Interlude I

This will be a short post because I do want something to happen on the blog while I work on a more difficult, longer post. Sometimes working on the next post gets interrupted by doings such as skiing around here with the first snow. Then there are difficulties with making the writing clear, then guests, Thanksgiving away and so forth. Since I’m not a professional writer and have no obligation to write, I sometimes simply put pen to paper or pixels to screen as Susan says and save the results for later thought or for the bit bucket.

Let’s start with a comment on my last post “Into the Morass, Part I” about different kinds of epiphanies. This is from a friend, MER, who follows this blog.

“I have been thinking a lot about what you wrote, mainly, ”epiphany”. I’ve been trying to figure out, have I ever had an epiphany? I wasn’t sure if I had….but then when you wrote about music, I remembered. I had gone to a John Hyatt concert in Rutland, Vt. And he had two guitarists, a base, and a drummer with him. One of the guitarists, he did a solo. It was so good, it was if the music you could see floating out from his guitar and into the air. I was stunned. Never before had I actually seen the music.

Then thinking of art, I went to the Boston Museum of Art to see the exhibit of Monet. It was the first time for me to go to an actual museum of art and I was in my early 40’s. There I stood, looking at the different paintings of Haystacks. It took my breath away. Same haystacks, but different time of day, different season, every one, everything different. So much color, so much paint, layer upon layer, turning each into works of pure enjoyment.

Poetry…..Bill writes poetry….and his words are written down on anything he can find to write on. Cardboard to yellow legal pad. I guess I have an epiphany when I read his poems too. They express so much of his soul, again, his heartfelt words take my breath away and i am in awe. Those so far as I can think through, are my epiphanies.

I am so grateful that, little by little, I can have these experiences. I don’t look for them, I have no bucket lists, (don’t care to think of lists to do before I die) I live for the moment and when something wonderful happens….an epiphany! Awesome!!!”

In talking about epiphanies there are many directions one may go. I’m struck by MER’s comment that she wasn’t sure that she’d ever had an epiphany until she began to think about it. Then she realized that indeed she had had that kind of experience which is not simply enjoyment, but a feeling about being “more alive” and that life has meaning. Although one can’t program epiphanies, just becoming aware that one has had them and can have more of them in the future is, I think, the beginning of a light-hearted but serious religious practice. One looks for joy and meaning and finds oneself becoming aware of the depths of existence and the sacredness of everything, particularly one’s fellow beings. And one becomes grateful.

This feeling of gratitude is a key point. I remember a trip to the mountains, which at one point ended up with two of us climbing up Middle Sister from a camp at Upper Chambers Lake lying to the south of the peak. It was a day of blowing clouds with glimpses of sky and on the summit one could see down through deep rifts in the clouds to depths below and across to South Sister. This was some time ago before the summit register on top of Middle Sister was removed. I started idly reading through some of the entries, many of which were simply on scraps of paper loose in the aluminum register. Then I came across one that affected me deeply. It was written by a women who had climbed Middle Sister for the first time and expressed how grateful she was to have been given the experience of being on the summit. I immediately felt the same way; that I had been given an incredible gift, the kind of gift that makes life deeply meaningful. This time it was MY eyes that filled with tears.

On the way down the two of us glissaded using our ice axes. I worked my way more and more to the east where the slope steepened towards 45 degrees (which seems when looking down almost vertical). I was in some kind of easy relaxed zone. The glissade was a joy, but I warned my less experienced comrade to stay on the less steep ridge which was safer for him.  Being in the “zone” is another kind of epiphany which I will go into later, but for now I want to consider how epiphany or, indeed, “mystical experience” relates to philosophy and language.

Ah, philosophy! The morass deepens and I’m floundering. But I will thrash around and hope to extricate myself and hope to have more to say besides incomprehensible garbage.