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I admit it. One of my attractions to solitude is the free pass it provides – a free pass from should. When you live in solitude, no one cares if you’re naked or nocturnal – as long as you’re self-supporting (sometimes tough in solitude) and not bothering anyone (extremely easy in solitude). Why would anyone [...]
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
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The Lifetime Channel recently aired a made-for-TV movie entitled Georgia O’Keeffe starring Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons. In spite of excellent acting, the movie was a big disappointment to me* [see footnote], focusing primarily on O’Keeffe’s turbulent love affair with New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz (played by Irons), her ultimate marriage to him and her [...]
Stevens Pass, October 2008
October is my favorite month. I like autumn generally and (here) October is the month that finds the perfect balance between summer and winter. Nature is quieting down, weather is revving up. Humans are settling some, too (at least temporarily) – school routines are set and efficient, holiday frenzies have not quite begun.
I always prefer quiet to frenzy. It’s part of my attraction to solitude.
October is also my birth month. Birthdays provide a day of license to celebrate ourselves – incorporate some self-indulgence into the schedule without apology. More importantly for me they are the annual opportunity to reflect on another trip around the sun – that pivotal personal reminder of the grand balance between the clearly temporary and seemingly eternal.
There is, apart from mere intellect, in the makeup of every superior human identity, (in its moral completeness, considered as ensemble, not for that moral alone, but for the whole being, including physique,) a wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is called education, (though I think it the goal and apex of all education deserving the name) – an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifarious, mad chaos of fraud, frivolity, hoggishness – this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettledness, we call the world; a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the hunter. – Walt Whitman
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I looked out the front window this morning just in time to see two grad students fitting Griz with a tracking collar before he recovered from the effects of their tranquilizer dart. Then I woke up. But I know what prompted the dream: yet another hermit researcher found this blog and hoped for an interview with [...]
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Griz and I have had mobile phones since the days when they were big and clunky. They’re an invaluable tool, no doubt about it – especially for a household with disparate careers, pressing family commitments and frequently a lot of highway miles surrounding it all. Modern-day schedule juggling – a phase from which Griz and [...]
We’re having what passes for a heat wave here in Western Washington – temperatures in the nineties and low 100′s, plus high humidity – a combo as rare here as home air conditioning. We don’t need AC often enough here for most people to justify the expense and installation. Of course, portable air conditioners are flying off the shelves this week. Weather – a sure-fire economic stimulator.
The oppressive heat is predicted to continue for a full week before that pleasant Pacific marine air finds its way back home. I know what I’m describing as “oppressive” is no biggee for you tropics and desert dwellers, and those of you where summer equals humidity – but we’re not used to it.
Griz and I adapt to heat the way humans have always adapted in their natural state: less or no clothing, get the chores done in the cool morning, cancel most movement in the afternoon, and rev up again in the evening after the sun goes down. We also have lots of water. The streams are dry, but the well isn’t. We can stay as wet as we like. Wet hair cools the brain.
This hot weather stategy has reminded me how lucky we are to live in seclusion with a schedule of our own devising. Solitude has many perks – spontaneous nakedness and freedom from clocks are this week’s stars.
Actor Tom Hanks created a truly Memorable Hermit in the 2000 motion picture Cast Away. Hanks’ character, Fed-Ex manager Chuck Noland, is the only survivor of a plane crash and is forced to survive alone on a desert island for four years. His transition from a portly, time-obsessed urbanite to a tan, bearded, slightly-emaciated athlete is [...]
It’s a fair assumption that most intentional hermits are introverts – like Griz and me. There may be a few extrovert hermits about, but they are likely unintentional hermits – living in solitude by accident or sacrificial choice – hiding from the law, castaways on uncharted islands, last-man-on-earth characters like Will Smith in I Am Legend. Introverts as a whole (not just [...]
Yes, I’m just trying to be provocative and I presume that is also Professor Christopher Peterson’s intent when he uses the phrase “there are no happy hermits” in his U. Michigan psychology lectures. But I’m quite certain I’m not the only happy hermit in the world, so I’ve decided to come to the defense of [...]
