Shivers

I have come to identify the shiver that begins somewhere in my chest and moves first through the sinews of my bone and flesh and then rushes along my skin like ripples, as a symbolic gesture from my body, saying,

“Thank you for this.”

A hug enveloping me from either sunlight, or a blanket, or a close friend. Or the warmth of a story, or a powerful poem. Seeing the center panel of Monet’s “Water Lilies”. Seeing a movie where different poetic moments caught me and fixed me in place with raptured attention.

I know, when I shiver, that something is moving and shifting deep in my consciousness – I will not be the same for that incremental change which only adds to what I can only imagine to be this colorful roiling, growing, beating mesh of experiences in my mind. Even now I am shivering, because I just articulated a difficult feeling that I have not been able to put to words, a feeling I have had for a long time.

I looked at that center panel for ten solid minutes. I’m resolved to go back, and look at it even more.

I want to describe it to you, but I feel that I would be dishonoring the point of visual art. You are just going to have to experience it for yourself.

Experience it – not see it. That is a wholly different concept. Experiencing something means that you begin somewhere, you take a physical, or intellectual, or emotional, or spiritual journey. Many elements are involved – time, active participation, some level of immersion and absorption.

If I experience a painting, it means all of these things. I don’t simply look at it or see it. That is what I am doing 24 hours of every day. I am allowing it, instead, to fill my range of vision – to feel the colors splash into a thousand, pieced and layered brush strokes. I try to see the pond through Monet’s eyes, how he was able to see so much more in that water, that pond which he diverted a river to create for his artistic endeavors. I admit, I couldn’t see it. I don’t have the artist’s eye – or maybe I do. I have what he saw right in front of me. He was able to show me his world, gift to me his incredible sensitivity to color, how it can be provocative and utterly beautiful. I lingered on this revelation and discovery of beauty, immersed just as those water lilies were in the depths of the pond.

I shivered. Thank you for this.

I experience words. I don’t just hear them. Hearing is the process by which sound waves bounce off highly specialized bone and tissue structures in the ear, some of the smallest bones and tissues in the body, to reach an essential “drum,” which is then brought to the mind.

We are also doing this 24 hours of every day.

But I experience words. One should listen to words. Because words out loud are beautiful. Poetry is the art of experiencing words as sounds which have the magical ability to carry meaning.

Start somewhere. Take time, let the meanings and images change you, fill your range of vision, add to that roiling, growing, beating mesh of experiences in your mind. Ask questions – can I see things as the poet sees? Or am I being gifted with that ability? To what portal of beauty am I being taken?

Linger on your revelations. Maybe your body will shiver, a gesture that may come to symbolize gratitude.

“Thank you for this.”

Experiences do not simply accumulate over time. Neither are they simply life lessons learned. They are growing-happenings, which may have beginnings but no end.

Take this class, for example. I have met you, all you wonderful people. But I am reminded of something C.S. Lewis once said (paraphrased here). We will not understand this meeting now. It will change in meaning over time, and we must nurture and keep pace with the changes these memories undergo. You would do as much for a planted seedling. And until it is a tree, we may never fully understand this meeting, between you and I. It may be tomorrow, it may be months.

I want to remember one thing. The really important meetings, the memories – the experiences – may not stop changing in meaning, in shaping me.

Maybe not even until the end of all my days.

Thank you for this.