THE RAGGED WRITINGS OF EVERLAND

Definition: n. a ‘ragged writi  ng’ is basically a poem rejected: being as it is an affront to the intellect because the most used part of the mind can’t make much sense of it. 

     Some years ago I had submitted a few of my poems to a poetry society and had received a rather scathing reply in return. It seemed people could not understand them; and this was a problem. And so the rejected poems I began to call ragged writings because I was left in tatters. Mortified I gave up. Misunderstood and confused I didn’t write in this vein for another two years. Then turning it around, choosing to count it all joy, love filtered through and understanding came; and with it acceptance of my strangeness and I began again where I had left off.

   The sap rose once more and more powerfully for having endured such a harsh winter. Up through the stem, the fiery pillar in the dark, came ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower;’ (–Dylan Thomas) and in renewed creative energy new leaves of writing began to appear from the pruned branches of my broken life.

   Only now it seemed that from a surface perspective my ragged writings were harder than ever to decipher; and were perhaps even more incomprehensible. But it was alright. It was all right. Delight washed over all that I wrote: I knew I was where I was meant to be—in the Unknown with Love—love all pervading, all present, and all knowing. Confidence revived. The door opened. If art went abstract, but not without a battle, couldn’t poetry, also, and the rejection-battle, normal, in any living process of growth and change. Although these poems are not abstract; every line is full of known and intended meaning. I had experienced that my heart, torn and divided asunder could carry my mind’s every finding, further and deeper, and that it wasn’t necessary for the outer parts of it to understand. I was shown the primary purpose of these poems: it was not so much that they be literally understood, but that they literally stood-under us making us littler—for the littler we are, the lighter we become; and the lighter we become, the happier we are, which isn’t by more, but by less.                                

 Explanation: When I first tried to write an explanation to help people cope with the strange language that came out of me, it sounded rather antiquated, and strange in itself. But much of what has come out in this book is not exactly what I had intended; a hand other than my own writes deep inside my life. (I have written more on this in THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL.) Anyway, the following is what I first wrote after I assumed I was rejected and began calling them ragged writings instead of poems:  

A piece of ragged writing which upon first reading appears incomprehensible, will to the diligent searcher slowly render its secret treasure upon each subsequent reading; enlarging the faculties of the inmost being to taste and eat of a whole new kind of fare. If we will but let go the incessant demand of our intellect to understand something before we can enjoy it, we might develop the spiritual capacities that are within us instead – the ones which make us who we truly are – the exercise of which will bring a more satisfying reward than we could imagine.

   It is hard. But narrow a river and it will flow more swiftly. All our lives we have thought that it was the nurturing of the mind that was the way to knowledge. But over feeding the intellect has hindered the heart. And we have been frustrated, albeit unknowingly, in our longings for what was beyond and never finding it: for the way of knowledge by heart and spirit is the reverse of the way of it by mind. And anything in reverse is hard. To turn around is hard. But help a butterfly escape from its cocoon and it dies. Its wings never develop. It needed its struggle to fly. And so do, we.

   Read without wanting. Read as though being read, yourself. The ragged writings are as looking-glass stones, reflecting back at you whatever you see in them. You could work them out, with some mental effort, or, you could soak them in, with no effort at all; in both are joys. But most of all you will discover that you are given out of not demanding to understand; and you will find delight in it; as you let yourself—go.