Solitude Equals Freedom by Dale Williams Barrigar

(image provided by DWB)

Solitude Equals Freedom

Harold Bloom, my spiritual mentor (if I had to choose, at gun point, just one, other than Jesus), rightly opined, over and over and over again (in the good way), that an American never feels free unless she or he is alone. Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Johnny Appleseed all agreed with him; as did Chief Joseph, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo.

The following poem, about my beloved Christina, is the result of that unnerving, wonderful, and true formulation.

Fleeing with the Geese

“Sometimes she is a child within mine arms…” – Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Tedium alternating with

Ecstatic balloonings which

Collapse

So suddenly

Equals this

Teenaged life

(for a few more months)

Of mine…

But then again

There comes

A sudden feeling, seeing

These geese exploding with power in their

Winged

Freeness

Like Bucephalus

The young war horse

Terrified

Of his own

Shadow in Plutarch

Until

Alexander

Understands

Him and now he’s

Becoming fearless

Over cottonwood

Trees

And power lines

Of the Ragged Prairie

Land

In the ghosts

Of the geese.

The UFO

Filled with marvelous mystery

Monsters

Is

Coming down

Now

And the

Mastodon Bone Museum

Is unleashing its feverish

Dancing

Creatures

And there’s

One bar

Open

On the edge

Of the

Railroad tracks in this

Dying American town!

And I’ll

Be back

On the highways and

Byways tomorrow,

She intoned,

At the end

Of the

Summer,

In 1991, to

Her Homeric

Soul,

Her heart

Humming,

Her hair blown

So wild

And so free,

Shaking the dust

Off her feet, in

America

ALONE.

Dale Williams Barrigar is an American artist who loves to be alone.

19 thoughts on “Solitude Equals Freedom by Dale Williams Barrigar”

  1. Dale

    A fine conclusion that leaves me hoping that Christina finds what she is looking for–even if the hunt is the only thing. (I’d advise her stay away from that bar by tracks! Nineteen often gets in, especially girls).

    Unless in peril, alone is a fine thing to be. Some people cannot exist outside the hive. I often go two or three days without actually speaking to another person (animals daily) and it makes me, if not happy, at least somewhat content. Things enter the mind when the clutter is booted out. Good and bad, such is the nature of things.

    I root for Christina but would feel better if she had a gun permit!

    Leila

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    • Leila

      You and I have much in common in many ways. I too often go two or three days without talking to humans except for animals and random “hellos” to strangers on the street, etc. It is deeply creative and sometimes deeply disorienting, depending. I think all great writers (and silent poets, too) have come to this level of solitude one way or another. They crave the purity of it and they know the purity is REQUIRED, a price of admittance into the Land of Literature. And it’s all worth it in the end.

      I did consider giving Christina a gun at one point, especially since I used to carry one myself during my own sleeping-in-car travels. But since I knew she would be OK I decided not to, also since I no longer pack heat in that way myself.

      Also, I was worried about her going into the bars too, but having known more than a few women who do indeed enter bars all on their own when they feel like it for various reasons, I decided to hint at it, but not explore it, since it’s there and leaving things out can make them more present.

      Thank you for all your sensitive and understanding commentary on Christina’s adventures all week long!

      Looking forward to more Springs adventures as we roll along with literary power unmatched anywhere else in America now!

      D

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      • Hi Dale
        That’s something I like about you–you care about your characters. For me that is a must from a writer. In their own way Fictional Characters have feelings too!
        Leila

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    • LA

      Thanks for drawing attention to this issue of the importance of characters in poetry.

      One of my own personal private revelations about poetry (that can now be shared more than ten years after the fact) came when I deeply realized that much good poetry is about fictional characters just like fiction is.

      The poet who writes about fictional characters and the fiction writer are of course on the same wavelength in many ways.

      Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Frost are all great examples of this. And the amount and number of characters in Eliot’s THE WASTELAND is an under-studied issue despite all the stuff (good and bad) that has been written about that utterly great, 434-line epic.

      I also want to throw a shout out there for Wallace Stevens’ MC in “Sunday Morning,” who inspired the creation of Christina. More than that, his line about “how high that highest candle lights the dark” from “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” also inspired her.

      Thank you!

      D

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  2. Ah yes. the bliss of solitude. Though I am a very happy family person I have spend long periods of time alone, here in the French forest and in various places in the Middle East and there is such peace when you are only you. Lovely nights reading by candlelight while the cats snuggled in for fear of the thunder. I hope Christina finds what she is looking for and always enjoys the bliss of solitude but finds happiness with others because, I believe, that as humans we benefit from both. Thanks for this. dd

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    • Dear Diane

      Thank you for all the support you’ve given Christina this week. And, I’ve really enjoyed reading all the great personal details you’ve included in your commentary as comparisons and contrasts. Also, I’ve never been to Europe, and Chicago is a long way from France, so the international extension and outreach from here to there and back again is something I find really fascinating, totally interesting, not to mention a great way to use the internet for good instead of bad. Thanks for all you do, from both me and Christina!

      Dale

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  3. chrisja70778e85b8abd's avatar chrisja70778e85b8abd says:

    Hi Dale

    There is something wonderful in loneliness. This place of self reflection, desolation, and hope. This goes well with the road. The in-between place that travelers peer into the pines or gasp at the mountains.

    When you’re alone there is no one to catch you in your foibles. A peace might be experienced.

    I like to watch the geese fly. “These geese exploding with power.” (Great line).

    “Railroad tracks in this

    Dying American town!”

    These are the places that draw me usually with a Nikon or Canon camera taking the long shot–watching the tracks waiver into a silver mirage.

    I liked the UFOs and mastodons. “A Homeric Journey.” There is always a sadness that comes with the end of a journey. Well done!

    Christopher

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    • Christopher

      That’s totally cool that you are such a photographer. I am myself as well, but such an amateur non-expert that I only use my lame-ass phone. I’d love to see some of your pictures some day. Your skills and talents at short story writing, where point of view, angle of vision, selectivity, and an eye for the key details are all so important, are all, I am sure, made great use of in your making of pictures. Totally awesome, utterly cool, one-hundred percent admirable, artistic at the highest level, and also wonderfully great to know that this is one of your artistic pursuits along with the writing. The thought of you wandering the lonely, far-reaching places of the American heartland with camera in hand gives me hope for the future of this, in so many ways, detestable nation (right now, anyway).

      Thank you!

      Dale

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      • chrisja70778e85b8abd's avatar chrisja70778e85b8abd says:

        Hey Dale

        Nature Photography is a lot of fun. I’m an amateur too. Digital cameras have really opened up the hobby., and are good for the world. To easily show people the beauty of nature and what they shouldn’t destroy.

        Finding the right camera has been tricky and expensive. But that was because I didn’t know what to use. You learn as you go and almost always lose money selling off equipment. I look at it as a rental fee or something.

        Yes that would be neat to show some of the pics! You might be able to see some on shutter stock. if you type my name.

        America is still a beautiful place. Sometimes we get in areas that are so secluded (even in Indiana– it’s definitely not all corn) It’s almost scary. It’s scary because we don’t know who we will meet. There is always some out there.

        I hear what you are saying about a detestable nation. I told my ex-wife that the flag doesn’t mean the same thing to me with “IT” as president. He is so against the environment (and everything else I believe in) that I’ve stopped reading MSN about it. The BIG Beautiful Fuck the poor and enrich the wealthy BILL and everything else has really gotten under my skin. But I’m feeling better today lol.

        Thanks
        CJA

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    • CJA

      You’re exactly right, one never knows exactly who one might run into out in the far-flung wilds of America. I’ve run into some very rough characters in places where I thought I was alone. And this was in areas where there weren’t any other humans for miles.

      It’s good for the soul, getting out of one’s comfort zone in that way, even though a bit dangerous too. It’s good for the soul because the vast majority of the USA population is FAR too comfy these days. Too much comfort literally kills both the body, and the soul – drip by drip, one little bit at a time.

      You’re also right that Indiana is not all cornfields, and neither is Illinois. Both of these states have many wild and semi-wild places in them still remaining. Even in some of the forest preserves surrounding Chicago you can still get lost in the woods. And you can definitely run into some very rough characters.

      A few years ago a mountain lion showed up in an alleyway in a Chicago neighborhood right in the middle of the city. The police shot it dead. No one knows how it got there, but it traveled all that way from somewhere (they thought it might have been South Dakota or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan). So the “you never know who can show up” factor goes both ways. Chicago is filled with coyotes. They travel in and out of the city via the railroad tracks most of the time (according to the coyote researchers).

      I’m gonna see if I can find some of your pictures!

      Dale

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      • chrisja70778e85b8abd's avatar chrisja70778e85b8abd says:

        Hi Dale

        Yes the wild places are yet wild. The spooky stranger lurks. I can relate to being miles from nowhere and there they are standing upright.

        I’ve always wanted to walk the Appalachian Trail.

        I like Illinois a lot! It is a beacon of light in the Midwest. A BLUE state! I’m surrounded by Trumpers. It’s sickening. They still fly their F..k Biden flags.

        I never talk about politics to my fellow Hoosiers. They are a bunch of mean bastards and bitches that hate democrats like myself. (not all–but a shit load). lol.

        That’s a shame about the cops shooting the mountain lion. They are quick to kill. It’s why God made hell so big.

        I’ve been reading a little Carver and Wolff. I didn’t know they both were professors at Syracuse U. I remember you saying they knew one another. Wolff was a soldier in Vietnam and may have been involved in a massacre after the Tet Offensive.

        “So Much Water So Close to Home” is a truly great short story by R. C.

        –from the Indiana mountains ( there are a few).
        Christopher

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  4. mickbloor3's avatar mickbloor3 says:

    Dale, you’re dead right. There is a splendour in solitude, and you capture it well. Do you know that Caspar David Friedrich painting, ‘The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’? You’ve probably been in the position of the subject of the painting yourself: climbing a mountain on a day of clouds, til you reach the summit, suddenly bathed in sunlight, looking down on the tumult of clouds, with not another soul in sight. It’s a great feeling, I know.

    But Diane is dead right too. Your mention of the wild geese reminded me of a time when I used to live beneath the migration path of the artic geese. The sound of them in the far distance, then a black cloud of them gradually filling the whole sky, the sound now almost deafening. Absolutely magnificent. Thousands of them, in beautiful fluid skeins, all with a common purpose.

    Your man, Abe Lincoln, knew the importance of a common purpose. It’s tricky but we seem to need both splendid solitude and common purpose.

    belated best wishes for 4th of July, mick

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    • Hi Mick!

      That painting is a brilliant reference. Haven’t looked at it in a long time but now plan on studying it some more this very day.

      You are so right to highlight, along with Diane, the dual nature of human need. If we were nothing but alone it might seem like there’s no reason to go on; and if we were never alone, it might seem like our own personality, our own mind, heart, and soul, were being swallowed by the void of the crowd and the herd.

      That is a brilliant description of the arctic geese, thank you for sharing this with myself and the Springs readers, you describe it all so perfectly and poetically.

      Thanks for visiting the Springs, Mick! I wonder if you’ve given any thought to being a Guest Writer here for an entire week via Leila’s incredible offer?? I’d love to see what you come up with for an entire week of writing/s in a row (five pieces, Monday through Friday).

      Dale

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  5. mickbloor3's avatar mickbloor3 says:

    Leila & Dale,

    It would be an honour to have five pieces published in The Springs on five consecutive days, but I don’t have five pieces sitting in my locker. And I’m just not fluent enough to write a piece a day for five days. If I should ever have five spare possibly-suitable pieces, then I’ll be in touch. I have to say it’s unlikely and I have to say again that it was an honour to be asked. Long may The Springs prosper, mick

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  6. Hi Mick

    Just saw this. You can send rejected stuff that you still if you’d ever like to appear for a week. No submission review here! Like the American political parties, anything gets in.

    Leila

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  7. mickbloor3's avatar mickbloor3 says:

    Hiya, I’ve had a look through my rejects pile and I reckon there are few that I still quite like. How do I submit ’em? Is it via wordpress??

    bw

    MIck

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