Coming soon ~ Black water breaking into reality ~

 

Autumn returns to us. It is the season of departure. The geese begin to migrate above the sky. All the tourists who came to this seaside village for taking the waters and refreshing sea air, unimpressed by the sober background, have disappeared overnight. 

The flowers that had brought me into daily contact with the grandeur of nature said goodbye for a while. 

According to the metaphysical poet, George Herbert (1593-1633) who peered at life through the lens of metaphors, the flowers have gone underground “to see their mother-root…where they together,/ all hard weather,/Dead to the world, keep house unknown.” 

The slant of October sunlight does not have loftiness or nobility against a grey sky. It is a maturing sun that puts us into a state of silence and reverie like a retired Colonel. When I was a child, I knew a neighbour who was a retired Colonel and read his newspaper in silence. I remember the way he mournfully stared at his cup, antique China, exquisitely etched in a gold pattern, while he waited for his tea.

 

As a precocious child, I was incredibly talkative when I went to visit his house. One day, the retired Colonel paused from reading his papers and looked at me through his black-rimmed spectacles with his severe expression and said: “Speak only when it can improve the silence.” 

I shall never forget his words. But at that time, I was young and not clever enough to understand what he meant. I thought how absurd the retired Colonel was and I made a solemn promise to myself that I will not be like him when I am old. 

It takes some time to arrive at the stage of maturity.

Autumn is never monotonous in this part of the world where I live. It can be extremely volatile. One has to go along with the weather by accepting and adapting to its variations. 

We had a terrible, deadly storm which lasted for nearly two weeks. It brought strong winds and heavy rain and substantial flooding which caused widespread disruption and a risk to life in some areas. 

I looked at the gale-force winds and waves crashing over the harbour, and the sea was almost black. It was immensely frightening. It reminded me of the line from Wallace Stevens’ poem: “Black water breaking into reality.”    

 

                                 

The wind blew in the empty place.

The winter wind blew in an empty place— 

There was that difference between the and an,

The difference between himself and no man.

No man that heard a wind in an empty place.

It was time to be himself again, to see

If the place, in spite of its witheredness, was still

Within the difference. He felt curious

Whether the water was black and lashed about

Or whether the ice still covered the lake. 

[...]

'Black water breaking into reality.' 

Extracts From Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas ~ Wallace Stevens ~

If, When he looked, the water ran up the air or grew white

Against the edge of the ice, the abstraction would

Be broken and winter would be broken and done.

And being would be being himself again.

Being, becoming seeing and feeling and self.

Black water breaking into reality.

Extracts From Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas ~ Wallace Stevens ~

The Collected Poems Of Wallace Stevens

by Alfred A. Knopf, New York (1954) p. 255