Behold The Dreamers (A Breath of Spring)

 

I seem to have lost my ability to daydream recently. My mind is too static to be daydreaming. To be lost in a daydream for me is to be in a state that is neither limbo nor complete awareness. It is when the unexpected images come to me out of nowhere of the mind. Daydreaming is prerequisite for my creative practice.   

I thought that it is frivolous to daydream in a world where there is so much disenchantment, injustice and tyranny. My ability to taste, remain quietly attentive and be receptive has subtly faded, like a little sickness, in my lonely vigil. Perhaps, they are the natural responses when we realise that our lives are in the hands of bullies and tyrants.

My journal has kept me scribbling and focussed on the familiar – the fishermen going out to sea at dawn, the pigeons courting on the roof, the motionless sea on a clear day etc. If I keep recording all of these familiarities around me in my journal, my hope is that I would be saved by what D H Lawrence describes as “this rhythm of eternity in a ragged, inconsequential life” in his novel, The Rainbow (1915). 

But there are a few moments of blissful respite when I spot rebirth in nature and the spring awakening. A breath of spring refreshes and revitalises my spirit after a long harsh winter. I know that I can always rely on a gentle singing voice of a black bird, yellow crocuses among the serpentine of ivy, or the punctuality of the daffodils and the blue sky above me makes me lift my head up. 

Although I mainly write about my tranquil pursuits on these pages of my journal, there are times when I find it cathartic to talk about the importance of looking after our mental health over a cup of tea. 

Gifts from my exceptionally kind neighbour

One of the reasons why I always return to these pages to write is that I can write in order to experience my true nature. I do not have to write for an editor, nor do I have to write in order to defend a corner. Writing can be therapeutic when it is very much geared towards fostering greater self-awareness. 

After writing a post here, I always leave my desk feeling calm, centred and determined to do something noble, at peace with my universe and everyone in it.   

 

“Only a series of todays…”

 

In Keats’ poem "Ode to a Nightingale", there is a line that has been perplexing the literary critic for years. It is a line where the poet is daydreaming (the poem ends with the question: “Do I wake or sleep?”) when he heard the song of a nightingale. 

Keats writes: “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down.” When Keats writes “immortal Bird”, he is not talking about the bird’s longevity but rather, its oblivion to death.

“Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down.” ~ Keats' poem, "Ode to a Nightingale"

This eloquent interpretation is from Andrew J Kappel who suggests that the bird’s immortality is a result of its ignorance of death: “For the bird there is, in a stricter sense than usual, no tomorrow, only a series of todays, and the easy ecstasy of its singing can seem wasteful only to an ontology for which there is a tomorrow, and which, hoping to live in it, invents conservation.”   

In his book, How to stop worrying and start living, I recall a sentence that Dale Carnegie wrote: “John Ruskin had on his desk a simple piece of stone on which was carved one word: TODAY.” 

I have forgotten much of what Mr Carnegie had written on the topic of how to stop worrying but the story about Ruskin is something that I have never forgotten. So, when I went to visit Brantwood last year, I was disappointed that I did not see this piece of stone on Ruskin's table. 

 

Humane understanding

We are lucky to be living in an age where people have more awareness of the issues related to our mental health. We are more understanding and sympathetic towards people who are burned out or under stress. 

My journal writing and my love of reading has given me a place I can turn to escape my anxieties. I suffer from anxieties and panic attacks throughout my life. 

 

Taking pictures of beautiful countryside and writing about the books and the authors I love make me forget about the external stressors of life. In my case, it is the love of reading that eventually gave me the desire to write. It goes hand in hand with the desire to create an alternative world that is kinder, more compassionate and humane. Above all, it keeps me sane and reasonably happy.  

 

My reading for the spring is a wonderful anthology by Walter de la Mare - Early One Morning in the Spring. Chapters on Children and on Childhood as it is Revealed in Particular in Early Memories and in Early Writings (1935). 

I stumbled upon on the concept of “reparative reading” by Eve Kosofksy Sedgwick in a collection of her writings. I bought a book by her for her critical writing on Proust but I came across this concept in her 1997 essay, Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading. 

According to Sedgwick, creating art becomes a survival strategy for those who seek refuge in an environment that is hostile. She wrote: “…it is sometimes the most paranoid-tending people who are able to, and need to, develop and disseminate the richest reparative practices…Like Proust, the reparative reader “help himself again and again”…”

 

One of the best examples of the reparative that I can think of is Charles Lamb’s (1775-1834) famous essays of Elia. The reviewers called his essays “dainty and delightful”, and praised for its “delicate grace and whimsical gaiety”. Lamb was not a stranger to mental afflictions. He and his sister, Mary both suffered periods of mental illness and he spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital during 1795.

Nevertheless, he created a dreamer, Elia, his alter-ego and his sister Mary was cast as “Cousin Bridget” in his essays. I love Elia for his lucid daydreaming and melancholy writings such as The Child Angel: A Dream and Dream-Children: A Reverie. The latter reveals a daydream in which the childless bachelor, Elia imagines telling his children about his own childhood and their deceased mother.

 

I find a kindred spirit in the essays of Elia by Charles Lamb, my favourite essayist and daydreamer. 

Lamb, who had to care full time for his sister Mary, was never married in his life. In the story of Dream-Children: A Reverie, he imagined what it would be like to have children and his own family. It is an idealised vision of life he dreamt for himself in order to keep himself sane. A perfect example of reparative practice or an empowered self-narrative. 

I suppose that it is this quality of the reparative, in other words, a form of coping mechanism to be able to confront life, in Elia’s essays that made me go back to him again and again.

Elia and Cousin Bridget. Charles Lamb dreamed of a better life for himself and his sister, Mary in his essays of Elia. 

“Afternoon Tea with Elia”

 

I find a kindred spirit in the essays of Elia. In a story titled “Old China” it begins with this sentence: “I have an almost feminine partiality for old china.” In this story, Elia is with his cousin Bridget who is reminiscing the time when they were poor and could not afford to buy expensive items without a detailed discussion about expenditure.

 

Every penny had to be saved up and every item bought was a pure joy. She remembers the worn out suit that Elia had to keep wearing in order to save money to buy a book (a man after my own heart!). But the book is not perfect either as it has loose pages, and Bridget has to glue them back. 

Now that they become well-off, the gift that he buys for her is a mere gesture whereas the gift that he purchased before they became rich had more thought and it mattered more. In essence, the reparative reading is all about showing empathy and humane understanding of others.

 

Gordon's homemade scones, bread and poppy seed cake are delicious for an afternoon tea while reading Lamb's The Essays of Elia.  

In a story titled “Old China” Charles Lamb begins with this sentence: “I have an almost feminine partiality for old china.” 

I think that the kind of readers who would benefit from reading the essays of Elia are the unhurried readers who believe in the advantage of daydreaming as explained by the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard in his book, The Poetics of Space:                                                                                                                                                                                                   

“…the unhurried reader—I personally hope for no others—undoubtedly enters into this miniaturising daydream. Indeed, this leisurely reader has often indulged in daydreams of this kind himself, but he would never have dared to write them down. Now the poet has given them literary dignity. It is my ambition to give them philosophical dignity. For in fact, the poet is right, he has just discovered an entire world.”

One is sheltered here

from the assaultive world

as if escaped from it, and yet

once arrived, is given (oneself

and others being a part of that world)

a generous welcome.

                                  It's paradise

as a paradigm for how

to live on earth,

how to be private and open

quiet and richly eloquent.

Everything man-made here

was truly made by the hands

of those who live here, of those

who live with what they have made.

It took time, and is growing still

because it's alive.

It is paradise, and paradise

is a kind of poem; it has

a poem's characteristics:

inspiration; starting with the given;

unexpected harmonies; revelations.

"A Clearing" by Denise Levertov, from This Great Unknowing: Last Poems. © New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1999.