I’ve been listening to a series of lectures on the poetry of Rilke given by Thomas Merton in 1965. Merton was a literature professor who became a Catholic priest who tended toward the mystical. I’ve learned some cool stuff, probably very basic to anyone who knows a lot about Rilke or Merton, but for me it’s novel.
Rilke went to Rodin to learn sculpture, but Rodin told him to write poems about things instead of sculpting them, and so he did. He is very good at focusing deeply on a subject that’s not himself. This is exciting to me, because one of my many sources of misery is my constant obsession with how I’m feeling at every given moment. Any study of something that’s not me promises relief from the confines of self-centered thought.
Even when I try to focus on something else, what I’m really focusing on is how that thing makes me feel. It bore me to tears.
Check it out:
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
That poor panther. He’s so trapped that the world ends at the bars. He walks in circles, occasionally gets a glimpse of something from beyond his world and then it vanishes. There’s another version of this poem that you can dance to, and it’s centered on a woman. I encourage you to listen now.
Working 9 to 5, by Dolly Parton
Good stuff. Dolly is a saint.
So, Free Life Coach, you’ve convinced me I’m a panther in a cage, a wage slave with no hope, what now?
Well, I can’t do much to fix the fact that society puts us into cages, gawks at us, and throws Doritos into our cage in a feeble attempt to get us to look at it. But I can offer a moment of respite from the pain that comes from staring at the pain. I offer not escapism, but momentary transcendence.
Look hard at something else. My friend Michael Landis writes poems about birds. Read them here:
Then, do what Landis or Rilke do. Go somewhere, a park, a zoo, a museum, a church. Stare at something: a tree, a bird, a panther, a statue, and then think about that thing for as long as you can without thinking about yourself or how you feel. If you can, try to write something down about that thing, only that thing. And then, share what you wrote. Or drew. Or sculpted. Gaze, create, share. Three steps to making life more bearable. And here’s the trick: share that thing with me or anyone and it’ll make their life more bearable too.
Hoping to see what you did with the moment you weren’t focused on you,
I remain,
You’re Free Life Coach
Sean Sakamoto
Agree big time.
This his without doubt. the best one yet. Sounds like a cool twist on meditation.