Insight with a Laugh: A visual representation of my marriage

So these made me laugh because they totally remind me of mine and Spencer's relationship. I hope you enjoy them, and maybe find yourself in them too. :) They are by the online comic Wasted Talent in case the pictures stop working.

-Natalie Cherie

Minimalism with an Exception                                                                 Crank Test

Happy Day                                                                          The Symptoms are Horrible...and Delicious

Despectacled                                                                                     Your Argument is Invalid

The Playoff Beard                                                                                    The Bits I Miss

The Center of Time

August 30th, 2013

So I got to talk to my little brother Tanner for a good hour or so today. It was so much fun to just talk, whether on sports, his latest book, the impending first day of school, or friends. I was also eating chicken curry and so I, of course, was in a fabulous mood. And after sitting on my kitchen floor, in front of my only air-conditioning unit, watching RWBY trailers I decided to begin my next essay. I've been married for almost two months and it's been incredible, so I felt like it was about time to write about it. At first, I had decided not to talk about getting married because I didn't quite know what to say. Spencer and I had known one another, progressing from friends to dating to engaged and finally marriage, for two years. Each summer was spent abroad, first him in Jerusalem and then me in the United Kingdom, and because of these difficult and worthwhile periods of separation we've accumulated quite a few letters. But there is one letter in particular that I am thinking of that he wrote, not while one of us was abroad but, right before we got married. In his first sentence he used the phrase "the center of time" and ever since having read it I can't seem to shake the idea that this phrase is significant so I once again decided to write an essay about what it feels like, and only guessing at what it means, to reach the center of time.

September 1st, 2013

The Center of Time

Today I woke up fifteen minutes early. 7:00 am instead of 7:15. It was my first day being trained, I had only been hired two days earlier. Two months ago I might have treasured and fought for those extra fifteen minutes of sleep, especially considering my current rising time of 11:00am, but not anymore. You see I got married. I think it was while I was traveling in England that my fiance, Spencer, first mentioned this idea of waking up a little early. At the time he had said he was practicing making time to hold me. Later in a letter, he closed by assuring me he'd always have fifteen minutes to give. Well it's habit now and this morning as I slowly opened my eyes at 7 am, I automatically began to shift towards Spencer, lightly kissed his cheek, and watched his lips form a small sleepy smile. This is my favorite part of being married.

Shortly after getting married I was re-reading a letter Spencer had written to me the night before we got married. Usually, I noticed the end, which promised me 15 minutes, but I noticed the opening this time. It said,


"Ma cherie,
It is weird to think of this moment as the center of time. But it felt like it took forever to get here. And it feels like we have forever ahead of us (which has some pretty awesome potential)."

For some reason I kept having to re-read it, trying again and again to comprehend the phrase, "the center of time." I mean, was that possible? I don't think I would have cared so much if I hadn't found some possibility in them. Albert Einstein said, "Time is an illusion." and the Doctor from "Doctor Who" always explained time as, "people assum[ing] that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint-it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...time-y wimey . . . stuff." So I began to suppose that reaching the "center of time," keeping in mind my limited understanding, was perhaps possible.

November 13th, 2013

So I've decided that "The Center of Time" isn't meant to be an essay. At least not yet. Right now it's a poem. Months ago I was talking to Spencer and said, "I'm digging a trough against falling walls." At the time I was struggling with isolation and fighting against the onset of depressive symptoms. Needless to say, I wasn't referring to the Center of Time in relation to my wedding day or any other happy moment. But, I think I've come to a conclusion. I think time is medium that I will never understand. No amount of Dr. Who quotes or Einstein relative theory will ever truly express the difference between the movement of time and the comprehensible parameters we place around it. But this summation doesn't stem from a defeatist attitude. I've simply realized that for now I can't really claim that a center of time and eternity exists.

But I do still wonder. Maybe it's like the center of a tornado. The winds swirl around and in the middle everything is perfectly still. But if that were so, is it possible to make it to the middle? Are we forever stuck on the outskirts in turbulent winds, attempting to swim to the middle while dodging each passing day in fear of our time catching up to us as we're laid in the grave? Or are we already in the middle, mindless of our place in eternity, each striving determining our happiness or otherwise?

If we are already in the center of time then my Center of Time felt like my Wedding Day because it was the moment my current decision influenced the rest of my eternity. But if I'm on outskirts, forever fighting for an eternal perspective, then the moments of pure peace, between sleeping and waking, or in meditation and writing, these feel like frozen points of time, the instant I found my way to the center, if only to be pulled back into the winds in the next instant. In these moments I could live forever. And that's where I'll strive to stay whether by memories, writing, or digging troughs against falling walls. Because learning to live in eternal time, that's the goal when searching for the center.


Falling Walls

I wish I could freeze it.
And place it in a drawer--
On sad days of loneliness and difficulty,
I could pull it out and gaze once
Again on his peaceful features, so untouched by the worry of a waking reality.

I am digging a trough against falling walls,
Blindly scratching at the sands of my own time.
A Silhouette of the Living.

Perhaps if I dig deep enough someone will notice,
Long after my digging has ceased.
But if not I'll bury my tools,
In the top right corner of the base of my trough.
And as the walls fall in I'll wait to be found, all the while dreaming of a small sleepy smile.

The silhouettes of the living will stumble into timelessness,
Found only in themselves;
The contours of a memory and the potential of eternity.

"Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things,
Just sit still and let the world exist in front of you-
Sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes
And the world pauses in its tilt.
Just for a second.
And if you somehow found a way to live in that second,
Then you would live forever."

Lauren Oliver said that.
And no matter the falling walls,
I believe her.

-Natalie Cherie

A Substance of the Metro in September, 1918: High Modernism 101

In an effort to post more regularly I'm hoping to share at least weekly something that has impressed itself upon me. Recently I've done this by sharing the essays I've written, but with my return from Great Britain my essayistic boot camp has ended and I'm simply not producing enough to post. So I thought I'd explore some new forms of posting.

Today I had a three-hour lecture course on High Modernism in American between World War I and World War II. Some names you may recognize from this category are Ezra Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Amy Lowell, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, and Katherine Anne Porter. American Literary Modernism was, in essence, a response to the social and economic conditions of Modernity. With the eruption of World War I and chemical warfare, 5 million dead, and a world left reeling everything was beginning to change. Women gained the vote in 1920 with the 19th Amendment and a new set of sexual mores were coming into existence making many behaviors more acceptable e.g. cohabitation, homosexuality, etc. With these social conditions in mind, Modernity is described as a sense of newness and a dramatic rupture from the past. It's emphasized through Industrialization with the introduction of an increasingly present middle class and the assembly line method to production, as well as scientific developments with Einstein's redefinition of space and time and soon the atom bomb. And finally as previously discussed the social revolutions of the day (voting rights and liberality) were booming.

Understanding the atmosphere of modernity helps us understand the lifestyle of High Modernists who lived bohemian lifestyles, which specifically rejected the middle-class values. They tended to be ex-patriots living abroad, mainly in London and Paris. They were specifically not American Exceptionalists and they used art to imitate the fragmented pieces of their modernist world.

So fragmentation is a style beautifully displayed in Ernest Hemingway's writing.

Indian Camp
http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/73035/Prose1/the%20story%20Indian%20Camp.pdf

After or before reading "Indian Camp" consider looking for these fragmented techniques.

• omitted explanations, summaries, or continual perspective
• begins arbitrarily and no resolution at the end
• occasional symbols that are very personal to the author
• Tenuously related segments in juxtaposition

Now that you've read it, think of this . . . What if George was the father of the newborn Indian Baby? !!!!!
What!!!?!?!?! you may say, or maybe you saw it all along. The exciting part is that we'll never know. Why? Because of Hemingway's Iceberg Principle. Hemingway said, "I always try to write of the principle of the iceberg. There are seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows." In other words, it's not what you read in the words but what you read in the words that aren't there. Gertrude Stein once told Hemingway to write like Cezanne and from the choppy strokes, we find Hemingway's unforgettable Modernist writing style.

Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase

Modernism, under Ezra Pound, eventually took a turn towards an artistic movement called Imagism. Eventually, Pound went to something new and Amy Lowell became the torch bearer but essentially Imagism attempts to show and not tell, and connect the image with the complex. Of the image, Ezra Pound said, "And 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." And a complex in Freudian terms, to which Pound was referring later in the quote, is a group of emotionally charged ideas or mental factors, unconsciously associated by the individual with a particular subject, arising from repressed instincts, fear, or desires." Oxford English Dictionary

Below are two of my favorite Imagism Poems. Before you read them here are the "Rules of Imagists" as laid out by Ezra Pound.

• Imagists must have direct treatment of a "thing" whether subjective (imagined), or objective (concrete)
• Imagists must use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation

As regarding rhythm: Imagist should compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. See if you can see the image and complex connection.

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound-1913

September, 1918

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves;
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open
       windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.


Some day there will be no war.
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.

Amy Lowell-1919

And finally, perhaps the most far-fetched movement was Cubism as triumphed by Gertrude Stein. Cubism was an early 20th-century artistic movement that rejected realism by breaking a scene apart and reassembling it in a scattered order. If you were to imagine a conversation, but you could only hear the key sentences or random snippets of thought, and then string them together you'd have cubism. Below is only an excerpt but try to find meaning. I focus on the second section and what it means for women. See what you find.

Excerpt from "A Substance in a Cushion" from Tender Buttons

The Change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable.

Callous is something that hardening leaves behind what will be soft if there is a genuine interest in there being present as many girls as men. Does this change. It shows that dirt is clean when there is a volume."

Gertrude Stein

~~~END~~~

Feel free to leave comments about your feelings and interpretations or questions. Modernism is fantastic and hopefully, you've seen a couple reasons why. Also, Midnight in Paris is a cute film that deals directly with the Modernist group who lived in Paris if your curious to see a depiction. :)

-Natalie Cherie

Somewhere in the Leftovers: Theories on Self-Definition

So today I'm just going to start with my essay because it reflects a rather big change in my life. I chopped all my hair off. Yep, all gone. Snip, snip, snip, gone. Traumatic I think yes, worth it? For what I've learned, definitely. By the way, I also just got married as many of you already know, but I just want you to know that I haven't forgotten (not exactly possible) but I will be posting in that vein of the topic very soon. :) Oh and the other pictures are of my brother Tanner, husband Spencer, and me hiking the Narrows in Zions Canyon.

Somewhere in the Leftovers

Theories on Self-Definition

The influence of perception upon one's self-definition has not long been an intriguing idea to me. That is, until today. My crisis, which led to my curiosity, began by looking into a mirror. It is surely a singular experience to look into a mirror and not recognize the visage staring back, to question who I am because of what I see or perhaps what I do not, led me to wonder at the foundation by which I perceive and define myself. This wonderment began because today, in fact, is the day I cut off nearly all of my beautiful red hair. I suppose it truly isn't so drastic, dramatic, or devastating as I seem to feel, whilst sporting a "short-haired" pixie cut (perhaps more commonly known as the boy-cut). But, even so, I felt as though I had suffered a double blow, losing my femininity and self-definition in one swift cut. 

But why? A close friend had accompanied me to the session and left me with nothing but validating comments. My husband also loved my hair, reassuring me for hours of his love and "still-alive-and-well" attraction. But in the quiet moments, I still had doubts and felt near sorrow at my self-inflicted fate. Why? 

After less than thorough consideration, I have formulated some theories on the workings of self-perception. It seems as though self-perception is a condition not only felt by everyone but felt both in the imagined expectations of an onlooking crowd and the internal solidarity of a pondering self-consciousness. These influences, external and internal, are the opinions that formulate our definitions of who we are. Yet, our perceptions of each and the importance we lay in them, reflect the one which we choose to more wholly cling to and our resulting dependence upon a consistent good opinion. 

Then I was led to question whether an emphasis on one was better for a person's self-esteem and by extension their self-definition versus an emphasis on the other. No one can deny that as human beings we are affected by both public opinion and personal opinion. But as it is highly unlikely that either could deliver a truly consistent flow of good opinions it seems that self-esteem and self-definition are less reliant on validation and more on sorting truth and error. This is not to depreciate any and all forms of validation. Validation is, after all, the balm by which each human soul is buoyed up and healed. But much like the inability to remain unaffected by either internal or external influence, regardless of one's emphasis, it is as equally impossible to be affected when any form of validation is internally disregarded as either untrue or inconsequential. This disregarding is due to the fact that each person, to one extent or another, has in already formed internal perception which usually reflects not necessarily who we are, but who we believe ourselves to be. Thus, the importance of sifting inside and outside opinion into categories of truth and error. This process is inexpressibly important as only that which we believe to be true can forward to inhibit the progression of our self-perception. 

Before I delve into lengthy and personal examples, I'm sure you've noticed my frequent references to different functions of the self, mainly self-perception, self-esteem, and self-definition. These three functions are inextricably linked, forming the bridge by which our imagined being coalesces with the external presentation of who we want to be. And somewhere between who we think we are, who we wish to be, and who other see we find the emergence of a cycle: the cycle of the self. 

Though each element of the self is able to stand alone, they also simultaneously interact, compressing and eroding from outside influence while also shaping our perceived self. If we were to begin with self-perception we would each enter our own minds. 

Who do you think you are? Is it based on a personal set of opinions or were you told and convinced by others? 

This line of questioning will quickly tell you whether you put emphasis on internal or external opinion. But now you must ask, who's opinion do you most often believe? Your own or others'? Though difficult to answer this question will reveal the malleability of your perception which can become more malleable the more one more readily believes outside opinion. After all, a thousand different opinions is a bit more unstable than just one. 

Now we turn to self-esteem. In short, self-esteem is the external display of internal belief. If your self-perception is easily influenced by external influences you esteem may fluctuate rapidly. If you are more internally influenced it is quite possible that your esteem will seldom change, depending of course on your own changeability. Either way, this link must be mediated with an accurate judgment of the truth so as to sure up strengths, recognize weakness, and obtain true self-awareness, remaining unhindered by one's self or otherwise. 

And finally, we turn to self-definition. For me, this is where my self-awareness began. Not realizing my lopsided view on truth, which was that the harshest was most likely the most truthful, I rarely believed outside validation and too quickly relied on internal depreciation. In turn, my self-opinion was very nearly marred by a simple haircut. Why? you may ask. It seems that self-definition is often expressed by picking an external feature that reflects an internal quality. For example, femininity might be expressed by chic clothes for one, a knack for homemaking skills for another, kindness, giggling, make-up, or even long hair. For me, it was the long hair. Without even realizing it I had bestowed my entire feminine identity within the length of my hair. Ridiculous? Yes. Common? Unfortunately. 

Now for some backstory. I have always perceived myself as rather tom-boyish. No one could persuade me otherwise. I liked being a tom-boy and I was fine with that. I have also always been told that long hair is a sign of femininity and short hair is a boyish or lesbian style. Though I didn't really believe either claim I obviously, upon retrospection, tucked both gently away as possible truth. But regardless of the truth, I eventually wanted to become more feminine and ever since I've felt that I could use as much feminine help as I could get. Well, about a year ago I decided I wanted to get a pixie cut. And after a year of careful consideration and patient waiting, I did it, all the while claiming that I really wasn't that attached to my hair so it wouldn't be a big deal. I might have been fine. Though it was a shocking change to witness, my femininity still felt intact and any previous external opinion had been ignored and abandoned. But then as I got up to leave the salon my hairdresser reminded me to always style my hair or I'd look like a boy or a lesbian...and we wouldn't want that, would we? 

In one swift moment the possible became true, my femininity vanished, and my self-esteem tanked. For a few days, despite my husband's best efforts, I was determined to think I looked like my thirteen-year-old brother. And I was miserable. And even though that's probably still true, I sat down and started writing and soon my perspective changed. As I reflected I found myself in an unnecessary rut. Everyone I'd talked to, even my family, had loved my hair. My husband guaranteed that I still looked like a girl with or without long hair. All I had to do was decide to believe them. So I did. 

It's true my husband's hair is officially longer than mine. But it doesn't matter. I love my hair. But it no longer means femininity to me. Finding a balance between my opinion and other's opinions is hard, believing good opinion from either is harder. But balance is the only way to maintain a positive and forward progressing self-esteem. And that's who I want to be: always progressing. I am not my hair, but my hair can be me. And perhaps it is only after experiences of self-dissolution that carefully erode at our self-definitions that we can be truly self-aware. Perhaps it is only after we strip away our layers of perception that we are left with the sediments of truth. And maybe it is there that we can find ourselves. Because somewhere in the leftovers of every soul laid bare is the center of who we actually are.

-Natalie Cherie

An Attempt by Living Happily

So this essay is way overdue! To be honest I finished it a couple months ago, right at the end of my study abroad but had simply not taken the time to put it up. So here it is! The assignment was to personalize a poem that touched us in some way or another. With this in mind, I chose John Donne, the metaphysical poet who can talk on everything from sexual tension via fleas to true love regardless of distance in the poem I chose "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." Since there are no picture captions this time around, these pictures are from Spencer's and my honeymoon in Mendocino, California. And finally, with renewed vigor and determination I have two or three essays in the making right now so I should be posting more consistently . . . at least that's my New Year's Resolution in the middle of the year. :) Enjoy!

An Attempt by Living Happily

“Do you miss him?”

In some variation or another, this is the question most frequently asked of me here on my study abroad. And my answer is always the same: “yes.” And true to form the same thought will surely follow: “Oh you can tell...great.”

*

I’ve often felt myself consciously attempting to hide my visible “neediness” in hopes that it would just go away and I would prove stronger than I felt. I remember saying goodbye and hardly shedding a tear. I couldn’t because I knew if I started that my heart was liable to break. This denial of emotion, of which I will later explain the origins, continued for weeks until I was sitting alone; the moment in which my pretense utterly shattered.

I was sitting in a room, my own room, that felt nothing like my own on the campus of East Anglia University in Norwich, England. And I was crying, a lot. I felt dumb for being so emotional over such a silly issue but even so, I was grateful that I had my own room so I could “let it out” this one time. I doubt anyone would have thought the less of me for missing my loved ones, more especially my fiance, but for some reason, I felt almost guilty...selfish even for lacking the gusto to cope with our relatively short separation. For heaven's sake, I was sitting in England and still, I was mourning. I felt ridiculous. But looking back now, perhaps it more disturbing than feeling ridiculous in my sorrow, was that in my sorrow I felt guilt.

*

My acquaintance with mourning is not exactly traditional, but in reality very common. The only person I’ve ever been close to who has passed away was my adopted Grandma down the street. In the moment, I was told that she had finally succumbed to the cancer mourning felt appropriate, necessary even. But I have rarely felt the comfort of “excused mourning” again.

I suppose comfort and sadness are not words commonly used together, so perhaps I should simply learn not to hope for both. But in lieu of cathartic comfort, often found in expressed sorrow, one does not necessarily expect the pangs of guilt either. I suppose my reoccurring guilt began when I was quite young. Our family was just starting, my parent’s marriage was strained from financial pressures too weighty for any. There were times, as I grew up, that I dreamed I could fix all of our “problems”...but I hardly knew where to start. But one day I became disillusioned. I don’t remember why, the day, or the instant, but it was in that moment that I stopped crying. Looking back now I can decipher a strange fissure between the time when I could cry and the time I could not. I imagine that somewhere between those states I realized that if I could not fix our
problems then at least I wouldn’t add to them. I wouldn’t cry or mourn, I wouldn’t be “weak,” and I would never be a problem. Instead, I would stand strong as a haven of calm and support for those who struggled, who might never understand how I truly empathized.

I am still this way though I have since attempted emotional balance. But even now I find no comfort or catharsis from tears and expressed sorrow but rather guilt for having let myself slip and appear weak.

I suppose this isn’t entirely healthy.

*

Well as I sat in Norwich, attempting to be “healthy” and to feel comfortable crying a couple poems came to mind. The first was “Rabbi Ben Ezra” by Robert Browning. The first lines of the poem are permanently etched into my mind since it is with them that Spencer proposed to me. They say, “Grow old along with me!/The best is yet to be,/The last of life, for which the first was made:/Our times are in His Hand/.”

Oh good, I had succeeded in making myself cry more . . . like expected I still felt no better.

It actually wasn’t until much later that I thought to read “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne. But when I did I found even the title to be fairly ironic as it seemed to defy the widely-accepted premise (though I am not sure who created such a trend of thought or if it was ever formally agreed upon) that it is human nature to seek validation in one’s present state. Therefore shouldn’t I have been seeking some poorly written “heart-wrencher” song that explained to me in juvenile lyrics that it was okay to cry or some such comforting nonsense? Yet, regardless of what should have been my human instinct or mourning protocol, I decided to read John Donne who explicitly forbade my mourning state.

I wonder if perhaps, mine was an issue of sexist affectation. It seems possible, if not probable, that men feel pressured to by “strong” and in turn find it difficult to cry while women, on the other hand, are nearly expected to be more emotional to the point of making up for man’s lack of emotion in her overbearing capacity.

Maybe in this way, I sought to defy my perceived role and pre-determined reactions. Maybe not. Perhaps instead mine was an issue of independent nature and I simply did not care to feel the neediness which irrevocable followed my tears. Or maybe it really did relate to the emotional and psychological repercussions of a saddened remembrance of what may have been a typical past, and the hopeless outlook that follows a repeated and consistent lack of solutions.

But these “perhaps” and “maybes” were not my concern. At that moment I very little cared for the reasons why I was mourning, nor did I hardly care for the possible reasons I felt guilty while expressing sorrow. I just wanted relief. And I figured if John Donne felt that he could forbid mourning as a whole, then I wanted to know how he thought it could be done.

As I read I found a series of three perspectives or rather paradigm shifts that served to nearly eradicate one’s desire to mourn and replaced the tendency with an “innocent mildness” that accepted it’s state of being. The first was what I would call the Profination of Spiritual Love, the second: The Expansion of the Soul, and third: The Anchor of Two Separate Souls Intertwined.

If I were to break down the phrase “Profination of Spiritual Love” basically I would say that John Donne is convincing his wife or love to “make no noise” because “tear-floods, [and] sigh-tempests move” none but rather serve as a “profanation of our joys.” In other words tears and sighing degrade their continual happiness. In the following two stanzas, a contrasting correlation is created between two types of couples, the first being “Dull sublunary lovers.../(whose souls is sense) cannot admit/Absence, because it doth remove/Those things which elemented it.” The second couple (Donne and his wife) are immediately elevated as he describes them as, “But we by a love so much refined,/That ourselves know not what it is,/Inter-assured of the mind,/Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.”

The apparent contrast is immensely effective as any lover desires to be of “a love so much refined.” But Donne’s true point was made when he explains their actions. The first couple who, “Moving of th’ earth” with their mourning brought “harms and fears.” Whereas the second with “trepidation of the spheres,/Though greater far” remained “innocent.”

As I thought through this first paradigm shift it seemed to me that I could rid my sorrow on the basis of wanting to be in possession of the most refined and true love. I suppose Donne had a good point in proving this perspective to be a potential avenue but it simply remained uncompelling to me because honestly, I didn’t care if I proved my love, I just missed Spencer. So I moved to the second perspective.

The second paradigm shift is embodied in just one stanza but is perhaps my favorite of the poem. It reads, “Our two souls, therefore, which are one,/Though I must go, endure not yet/A breach, but an expansion,/Like gold to airy thinness beat./” This concept of expansion was first told to me by Spencer. This was not the first summer we had been apart. The previous summer he had gone on a four-month study abroad to the Jerusalem Center. It was during that time that he first expressed not feeling so far distant or separate but expanded. These were my first thoughts when I read John Donne’s similar assertion. It is actually this perspective which kept me from crying in the moments where I felt the need to. So lovely was the image of airy-thin sheets of gold I felt as though I could not cry but rather be grateful that Spencer’s and my love for each other was capable of withstanding the beating process of expansion. Yet, in one word I did differ, dramatically. Because I did feel a breach. Spencer’s existence and influence in my mind and even on my actions had expanded past the Atlantic Ocean but I still felt the viable absence of his physical presence. And so though I found partial comfort in Donne’s beautiful articulation I still felt the need to mourn and the guilt for the times I had.

Thus, I turned to the final perspective which was the Anchor of Two Separate Souls Intertwined. Here Donne uses a beautiful metaphor of two souls being the feet of a compass. One foot remains fixed and connected, not by location but longing, and as the other foot moves and wanders they lean in tandem and follow with a loyalty unparalleled. In a closing word, Donne says, “Thy firmness makes my circle just,/And makes me end where I begun.” And I felt calm.

I suppose in the end the question was never whether or not I should feel guilty for mourning the absence of half my heart. In the end, it was simple, though our love would expand across the ocean of insurmountable separation I could not help but lean after and long for our reuniting. Thus I would always desire to come home. But I did not have to mourn. I did not need to wonder whether or not people knew or felt sorry for me. I did not need to cry behind a closed door for fear of feeling weak. And if I did decide to mourn for a moment I did not need to feel guilty for doing so. I suppose “being emotionally healthy” is a how-to question I may never answer, but at least, for the time being, I was able to find solace in the words of a poet who knew what it meant to miss and the way in which to continue living. How? In essence, happily.

-Natalie Cherie

The Stamp of Immortality: The Mortal Moment Part Two

Flying Kites in Tintagel

I'm back and officially online for the next ten days! This is because I just arrived in London which is absolutely fantastic and exciting. Our hostel is situated next to an Opera Garden so each evening we hear the sopranos and baritones singing as we write. It is quite excellent. Each day we'll so see a new site and we were even able to book tickets to the musical WICKED. I can't wait! So the past little while, when I've been gone from the online world has been tons of fun. I've been exploring the legends of King Arthur in Tintagel and singing with locals in the Wellington Hotel pub of Boscastle. I was even crazy enough to play some music on my guitar. It was pretty neat because they were so welcoming and even gave me a sandwich because I played. 

Cheryl was one singer who was kind of sassy and coy. She was absolutely delightful. She would act along to the ballad lyrics and make jokes to involve us as young adults. She was Scottish and before I left she came up to me, cupped my face in her soft, weathered hands and lightly kissed my cheek. Jack was the B and B owner and he was there playing his Mandolin-Banjo. He is a painter and the walls of his home are lined with beautiful oil paintings of the harbor. Also, he loves rock so as we sat looking through all of his collected items, statues, and photos there was classic rock in the background. His granddaughter's name is Genevieve and she was running around calling after the little dog Ollie who didn't like to stay put. It is honestly one of my favorite things to watch the everyday lives of people. I find it delightful and fascinating. I was even inspired to write a song about Genevieve so we'll see where that goes. 

The twisted trees in Stourhead Garden 

Soon after I climbed to the top of Salisbury Cathedral and was able to see the immense architecture which holds everything up, all weighing down on literally four feet of foundation. Incredible...pictures coming soon. :)

Apollo's Temple (the Pride and Prejudice rejection scene)

Then we removed our group to the Isle of Wight where we visited Queen Victoria's summer castle, Osbourne where she led her quiet family life away from the pressure of public life. It was really fun to see some more recent architecture, coming from the Victorian Era, but it was kind of mindblowing to realize that Osbourne's recent architecture was closer in age to our own Nation than the bulk of England's buildings. I also got to swim in the ocean for the first time at the Isle of Wight when a bunch of us went night swimming. It was rather cold but a total blast. 

Oh oh! And we were able to visit Stourhead which is where a few scenes were filmed from the newest Pride and Prejudice movie. It was a beautiful expanse of gardens and there was a very romantic feeling to the area. Everything was in bloom and the sun was shining. The grotto and other rock structures were super cool and the Romanesque statues were so lovely. On that note I don't think I've ever seen so many naked statues before, but alas. Anyway, it's been a wonderful time flying kites as the sun sets on the ocean, feeling like Anne of Green Gables while sitting in the blowing grasses on the cliffy shore, running around looking for wifi, and meeting local people like Cheryl, Jack or Genevieve. I even got some time to write and finish my essay. So here is the second part to my essay The Mortal Moment: Trekking the Pilgrimage of Existence. This is the last part title The Stamp of Immortality. Enjoy!

The Stamp of Immortality

North Germanic Sea

I remember this concept re-invoking my attention after a short conversation I’d had whilst walking a stormy beach. To my companion I had expressed that the ocean and the waves never grew old, their awe-inspiring effect always stunning as I looked out upon them. But she had heard something quite different.

It has always interested me how people can perceive two different experiences or meanings from one original source. Perhaps I will look into that later.

Anyway, though I had merely expressed awe at the stunning effect of the ocean my friend had heard only two words, “never ages.”  At that moment our conversation took quite a different turn as we began to analyze the endurance of nature, its means of existence, and what I will later define as the stamp of immortality.

Tintagel

Perhaps nature’s most stunning quality is it’s agelessness. No matter the time that passes, the lives the play out, or the generations that pass, nature never seems to yield. As an ever-constant companion this omnipresent existence has paralleled itself in our minds to God, resulting in the prevalent idea that nature is a consistent connection to the divine. This connection whether founded on the shared qualities of consistency, beauty, power, or endurance has served as a balm to those who have sought its repose.

The Jurassic Coast

But what is it that people find when escaping to the isolation of the wilderness? The capacity to endure and the agelessness of dormant energy buzzing through the life-blood of every plant is certainly to be found when entering the woods or walking along a beach. If one is religious, feeling a closeness to God is made vivid upon entering the hills. But these findings, though important as they symbolize the endurance of nature, simply answer the “what”? Perhaps more important is answering the “how.” How is it done? How is endurance, like slow plodding, achieved in such intricate beauty and sheer magnitude?

The “how” is what we titled as Nature’s means of existence. We began by dividing its contents into two categories. A plant expert or even just flower gardener, might call the categories the annual and the seasonal. I, as a writer, have learned to recognize the elements of landscape as the pillars and cycles. To be categorized as a pillar an element of nature must serve as a foundation immovable. Those the effects of time may erode or deface the efforts of such pillars their sheer attempts to remain attain them the timelessness upon which the fresh beauty of nature is built. Among this category stands the rocks, the cliffs, even the pebbles of the beach. Mountains, valleys, the oceans and the sky. For a time even the castles of medieval men may serve as a monument to the pillars. The waves which keep time by their which coordinate with the pull of the moon, or the sun which rises and sets along our horizons all become the pillars of immortal nature. 

Fountain Abbey's Ruins

Perhaps an easier to recognize those which the requirements are to simply remember the four elements of earth, air, water, and fire. It reminds me of meditation. Almost a year before I came to England I was taught to meditate by the elements. My fiance served as the storyteller, weaving smooth lines of prose that embodied the elemental imagination behind my closed eyes. Each breath was modified depending on which element we were emulating. Water was smooth and relaxed, earth steady and firm, fire was energized and powerful, and air was light and ethereal. Each was fulfilling in and of itself but when juxtaposed in contrast to each other became foundational, or the pillars, by which internal peace was achieved. This to me was when I first discovered the “how,” the means by which nature exists.

The South Cliffs of the Tintagel ruins

In the seconds category, that which cycles, one will find the plants that bloom and leaves that fall off of the trees, the rains and snows which fall only to dry or melt, and even the animals which are born, live, and die, soon returning to the land. The cycles, like the pillars, are fundamental to Nature’s means of existence but instead of adding the timeless effect of endurance they add the agelessness of constant rejuvenation. This rejuvenation or as I first heard in The Lion King’s “The Circle of Life” is what grants peace when simply submitting to the way of things. All are born, each has the opportunity to live, and all must die. The new will rise up, the old will pass away. Upon the aged footprints of one are the tried and tested footpaths of the other built. When coming to such peace in life, and indeed death, we too like Nature discover the way to exist meaningfully.

Though the how is perhaps most important for implementation, and the what for comprehension, it is when the two come together that self discovery is found. Self discovery may be considered the “why” of nature. But with no other reason than self discovery being a less-than-evocative title I decided that “The Stamp of Immortality” was a better explanation for the possible reason behind an individual’s turn towards nature.

It seems to be a trend that many individual’s turn to nature for isolation, inspiration, or repose. Even I seem to fit the mold, having laden myself with thousands of dollars worth of debt and flown thousands of miles, leaving behind my loved ones to find something more hardly knowing what it was I was searching for. But what is it that we all have in common, why the exodus, why the need for a pilgrimage to nature? W.G. Sebald made famous by his writings which detail lonely wanderings, isolated melancholy, and forlorn musing once said, “Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.” Ophelia, while singing of flowers and mourning their wilting leaves says, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts...There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when my father died. They say he made a good end."

 And even my friend and I, amidst small talk, found significance in the two words, “never ages.” Lying in common with each is the hope of life, the inevitability of death, and the stamp of immortality.

For Sebald nature may have served as the means by which to express his “enstrangement...with their (memory) mounting weight.” In The Rings of Saturn his English wanderings became the path of his repose, his own means of existence, his way to endure the bleakness, the grayness of life. Perhaps unlike many, Sebald wasn’t seeking personal immortality in reaction to a fear of death or a love of life, but rather reconciling himself to the immortal struggle of lonely minds. Such isolation and reconciliation with grief may be found in nature.

It surprises me how similar Shakespeare’s Ophelia is to an author like Sebald. Such words describing enstrangement, loss, struggle, and isolation previously used for Sebald, all make an accurate characterization for Ophelia’s turn to nature as well. But their remains one fundamental difference. Unlike W.G. Sebald, Ophelia not only finds in nature expression for inexpressible sorrow but also relief and escape from burden through death. In the play it is a matter of little dispute as to whether or not Ophelia’s death is suicide. Because she did not attempt to save herself, maybe due to her insanity, she was accounted responsible for her own death. Yet, while looking at her peaceful body I wondered if she was rendered unaware of her own distress through her perfect acceptance of the course of life and the way of death. Can this be immortality? Can accepting our eventual end implant our beings into the fabric of nature as our bodies will when embracing the dirt? Is this immortality?

A Pride and Prejudice moment!

When coming face to face with the dead Ophelia I experienced my own moment of mortality. My hands seemed to grow cold prematurely as I stared at her face and I found myself frightened. But now I am not afraid. The dispelling of my fear occurred after my own turn towards nature. By engaging in the tradition of humanity I tapped into the exodus to nature and the pilgrimage of existence. For me mortality and nature seem to unite while standing before the sublime. To stand on the edge of a precipice and recognize the possibility, this is the sublime. To stand in awe at the pillars and cycles, to be stunned by the endurance of nature, and to glimpse the stamp of immortality, this is the sublime. While in England I have found such places while climbing the steep slopes of Tintagel or hiking on the craggy cliff edge of the Jurassic Coast. In these moments I stand in peace not wondering whether I will ever live up to the legacy I hope to leave. In these moments I stand in relief, feeling satisfaction in the life I currently lead. In these moments I stand in amazement wondering how I might unite myself to the earth created by the hand of my God. In these moments I begin to write. And the trek continues as I search for the words of what it means to live and how to live. As I search for the words of how to die and what it means to remain as a voice upon the wind calling lonely souls to nature, I enter the pilgrimage of existence and perhaps for a moment suspend or rather embrace my own mortal moment.

Hannah Thomas scratched Spencer's and my names into
the Ladies Window along the Jurassic Coast approaching Boscastle

-Natalie Cherie