The touch

There was a big arrowhead of rock, which was split off from the mother rock by the most recent surge tide and it pierced the air with a new shape.

Today I see that this arrowhead, its granite neck and abdomen, have been pushed away from the rock family, further up the beach. It reclines now, offering the kind of couch I'd love to have in my (sadly couchless) lounge. But this is nature's gift, which I accept in joy and wonder, and I settle in, protecting my butt from the rock's cold surface with a folded cloth.

And that's when I see the breaching whale, his fluke cartwheeling over the deeps. And a huge container vessel too, ploughing forward, east to west. The sun's on my left shoulder. Both vessel and whale are heading to where the sun will set later, to my right. 

Whale, you library of blood and flesh, intelligence and blubber, the engine's drone hurts, I know. Above the water, too, many humans don't have the marrow in their bones to feel the sounds, which they create in ignorance of the responsibilities of power. 

Parnassian philosophising! The whale's dived down, out of sight, as I've droned on.

Alright. I'll follow you down where you may be. No longer is it necessary for me to explain or to prove anything. The material I create is its own justification. Neither fans nor critics, nor those who will never read a word of what I write, can match what I do, the vast majority want answers. That is one thing I do not provide, cannot give - because that's not a need. Whoever heard of a mouse or an eagle wanting answers? Riding the wind is enough, hiding in a hole is enough, nibbling grass seeds, tearing apart a dassie, breaking dead wood, caressing a human cheek - all that is enough.

Touch is enough. As I touch all I write about, and all I write about touches me.

At this precise moment, I lock gazes with a dog, about fifty metres off, who sits down at my return look. Dog and I mirror each other - straight-backed, cautious, alert, self-controlled. Measuring one another up.

But now it starts barking - is the owner close? The dog is gradually, somewhat nervously advancing towards me. A pair of geese swoop overhead, a private plane buzzes by. The dog disappears as the geese and the plane divert my attention - no, he has run past behind me, surreptitiously, on to the other side of me, my left side, towards the sunrise. When I bent down to the page, he seized the opportunity, plucked up the courage to pass by behind my back. Funny thing! So proud of himself now, dancing lightly off upon his doggy toes. Uncommanded, dignified, opportunistic, self-preserving, forward-moving. Blessèd instincts, precious, self-motivated creature!

 

S.O.S.! Respect for the soul at work

About two and a half weeks ago, my friend, Tony, from the days when we both still lived in Hogsback, called out of the blue.

Out of that day's unclouded sky, Tony brought renewed focus into my mind's unexpecting eye.

He asked me to clarify Table Love. He said he is busy writing about Table Love, because he feels it's important for people, for the world.

In that moment, he did something important for me: he took me back to a ritual, which my late husband, the poet Norman Morrissey, and I began for the first time on the 3rd of July 2010. It was really simple. We sat down together at his big oak table and absorbed ourselves into a companionable solitariness. Each listened to what came to him or her out of the silence. When something arrived that was more or less pleasing, true, satisfying, playful or significant, we wrote it down. In silence.

Whoever finished first, waited quietly, for as long as it took the other to complete 'their thing' - thought-string, piece, or poem. When both pens had been re-capped, we read our 'things' out to one another. Invariably we hummed and gave our sense, our understanding of what the other had done. Sometimes we commented, made suggestions, and sometimes we praised one another's creations. So there was a natural flow from companionable, silent solitude to sharing, responding and communicating.

There is nothing quite like sharing an absorbed, creative silence with another or, indeed, with others.

It occurred to me, after talking to my friend, that the Hiku Hikes are really extensions of Table Love, with the added benefit of being outdoors and susceptible to all the fresh air and stimuli offered there. In the Hiku Hikes, too, we move from silence to sharing, to further silent work, to further subsequent sharing. It's dynamic, peaceful and stimulating, nourishing both individual and communal needs.

The single most crucial aspect of both Table Love and the Hiku Hikes, I would say, is respect for the space of another human soul at work. The soul works in the dimension of what is sometimes known as 'the dreamwork', that is to say, in a dimension that is temporarily independent of pressing or immediate worries and concerns, a dimension whose concern is a lucid state of consciousness, whereby time and space are inhabited simultaneously without undue friction, and without the body necessarily being in action.

When you are truly engaged on a creative level, you cannot think yourself into another space, nor another time, than the one you are inhabiting at that moment. In other words, a kind of unification takes place between body, mind, heart and spirit. I venture that it is that unification, or unity, which we call soul. It is frequently felt as deep concentration - the choice of the word 'concentration' for this state of being-doing is not accidental. All parts of us are brought to a common centre or fulcrum. 

When a person has had no opportunity for and no experience of this, they cannot understand this process. A person who keeps their dreams away from the everyday, indeed, away from themselves, who is unaware of the needs of their soul, will automatically suffer impatience, there is a restlessness that prevents them from giving themselves or the other person silence and proper solitude. With this inbuilt lack of generosity and lack of respect for Time and Space, our industrialised, digitalised modern culture has been, to quite a large extent, dangerous to the dreamwork, if not lethal to the soul.

The peculiar need to throw stones into the still ponderings of others is motivated by mischievous jealousy and greed, not for anything material, but for the substance of their souls. It connects to a need to own the other person's time and space and to command it. It consumes what the other has, because oneself does not have it. Many people are anxious to prevent others from having what they themselves do not have. And many more compulsively inflict injury on others to avenge injuries they themselves have borne and have not tended to, let alone healed.

Human beings everywhere are doing what we can to remedy the situation in numerous ways, we are, many of us, occupied with the vital question of how to save our souls. The open secret, of course, is that it is for each of us to save our own, hence the emergence of healing modalities, such as soul retrieval, somatic trauma release, mindfulness workshops; bringing in fresh concepts and vocabulary to assist understanding, such as 'enneagram' and 'ecopsychology'; along with truly mindboggling advances globally in overall emotional and psychological literacy for everyman and -woman, for everygirl and -boy.

To paraphrase Pearl S. Buck, where the human soul used to be the most underdeveloped terrain on earth, it has become a hotspot of attention for the very good reason that reason alone has proved to be not enough!

It is a question of protecting the creative self, of preserving the creative flame, for it alone is the carrier of human souls forward. That, and the freedom of laughter, playfulness. Such insight comes not in garrulous, excited, or fretful company, but murmurs in the unruffled privacy of ponderings.

by Silke Heiss, published in Greater Matter

by Silke Heiss, published in Greater Matter.
The playful layout is thanks to Flow Wellington of Poetree Publications. 

The book is coming along nicely ... while the journal holds my hand

9th June 2024

I have been thinking repeatedly about bringing out a book about the Hiku Hikes, in which I discuss the origin, history & process of the activity, with examples of what people have produced. I may even have captured some first original creations in our [Norman Morrissey's and my Give Your Writing The Edge] newsletters.

10th June

I have messaged some of my previous Hiku Hikers and have thus far received very positive feedback, have created a folder for the book, and am gathering everyone's creations.

12th June

I reconnoitred a possible new route today and took some lovely pictures, but decided that it is not suitable for the next Hiku Hike. L's feedback has made me realise that I need to differentiate between different clients. Writers, experienced or budding, and non-writers. There is so much potential. It makes me happy if I can work under an open sky, deal with weather & nature as they come.

13th June

Of course, nature includes humans and their natures, as well as my own.

17th June

Eons have passed since I wrote the above. I had forgotten there was no rehearsal on that day [the 13th], but I had the pamphlets and posters printed at half price in Beacon Bay and left some pamphlets at E's practice. Friday I hung the last poster at Tea in the Trees.  

18th June

I pray I shall be led according to the best way forward. I came to Kwelera to catch up with myself and it is most vital that I walk and write each day. It be fitting that I write the book on the beach, in the forest - oh yes! That is what I must and wish to do!

Not bound to my desk, but to the beloved trees, the sky, the cormorants & kingfishers.
Precious, unostentatious rocks, tumbled assemblies of stone, foamy breakers - so exuberantly obedient to the forces of wind and centrifugal laws, delicious freedom, let my heart burst its human banks & consort, completely at one, with these wild and safely tethered powers, beyond the narrow range of human wilfulness, its vast illusions, let me be liberated into the cormorant, looping her neck down into untired pools, fresh and curious, and finding food.

21st June 2024

Today a wild berg wind is blowing & it is likely to remain gusty - let's see how that impacts the Hiku Hikers.

What is this wild wind, this warm day, at the winter solstice? An unnerving, dust-laden messenger that all must endure. And as a truck arrives with tons of further sand to unload at the building site, cattle graze within not unlush grass on their farmland, dust clouding the air and probably coating their tongues, insisting they imbibe extra minerals.

A freshness there is not, yet it beckons & tomorrow, coolth is forecast. In the ragged turbulence of this time, the strelitzia sheafs, long-bearded, with a crackling of ancient, grey leaves, slap and rustle in the boisterous air, shedding the stuff of human neurosis, human madness, unsapient, back to nakedness and, maybe, wonder.

23rd June

And we changed the route & it was sublime.

And the afternoon workshop was enriching.

24th June

Woman is a thought-adventurer.

26th June

A poem.

Not quite exactly

Rats' feet in the ceiling -
my only companions, at this hour,
when quiet is a philosopher's dream!

27th June 2024

I shall spend the rest of my days making sure that my writing sees the light of day, so to show its worth, its testament to love & life & art & a woman's self.

29th June

At long last. Fidelity to my soul: I am on the blue rocks again, a prodigal daughter.

Here is my place of work,

here is my desk: my lap; 

my seat, a granite boulder,

peppered with periwinkles, poking their miniature noses

into my flesh. I don't mind, the day is young,

laziness can come

after a little creative labour.

30th June

I am reconnoitring the route for the 20th of July, a very short beach walk. The water is very loud today and the pied kingfisher very close and energetic. Almost like a bat.

3rd July 2024

I have taken myself, or have been taken by the urge in my body, to the beach, a wash-up of stones on this less familiar side has stopped me in my stride & I am seated on a high-rock edifice, with a hearty, incoming tide rushing in semi-opaque greens over purples, greeting from below, purple-seaweed-brocaded rocks, and the foam is laughing over the stirred surfaces, and a hah-di-dah is laughing overhead. 

I am aware of anxiety in my heart, beneath my skin ...

I become still in a dimness of not knowing what I understand.

A man with a backpack walks by in boots over the stones, looks back & waves, I wave in turn.

Blessed am I to sit here, to try to catch the news that comes with these strong, fearless waves: that labour of the delivery, the labour of the water's cold, green, foamy truths, which have no opposite, just as life has no opposite. And B's homage, & my tears.

I know this, but only in the stillness.

Writing, writing, writing the anxiety down into these thin fibres of ink, serenity in the movement, natural, unstoppable, divine. Surrender. Surrender takes courage that ...

...

...

...

... that what?

What?

My womb. This wind. My partaking of the elements of which I am constituted. Wind from the west, from the north-west, harassing my bare neck, my shoulder.

Never stop.

Never stop.

Never shall the ocean,

never shall the wind,

never shall the rocks,

the light of fire,

nor the song from the womb,

stop, nor the blood-fed tissues, swollen

with longing for expression, sharing

their hour

with all

this.

An ecstasy, then, a letting go, surrender to the perfect patterns, the immeasurable and curvaceous geometry, the chemistry of sheer surprise, that is the gift of love.

Deeper & deeper the waters advance, higher & higher the splashings, empty now the cartridge of my pen.

6th July

The Hiku Hikes - A practice to evolve a healthier relationship with earth and language.

7th July

The book is coming along nicely.

At my desk. Which makes it possible to use a laptop, to type, to cut unwanted lines easily, to upload and to send stuff off into the human yonder.

Four-footed Fire

I want to re-ignite momentum on my blog! 

Through a series of blessed synchronicities, I find myself here again, at last, after almost seven months.

Today eleven years ago I formally wedded that beautiful soul, the poet Norman Morrissey and, in the wake of that event, I created a hand-made book of poems for him - most of which have never seen the light of day.

I'm moved to share two of them with you. 

They are quite distinct in their energies. 

Four-footed by Silke Heiss

Four-footed

My ring has four loops
round the green eye

of the centre stone.

Wisdom is an animal:

four paws on the earth

keep the heart humble

and the mind

uninterested

in suffering.

        *

The above poem was written in Grahamstown, where I was staying with my fifteen-year-old son, who was not at all happy, at the time, about my marriage to Norman. Norman, for his part, had his youngest son staying with him in Hogsback, so we were both, during and very shortly after our wedding, more or less absorbed in parenting, more than we could be in one another. This was painful to me, but the ring (which I had designed myself) gave me strength, it gave me the sense not to indulge myself. At least, my poem led me there, to a better self, you could say.

The second poem is entitled Fire. I like it because, as far as I'm concerned, it reveals me to myself more articulately and more wittily than I could do. If that makes sense. Here it is.

Fire by Silke Heiss

Fire

Hestia and Aphrodite

- the virgin goddess of the hearth

and the brazen goddess of love -

in me

somehow combine -

Hestia's fire keeps

my loins loyal,

while the love goddess' spark

illuminates my kitchen

and all I conjure

in the heat there.

Ag, it probably sounds very grand and unlikely.

But it's true

my eggs are in two baskets -

both very 

near fire. 

    

       *

Hmm. I shall be curious as to whether this little bit of breath on that little bit of tinder does, indeed, re-ignite my blog.

Strelitzia - my chosen wedding flower,
blooming in Sunrise-on-Sea, where I now live.

My sword

The banking consultant said, “I overheard your request when you were explaining it to my colleague. I saw you were burdened when you came up the stairs. But you still smiled when you greeted.”

He proceeded to tackle my request and, in the process, revealed that other consultants had (presumably unwittingly) blocked progress on the matter for three years, by giving me incorrect information. The consultant frankly expressed dismay and sadness over the fact that I had been given different stories, which effectively translated into loss of not insubstantial sums of money, with the bank benefiting on the side. Possibly the other consultants had not been adequately trained, or, due to innate lack of curiosity or interest, were simply inadequately motivated to assist.

The consultant had a mean wound on his forehead, which I was tempted to ask him about – had he been bitten by a dog? It was healing well, but it must have been a shocking and painful incident. Nothing in his manner, however, showed that the wound meant anything to him at all and it occurred to me that it might be intrusive of me to ask him about its origin, as it evidently did not cause him pain anymore and he had probably forgotten all about it. Indeed, he was giving all his attention to my finance-related instruction.

While he was working to resolve my situation, a little orange and black bug appeared out of nowhere on the camouflage trousers I was wearing. He was agitated, as bugs tend to be: busy feelering his way through a mission that was a mystery to me. I offered him my finger, which he climbed, scurrying up towards my wrist. I looked around.

“Is there a plant somewhere here?” I asked, but saw only non-living materials: comfortable chairs, sleek desks and counters, laptops, windowed cubicles, and numbered lockers in the space.

“Oh,” exclaimed the consultant, as his gaze moved away from the screen and fell upon the little creature exploring my hand, “I’ve never seen one like it!”

“Would you mind,” I queried, “if I run downstairs quickly and release it outside?”

“Not at all,” he replied.

I hurried past other clients, waiting in huge settees, who might have raised eyebrows, imagining that their patience was being tasked by the needs of a little orange and black bug, had they not also been surprised by the unlikely miniature adventure taking place before them. It was mizzling outside and I set the lithe little beetle into one of the trees that lined the village centre’s parking lot. It would be able to quench any thirst it might have, by sipping a watery droplet, and hopefully be able to make a new life for itself here. I jumped back up the stairs two at a time, aware that my body wasn’t quite acting its age, I am a woman nearing sixty, who has to watch her back. I slowed down enough to retain both health and dignity.

The consultant was still waiting for another department to answer his call and so, I, as well as the people seated around, were obliged to wait. The banker’s gentle presence exuded such patient peace that I felt moved to continue working on a poem that had come to me a couple of days before. I opened my notebook and quietly edited the lines. To my joy, they took on a shape I could not have predicted, a beautiful and profound shape I felt extremely pleased with. In that moment I realised that I must dedicate the poem to the banking consultant. It was a strange experience – an experience I have had over and over, without its ever being the same – of doing something I had never done before. I must set aside self-consciousness, all fear of embarrassment or doubt and judgment, and obey the impulse.

I wrote the poem out in full and dedicated it to the name displayed on the consultant’s tag. When he was done on his side, he gave me all the details of my case, explaining that, since it was a Saturday, my instruction would only be processed on Monday. I expressed my gratitude: he had helped me finally to shed a three-year financial burden. Then I told him what I had been busy doing in the meantime.

“You might have heard the expression that the pen is mightier than the sword,” I said, adding, “I am a poet and had been mulling over an unfinished poem. Your kind presence helped me edit it to a state I am very happy with. So I have dedicated it to you.”

I read the poem aloud and gave it to him. It's a few lines describing the shape and colour of a leaf, showing how it resembles a sword's blade and has its 'hilt' attached to the twig that joins it to the whole tree. The consultant's presence allowed me to understand the lines expanding their meaning to include the Tree of Life, upon which the poem is a small, green leaf, reflecting both the power of the word as well as the connectedness between living beings.

My sword

For Bradley Barnado

Sun through leaf:

bright blade

of green. Red at the hilt:

attached to twig, the holy place,

where sap flows from the tree

into your being.

“Thank you so much,” he said emphatically, “that is so beautiful! I will treasure it!”

He folded the piece of paper and added, “I am so glad I met you!”

“I feel the same,” I replied, “your attentiveness and kindness have made my experience in the bank this morning very special.”

“Thank you! Would you mind saying these things to my manager, emailing her?”

“Not at all, what is her email address?”

“Please also speak to her directly?”

He took me down to her cubicle, but she was not there. I promised to wait for her a few minutes and we said good bye.

When the manager arrived, I told her, “This young man is a gem,” and related what had transpired. She was delighted and asked me please to email her my feedback, something I have yet to do. I will certainly include the link to this blogpost.

A banking consultant who has time for a bug to be freed, and to hear a poem he feels privileged to treasure – he is a man of the new earth in deed. And the old earth, I’ve no doubt, agrees. Wounds do heal, mistakes can be corrected, and a mere leaf can tell us more than we might imagine about the Tree of Life.

– Silke Heiss, 3rd December 2023

HIKU HIKE interview 2nd June 2023

Silke: So just … let me know, please, how the experience was for you on this Hiku Hike?

Ed: It’s a lovely experience. What I found is that it makes you aware of the quietness, and that the quietness has, basically, words in it – and they will come to you if you’re prepared to go quiet and to listen. And then … then also to use those words, to write them down. Because normally it will just pass right over you and you lose it. But to write them down, to capture those thoughts, those words that came to you is something that you’ve got, tangible, to look back on. And then the editing of those words, to use those words to actually create a poem. A writing of the experience, of that – it’s beautiful, it’s opening up your mind to a whole new world.

Silke: And you said earlier that you usually go to the beach and you are looking –

Ed: Ja, you know I love collecting stones and shells and stuff, I’m always going down to the beach looking for stuff, you’re like quite busy looking for shells and looking: where’s the next shell? And that’s it. [Laughs] … come back and you’ve got nothing. You might have a few shells, physical things, ja, but now – going down to the beach I can now look for shells, and also I can – if I’ve got a notepad and pen with me – I can also capture words that are going to come to me, or sentences … and I can use those, so it gives you more. It gives you, like – you can go to the beach, for example, and you can collect shells, but you can also collect words and thoughts and images and, like I said, it opens up a whole new world.

Silke: And you can come back with things that didn’t exist before. Things that you created.

Ed: Ja, that’s true. So I can find things that are material on the beach, sure, driftwood and shells and stuff, but I can also create things out of the nothing. Ja.

Silke: And did the creative, you know, when you jotted your different impressions and then chose to work on particular lines and words – how did you find that choice in the editing process? You know, where you actually sift through your impressions and choose certain ones – can you say a bit more about how that was for you?

Ed: Well, I realised I’m having to create a poem, so then I sifted through what all I’d written and then I had to choose one, because there were actually many poems that I discovered that I could use and write on – different poems, but I had to actually, like, wow, okay, I have to actually choose one here in this Hiku Hike that you wanted me to write down, I had to actually choose one of them, which I did, but I realised it also takes a bit of time – you know, I’ve got to spend more time on it. I can improve my poem that I’ve already written down, but there are also other poems there that I can work on if I choose to and that’s great. I think it gives you so much more, it takes away that noise in your head, it makes you go to the quiet, you know, use the quiet.

Silke: And take what comes to you seriously, rather than dismissing it because you’ve got other things to do.

Ed: Ja, it’s a great experience and I think everybody will benefit by doing something like this, it’s like I said: it opens up a whole new world.

Silke: Did it help you in any way specifically with your writing? Because you said to me you don’t write, people don’t write.

Ed: Yes, it has helped, because you tell me to write something – it is a bit foreboding, like, gee, what am I going to write about? But just to jot down little simple thoughts, that’s easy, anybody can do it –

Silke: Yes.

Ed: And it’s great and I actually need to carry a pen and a notebook with me, and just keep on doing that and capture those thoughts, because I realised they’re coming out of the world, they’re coming from God or they’re coming from wherever –

Silke: To you.

Ed: Ja. It’s important. Whereas before you don’t realise it – you’re just missing them, you’re missing out!

Silke: Missing your own thoughts.

Ed: Ja. [Laughs] It’s crazy hey!

Silke: [Laughs]

Ed: It sounds crazy, but ja, if you do the Hiku Hike … everybody should do it, then they’ll know what I’m talking about! [Laughs] Ja, this Hiku Hike I found it kind of gives you the tools, but there are no tools, it’s no physical tool, but it gives you the tools to plug in to more of life.

Silke: Mental tools.

Ed: Mental tools. It gives you those tools, exactly.

Silke: Language tools.

Ed: Like I say it’s crazy when you think about it. If I look in the future at what I’ve written down I’m going to think wow! where did these words come from? But they do, they come to you and it’s an amazing revelation to … to know that things will come to you and you will be directed.

Silke: If you put yourself deliberately into a relationship with your surroundings.

Ed: Ja. And you can do it all the time, with everything, wherever you go . It’s like trusting your intuition and just looking for the signs. And it’ll help you. They’re there.

Silke: And they’re the ones for you. You know, different people on the same walk will obviously be receptive to completely different things, depending on where they are at in themselves, in their lives. And that’s what’s so beautiful is that each one is given what they need.

Ed: Mm. And I think this Hiku Hike actually helps a person to plug into that world, to plug into that reality that’s there, but because of our busy minds we’re not aware of it. But it’s there.    

/END

Thank you, Ed Low, for trying out a Hiku Hike, so we could have this chat :-)

Rocks on Sunrise-on-Sea beach, Amathole Coastal Resorts 

 

Equally human

‘The poor’ and ‘the rich’. Two terms, which, apparently, denote human beings according to their material property.

I recall teaching youths as well as adults in Soweto during the 1980s and early 90s. They were a relatively small élite, in that they were given the chance of receiving high quality education every Saturday, while their peers were watching tv, doing chores, laughing, squabbling or, worse, fighting in the streets.

A couple of years later I taught at a private college, which had sprung into existence to support young people who had not achieved university exemption, but whose parents wanted them to get some form of tertiary qualification. Many of them managed to register through UNISA, and not a few lacked the discipline and motivation to knuckle down and obtain their degrees. We, the teachers, were employed to serve this ‘clientèle’ by wrestling them, somehow, into passing.

What disturbed me at that time was the strong sense of the disadvantagedness of these ‘rich kids’. In hindsight, I guess it was the cadaverous fragrance of decadence that hung about them. Against all political correctness, I felt, strongly, the privilege of those select township children, who were loved and pampered by the education support programmes and really given the best in the allocated hours. By contrast, I felt sorry for and disturbed by the ‘rich kids’, who were paid for, but whose hearts and minds were all too often nigh impermeable. As human beings I judged more than a few of them to be quite stunted in their development.

It remains a horribly unquestioned perception that material wealth equals advantage. It is a skewed perception, however, because it is grossly superficial. The most advantaged kids I have seen in the last ten years were a group of grade 7s at a tiny school called Crabbush, in Hogsback in the Eastern Cape. They came to the local library once a week for supplementary tuition in English. They were considered disadvantaged because they could barely speak that language. However, they struck me as basically happy, healthy children, who recited new vocabulary in sing-song, and then strolled between free-roaming cattle from the library back to their school each Thursday. It disturbed me that such children should be saddled with so negative a label; just as it continues to disturb me that youngsters, who are fluent in English and who have private rooms in city dwellings, should be seen as ‘advantaged’ when too many of them are, in fact, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually dangerously neglected, in some cases even abused.

I cannot not mention the rich élite in the present government, who also demonstrate the potential 'disadvantage' of excessive material wealth when it comes to being a decent human being. The rich are helplessly entangled just like the poor in an outdated system and mindset, which is a system and mindset that prioritises the material identity of an individual at the cost of all that makes us truly human. The 'poor' who steal and lie and commit murder are not a jot better than the 'rich' who steal and lie and commit murder. BOTH classes are dehumanised.

I am trying to question, indeed, I would like completely to get rid of the mindset that says it's ok to steal and lie and even murder just because you are materially poor. THAT is one of the most HARMFUL attitudes, which robs the poor of their humanity and encourages material greed. That limiting mindset has rotted our civilisation through and through and stoked frightening hatred towards the rich, many of whom are, likewise, not in control of themselves – indeed, there are individuals in the South African government who are perfectly happy to demonstrate that it’s ok to steal and lie and cause the misery and death of others, just because they themselves are rich.

It is time that real human needs – for love, care, intellectual stimulation, manual as well as mental skills, as well as spiritual sustenance – are ranked equally alongside the need for food, drink, clothes and shelter. Nobody can enjoy the satisfaction of one need at the cost of excluding the other needs. The rich are just as human as the poor, and both are just as human as the middle classes (where, arguably, the greatest chance for a balanced lifestyle exists). Neither group benefits from being labelled, as these labels merely serve as blindfolds for the living hearts and minds inside the individuals branded so. The choice to honour your humanity exists for EACH ONE OF US – no matter whether you wear diamond-studded stilettoes or go barefoot.

Image by freepic.diller on Freepik

Image by Leroy Skalstad from Pixabay 

Self-tuning: The Tonic of Choice Words

I would like to present you today with two poems by Norman Morrissey, which perform very lucidly a dance of change in the spirit of a man. This change concerns a self-healing process, recorded in words, moving from a divided to a more integrated sense of self. 

For me, one of the most remarkable qualities of my late husband Norman – as man AND poet – was his determination to self-examine, to self-edit the tissue of his being and writing alike, in order to enact a continuous transformation of both poetry and psyche into a truer timbre. Self-tuning would be a choice word here.

 

Conscientious nerves

 

You talk

of a life

without regrets

 

– some line walked always true

so you never must

ache for your myriad mis-steps.

 

I’ve never been

that lucky,

there’s no recall of any day

 

my shoulders didn’t stoop:

memories,

conscientious nerves

 

rooting

in

my marrow.

 

– Norman Morrissey, first published in Sound Piping, Ecca Poets, Hogsback, 2015

 

I confess that I’ve long felt accused by this poem – of failing to be ‘conscientious’ in examining my wrongdoings – but this is probably due to the fact that the poem models the act of self-accusation by means of the conscience: describing the man’s very bones (“my marrow”) as being strung through with “conscientious nerves”. The lines, which alert the reader to this, are:

  there’s no recall of any day

 

my shoulders didn’t stoop

 

There’s an open display here, a FREE EXPRESSION of feelings of low self-worth and shame as performed by the body. 

Now I remember my father – a self-proclaimed atheist, fervently reverent of life – reminiscing on conversations with a pastor friend, in which he took issue with the Christian term ‘sin’. I can do wrong, he maintained, I can, as a human, do harm – but that does not make me a sinner. 

Hiding in this rejection of a fallen state is the heathen’s freedom, but also his innocence (though innocence is, of course, not necessarily innocuousness). The word ‘heathen’ originates as a designation of the ‘uncivilised’, but probably largely harmless, folk, who populated the rural areas (heaths) beyond the precincts of state and religious control. The online etymological dictionary observes:

It is most probably that the Germanic word haiϸana (heathen) referred to a person living on the heath, i.e. on common land, i.e. a person of one’s own community. It would then be a neutral word used by heathen people in order to refer to each other rather than a Christian, negative word denoting non-Christians.

I don’t see an untouched Bushman with “stooping shoulders” due to a deep, inner “ache” for his “myriad mis-steps”. But, on being told he is a sinner, surely her or his posture will change.

Nietzsche, in his critiques of the tenets of Christian civilization, examined the ominous build of resentment in the collective human psyche, due – if I recall his writings rightly – to unacknowledged guilt and shame over the fact that our species had murdered God;  resentment, then, being a phenomenon whereby negative feelings (grief, horror, shock, rue) are not felt and expressed, but denied and repressed, thus generating a continuous acid reflux (the metaphor is mine) of powerful energies denied the opportunity for natural transformation or –mutation back into the flow of life. 

The miraculous turning-point in the Christian story is, of course, that our wrongdoings, including, I would guess, the murder of God – surely our ultimate crime – are forgiven and, moreover, REDEEMED, through penitence before that same God, resurrected. The orthodoxy (Bible) prescribes words for us, with which to realise that miracle, which I understand even today serves the more non-verbal among our species, who are not given the listening tongue – but, for the poet, there is a different kind of freedom, that is to say, the freedom of conscientiously elected words. Consider the “shift” in the heart of him here:

The story

 

Something has shifted

in the deep of me:

the constant memories

 

– starting like a grouse at my feet –

fly differently,

don’t lurch

 

sickly

into shame and griefs

and thoughts

 

of clumsiness and wrong-headedness

– of ineptitude and folly.

There’s still

 

the whirr at my feet

and the wings beating

at my face:

 

but each visitation

starts to whisper

new words:

 

starts to hint

a new

language of belonging,

 

the replays

start making a movie

that shows the essential me.

 

I still have a script

of bungles and crimes

– but at least

 

it’s becoming a screenplay,

becoming a history

that makes sense:

 

and that changes

the shape of the story

as something to live with.

 

– Norman Morrissey, first published in This Moment’s Marrow, Ecca Poets, Hogsback, 2017

 

What I notice in this poem is the transition from a prevalence of guttural sounds and clipped consonants in the first four stanzas – sh, ch, f, t, c, s – to a lovely in-breeze of gentle w and wh sounds, and even the s in ‘visitation’ is heard as a soft z, in stanzas 5–7 – as if the breath itself were taking command to expel fearful tension in the body. 

The image of the grouse in stanza 2 – which strikes me as strange, foreign, even – suggests itself, to me at least, as an unconscious memory, “in the deep” of the poet, of the German word Graus (horror) – a word, which is pronounced the same as ‘grouse’. In the fifth stanza, this gives way to a softer, much more English-sounding “whirr”. 

“each visitation/ starts to whisper/ new words” we read, as the last four stanzas take on more measured, calmer rhythms and employ longer, soothing vowel sounds; while a prevalence of alliterative s’s snake confidently through – perhaps delivering a shimmer of Hippocrates’ staff of healing? Indeed, that staff is invoked in ‘Grasp’, a subsequent poem in the collection, whose last line names ‘This Moment’s Marrow’.

The poet’s use of the word ‘story’ to mean something he has shaped “to live with” must be firmly distinguished from recent usage of the word in a negative sense as ‘the story you tell yourself, which repeats old patterns’. Norman’s “story” is one which he has built himself, resulting in a sovereign, “essential me” – HIS history and life, which, despite “bungles and crimes”, he CAN live and, by implication, be at peace with. 

The choice of the word ‘crimes’ is particularly interesting, and, in my view, suggests that – unlike the sin-free heathen, or atheist – the poet faces his “essential me” as inextricably entwined into a species NOT FREE OF a violent and sacrilegious past.

Between ‘The Story’ and ‘Conscientious nerves’ lie two years; the last two years of the poet’s life. They record a process that took place inside the man, and allow readers to witness genuine self-healing, self-tuning, as it were, by the tonic of choice words.

For a more indepth examination of the minute particulars whereby Norman tuned, exercised and trained his voice to become the medication it could be for his soul, see John van Wyngaard’s superb Introduction in Gripscapes. This posthumously published book contains two of the three poems referenced here. Reading MORE of my beloved late husband’s carefully crafted poems CLOSELY may be the best thing you could do today, in order to prepare for tomorrow.

– Silke Heiss, February 2023