“I watch them every summer, the hot hills crouched like a lion beside the road. I see the strength—tawny skin pulled taut across long, lean ribs. I would take my hand and trace round ripples of male muscle, feel the hot rise and cool dip of his body. . . .”
So begins a poem I wrote years ago as a young woman driving along the Central Coast of California on my way to class at Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo. I loved the commute along highway 101, especially that stretch between Pismo and Avila with the golden rolling hills studded with oak groves towering up beside me on one side, while on the other side lay the Pacific Ocean, cool and shimmering, far below.
My commute was a kind of communion with silent companions that lay still and passive while I moved past them, watching them fervently. I traveled with my hands stretched out, tracing the changing contours of the passing landscape with my fingers. I felt the silky coolness of the sea, the soft brush of the hot hills– physically, intimately, intensely. And I felt as if I was leaving part of myself behind as I streamed past them
It was an overwhelming feeling, permeated by a sense of longing and loss, because that sense of connection, of “oneness,” I felt so keenly, was so fleeting. A waft of perfume, a balmy breeze, that slowly dissipates and disappeared.
Knowing this, sometimes my watching was like a spurned lover or jealous mistress. Sometimes like a distant voyeur, or persistent suitor, watching and waiting, watching and waiting. Waiting for that moment, as my poem concludes, when the lion so still and silent beside me would “rise, stretch his sensuous body against the sky with one low moan” and “pursue me”.
Pursue and devour, was the unstated implication. “Swallow me whole” is the metaphor that comes to mind these days—consummation.
All that waiting paid off, it appears. My relationship with the natural world has matured over the years. How I remember so long ago watching the streaming stars passing overhead on those hot, balmy nights, and being filled with a deep sense of longing and loss. This too must pass, I thought, and it was almost unbearable. But no more.
Now when I say goodnight to the stars before going to bed–the nights hot and balmy or crystal clear and cold–there’s no sense of longing. When I turn away toward the house nothing is lost. It’s all a part of me now. A sustaining presence.
And the passing days and nights, that sense of fleetingness that the poets have mourned over the ages, is “a dark stream streaming through me,” as I write in another poem. It’s all one, the stream and the streaming. It always was.
For those curious, here’s the complete poem I quoted earlier as written so long ago.
Hot Hills in Summer Heat
I watch them every summer, the hot hills
Crouched like a lion beside the road.
I see the strength—tawny skin pulled taut
Across long, lean ribs.
I would take my hand and trace
Round ripples of male muscle, feel
The hot rise and cool dip of his body.
I see the arrogance—rocky head held
High against infinity, the patient power
Unmindful of the heat that holds me.
Someday he will rise, stretch his sensuous
Body against the sky with one, low moan.
On silent paws he will pursue me.
And so I wait.
Beautiful language, beautiful writing. So interesting that your personification of the hills is male. A friend of mine put it–so many people think of the elements in nature as being mere decoration. You write about so much more than that, and I realize that my own relationship to the natural world has matured as well. Thanks for helping me see that!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your comments. It means a lot.
I love the notion of the hills looking like lions. Wow! What a visual. Sounds like you’ve had a very interesting life. Your words transported me to California! Since I live in New Jersey…quite a change! Love the blog, now following.
Thank you Katerine. I really like your blog too. Your last post on epiphanies sparked a lot of interesting conversation.
What do you feel is at the heart of your matured relationship with nature? What do you think has taken away some of this longing in the intervening years?
I really like this post a lot. I feel that at this particular stage in my life I am feeling a mixture of longing turning over into something else, even if I am not sure what that something is right now.
Good questions. I don’t think I had realized that my relationship with nature had changed until I started writing this–as often is the case. I think the change came from gradually discovering that what I was seeking outside myself is really within. Nature isn’t something apart from me, I’m steeped in it–so I can’t yearn for it or miss it–I can’t get out of it. It’s not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere. It’s all there is.
I’m not sure what I mean by “nature” though, or what “it” is. I just know there’s something in this sensual world that envelopes us–in its bone and blood and lifeforce, its mountains and rivers and trees and deer, that speaks to me, my bone and blood and lifeforce, and what it speaks of is that which articulates all of us, as if we were merely notes of a greater song we can only hear in unison. Not to get mystical or anything :). But it is a mystery. The Taoist poets call it a spiritual rhythm that moves through things that we can feel when the mind is still and we’re open to “nature,” our surroundings. Open to the “other” perhaps.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense. But I’m glad you got me thinking about it.
I too find that when I’m writing I discover things that I didn’t know already existed in my heart.
Funny how the most important things are almost impossible to put into words!
Thank you, Helen, for responding to my comment. I really needed that.
It’s weird, but after I wrote that comment, I felt a bit self-conscious, un-nerved, about it. Like I’d struck a false note, or revealed too much It’s hard sometimes to reveal things about the core of your being that you don’t quite understand, like you’re exposing what should be kept hidden.
Cooincidentally,soon afterwards,I book I’d ordered arrived, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (recommended by a follow blogger on this site!) As I was dipping in the book I found a section talking about the five great fears according to Buddhist psychology, and one of them was the fear of self-revelation through writing/speaking.
The author writes: “Leaving the refuge of silence demands the willingness to be seen, judged. It demands that we turn away from our desires to please, to fit in, to spare the feelings of those we love,and also from our desire to create a shapeliness that does not reflect how awkward, unfinished, and ambivalent actual experience really is.”
I think it was the last part I felt most self-conscious about–how to reconcile this increasing sense of bliss I feel in relation with nature, my surroundings, and the awkward, unfinished life I lead between those times. Also how to reconcile the great heart-stopping beauty we find in things with the great mind-crushing brutality we encounter elsewhere. I’m working on a piece about the birth of a grandchild and the death of my mother, life and death–and it’s so hard. How do we do it, carry them both? I felt so shattered, so vulnerable
But then this morning I saw your simple comment and it made all the difference–simply connecting with others, to hear yes, I felt that way too. We don’t have to understand it all, reconcile it all, we just have to connect with others–to hear and be heard–perhaps that’s enough.
Hi, Deborah, who was the writer? Was it Natalie Goldberg? I read quite a bit of Buddhist literature myself. In my classes I’ve never heard the teacher mention anything about writing though! I’d love to know what Buddhist text that Teaching on fear came from.
Your comment To me was pretty amazing! I think when we draw close to something true many negative feelings surface – the trick is to sense What they signify – are we Actually being untrue? Or i are we simply experiencing a natural response to being intimate and exposed?. That is of course where our best writing comes from.
The book where I found this was “Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry”, essays by Jane Hirshfirld. She references a Buddhist psychology system known as Abhidharma that lists five great fears, among them speaking before a public assembly, and she says this one is the particular demon of writers, the fear of self-revelation.
I like your response to my fears, and the trick to sense what they signify. I put the piece on birth and death away for awhile, and worked on Riffing on Roses instead–had a super day, all joy.
Thanks! I’ll ask my teacher if he knows that text. Always looking for the Buddhist angle on writing. Keep dancing, Deborah!