I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .
– Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
And are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
(translated by Robert Bly)
The awakening of individuality is a continual unfolding of our presence. Individuality is not a thing or a position, nor the act of fixed or stolid identity. Individuality is the creative voyage of aloneness in which the gifts and limitations of real presence emerge. The nature of the beginning inevitably holds the rhythm of the future. The secret of individuality is powerfully suggested by the act of birth. We come to the earth in an intensely vulnerable way, for birth is an act of separation. We are cast out into the emptiness as the cord is cut, yet the wound of connection remains open for the visitation of beauty.
E
MERGENCE
:
B
REAKING THE
S
HELL FROM
I
NSIDE
The sadness and despair of beauty laid bare.
HERMANN BROCH
WE USED TO HAVE HENS ON THE FARM. EVERY YEAR CERTAIN HENS would offer themselves for the adventure of love and motherhood. The sequence of events usually began when a hen would distinguish herself through accentuated ‘clucking’. The adult powers intuited that she was having a passionate liaison; consequently, she was chosen to sit for weeks on a collection of eggs. With the warmth of her feathered body she hatched the eggs. If the weather was very cold and the eggs were almost hatched, my mother would bring them in beside our kitchen fire. Then over days the new chicks would begin to emerge from the eggs. Again the journey was signalled through sound. You would hear the little chicks’ beaks faintly tapping at the inside of the shell. Then the sound would become louder and gradually from the inside the shell would be cracked open. The plastic-like inner sealing of the shell would appear. You would see the little beak push against it, almost the way a finger does inside a balloon. Then the sealing would break and the next thing a wet little yellow-haired, greased-up chick would waddle out, looking wet and miserable and fumbling in its movements. After a while it would dry and become the sweetest little creature adorned in a fine fur of golden feathers.
When we are wounded, we close up. Rather than soft, porous skin growing back over the opening, we decide to grow a shell. This idea came to expression in the following poem:
F
OSSIL
No
Don’t cry
For there is no
One to tell,
A mild shell
Spreads
Over every opening
Every ear
Eye
Mouth
Pore
Nose
Genital,
A mildness of shell
Impenetrable
To even
The bladed scream;
Soon
All will be
Severed echo,
And the dead
So long
So unbearably long
Outside and
Neglected
Will claim
Their time.
After being hurt, it is natural and indeed necessary that we draw back inside the shell. No-one can force us to emerge and risk growth. Indeed, the probability is that under pressure the retreat will go deeper and the shell only become harder and tougher to crack. Once we recognize how control and self-protection rob life of all vitality and rhythm, we will find ourselves slowly advancing towards the threshold of risk and trust once more. Because life is so short and its invitations so thrilling, it is such a waste to become absent from life. The memory of the birth of new life through the wall of a shell has always remained for me an image of transformation. When the new life had found its form within that sealed darkness, the dream of light awakened it. In an absolute risk for the unknown and the unseen light outside, the chick broke its only shelter, destroyed its nourishing protection, to stand naked and tiny in a foreign world. And sure enough, within a short time, it becomes a joyous and excited participant in the possibilities of its new life. Although there are no guarantees in the kingdom of risk, nature shows us, time and again, that it is precisely at that moment of greatest risk, the moment when everything could be lost, that the greatest change happens. A new life opens out into a new world that could not have even been dreamed before this. It is difficult to find the courage and vision at the points of deepest wounding to believe that new risk can take us into new life. But there is no alternative. When we remain sealed away inside the shell, we are no longer able to hear our own life. Even the voices that really care for us sound like severed echo. We will grow only more deeply lost, unable to hear even the whispers of the heart.
T
O
C
REATE
B
EAUTY OUT OF
W
OUNDEDNESS
Beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life.
NIETZSCHE
WHEN WE DECIDE TO EXPLORE OUR LIVES THROUGH CREATIVE expression, it is often surprising to discover that the things that almost destroyed us are the very things that want to talk to us. It could be years later; time makes no difference in the inner sanctum of this encounter. The wound has left its imprint. And yet after all this time the dark providence of the suffering wants to somehow illuminate our lives so that we can now discover the unseen gift that it bequeathed. The labour and discipline of creativity refines our blemished seeing, and gradually an unexpected gift comes to light. Because creativity demands patience, skill, expectation, desire and openness, it leads us to another place where we learn to see in the dark. Nothing is said directly in a creative work; it is obliquely suggested. Perhaps creative expression is a way of telling something indirectly that we could never tell out straight.
Beauty is not all brightness. In the shadowlands of pain and despair we find slow, dark beauty. The primeval conversation between darkness and beauty is not audible to the human ear and the threshold where they engage each other is not visible to the eye. Yet at the deepest core they seem to be at work with each other. The guiding intuition of our exploration suggests that beauty is never one-dimensional or one-sided. This is why even in awful circumstances we can still meet beauty. A simple instance of this is fire. Though it may be causing huge destruction, in itself, as dance and shape and colour of flame, fire can be beautiful. In human confusion and brokenness there is often a slow beauty present and at work.
The luminous beauty of great art so often issues from the deepest, darkest wounding. We always seem to visualize a wound as a sore, a tear on the skin’s surface. The protective outer layer is broken and the sensitive interior is invaded and torn. Perhaps there is another way to image a wound. It is the place where the sealed surface that keeps the interior hidden is broken. A wound is also, therefore, a breakage that lets in light and a sore place where much of the hidden pain of a body surfaces. Unlike the natural openings in the body, a wound is an unexpected, foreign opening. Some accident or dark intention forced the breakage of surface. A wound awakens and focuses the reserve of the immune system. The overriding desire of the body is to seal the opening, to heal and restore its inner darkness. Yet the wound takes its time to heal. While the wound is open, new light flows into the helpless dark and the inner night of the body weeps through the wound. In the rupture and pain it causes, a wound breaks the silence; it cries out. It ruptures through the ordinary cover of words we put on things. Each wound has a unique shape and signature. Woundedness is one of the places where normal words and descriptions break down. We know the distance words have to travel whenever we attempt to tell someone of the pain we feel. It is no wonder then that the wound as the sore point of vulnerability cries out for some new form in which to express itself. As we have seen, the beauty of great poetry and music is often infused with pathos.