September's End

Sometimes there seems just too much honest sadness out there to bear and so little opportunity to relieve it. Oh, I can serve as a good ear and responsive heart, and sometimes that can be some comfort, though I doubt that it relieves much pain. I recognize how powerless I ultimately am to actually do anything to provide much relief of any lasting significance. And vice versa. Dylan writes:

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine

He’s right from his side.

Sometimes the wisest strategy is just to make a retreat. So I come out here to Walden to write, to read and to think. Ah, it is so peaceful out here. Today is a warm last day of September, and though many trees have already lost their leaves, those trees still adorned are afire in color. There is no wind. I think of Sigurd Olson’s Listening Point. He writes, “I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard. Everyone has a listening-point somewhere. It does not have to be in the north, but some place of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe.” Olson says that we all seek a Listening Point, and I have always     thought of Walden as my discovery. I came out this afternoon to my Listening Point troubled in mind and seeking peace.

I opened all of the five oversized windows and let the air blow freely throughout the cabin. And I sit down in my reading chair with my arms resting loosely on my torso. And I listen. And outside the cabin on the eastern wall I hear a small community of woodpeckers pecking away at my cabin. I race outside flailing my arms and screaming mild oaths only to discover large patches of pecked cedar. And across the southern and western wall of Walden I see swarms of box elders basking in the warmth of the afternoon sun. And above me I spy the beginnings of a wasp’s next in the angle of the room beams where even a broom couldn’t reach unless I stood dangerously on a ladder risking my brittling bones.

And I recall Fran Lebowitz’s dictum: “The great outdoors is lovely . . . so they tell me!”