I wonder if we start out hibernating or if we all were awake and then, knowingly or unknowingly, chose to hibernate because living, being fully present with this life, can be overwhelming, terrifying, or just plain uncomfortable.
Perhaps it is good fortune to awaken and requires great courage to stay awake.
I think courage is necessary for sure, but I also think there is a fair share of intent needed as well. I suspect that some people just kind of forget, in the chaos of surviving everything thing from personal traumas to rush-hour traffic, that they need to intentionally live.
More often that shock treatment that Nin referenced comes on and you awaken 5 years removed from your last wake up, confused and slightly embarrassed that you allowed yourself to slip again.
Nicely and simply put. As I read this piece this morning, I reflect on a retirement party I went to at the weekend. Without sounding too judgemental (good heavens if I ever did that...), I felt surrounded by a flock of sheep and maybe each one of us was choosing to be accepted by the other and losing the opportunity to be courageous and find our unique awakening.
Love these lines - I was thinking something vaguely similar recently while worrying about a friend - that they needed a song or a book to start to break their heart back open. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, Anais Nin was a "poetic outlaw" like her close friend, Antonin Artaud, who once wrote: "I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality" - Antonin Artaud
Thanks for this. There was a Tibetan lama visiting Europe. His wife commented on the beautiful houses built as tombs in cemeteries in France. And the lama replied 'Yes. They build beautiful houses for the dead, and in the cities they build beautiful houses for the living dead too.'
thank you! This led me to look up and read the first few pages of her vol 1 where I found the paragraph you reference. (Did you put it in this format? Very nice!) Her ability to express her awareness of her surroundings was extraordinary. When she spoke of hearing the crackling of the car coming up the driveway, it led me to think… how much of what we perceive are we blocking out or just ignoring. When was the last time you actually heard the crackling of the gravel road when you noticed a car driving towards you? In the early morning, sitting in meditation, there is a moment when the silence of the night is broken by the sounds of birds speaking as they awaken. It is as if they all are exclaiming the awakening of a new day. Yet to them, it is the only day. How grand must it feel to awaken into a moment for the first time and hear the sounds of everything else doing the same. To perceive as if there was no before and no to come. Just this moment, alive, but not knowing what it is to be alive. Moving naturally, without expectation. Taking the first meal of the day as if one was taking the breath. Giving no thought at all to it.
"Show me a day when the world wasn't new" ... Sister Barbara Hance
In the most recent essay, ars poetica quotes the French philospher Malenbrache ... "Attention
is the soul's natural prayer." Thinking of it in those terms puts it in the realm of meditation. Alive and aware in the moment. Maybe it's not so much an intentional "blocking out" or ignoring that prevents some from being aware of their surroundings. Could be a lack of curiosity, imagination, distractions, or all of those. I don't know. I know when I give my full
Living among the complacently conventional, I wonder if people fall into two groups, those who fear being different from the herd and those who fear becoming part of the herd.
One is the herd, one is reactive to the herd. Both are about the herd, and fear. I feel the tension between them in myself. But these are levels, limitations to personal growth. The way we are capable of love, without fear, is another path or level. Appearances can be deceiving. The most conventional looking person may have an inner life that follows that other path, constituting a third group.
It's difficult to live in the USA, there is no reciprocity between the Baron Lord government and the citizen. everything is for sale, everything. The only interests people have is acquiring property which requires buying protection and cash to buy protection and more cash in their attempts to escape sensory deprivation all of which breeds ruthlessness . The heroes in the USA are criminals but law and government is tailored to accommodate them. They hide behind right to life and other holier than thou hypocrisies Would be parents don't realize this when they start having children and Public School trains them to wake up for work - if they knuckle under and submit they will afford subsistence by selling their labor and borrowing credit if they don't they will have 5 or 6 years to enjoy life while everyone induces guilt for being disobedient. More and more child are being born that no one needs because government is no responsive to humanity and natural rights they're only responsive to "economic growth" for military spending the chief opposition to monarchy which the USA version of democracy replicates. Only wealthy established people should be allowed to have children it's truly the only cure for poverty.
I wonder if we start out hibernating or if we all were awake and then, knowingly or unknowingly, chose to hibernate because living, being fully present with this life, can be overwhelming, terrifying, or just plain uncomfortable.
Perhaps it is good fortune to awaken and requires great courage to stay awake.
I think courage is necessary for sure, but I also think there is a fair share of intent needed as well. I suspect that some people just kind of forget, in the chaos of surviving everything thing from personal traumas to rush-hour traffic, that they need to intentionally live.
More often that shock treatment that Nin referenced comes on and you awaken 5 years removed from your last wake up, confused and slightly embarrassed that you allowed yourself to slip again.
Beautifully written.
I so agree with you that it is indeed good fortune when one awakens and that courage is required to stay awake.
Nicely and simply put. As I read this piece this morning, I reflect on a retirement party I went to at the weekend. Without sounding too judgemental (good heavens if I ever did that...), I felt surrounded by a flock of sheep and maybe each one of us was choosing to be accepted by the other and losing the opportunity to be courageous and find our unique awakening.
It takes curiosity, I think. When we stop being curious…. Then we are alone with the solitude causing the hibernation.
That's a profound thought and certainly worth some consideration.
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born..
—Anais Nin, Diary of Anais Nin, vol. 1
1931-1934
"And then some shock treatment
takes place, a person, a book, a song,
and it awakens them and saves them
from death."
Love these lines - I was thinking something vaguely similar recently while worrying about a friend - that they needed a song or a book to start to break their heart back open. Thanks for sharing.
Nin was a 'poetic outlaw' alright.
Yes, Anais Nin was a "poetic outlaw" like her close friend, Antonin Artaud, who once wrote: "I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality" - Antonin Artaud
Thanks for this. There was a Tibetan lama visiting Europe. His wife commented on the beautiful houses built as tombs in cemeteries in France. And the lama replied 'Yes. They build beautiful houses for the dead, and in the cities they build beautiful houses for the living dead too.'
thank you! This led me to look up and read the first few pages of her vol 1 where I found the paragraph you reference. (Did you put it in this format? Very nice!) Her ability to express her awareness of her surroundings was extraordinary. When she spoke of hearing the crackling of the car coming up the driveway, it led me to think… how much of what we perceive are we blocking out or just ignoring. When was the last time you actually heard the crackling of the gravel road when you noticed a car driving towards you? In the early morning, sitting in meditation, there is a moment when the silence of the night is broken by the sounds of birds speaking as they awaken. It is as if they all are exclaiming the awakening of a new day. Yet to them, it is the only day. How grand must it feel to awaken into a moment for the first time and hear the sounds of everything else doing the same. To perceive as if there was no before and no to come. Just this moment, alive, but not knowing what it is to be alive. Moving naturally, without expectation. Taking the first meal of the day as if one was taking the breath. Giving no thought at all to it.
"Show me a day when the world wasn't new" ... Sister Barbara Hance
In the most recent essay, ars poetica quotes the French philospher Malenbrache ... "Attention
is the soul's natural prayer." Thinking of it in those terms puts it in the realm of meditation. Alive and aware in the moment. Maybe it's not so much an intentional "blocking out" or ignoring that prevents some from being aware of their surroundings. Could be a lack of curiosity, imagination, distractions, or all of those. I don't know. I know when I give my full
attention, life responds with ineffable richness.
Beautifully stated. Wow.
Thank you for this, I had read a lot of her diaries, a long time ago and now want to revisit some.
Love this, love her.
Living among the complacently conventional, I wonder if people fall into two groups, those who fear being different from the herd and those who fear becoming part of the herd.
One is the herd, one is reactive to the herd. Both are about the herd, and fear. I feel the tension between them in myself. But these are levels, limitations to personal growth. The way we are capable of love, without fear, is another path or level. Appearances can be deceiving. The most conventional looking person may have an inner life that follows that other path, constituting a third group.
"Father, the Sleeper has awakened!"
poignant-
getting married,
birthing a child and having it die at seven weeks,
birthing two more children
and raising them,
or trying to,
watching them grow from nursing and shitting their cotton diapers
I washed out in a toilet,
watching them learn to walk and fall down and walk, and talk,
watching how curious and full of energy they were,
watching their mother and I grow apart,
watching me not being the father my children needed,
watching my life go to hell,
watching my children have their own struggles,
some their doing,
some because I was not the father they needed.
watching me get married 7 more times,
each wife remarkable,
each wife woke something up in me I did not know was there,
they enriched my life,
I hope the same for them,
since i was not easy to live with,
nor was it easy for me to live with me,
how empty and I suppose boring my life would have been,
but for those women and the three children,
the one who died suddenly
so unhinged me
that I was never thereafter able to fit into the molds and plans
made for me by my ancestors and me,
he broke my heart and set me on my journey,
a dozen different lives in one lifetime,
I did leave the old, many times,
and start anew,
in places where I knew no one,
but now I’m back where I started,
my hometown,
a blue southern city surrounded by MAGA counties,
the local churches seem right where they were when left
and came to wonder when I ever was not in church?
Most people I once knew here,
seem where they were when I left the first time in 1986,
I have lived in this same old apartment building three times
after I stopped running away from home,
It was all-white, then it was somewhat integrated, now international,
the Internet makes it a lot easier to run away for a spell,
but everywhere I go,
there I am,
can’t run away from me,
nor from many, many memories,
waiting for the Lord to take me,
hopefully before I am in assisted living
or a nursing home
or nut house,
I crawl out of bed each morning
and engage what gets on my plate today,
chop wood, carry water, I suppose
This is so beautiful and poignant. Thank you for sharing ❤️❤️
Gracias
She and her work are my sole reasons for becoming a writer. Period.
It's difficult to live in the USA, there is no reciprocity between the Baron Lord government and the citizen. everything is for sale, everything. The only interests people have is acquiring property which requires buying protection and cash to buy protection and more cash in their attempts to escape sensory deprivation all of which breeds ruthlessness . The heroes in the USA are criminals but law and government is tailored to accommodate them. They hide behind right to life and other holier than thou hypocrisies Would be parents don't realize this when they start having children and Public School trains them to wake up for work - if they knuckle under and submit they will afford subsistence by selling their labor and borrowing credit if they don't they will have 5 or 6 years to enjoy life while everyone induces guilt for being disobedient. More and more child are being born that no one needs because government is no responsive to humanity and natural rights they're only responsive to "economic growth" for military spending the chief opposition to monarchy which the USA version of democracy replicates. Only wealthy established people should be allowed to have children it's truly the only cure for poverty.
a really outstanding poem, thanks for sharing it
I did things,
We did things,
I do things,
We do things,
Do we live,
Living is life,
Things aren't life,
Life is doing things,
The things means life,
Thing, bring, brings life,
Alive, doing things,
The thing I do,
The thing we do,
Life, true?
What we won't feel can't heal in our spirited body-world 🤗 some never awaken, leave them to it (spirit).