Finding Places
When I need something there are a few places that I will go looking. When I was younger I would climb to the top of a tree to find it, as I got older I searched the different corners of the world. I will listen to a song until I am safely lost in a rhythm that can hold my worst fears, often unwanted loneliness, at bay. I’ve tumbled into pubs and ordered the most mundane of beers, with the fail safe knowledge that friends, laughter and ‘one more’ will dull the edges of perceived or actual failure. Writing will transport me away from the sucker punch of a friendship that is faltering, no faltered. I’ll use my hands to create, just about anything I can - food, art, diy - with the hope of sneaking away from the responsibilities that I’m not meeting. Walking, one foot in front of the other, is the tool I return to when I’m avoiding the truth of various well rehearsed anxieties, that truthfully I might have got it all terribly wrong.
And then there are the places that I go to when I need to find myself again. These places are often the landscapes that others have walked in and subsequently written about. I am currently rereading Jeanette Winterson’s brilliant ‘Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal’, and was reminded of a truth - “that is what literature offers - language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.” So, if I need to remember that my innate humour can pull me out of danger I will read Roger McGough; that my kindness can soothe my troubles - Olivia Laing; that my curiosity is my secret weapon - Oliver Sacks ; that I have had many adventures and will have more - Paul Theroux; that living a full life involves searching inside myself and being honest - Julian Barnes or that we are all similar and in this together - Michael Palin. These are my finding places.
Recently, I have found a new finding place. This particular poem gave me the salve I needed during a moment of doubt and sadness at the de-peopling of my life, especially as we enter December, the most socially full of months.
I hope you can also find solace and joy in it.
Go to the Limits of Your Longing
Rainer Maria Rilke
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.