Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters To A Young Poet)

A panegyric to solitude

It is dusk. Light falls softly and disappears even as I look out of the window. I am sitting at my desk in a house so silent that I can hear a bird alight on the tree outside. No one comes in clamouring for attention. No one calls me outside to see icicles on the oak tree. No one interrupts me with an anxious "Haven't you worked enough for one day?"

The silence began two years ago, on a day full of the sound of running water...
My experience feels unique to me, but of course, it isn't.

We who live solitary are visited from time to time by great gusts of loneliness. We are scarred by those dismal hours in which what we have to do - without anyone helping us - seems too much. We are overwhelmed by a longing for the paired life we see others enjoy, simply for the joy of sharing intimacy.

But solitude brings a life full of satisfaction, warmth and even joy. Since the times of solitude can come to many of us unchosen, it behoves us to learn how to find these joys, so that we may live with dignity and grace.
Looking back on some times I have spent solitary, I see some moments crystallising in my memory. Like that first gentle, thin ray of sunlight after rain, there is a meagre, yet growing warmth that is indigenous to my solitude.
Where does this warmth come from? First of all, from memory, which holds together the skeins of my life. Solitude enhances memory. And so, curiously, memories strengthen the sense of continuity I feel with others' lives.
If my solitude has been lit by memories, then it has also been warmed by a growing sense of my own identity. After I had lived alone for a while, I found myself caught up in innumerable inner dialogues, between the self dying of the grief of aloneness and the self who wanted to live; the self who believed and the self who denied; the self who loved and the self who repudiated love because it hurt too much.
Haven't we known, Like Whitman, that we contain multitudes? Compassionate and cruel, mature and callow, wise and jejune? Haven't we always known that the colloquy between these warring selves has been waiting for us to catch up with it?
Caught up in these struggles, I have had the chance to come to grip with unexplained beliefs and answer important questions. Why do I do this and not that? What is being asked of me? What am I to do with my life? When I lived surrounded by people, some of the passion and insight natural to my inner self leaked away through the sieve of the daily humdrum. Alone, I was forced to pay attention to the question marks in my heart.
Solitude, I found, is that identity-making place where I learnt to fight my demons. And how many I had of those when my solitude began: the fear of the dark, the fear I would never be loved again... The risk for all of us who live alone is that our feelings may become the most important thing in our lives! We may brood resentfully about people instead of responding to them.
Every day, the solitary person - still fighting the all too human battle against growing up - must cope with something new. Quickly and painfully, you discover what kind of a person you are, what kind of inner resources you can muster. In solitude, as Rilke says, "there is no place that does not see you" - so only honesty is good enough.
At my most daring moments, I like to believe that what is going on is that ultimately divine work - the shaping of my soul. True, there are many agnostics hiding in the foxholes of solitude; some of them became that way because they were alone for much too long. Nevertheless, there is something in the nature of the solitary experience that contributes to the growth of the spirit. Many a solitude has been lighted by the discovery of what the Quakers call "that of God in every man".
Above all, my solitude is warmed by people and my new understanding of them. That sounds like a paradox, doesn't it? You may ask: isn't the solitary, by the very nature of her solitude, handicapped in her relationships with others? On the contrary, the solitary is particularly fitted for relationships. As Carl Jung says "No one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man".
We have empty, therefore, open hearts as we did not when preoccupied with just one love. We are freer to meet the stranger, freer to talk to him in depth,
The sorrows of others seem to enter my solitude framed by the understanding of my own struggles. Solitude is part of the inescapable enterprise of maturing. A time for solitude, well used, is a spillway for what has choked one's life; it is an illumination of the rest of one's experiences.
But it is not always tranquil. My inward life is sometimes the threshing floor of emotions. I suspect that solitude never leaves you the way it found you. You emerge from it angrier, or gentler, sterner or more compassionate; more bitter, or more loving; more shut within, or more communicative; but never the same.

Search out the joys of solitude. I have heard people say "Nothing good ever happens to me". I don't agree. My gratitude journal list my daily joys: "Today N called"; "S sent me some music"; "DB sent me wonderful candy"; "Had lunch with N, S and P and giggled madly over the way H behaves"... Reading those pages, I watch myself growing and can only marvel at how unpredictable and wonderful life can be!
Solitary, or coupled, the most important thing we can do for ourselves is to learn with ourselves with courage, humility and beauty.