“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Virginia Woolf
Too long I hid away
thinking that in solitude
I would discover meaning
I learned much
but the very things that brought me here
that I escaped
stayed unresolved
Tho I lived in peace
I was not peaceful
Too many others carried with me
in my heart.
I spoke to their echoes
but only I echoed back
Now I return
to resolve the past
to dissolve the lie
of my old lives
Only this way can outer peace join inner
and fractures start to heal.
— G A Rosenberg
“I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of ‘thinking’ and ‘enjoying’ what they call ‘living’, I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.”
― Jack Kerouac
“Stop this ride and let me climb off.” I tell this to the conductor who is also me. He gives me a weary look and slows things down. He knows how often I have asked this before only to demand things start up again as soon as it came to a complete stop. Do I know my own mind? Better than most but I need to know it from the outside to see if TARDIS-like it expands eternally internally. The ride pauses if not stops completely and I grit my resolve and leap off. I hit the ground or I would if I wasn’t suddenly falling through the clouds. How often I’ve watched them outside an airplane window wishing somehow I could walk in that solid-looking illusory kingdom. It
s colder and moisture than I expected and not nearly as solid when you fall rain like. The ground comes rushing up to me and I have always been terrifying of falling or is that landing? Just like the ride tho, I slow to a float just above ground level. I step down.
There is a fire there. I sit down by the fire and look out and the stars are spectacular. They shift patterns and colours and I find myself entranced. At first I avoid inner quietude by naming unknown constellations but slowly out there lost in immensity my breathing slows. I let thoughts cross my mind without chasing after them. People pop in and pop out but they don’t stay long and after all its only me. Slowly I find peace and resolve.
“Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain’t no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
There’s a difference between being lonely and being alone and its a key one. As much as I enjoy company and genuinely enjoy speaking with others, at times especially while creating, thinking or meditating I crave solitude. Those are the times that even if I have gone where others have I am still blazing my own trail. The territories of the mind, heart, spirit and imagination are infinite and while there is a lot of cross-overs each passageway is unique. We can admire the path that someone else has made but we cannot take it as our own, they’ve paid for it with their experiences and those are unique to each.
After we have journeyed for awhile, it is fun to call a friend in to show them what we have found on the passageway as it is to see what they have found. Since we create our trail as we go, we can never know when we will use something given to us by another. Each item whether internal or external is sacred. Eventually the trails will converge with lifetimes of experiences shared by all.
Blessings, G
“It is necessary … for a man to go away by himself … to sit on a rock … and ask, ‘Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?”
― Carl Sandburg
I’ve been considering all these questions of late… along with the eternal ones posited by Spider and Jeanne Robinson. How did I come to be here and how did all this come to be here with me and ultimately with a sense of proportion, Why am I so alone? Oh I know I’m not. Between the internet, my family and friends anytime I want I can have a conversation of almost any intensity I want but when it comes to understanding and feeling understood I sometimes find myself in my own skull. Oh most times that’s not so bad. I kind of like it here and have been working at making it a fit place for company, even my own. Still find myself reaching out and reaching in and searching for that rock… Sometime’s pondering and contemplation are good for their own sake.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized
His Spirit Dreams in Electric Colours by G A Rosenberg
Observed by G A Rosenberg 
Atomic Cogs by G A Rosenberg 
