In The Garden with John Cowper Powys

I came late to gardening even though I have had a garden for most of my life.  It has always been like an extra room; a sitting room in summer and a spare guest room for the feathered visitors that come with winter days.  Although I have gained much pleasure from the garden, as with any other room in the house it must be kept tidy and maintained.  So for many years I viewed gardening as a necessary task until about ten years ago when I began to enjoy the weeding and planting, the digging, cutting and pruning.  What changed?  Due to stresses and pressures at work, I began to see the garden as a refuge, an escape, and I found myself enjoying the gardening as much as sitting and relaxing there.  How I ever saw gardening as a chore I now couldn’t understand.  About the same time I was discovering the works of John Cowper Powys and found many insights there.  I have always loved being outdoors and going into the garden means stepping out under the sky and into the air but most of all, it is offers a myriad of sensations to experience and enjoy.

 

When I’m just sitting quietly in the garden or doing some work there, the vibrancy and beauty of the red roses, the citrusy freshness of the lemon ones, the hum of the bees gathering the pollen from the foxglove bells, and the delicate scent of the honeysuckle on the warm air reach me and I receive them joyfully.  I watch the insects and the worms going about their lives and see and hear the birds in the branches above my head. I see and feel the textures of the different leaves and instinctively recoil my hand under the prick of the holly or sting of a nettle.  I feel the sun on my back or more often here in Cumbria, the soft rain gently patting my face!

The title of one of JCP’s book’s is ‘In Defence of Sensuality’ which he opens with an explanation of his meaning of the word sensuality.  He stresses that he uses it in a different way to our usual understanding of it.  He advocates a ‘life of sensations’ by which he means actively opening our five senses, keeping them ever alert to the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures that surround us constantly.  Doing so will bring happiness and dispel those feelings of lethargy and boredom that afflict so many people.  We live in an artificial world surrounded as we are by concrete, steel, pavements, covered shopping centres, paved driveways and nature is pushed further and further to the edges of our lives, physically and emotionally.

 Sit or dig in a garden, walk in a park, observe pots of plants in yards and on balconies and really notice what is around.  Once we switch off the thoughts and concerns in our heads and open ourselves to experiencing the moment, our senses can hone in and pick up all the impressions and communication that nature is offering to us. A renewed sense of wonder is instilled as the natural world displays some of its beauty and diversity.  Reading JCP’s works, his novels and non-fiction, alerts me to these facts for he presents another perspective on the world, or sometimes he just reminds me of essential facts of living I have forgotten that have been covered by our 21^st century lifestyle. 

 

I was wrong in thinking of the garden as an extension to the house, another room.  It is much more than that; it is a universe with a life and aliveness that infuses my being, renewing and invigorating the life within me.  JCP cried “Sensations! Sensations! Sensations!”  He was right – using our senses fully means experiencing the world about us.  There is so much beauty and wondrous things happening all around us, how can we ever be bored?  

“[Sense] impressions adhere to the soul.  They gather and deepen.  We forget the pain.  We forget the shocks and insults.  We remember the cumulated exaltations of rapture, rising up and hitting our sense, from country-roads, gardens, doorways, old walls, leafy lanes, backwaters, wood-paths, twilight harbours….The annoying, troublesome aspects of experience disappear from memory.  Only the rare vision remains.”
 (In Defence of Sensuality)  

“Colour! What a thing to have appeared at all under the sun! To anyone who like myself is not only a coward but a confirmed sensualist, this phenomenon of colour is like a vast number of entrancingly delicious fragrances grown visible. No it is more than - that. It is like a human body with which you are infatuated. It is at any rate something you touch, taste, feel, and embrace with your whole soul. It is something you sink into and enjoy like the revelation of an erotic Fourth Dimension.” 

(Autobiography)

Stoicism

 

Scarred, broken, its limbs twisted, its trunk gnarled, the old tree stands in the field like a bloodied boxer defiantly carrying on the fight.  Its beauty has long faded and it no longer stands tall and erect but bent and stooped under the heavy blows that the storms of its life have inflicted upon it.  Deep lines and grooves are imprinted on its trunk like the lines and wrinkles on the face of an old man or woman.  Our life experiences, whether we are man, beast of plant, are etched indelibly into our features and our soul.  Beauty has been replaced now by character and the tree draws you in as you observe it and tells its story with every furrow and gash, wound and weakened branch.  It tells of long, dark days and nights and battles with the elements that elicit feelings of pity and sadness for its condition. Perhaps my thoughts have diffused into the atmosphere and the tree has inhaled them with the air, for my eyes are directed more searchingly about the tree. There is more to its story. It is embattled and old yet it stands firm, roots deep in the earth and rock drawing life from the soil and water.  It has felt the heat of the sun, had birds singing from its branches and easy days of just being alive to the universe.  The hard winters give way to spring when renewed energy and new life flow through it.  It knows that life is a process of changing seasons, of ebb and flow, scarcity and plenty.  So it stands there, that old oak tree, telling its tale of stoicism and endurance and faith in the future.

JCP was right when he said that nature has much to teach us if we only stop and observe.  Trees have an important lesson to share about acceptance and fortitude.  His cry of ‘Accept! Defy! Enjoy!' is one that could be ascribed to that tree. Powys believed that stoicism and acceptance are important characteristics to develop for they are the means to a more contented life.  He wasn’t saying that we can’t or shouldn’t change things, quite the opposite, for he firmly believed in our ability to create change.  But there is a right time for action and sometimes we have to just ride out the storm, accept things as they are for the time being, and carry on with courage, enjoying the small pleasures available to us.  Fighting, raging inside about a particular situation can make matters worse and achieve nothing but more suffering and unhappiness.  Sometimes, it is better to bide our time, cope with the prevailing conditions, weather the storms of life and when they subside, act, fight, create change, do whatever needs to be done.  Stoicism is almost an old-fashioned word and idea now but it a useful tool with which to arm ourselves against the inevitable storms of life.