Song of Nothing

Nothing has been written here for some time because I’ve simply had nothing to say. I found myself at the end of the semester empty and voiceless, having worked and played too hard. My life was absorbed by a calendar and to-do list whose enormous maw could seemingly never be filled, no matter how much I tried. The goodness and value of the work only made it easier to miss the fact that I was in dire need of some rest and recuperation. In the midst of this, there were some developments at work that hurt me somewhat but were fairly typical of any workplace. I just wasn’t used to such mundane responses in such a sacred place. I could feel myself spinning out of control, so I began looking for some solid ground and some rest.

I remember finally picking up the guitar after what must have been weeks without playing, and my spirits began to rise almost immediately. Music will do that of course, but I think this was the result of simply not doing something I had to do but doing something I wanted to do, rejecting the calendar and to-do list and spoiling myself with a half-hour of playing along with the Crows, Patty Griffin, and U2, but mainly just taking some time for myself. Suddenly, I could feel myself again, something rushed back into me that was old and familiar, and I began to feel better. But I am still hearing the song of nothing even as I come back to myself.

These brushes with nothingness are strange and compelling, and not a few religious people, from mystics to prophets, have drawn inspiration from them. Moses, Jesus, Paul, Siddhartha Gautama, Lao Tzu, Zoroaster, Muhammed: they all know nothing and therefore know something. I like to think of these moments as opportunities to travel to the edge of your existence and look over, maybe even put one foot into chaos. It is the equivalent of the Apollo astronauts looking back at the earth, or a child seeing himself in a mirror for the first time. We need to know the edges to know the center. We must take measure of ourselves at times to ensure that we are not nothing and that we are not everything, but we touch both of those borders and travel between them. At the same time, I do not want to represent these moments as quaint excursions from the self, weekend getaways that make us appreciate home when we return. For one thing some people never return from a glimpse of the edge; they walk on over and are lost, at least to those of us who remain. Even if we return from the edge, peering over into that abyss can be shocking, even life-changing. Frankly, I’m still not quite myself after my last look, which may account for the strange nature of this post.

As I’ve written here before, we’re never quite ourselves anyway, always moving among a number of selves, always presiding over the births and deaths of others. Circles of motion overlapping and rippling across each other. And even as I write this I find myself looking for something and trying to turn away from the nothing, but the nothing remains.

I know what this is.

It happens every year. Winter Solstice. The very definition of the edge of time. It always makes me a little crazy, and wild thoughts come into my head as I recognize consciously and unconsciously the birth and death of the sun. St. Mary of New York will remember many conversations about this, and I am reminded of an poem I wrote many years ago when I was feeling this way.

Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice
Sister of Solitude
Dreaded Longing
Light and Life.

On this seam of the seasons
I am charged with the static of
Change.
White noise crackles within
While the edges of time join
With no space between
Not even a crack
That will let me slip through.
The world is perfectly nonchalant
While my heart cleaves.

And while you turn turn turn
I whirl
Until I am dizzy with the vertigo of time
And chance,
The moment before the rollercoaster falls
Before breath takes the shape of words
Before the seed erupts into its warm tomb
Before the death of all light.
I am waiting
For fire and wind and rain
To consume these thoughts
Evaporating like shallow puddles
During summer solstice.

But there is no time like the present
For dancing on the edge
Knowing that to fall is also
To Rise Again
And the risen and fallen
All
Are part of the centrifugal sense of things.

Aristaeus, 12/21/93

And now I am also reminded of the insurance salesman, Wallace Stevens, who also contemplated the nothing of the winter.

The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

This is the mind of winter, and I feel it even in the land of the sun. Today I read St. Mary of Virginia’s post, and I recognize the song she is singing. Earlier, she likened it to Persephone descending into the Underworld for winter, a seed being planted in anticipation of spring. That’s not only a lovely image; it is also correct. But we are not there; we are here, in the dark, in the winter. And there is the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is, and I am the solitary listener who is nothing himself. All of this is part of the centrifugal sense of things.