The summer I was turning thirty five was hellish awful. I was strung out to a dangerous point from anxious exhaustion following a rough few years after nearly losing our third child when she was seven weeks old and then helping my partner recover from a long term illness. I was unwell myself--pulled in so many directions and needing rest desperately.
I decided one day to go to the library alone for the first time in years, for my own self, no children in tow and I was an anxious mess. I recall standing awkwardly in an aisle, not knowing what I was looking for and stumbly reaching into my purse for a tissue as I was having an allergic reaction to something. A young librarian was shelving books in the same aisle and he asked me if I needed any help.
Do I need any help? I thought to myself--is my need so desperately obvious that even a stranger can sense my distress? I thought I had pulled myself together physically enough to be in public. I was showered and dressed in clean clothes and had a new purse on that my mother-in-law had given me.
Yes--I need some tissue was my incredibly awkward response to what I suddenly realized was a normal query wondering if I needed any library assistance finding a particular book. Uggh.
He said no problem, I can get some for you and graciously handed me a tissue box he found at the circulation desk and then asked what kind of things I liked to read.
I wiped my nose and red faced replied poetry.
He said I was in the right place and that the books weren't too dusty if allergies were what was causing my sniffling.
I thanked him for his kindness and turned embarrassingly away.
What is wrong with me--I can't eve do the library right! I admonished myself. And while I was standing trying to pull my frazzled nerves together and process this stranger's kindness in response to my extreme social awkwardness I saw him coming toward me with a book in hand.
Have you read Basho before? he inquired of me. To which I responded I hadn't.
Well, I was just putting this back on the shelf and I thought you might enjoy it. Take it out, give it a try. He smiled warmly handing me the tiny paperback with ink drawings on the cover.
He told me his name, Ryan, and I thanked him profusely for his warmth and caring and made my way to the circulation desk to take the book out.
That book of poetry literally saved my life during a summer I thought I was going to lose it. I borrowed it over and over again and read it cover to cover reveling in the knowledge that this 17th century Japanese Haiku poet named Matsuo Basho saw the world the same way I did.
That summer I walked across the miles of time through his words, sparing and decidedly precise. They were evocative of an ethos that represents bearing witness to beauty amid the changing circumstances of life and I understood my own need for this intuitively.
Poetry and kindness became urgent necessities for my healing and I clung to them over the months it took for my bodily shaking to subside and my weak pulse to regain normalcy. I feel a similar need now.
Be kind to self and other during this challenging time. You never know when your kindness is quietly saving someone else's life or your own. And never underestimate the ability of poetry to tie you to the living earth pulse of another.
Today I offer you Matsuo Basho's Collection of Six Haiku from poemhunter.com
Waking in the night; the lamp is low, the oil freezing. It has rained enough to turn the stubble on the field black. Winter rain falls on the cow-shed; a cock crows.
The leeks newly washed white,- how cold it is! The sea darkens; the voices of the wild ducks are faintly white. Ill on a journey; my dreams wander over a withered moor. Matsuo Basho
ps--A sweet friendship ensued between Ryan, his partner Emily and my family and I. Each day my husband and I drink tea/coffee from Ryan's pottery mugs.
Be well.
In kindness,
Jill