Showing posts with label Harlan Hubbard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harlan Hubbard. Show all posts

Friday, April 21, 2023

my wilderness


.
.

 
 
I looked up with a wild duck's eye into the trees 
waving as the wind rushed through them... 
Suddenly I felt alone on earth, 
as I do when lying on the damp ground in spring
 to see the bloodroot raising its leaf sheath through the mold.  
These moments are not rare.  
I can summon them whenever I feel the need to retire into the wilderness.  
For this is my wilderness, 
untouched by man, 
of infinite grace and harmony.
.
 
 
 
~ Harlan Hubbard
from "Payne Hollow - Life on the fringe of Society"
.

unbind my eyes







.
Now I must break forth from my old self,
cast away old traditions,
unbind my eyes,
so that I may have a broader vision of truth;
so that I may come to this river, as I do today,
and not find it cluttered with emotions and thoughts of former days;
or its shore lined with drift of cities.
I must see the elements as they are...
.
 
 
 
 
~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, quoted here from
"Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life"
by Don Wallis
.
 
 

Monday, February 14, 2022

"Sonata at Payne Hollow," by Wendell Berry


Harlan and Anna Hubbard


The Kentucky shore of the Ohio at evening.  Some time in the future, perhaps a saner time than now.  It is the season when the toads mate and sing from the stones along the water’s edge at night.  Here the river has curved in close to the foot of a steep hillside.  The slope is wooded with tall trees.  A fringe of willows along the shoreline opens to give a view up among the larger trunks.  During the play, the light slowly changes from twilight to dusk.
          Two boatmen, a man past middle age and a boy of about fifteen, come ashore.  They may be small-time traders who row of drift from one river town to another.  Their johnboat, the bow of which is visible to our right, is of the traditional make, built of wood.  A rope is attached to a ring in the bow.
          The boy carries the end of the rope up the shore and makes it fast to a willow.  He then stands and looks around.
.
The Boy:  We never stopped here before.

The Man:  Night never caught us here before.  But look.  There is the notch is the hill, and there is the creek coming down, and here are the rocks it has brought and shaped in a little bar fanned out on the river’s edge.  You’ve heard of this place.  Up yonder on the slope is where they lived and made their music, in a house built of rocks and poles and rough planks and pieces of drift from the river.

The Boy:  Who were they?  Tell me again.

The Man:   Their names were Harlan and Anna.  A long time ago they came here, past the middle of their lives, to love until they were old.  They were refugees from that violent world of our ancestors that nearly destroyed itself.  They wanted a quiet place that was dark at night, unwanted by other people, where they could grow their food or catch or find it, and be warmed by firewood burning on a hearth they made of rocks carried up from the river or the creek.   Harlan, they say, made pictures of the river and the trees and little farms that stood along the valley sides.  And he and Anna made fine music in the evenings with his fiddle and her piano.  Up there is where their house was, and there the little shop where he made the pictures, and there the shed where they kept their goats.

The Boy:  And that was long ago?

The Man:   Long ago.  The boards of their building now are gone to dust, and trees are standing where they played and ate and slept.

The Boy:  What became of them?

The Man:  They got old, and died.  And yonder, below the chimney stones is where they were laid to rest – or not, maybe, to rest.  For there’s them that tells of being here at night, and hearing that old music strike up sudden in the woods, and seeing those two ancient lovers walking about, talking.

The Boy:  Oh, Lord! Talking! What do they say?

The Man:  They talk of what they could not talk about enough while they were here, like all ghosts do.

The Boy:  If it was up to me to choose, I’d just as soon be someplace else.  Your talk is talk enough for me.

The Man:  It’s them.  You needn’t be afraid.  We’re not where they are.

The Boy:  But they’re where we are.

The Man:  Be still!
.
Now, as from far off among the trees, we hear a piano and violin – perhaps it is Mozart’s Sonata in E-flat Major.  The piano is played with elegance and technical precision.  The quality of the violin, by contrast, is “honest and handmade” but “strikes deep.”  The sound of the toads has ceased.  The music, at first only faintly audible, becomes louder.  Now there can be no doubt what it is.  The man and boy stand still, listening, the boy looking a little anxiously at the man.
Now, slowly, candlelight defines a large window among the trees well up the slope.
And now, with the light fading off the boatman and his boy, the figure of a slender, white-haired old man is revealed, standing by the river’s edge upstream.  We have not seen him come; he is just there, perhaps having been there for some time.  He stands, facing upstream, his left side to the river and to us, looking out across the slowly darkening water.  The knuckles of his half-open left hand rest against his hip.
And now the light defines the shape of an old woman walking among the trees.  She crosses above the old man and comes slowly down to the water’s edge, where she too stands still, looking out, her left hand holding to a small willow.  She faces downstream, her right side to us.  Except for the music, the scene becomes completely still.  The stillness is allowed to establish itself before Anna speaks.
In the dialogue that follows, the differences are expressed with feeling, but not with antipathy or anger.  What we are witnessing is a ritual of courtship, discord reenacted as for pleasure, the outcome foreknown.  Perhaps it has been repeated countless times before.
.
Anna: There you are, Harlan.  I've called and called.  What are you doing?

Harlan: Looking.


Anna: At what?


Harlan: The river.


Anna: You've never seen enough, have you, of that river you looked at all your life?


Harlan: It never does anything twice.   It needs forever to be in all its times and aspects and acts.  To know it in time is only to begin to know it.  To paint it, you must show it as less than it is.  That is why as a painter I never was at rest.  Now I look and do not paint.  This is the heaven of a painter - only to look, to see without limit.  It's as if a poet finally were free to say only the simplest things.
.
For a moment they are still again, both continuing to look, in opposite directions, at the river.
.
Anna: That is our music, Harlan.  Do you hear it?


Harlan: Yes, I hear.


Anna: I think it will always be here.  It draws us back out of eternity as once it drew us together in time.  Do you remember, Harlan, how we played?  And how, in playing, we no longer needed to say what we needed to say?


Harlan: I'm listening.


But I heard here too, remember, another music, farther off, more solitary,  closer -


Anna: To what, Harlan?


Harlan: I'm not so sure I ever know.  Closer to the edge of modern life, I suppose - to where the life of living things actually is lived; closer to the beauty that saves and consoles this earth.  I wanted to spend whole days watching the little fish that flicker along the shore.


Anna: Yes.  I know you did.


Harlan: I wanted
to watch, every morning forever, the world shape itself again out of the drifting fog.


Anna: Your music, then, was it in those things?


Harlan: It was in them and beyond them, always almost out of hearing.


Anna: Because of it you made the beautiful things you made, for yourself alone, and yet, I think, for us both.  You made them for us both, as for yourself, for what we were together required those things of you alone.


Harlan: To hear that music, I needed to be alone and free.


Anna: Free, Harlan?


Harlan: I longed for the perfection of the single one.  When the river rose and the current fled by, I longed to cast myself adrift, to take that long, free downward-flowing as my own.  I know the longing of an old rooted tree to lean down upon the water.


Anna: I know that.  I knew that all along.  And then was when I loved you most.  What brought me to you was knowing the long, solitary journey that was you, yourself - the thought of you in a little boat, adrift and free.  But, Harlan, why did you never go?  Why did you not just drift away, solitary and free, living on the free charity of the seasons, wintering in caves as sometimes you said you'd like to do?


Harlan: Oh, Anna, because I was lonely!  The perfection of the single one is not perfection, for it is lonely.


Anna: From longing for the perfection of the single one, I called you into longing for the perfection of the union of two.


Harlan: which also was imperfect, for we were not always at one, and I never ceased, quite, too long for solitude.


Anna: And yet, of the two imperfections, the imperfection of the union of two is by far the greater and finer - as we understood.


Harlan: Yes, my dear, Anna, that I too understood.  It is better, granting imperfection in both ways, to be imperfect and together than to be imperfect and alone.


Anna: And so this is the heaven of lovers that we have come to - to live again in our separateness, so that we may live again together, my Harlan.


Harlan:  And so we named a day - remember? - and a certain train that you would be on if you wanted to marry me.

Anna:  and that you would be on if you wanted to marry me.


Both:  and both of us were on that train!


Anna:  And then, Harlan, we did drift away


Harlan:  on a little boat we built ourselves, that contained hardly more than our music, our stove, our table, and our bed


Anna:  in which we slept - and did not sleep -


Harlan:  my birthplace into our new life!


Anna: For a long time we had no home but that little boat and one another


Harlan:  and the music that we sent forth over the water and into the woods.


Anna:  And then we came here to this hollow and built a house and made a garden


Harlan:  and gave our life a standing place and worked and played and lived and died


Anna:  and were alone and were not alone.


Harlan:  Alone and not alone, we lived and died, and after your death I lived on alone, yet not alone, for in my thoughts I never ceased to speak with you.  I knew then that half my music was hidden away in another world.  The music I had heard, so distant, had been the music you and I had played - the music of something almost whole that you and I had made; it made one thing of food and hunger, work and rest, day and night.  It made one thing of loneliness and love.  That music seemed another world to me, and far away, because I could play only half, not all.


Anna:  And half the life that you so longed to live - was mine?


Harlan:  Was yours.  Without you, I could not live the life we lived, which I then missed and longed for, even in my perfect solitude.


Anna:  You will forgive, I hope, my pleasure in the thought of you alone, playing half a duet - for also it saddens me.


Harlan:  You would have laughed, Anna, to hear how badly I played alone, without your strong art to carry me.  My perfect music then was made by crickets and katydids and frogs.  I heard too the creek always coming down,  allegro furioso after storms,  and of course the birds - the wood thrush, whose song in summer twilight renews the world, and in all seasons the wren.  But those unceasing voices in the dark were the ones that sang for me, and I was thankful for the loneliness that had brought us two together out of all the time we were apart.
.
And now, as both have known they would, they turn toward one another, and thus are changed, revealing themselves now as neither young not old, but timeless and clear, as each appears within the long affection of the other.
With this (their only movement since their conversation began), the light no them brightens and changes; it becomes, for only a moment, the brilliance of a spring morning, and on the slope, where before only the candlelit window showed among the trees, now appears the house as it was, with a garden on the terrace below, Harlan and Anna smile and lift their arms toward one another.  And then they and the light abruptly disappear.  The music stops. The trilling of the toads is audible again, and we see the boatman and his boy looking up the darkening hillside.  The boy turns toward the man and is preparing to speak when the stage goes entirely dark.  The toads sing on another moment, and then are silenced.
.
Production note: The left side of Harlan’s face and the right side of Anna’s are made up to appear old.  The opposite sides of their faces should denote, not youth, but the youthful maturity of a couple in their forties - faces lovely because they are lovely to one another.




~ Wendell Berry


Wednesday, February 9, 2022

the new moon beginning to shine






.
The chok chok of an axe, on a winter evening, 
the sun having set over the snowy earth, 
the new moon beginning to shine.  

Man has evolved into this social, technological, intellectual animal, 
but perhaps another development is possible, in another direction.  
He need not modify and subdue the earth, his home, 
nor forget that he is a part of the natural system.





~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, January 26, 1966
NASA photograph



Thursday, May 6, 2021

choosing drifting




a shantyboat community by the river's edge.  



After building their "shantyboat," out of mostly salvaged materials, 
Harlan and Anna set out on the river, 
drifting.




I had no theories to prove. 
I merely wanted to try living by my own hands, 
independent as far as possible from a system of division of labor 
in which the participant loses most of the pleasure 
of making and growing things for himself.  
I wanted to bring in my own fuel and smell its sweet smoke 
as it burned on the hearth I had made.  
I wanted to grow my own food, 
catch it in the river, or forage after it.  
In short, I wanted to do as much as I could for myself, 
because I had already realized from partial experience 
the inexpressible joy of so doing.

This is a windy day with a secret exhilaration about it. 
When I look at the rough water patched with cloud shadows, 
the boat pitching slightly in the wind waves -
 all this from a higher plane somewhere above these little affairs.  
Yet they are a part and lead into it. 

The pure delight of drifting.  
Each time, it was a thrill to shove out into the current, 
to feel the life and power of the river, 
whose beginning and end were so remote.  
We became a part of it, like the driftwood... 
The tension and excitement, the near ecstasy of drifting.  
We had to stop often and take it in small doses.




~ Harlan Hubbard
from Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life
by Don Wallis
block prints by Harlan Hubbard





from 'Sonata at Payne Hollow'


 
Harlan and Anna Hubbard



And now, as both have known they would,
they turn toward one another, and thus they are
changed, revealing themselves now
as neither young nor old, but timeless
and clear, as each appears
within the long affection of the other. 



~ Wendell Berry



 
 

Friday, February 12, 2021

work perfectly realized


.
 
 
 
In work perfectly realized 
there is no thought of reward, 
no love of procedure, 
no seeking after good, 
no clinging to goals, 
whether of attainment 
or of god himself.
 
 
 
~ Meister Eckhart 
art by Harlan Hubbard, "Below Madison," 1934
 
 
 

Friday, January 15, 2021

the artificial structure



 
 
 
The mind tries to live by the artificial structure of the world, 
but the body will have none of it, holding to primeval forces.  
People try to be all mind...
this has gone so far that now... 
the earth itself is but an idea.  
As animal, man has suffered from this and degenerated... 
The only hope and consolation is the perception of beauty, 
the revelation today of that which was God.
 
 
 
 
~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, written in 1937 
Quoted here from "Harlan Hubbard - Live and Work"
by Wendell Berry
.
 
 
 

Saturday, May 9, 2020

to drift









He wanted to drift on the river not so much to see where it went 
as to be one with it, to go with it as virtually a part of it.  
He wished perhaps to live out a kind of parable.  


One cannot drift by intention - 
or at least, in intending to drift and in drifting, 
one must accept a severe limitation upon one's intentions.  
But in giving oneself to the currents, 
in thus subordination one's intentions, 
one becomes eligible for unintended goods, 
unwished -for gifts - 
and often these goods and gifts surpass 
those that one has intended or wished for.


 And so a drifter subscribes necessarily to a kind of faith 
that is identical both to the absolute trust of migrating birds 
and to the scripture that bids us to lose our lives in order to find them.  
Harlan stated it in 1932 with characteristic simplicity: 
"I believe that whatever we need is at hand."




~ Wendell Berry
from "Harlan Hubbard - Life and Work"
photo by Ansel Adams






Saturday, December 14, 2019

between human beings






Harlan disliked handling money because of its abstractness and impersonality;
 for he did not enjoy either paying it or receiving it in payment. 
He felt a social embarrassment in monetary transactions that country people
 still feel, as if money is simply too crude a means of exchange 
between human beings.



~ Wendell Berry
from Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work

a different self





... I myself I require a more direct revelation, 
not one that must come through so many minds before it reaches mine.  
I must have a faith that I can see and hear, 
one that I can feel without thinking or even trying to put it into words.  
It is not for anyone else, 
it is a personal faith.

The interval of solitude is precious.  
It is a different world and I am a different self.  
I feel relieved of a responsibility that cannot be defined.  
I am released from pressure, my mind is free.  
Yet would I not feel a lack of balance if I lived alone all the time?



~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, 1959





Tuesday, September 24, 2019

alone and not alone, we lived and died

Harlan and Anna Hubbard
.

Harlan:  And so we named a day - remember? -  and a certain train that you would be on if you wanted to marry me,
Anna:  and that you would be on if you wanted to marry me,
Both:  and both of us were on that train!
Anna:  And then,  Harlan,  we did drift away
Harlan:  on a little boat we built ourselves, that contained hardly more than our music, our stove, our table, and our bed
Anna:  in which we slept - and did not sleep -
Harlan:  my birthplace into our new life!
Anna: For a long time we had no home but that little boat and one another
Harlan:  and the music that we sent forth over the water and into the woods.
Anna:  And then we came here to this hollow and built a house and made a garden
Harlan:  and gave our life a standing place and worked and played and lived and died
Anna:  and were alone and were not alone.
Harlan:  Alone and not alone, we lived and died, and after your death I lived on alone, yet not alone, for in my thoughts I never ceased to speak with you.  I knew then that half my music was hidden away in another world.  The music I had heard, so distant,  had been the music you and I had played - the music of something almost whole that you and I had made;  it made one thing of food and hunger, work and rest, day and night.  It made one thing of loneliness and love.  That music seemed another world to me,  and far away,  because I could play only half, not all.
Anna:  And half the life that you so longed to live - was mine?
Harlan:  Was yours.  Without you, I could not live the life we lived,  which I then missed and longed for,  even in my perfect solitude.
Anna:  You will forgive, I hope, my pleasure in the thought of you alone, playing half a duet - for also it saddens me.
Harlan:  You would have laughed,  Anna, to hear how badly I played alone,  without your strong art to carry me.  My perfect music then was made by crickets and katydids and frogs.  I heard too the creek always coming down,  allegro furioso after storms,  and of course the birds - the wood thrush, whose song in summer twilight renews the world, and in all seasons the wren.  But those unceasing voices in the dark were the ones that sang for me, and I was thankful for the loneliness that had brought us two together out of all the time we were apart.





~ Wendell Berry
from 'Sonata at Payne Hollow'

Monday, June 3, 2019

to be near





.
It had been a good day after all.  This is what we were on the river for - to feel the power of it, to see it in action, to be near to it with as little as possible between us and it, to know it as an elemental force stripped of names and associations.  The hard work and aggravation, the unwieldy boat, stubborn as a mule, water like glue, all this was good, too.  What true understanding of the river could one acquire by a fast trip in ease and comfort?  And now, after such a day as this, it was good to be at rest, sheltered where wind and current could not reach us.





~ Harlan Hubbard
from Shantyboat Journal
edited by Don Wallis
art by the author


Sunday, June 2, 2019

an undeniable love



Anna reading at Payne Hollow


An undeniable love for the river drew us away from town and down to the shore; the boat we built there was to carry us into a new existence. This regeneration gave a direction to our lives that Anna had never before contemplated; for me it was the fulfillment of old longings; yet we were both led on by a common desire to get down to earth and to express ourselves by creating a setting for our life together which would be in harmony with the landscape.

We catch fish for our own eating, get all our living as direct means as possible, that we may be self-sufficient and avoid contributing to the ruthless mechanical system that is destroying the earth. 

In this endeavor, no sacrifice is called for, no struggle or effort of will. Such a way is natural. Rather than hardship, it brings peace and inner rewards beyond measure.

Thus shantyboating has become, for us, a point of view, a way of looking at the world and at life. You take neither of them too seriously, nor do you try to understand their complexities. Who can? It is an obviously illogical philosophy, in which the individual is supreme. The claims made on him by his inner beliefs are above the demands of society. He is not without compassion, but his love is expended on those of his fellow men he is in contact with. With no schemes for universal betterment, he tends his own garden.

Is this selfish? No. The selfish man wants more than his share, a higher seat at the table than he is entitled to. One strong enough to stand by himself is not attracted by the prizes which the world offers. He has his own values, receives other rewards, for which there is no competition.

Instead of trying to make everyone alike, the state and society should encourage individualism. Individuals will never be too numerous; in fact, they are becoming harder to find. The river shantyboater has passed away, along with the old river; yet a few renegades will always be found, out in the brush somewhere, or on a forgotten bit of river shore, content with an environment the proud would scorn. The shantyboat strain is not likely to be cultivated out of existence, any more than the earth will ever be completely subdued.





~ Harlan Hubbard
excerpts from Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society

a shantyboat in winter - by Harlan Hubbard




Friday, October 9, 2015

the wild earth







Even through these trivial crowded days,
I never lose sight of the wild earth on which I live,
of the ravishing perfection of its beauty.
I stand before infinity and look out over a virgin wilderness.

The potential for reproducing fragments
of this in a form worthy of it are endless.



~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, January 15, 1987




Saturday, November 15, 2014

drifting was becoming a passion





.

We were thrilled anew by the expanse of swift water that was the Mississippi.
 Drifting was becoming a passion. Though there was nothing new, 
nothing changed, we looked around each succeeding bend 
with undiminished interest. No prospect was quite like any we had seen before;
 no landing was like another, each afforded new problems handling the boat; 
and when on shore, we climbed the bank or threaded the woods
 with keen expectation - of what, we could not say, but our zest for new shores
 and reaches of river was sharp as ever. The details of drifting and landing,
 of each shore we explored, of towns, boats, people, 
even of the weather, remain vivid in our minds.




~ Harlan Hubbard
from Shantyboat Journal
edited by Don Wallis


Sunday, March 25, 2012

a river tugs






A river tugs at whatever is within reach, trying to set it afloat and carry it downstream.  Living trees are undermined and washed away.  No piece of driftwood is safe, though stranded high up the bank; the river will rise to it, and away it will go.

The river extends this power of drawing all things with it even to the imagination of those who live on its banks.  Who can long watch the ceaseless lapsing of a river's current without conceiving a desire to set himself adrift, and, like the driftwood which glides past, float with the stream clear to the final ocean?





~ Harlan Hubbard
from Shantyboat - A River Way of Life



Wednesday, August 10, 2011

busy days




.
These were full and busy days...
This busy life is quite different from the shiftless leisure that shantyboaters are supposed to enjoy.  We became industrious and respected members of the community.  I even cut corn in the fall to get our winter's supply.  On Sundays we prepared for visitors.  I kept myself presentable, and did not become involved in any work which could not be dropped instantly.

This placed us in a new position with regard to the river.  Watching it from the shore, almost as a landsman, we might have felt a longing to drift with it again and, ever passing new shores,  make only brief stops along the way.  Yet we did not regret our present shore-bound life, rather we made the most of it; for the autumn and our departure would come soon enough.





~ Harlan Hubbard
from Shantyboat Journal
edited by Don Wallis
art by van gogh