Island

I'm not entirely certain why John Donne's meditation popped up in my head tonight. I think it may have more to do with newspapers than nuanced pondering. We have been bludgeoned by bad economic news, frustrated by lack of solutions, and infuriated by political infighting for so long that some of us may feel the need to just drift away, across that sea of doubt and dismay, to a place insulated from the noise and (at least) seemingly under our control.

Hemingway's Islands in the Stream paints problematic pictures of those who seek idyllic isolation. Then the popular song lyrics sculpt an ideal landscape: Islands in the stream that is what we are. / No one's in between how can we be wrong? / Sail away with me to another world.

Simon and Garfunkel's I Am a Rock resonates with Keweenaw residents: A winters day / In a deep and dark December; / I am alone, / Gazing from my window to the streets below / On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow. / I am a rock, / I am an island.

Perhaps the final words of their song strike closest to home for writers like me: I have my books / And my poetry to protect me; / I am shielded in my armor, / Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. / I touch no one and no one touches me. . . . And a rock feels no pain; / And an island never cries. In the Keweenaw, especially in the winter, it is easy to feel isolated from the rest of the planet -- despite the invasive news broadcasts and the constant links by Internet, phone, and cable. The sheer physical immensity of the snow, the cold, and the winds make you feel small and sealed away beyond a ocean of doubt -- in a frozen, white redoubt.

I guess it is the conundrum of human nature -- to seek isolation and yet be connected to one another -- "because I am involved in mankind." Tonight, I write from my island in the snow.

Mick

Island

I'm an island in an ocean of doubt,
My own little kingdom, where I'm the boss.
There are bridges in, and some bridges out;
I decide who's allowed to come across.
I also decide who's allowed to stay,
To visit, or take up their residence --
Until I tell them to just go away,
Or I let them stay, but behind a fence.
I dug the channel that keeps us apart,
For more control and to keep things cooler.
That ocean of doubt helps protect my heart,
For I used to be so peninsular.
"No man is an island," said old John Donne,
But I know better because I am one...

Mick McKellar
October 2009


John Donne
Meditation XVII: No man is an island...

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."