‘And that's why i have to go back
to so many places
there to find myself
and constantly examine myself
with no witness but the moon
and then whistle with joy,
ambling over rocks and clods of earth,
with no task but to live,
with no family but the road.’
— Pablo Neruda
I stumble upon this lovely poem and I wonder, as I always do, how I can have gone through so many years of my life without reading it.
I wonder whether the going back and meeting oneself is a poet’s thing, because TS Eliot writes of it too, although I can’t remember where.
As I’m wondering, I think of the act of wonder - both in the sense of asking quiet questions, and in the sense of looking at the world with awe. I think it’s something that children do, all the time, without being taught. I think perhaps it is something that grown-ups have lost.
I think: I am going to go through this day wondering. I am going to open my eyes like a child.
I felt suddenly tired and melancholy last night and I have absolutely no idea why. There was a little pull and an ache and I had to go out into the gloaming and walk it off. I’ve been reading a lot about how we humans must heal our wounds in the body first. The mind can’t do it on its own. There’s still a part of me which is cross about this, because I love the mind. I like the idea of finding the old stories which are non-helpful and telling myself new, truer, more helpful, more humane stories. This appeals to the writer in me. But this ache and pull is perhaps the body saying: you need to start with me.
I think: I’ll take that down to the magic field and stand with the red mare and connect to all the good things on the atomic level and that will make the body happy.
I sometimes wonder whether there is an age where all the things suddenly become obvious and easy. But then I’ve seen a man in his eighties mourning his life because it doesn’t meet his version of success. (Love of family apparently counts for nothing in this metric, and achievements in business and finance weigh heavily. So he is gloomy, because he thinks he has failed. And nobody can persuade him otherwise.) I think: yes, that’s why it’s worth doing the work. That’s why it is worth going back to so many places, there to find myself.