The Message

My landlord calls me, with some degree of affection in it, I feel, The Hermit, what with my living alone, and undisturbingly quietly, in one of his back apartments, and never entertaining in it, and seeing me, now and then, always alone on the streets (returning home from my daily, either to the post office and store or to the local park, for some reading in the Southern California sun).  And I suppose I am, in a way.  Though not deliberately sought out; like the young man from Massachusetts who drove deep into the forest in Maine one day many years ago and simply abandoned his car and set out on foot, deeper into the crowd of trees, to find some peace and solitude, and lived that way for twenty-seven years.1  My ‘hermitage’ is because I have lived a long life alone, even in an intentional (spiritual) community for many years of it, and am now in my retired twilight years, back in my old home town; which seems to me much like that of the man in Washington irving’s classic tale.2  

And so I do my reading - much of it on the Internet, now - and fretting.  About life.  In particular; and in general.  And as to that: I recently had occasion to remark, via email (I feel that ‘letter-writing’ is a lost art, these fast-food days), to a person who had written an interesting article which she had preceded with a quote - she reported - from Cicero, and to which I responded with the information - i.e., my information - that that quote was, rather, from Cato.3  She was kind enough to write back, clarifying that it was Cicero who had kept that quote alive, of a hundred years before his time, by writing about it in one of his marvelous works.  The exchange, and interaction with a live person on the other end of an article in one of my email newsletters (we got talking - exchanging - briefly as a consequence about Cicero), prompted me, for some inexplicable reason at the time, to go to this town’s Main Library and see if they had the novel about Cicero and his times, by Taylor Caldwell, that I had remembered reading many years ago, during my early manhood, and at a time of awakening more fully to what was going on around me.  And there it was, on their shelves.  Just awaiting some earnest reader like me to chance upon it.  And be moved by it; as only books - well-written books - can do to us.

A pillar of iron.  A man of principle.  A man after my own heart... 

I had totally forgotten most of it.  And all of a sudden, in its early pages, that time in Rome’s life came leaping out of the pages at me.  How extraordinary, I thought; about how a propos it all was to our own time.  The same themes.  Including

war.

Always

war.

Incessant

war.

I am sick unto death of

war.

It will be ever thus??

Not if I can help it…

As to that.

I hold no malice for no man.  We are all impaled on the crook of our conditioning (and it is our job to deal with it).  But to deny one’s Creator (the classic Unknown God, of even Cicero’s day), in wishing to go one’s own way, and defying The Law arrogantly and obscenely in doing so, is unforgivable; and the result is accordingly.

I do not - will not - consign satanically saturated souls to the Great Central Sun for extinguishment.

They do that to themselves.

And I will continue with my work.

Which is the Work of the Creator Source Who sent me.  

To do just that.

Not my will but Thine be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Simple enough.

Why is it taking us so long to get it???

P.S. My ‘dally’ is not just about the physical exercise of it, but the clearing of one’s mind.  For thoughts to come through with less effort, less obstruction, less ‘static’ in the way.  For example, in today’s daily, the thought came to me that 

‘If not for the length of our telomeres, 

                     there is no reason 

We should not be able to live 

For 800 years

Or longer, even.

Sufficient unto the day

Is it, when

The time comes

For all mere Men.

Which, of course, could include

Assassination

Of those who rock the cradle

Of civilization.’

And here I was thinking of the ugly likes of War.  Which had hounded us for

damn well

long enough.

—

footnotes:

1 Until he was finally caught, in stealing food from a weekender cabin. After patently observing the scene for some hours, as was his long-cultivated habit.  Unaware, even then, that a trap had been laid for him. That would bring him joltingly back into our social scene.  

     Michael Finkel has the intriguing story, in his book ‘The Stranger In The Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit,’ based on interviews he had with the elusive quarry, in jail.  

   Why I have this book - which was sent to me by a friend, and which I have barely dipped my feet into, with so much else capturing my immediate attention - is another story.          

2 Though not so’s the recent generations would notice.  I have noticed that there has been a major change in education since my days in that formal institution.  What do they have today, in high schools, to read, as part of their English class experience, and exposure??  I have the feeling that it is all about indoctrination, these dark days.  Not about the joy of reading for the simple pleasure of it.

   But to continue.

   But if I had my way…

   But to continue.

3 The quote being a classic one: ‘Carthage must be destroyed!’  But there was more to the story than that bald statement of it.