I am back from the 4 day men’s group (Big! Can you imagine – 34 – both young and old) in a house in sparkling wild country near Buxton (Derbyshire), and warm messages from several missing you.
Was I caught out? Checking in, I did indeed ‘out’ myself with the very first words I said. I have retired, I began. A moment of relief to get that over with, and two back-flips later (you know the way my mercurial mind works), but I quickly tripped over the doorway of the next questions, What to leave behind, and what to put aside and keep. Fitful sleep was the only answer. But by the next day I had collected dried leaves to bury and rot, and decided the coloured jewels to return to my back pocket. What jewels? Well, the power of metaphor for one, and my singing voice for another, so that, for example, when I checked out I did it in song. The song, a simple one and newly composed by me for the moment, was called The Art of Ending.
So the work was the practice of crossing thresholds, and also asking for help, which I did in Flaschenpost (‘message in a bottle’) style, and I can report was amazingly and improbably found. And tiny glimpses of a possible future, so that later it occurred to me The Art of Ending is also a possible new name for the charity I look after which has been inactive for the last two years (UK Reg’d no. 1120811, primary charitable purpose ‘EDUCATION AND INFORMATION ON PALLIATIVE CARE AND END-OF-LIFE CARE IN THE UK’). I purchased artend.co.uk / artend.org site names today.
I also began a personal letter today:
Dear ****
We agreed on a ‘buddy’ basis to continue with our conversation, which began towards the end of last weekend, when I also invited you to meet with me here, where I can also offer, if you like, to introduce you to my blogging co-writer (ak), with whom this particular stretch of the dialogic writing ocean is shared.
Introductions over, I can move on to the main area of our conversation two days ago; about aloneness, or perhaps better said, about aloneness and friendship. You and I were talking about this in the context of what it is like to be perceived to be absent, or ‘not there’ at an arranged meeting. To be accurate about this, of course you are there in physical person, but not otherwise according to the observation of certain people attending. Caught out, our reaction to your apparent absence is an irritation, even a disgust (yes, I own to that feeling too), which it is almost impossible for any of us to put into words, and, when words are tried, they are translated into various kinds of negative viewpoint and critical utterance.
And you say that you have heard all these before!
There is an assumption about meeting, like the laughing Rumi says, “Out there beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field, where we meet”. At which point I leap. What assumption, I ask. And there you are at that moment, clear in the aloneness, like a sparkle upon the seawater, like a glint from within a slanting light.
It is something that I have experienced before, but now is not the time to tell you the stories, and aloneness is a subject, which both ak and I have, as best we can over the years, directly and indirectly written about quite often here (after all, we receive almost no outside visitors to our stretch of the dialogic writing ocean!). Aloneness, and, I find, often in the same breath intertwined with brokenness in the seelische ('spiritual') sense; during these see-through moments when our personal spirit is in some way broken off, and the aloneness stands clear of any supporting form.
And a friendship based upon this capacity for seeing, and being seen in this way. You will notice from our blog ‘strap heading’ that we describe ourselves as “two city vagabonds on pilgrimage”… Well, you are welcome to join us any time you like as we go along, as well as (or alternatively of course) continuing our ‘buddy’ basis conversations in private, as you prefer.
(Etc…)
My letter ends with some personal remarks, which I do not wish to make public.