a desire to set himself adrift

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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

reminiscent of Van Gogh's Starry Night,

massive congregations of greenish phytoplankton 

swirl in dark water around Sweden’s Gotland island 

in a satellite picture by the U.S. Geological Survey

day and night

The sun rises and sets,

 it is day and night,

 it will go on thus for a long time.  

You get to think you are part of it and 

your circumstances are related to the cosmos, 

but one day your little system will break down 

and the day and night will rotate indifferently.  

Can this be?  

It seems more like the sunrise and sunset, 

the moon and stars, 

this new season, 

they are part of me. 

 I am sure they will never be the same without me,

for no one could see them just as I do.

.

~ Harlan Hubbard

journal entry March 9, 1963

woodcut by the author

sawing firewood

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.

Probably no moon has furnished me with as much light as this one,  in this clear weather.  Now it is past full, and I can arise before daybreak and see my way about, sawing firewood.  One feels alone on the earth, no sounds, no lights, anywhere, unless a boat passes.  In a light fog, as this morning, the isolation is even more strongly felt.  It brings peace, contentment and a sure faith that all is well.

.

~ Harlan Hubbard

from his journal, Dec. 28th, 1958

woodcut by the author

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wonderment and a delicious trouble

.

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This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight.  For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen;  and this is the Soul's feel for it, every Soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love - just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are not stung as sharply , and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers.  These Lovers, then, lovers of the beauty outside of sense, must be made to declare themselves.

.

~ Plotinus

from the Enneads 

woodcut by Harlan Hubbard

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life partakes of the freshness

.

.

Our zest for the river did not wane...

We went on in much the same way, in surroundings which had become familiar, 

with not even a flood to make the year memorable.

.  

Ruts, however, are worn only in traveled ways on land: 

a river life partakes of the freshness of the river itself.  

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Each rise and fall affords a new outlook 

and gives to a well-known shore the feel of one 

at which you have just landed for the first time...

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~ Harlan Hubbard

from Shantyboat Journal

edited by Don Wallis

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I am fishing with the one who made the river

.

.

When I go out on the water at night, and as I bait hooks, watch Cassiopeia, rising in the eastern sky, draw up her fishingline, Perseus with the misty Pleiads as bait and bright Venus caught, and then all grow dim in the faint beginning light of dawn, then I feel that I am fishing with the one who made the river and set her flowing.  I feel its length and sinuous flowing, fed by swift streams in the wooded eastern mountains; and somewhere, through a country unknown to me except by hearsay, past the mouths of new rivers and towns known only by name, it will at last enter an ocean and lose its identity, as I will too, at the end of my devious flowing.

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~ Harlan Hubbard

from Shantyboat Journal

edited by Don Wallis

Time became as smooth and even as the current

.

.

I worked too hard and furiously about the boat last week, trying to get the interior more or less complete, so as to get at the construction of a johnboat.  But I suddenly came to myself, realizing that none of it mattered a great deal, and I was losing much by my absorption in it.  We are really comfortable here, with the chores inside and out easy enough to do.  All that we plan to do will make for added comfort, convenience and neatness, but will come in time, and leisure must be had for other activities and for just living, or we will miss our way.

.

Time became as smooth and even as the current outside our windows, and we began to realize our true aims in coming to the river... 
I had no theories to prove.

.

~ Harlan Hubbard 

bookcover art by the author

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The earth is hushed

.

.

The bright moon lights the path

through the gray woods

From the unlit depths of the hollow comes

the soft sound of broken water

A faint brightness, or is it a low cloud

within the eastern sky

The earth is hushed

.

~ Harlan Hubbard

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I see through my pictures

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Harlan's studio at Payne Hollow

When I am painting, or have painting in my mind, 

I see more, observe more carefully, am more sensitive... 

I see through my pictures.

I see everything as a painting. I see so much more.

Seeing things as a painter, seeing pictures.  

This is a great happiness.

It brings everything into balance and harmony.

Painting can only be done in some state of exaltation.  

It is a force that breaks through the routine of life, 

that transcends life itself.

It is exciting with boundless possibilities.

I am always painting in my mind.

Just a little solid, creative painting and the day is good.  

It brings us closer to the earth, 

makes the present moment exhilarating, 

the future hopeful.

It is a strange life when I consider it, 

how I endeavor to attain strength and clarity, 

to mold these base materials into forms which will express me, 

and my attitude, my joy and thankfulness.  

I work alone, 

who cares whether I produce anything or not, 

or who appreciates it?  

Yet I believe a good thing will not perish.

~ Harlan Hubbard

from "Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life"

by Don Wallis

their graciousness is an invitation

.

.

 a bell is placed across the river for visitors to ring, 

their graciousness is an invitation

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"There is a fascination about the distant tones of the bell sounding across the river.  

Who is there, with what news?  

Is it a dear friend long unseen, 

or a stranger whose coming will change the course of our lives?"

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~ Harlan Hubbard

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.

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I will be watered to my roots

A pale sun burning through the mist, 

the soft clouds barely visible in the gray, blue sky... 

Looking up the river I saw a bolt of lightning, 

an arrow from the sky that pierced the earth.

A soft rain comes down from the gray sky, 

and sullen thunder rolls into the distance.  

My spirit drinks in the rain like the plants do.  

I will be watered to my roots.

It is suddenly full summer.  

We look out from leafy trees.

The fragrance of wild grape and honeysuckle 

flowers drifts through the air.  

You enter and leave currents of it as you go along the paths.

In the leafy woods there is such contrast to the sunlight

 that the shade is like twilight, 

like going down into a deep ravine.  

The pale green of the jewel weed is ghostly... 

Then to hear the thrush singing on the hill above...

I think I saw the first green heron.  

Yes.

~ Harlan Hubbard 

from his journals, taken here from

"Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life"

by Don Wallis

snug harbor

.

.

To achieve more perfect

harmony with the river

and at the same time 

live close to the earth

... I became a shantyboater

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~ Harlan Hubbard

from Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life

by Don Wallis

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a man and a horse

.

.

There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. 
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The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man, standing alongside the road, shouts, 'Where are you going?" and the first man replies, I don't know! Ask the horse!" This is also our story. We are riding a horse, we don't know where we are going, and we can't stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless. 
.
We are always running, and it has become a habit. 
We struggle all the time, even during our sleep. 
We are at war within ourselves, and we can easily start a war with others.

.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

from "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching"

art: "Summer" by Harlan Hubbard 

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longing for your giant self

.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: 

and that longing is in all of you.

But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, 

carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.

And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends 

and lingers before it reaches the shore.

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, 

"Wherefore are you slow and halting?"

For the truly good ask not the naked, 

"Where is your garment?" 

nor the houseless, 

"What has befallen your house?" 

~ Kahlil Gibran

from "The Prophet"

art: "Shantyboats at Sunrise"

by Harlan Hubbard

the art

.

.

When I paint a landscape,

I try to paint heaven,

and my joy at being there.

.

There is no artist,

living or dead,

whose work would satisfy me

as an expression of my life.

.

Nothing was ever painted 

that I would like to have done.

.

No one ever expressed me.

.

My painting could not have been done by anyone else,

nor in the past.

It is growing more and more unique and personal.

.

The beauty of the snow, 

the pleasure of seeing it

and being out in it.

To express that is the end of art.

.

I would like my paintings to be as real as the rain and stones,

yet transcend reality into sublimity.

.

My pictures follow their own course.

I draw the geographic form, but as the painting goes on,

there springs up a design which is unpredictable,

unconscious, and as perfect as my sense of harmony makes it.

.

~ Harlan Hubbard

from his journals, taken here from

"Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life"

by Don Wallis
art: "Crossing the River"
 by Harland Hubbard
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a more direct revelation

.
Much as I admire the Christian principles and teaching, 
and the people ... who follow them,

...for 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.

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~ Harlan Hubbard

.from his journal, 1959


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After Anna's death

He was not lonely because he had no desire to return to the past: 

"I am not one of those who enjoy thinking of their past life.  

For me, it is gone, and I have no desire to resurrect it even in thought."  

He saw the pain and imperfection of the past, and he did not want it back. 

The present was enough; it was all he asked.  

And the present provided him sufficient company.  

He was newly and generously mindful of the creatures who lived with him in Payne Hollow:  

"This hillside is common ground for me and the little wild animals who live here."  

He was attentive as perhaps never before to the presence of possum and chipmunk, 

cricket and katydid, bullfrog and dove.  

When he woke long before dawn, the night song of the katydids 

would be dwindling toward silence: 

"Each squawk you think is the last; but no, some diehard starts afresh.  

Sometimes I lie awake listening.  

Surely now the night is over, but no, not yet.

~ Wendell Berry

quoting Harlan Hubbard in

Harlan Hubbard - Life and Work

art by Harlan Hubbard

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I discovered a truth

.

.

I discovered a truth that seemed to me a revelation... 

There seemed to be two universes which I termed the world and the earth, 

in either of which I could choose to live.  

Then I saw there was but one, 

and that I was living on the earth looking directly into infinity.

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~ Harlan Hubbard
from the afterword of "Payne Hollow - Life on the fringe of Society"
afterword by Don Wallis

art by the author, River Hills, 1935

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The painter Harlan Hubbard

The painter Harlan Hubbard said

that he was painting Heaven when

the places he painted merely were

the Campbell or Trimble County

banks of the Ohio, or farms

and hills where he had worked or roamed:

a house's gable and roofline

rising from a fold in the hills, 

trees bearing snow, two shanty boats

at dawn, immortal light upon 

the flowing river in its bends.

And these were Heavenly because

he never saw them clear enough to satisfy his love, his need

to see them all again, again.

~ Wendell Berry

art by Harlan Hubbard

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it needs forever

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, to 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.




~ Wendell Berry
from  Sonata at Payne Hollow



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