To connect. To converse. To respond. To listen. To silence.
Through poetry.
There is a scene in the novel "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth where one of the main characters, Lata, gets lost in thought in the middle of a family wedding as she stares at a fire:
And yet, Lata thought, her mind wandering from one thing to another, perhaps this little fire was indeed the centre of the universe. For here it burned, in the middle of this fragrant garden, itself in the heart of Pasand Bagh, the pleasantest locality of Brahmpur, which was the capital of the state of Purva Pradesh, which lay in the centre of the Gangetic plains, which was itself the heartland of India . . . and so on through the galaxies to the outer limits of perception and knowledge. The thought did not seem in the least trite to Lata;
Imagine looking at a candle where you are right now as you read this - or better still, actually light one! And follow the steps that Lata goes through and imagine that that small flame is the centre of the universe. In some ways, it is - in so far as your field of consciousness is the most palpable sense of the universe that you can experience. And therefore, looking at it, as you are now, means that it is the centre of a universe.
Alberto Rios has a most exquisite poem, December Morning in the Desert, where his flow of thought follows one very similar to that of Lata's, starting with the edge of winter creeping into the desert, rising to the stars in the sky, cascading down to Earth again and the beating hearts of birds, and nestling into our Monday morning slippers. In the middle of it, he wonders at the silence of stars:
We should hear the stars as a great roar
Gathered from the moving of their billion parts, this great
Hot rod skid of the Milky Way across the asphalt night,
The assembled, moving glints and far-floating embers
Risen from the hearth-fires of so many other worlds.
He starts off talking clearly about galaxies in the sky. But there is a tender ambiguity in the last two lines here, where it seems to me that he could be talking about the candle you are looking at right now - or maybe your own hearth-fire. As I sit here listening to some music, and think about the billions of candles and fires lit around the world at any given point in time, even now, I could be forgiven for thinking that I should be deafened by their collective roar. The stars on Orion's Belt are swaddled by an infinite vacuum - and we all know that sound won't travel across that space.
But your flame, mine, that of billions others, they are overlooked by a vacuum, surrounded even - but they are not smothered. And yet we are not deafened.
So now I turn off my music. There are ebbs and flows of silence around me - but also the sound of our daughters moving upstairs; our dog stretching his dew claw on our wooden floor; me typing. And I still cannot hear those other flames or fires.
So what universe am I centred in?
I think it is a universe that is a house, a home. A home where we can move between different spaces - each one bounded from and with the other - and rest in our own space from time to time. A space where I can visit you, and you can visit me, sitting as welcome guests by the fires of others, sharing food and drink, words and laughter. Connect and let go.
And no more than the stars on Orion's Belt, there are parts of this wonderful world that neither I nor you will ever set foot upon, nor breathe the air in. And yet as we come to learn more about just how inter-connected this world and all its life is - how intra-connected even - the fact that we could feel isolated in silence should not blind us to how much the world lives in us.
This is not some esoteric mumbo jumbo. If we stopped to think for even a minute of where the food we eat comes from - each of the ingredients in our breakfast or lunch or dinner - tracing from rays of sun photosynthesising plants in the soil, through gathering, picking, transporting, packaging, transporting - and every living being that had any hand, act or part at any of these stages - we would glimpse a sense of how the glints and embers of the world around us do find their way to us, into us.
And so, we may or may not be at the centre of the universe. But the universe is at the heart of each of us.
This is true every time we raise our eyes to look at Orion's Belt, and marvel at how three stars seem to be aligned, and their light rays across space land on our retina before disappearing when we look away. This is true when we see a comet arcing across a night sky and we capture it between folds of cloud through a camera lens and print it on canvas for so many others to hang in their rooms.
And this is true when as descendants of star dust, we move to connect with each other over warm cups of coffee or marinated steak - or biscuit-infused ice-cream draped in warm toffee sauce.
Tomás Ó Ruairc 1 December 2022
"But that's the thing about having vision. It's not about always being right about the future. It's about constantly learning what's right and striving for it." - Daniel Jonce Evans writing of his wife Rachel Held Evans (d. 2019)
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank
"Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments." Friedrich Nietzsche
I don't speak because I know that something is true. I speak because I hope and know that authentic conversation between us will unveil the sense of Truth a little more. Tomás (Inspired by the writings of Mark Nepo)
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