Wisłowa Szymborska

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

August 6, 2020

 

Some Thoughts On Culture That Nurtures

 

All human beings live inside cultures. Our language, our customs, the things we make, the way we interact, the stories we tell all help to co-create our culture. Our culture is supposed to help us understand ourselves and the complex, mysterious world in which we live. Culture is supposed to nurture us—help us to be confident, happy, imaginative, loving and kind. It should nurture our genius, help us to realize our fullest potential. Each of us is unique and has much to give to others which no one else can.

 

If we turn on the TV, we may find that many of the messages we get from the programs and from the commercials are unhelpful. They don’t make us wiser or kinder, happier or more free. They can make us more fearful and angry and depressed. We are taught who we should hate.

 

There are old and new stories about Paradise. It either happened a long time ago, or may happen sometime in the future. I try each day to tune myself to the Paradise that is already here. In this newsletter, I’m looking for things that will inspire, delight, enlighten, or in some way help the reader to bless this day.

 

Sometimes we need consolation:

 

Consolation

 

Darwin.

They say he read novels to relax,

But only certain kinds:

nothing that ended unhappily.

If anything like that turned up,

enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

 

True or not,

I’m ready to believe it.

 

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,

he’d had enough of dying species,

the triumphs of the strong over the weak,

the endless struggles to survive,

all doomed sooner or later.

He’d earned the right to happy endings,

at least in fiction

with its diminutions.

 

Hence the indispensable

silver lining,

the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,

the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,

fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,

stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways,

good names restored, greed daunted,

old maids married off to worthy parsons,

troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,

forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,

seducers scurrying to the altar,

orphans sheltered, widows comforted,

pride humbled, wounds healed over,

prodigal sons summoned home,

cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,

hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,

general merriment and celebration,

and the dog Fido,

gone astray in the first chapter,

turns up barking gladly

in the last.

 

—Wisłowa Szymborska

*

 

I like happy endings. If I get into a conversation with friends where we talk about how terrible things are or how bleak the future looks I always try to end our talk on a positive note. Hopelessness and despair accomplish nothing—except to make us feel miserable. Life is short. This day is precious. I want to enjoy it.

 

Kirk Bromley shared this poem with Howard Thoresen, who sends it to all of us:

 

The Tuft of Flowers

 

I went to turn the grass once after one

Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

 

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen

Before I came to view the levelled scene.

 

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;

I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

 

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,

And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

 

‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,

‘Whether they work together or apart.’

 

But as I said it, swift there passed me by

On noiseless wing a ‘wildered butterfly,

 

Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night

Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.

 

And once I marked his flight go round and round,

As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

 

And then he flew as far as eye could see,

And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

 

I thought of questions that have no reply,

And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

 

But he turned first, and led my eye to look

At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

 

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared

Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

 

I left my place to know them by their name,

Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

 

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,

By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

 

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.

But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

 

The butterfly and I had lit upon,

Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

 

That made me hear the wakening birds around,

And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

 

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;

So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

 

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,

And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

 

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech

With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

 

‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,

‘Whether they work together or apart.’

 

—Robert Frost

*

 

Here’s a poem Kim Stafford sent our way:

 

      The Fact of Forgiveness 

 

It is a given you have failed.

It goes without saying you were hurt         

      and so you hurt some others.

Of course you alone could have saved someone         

      or something you did not.

The midnight court of the sleepless mind         

      has reached its verdict: Life Sentence.

Life will be long and hard, but also mysterious         

      in how you are condemned to live          

      by beauty all the same.

Through the bars of your cell, you must watch          

      the moon grow full and generous.

A tune made for others will arrive at evening,         

      smuggled into your mind as if for you.

The world can’t keep its treasures from you—         

      no matter how little you deserve,        

      you have it all:

Moon, Sun, Sleep, Waking, Water, Air—        

      a bird dancing away out of sight         

      leaving the print of its flight         

      and a filament of song          

      for you.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

Kim’s poem reminded me of this passage from Shakespeare:

 

Hamlet:  What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?

Guildenstern:  Prison, my lord?

Hamlet:  Denmark’s a prison.

Rosencrantz:  Then is the world one.

Hamlet:  A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons.  Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.

Rosencrantz:  We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet:  Why then, ‘tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.  To me it is a prison.

Rosencrantz:  Why then your own ambition makes it one; ‘tis too narrow for your mind.

Hamlet:  O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space— were it not that I have bad dreams.

 

That’s it for now.

 

May all people be happy.

May we live in love.

 

–Johnny