New Hemispheres: Day 2 – Movement into Solitude
New Hemispheres: Day2 - Solitude - Detail Shot
New Hemispheres: Day 2 - Detail Location
NEW HEMISPHERES: DAY 2 : Moving into solitude
I often go into a feeling of deep solitude and isolation when I work on paintings from this series. My phone seems to go dead and my outer life becomes very quiet. I often feel like I am forgotten or don’t quite exist in the world. I start to feel a quiet longing, but for what? This is a longing that cannot be filled by my being busy, popular, acquiring more material things, or eating more food or drink no matter how hard I try. I often try to avoid this loneliness until I remember the poem that I recited over the phone to a dear friend last year when she was going through a period of feeling extreme isolation and lonliness….
Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,
My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
by Shams al-Din Hafiz
I was also reminded of this what Don Jose Rios (a revered Huichol Indian shaman, who visited the U.S. at the age of 106) said:
In my eighty years of training I have suffered much. Many times have I gone into the mountains alone. But you have to do this. For it is not I who can teach you the ways of the gods. Such things are learned only by yourself, only in solitude.
