“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down. … ”
Mending Wall, Robert Frost
I am of the group who finds expression in this poetic definition of negotiating life and its communications. I like less walls… but I find they are necessary at times to others if not to myself and that most people love their walls without thinking to whom they give offense. We construct them so easily and with so little forethought.
Then we wonder why we always have to repair them or … in worst cases… move them or watch them fall. Walls tell a boundary where mutual consideration does not exist. Walls are for shutting out the intruders and keeping insiders secure. Walls are building my castle and arming it well.
And then I think of that Sting song… another poetic expression which identifies the emotions I hold:
“As I returned across the fields Id known
I recognized the walls that I once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines Id laid
And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire”
When it comes to songs about walls, I love Joe Jackson’s song Blue Flame.
I’ve got some walls around me, too
But they’re not much compared to your house
Fifty feet high, with barbed wire
Guards on the top, aiming rifles at your lovers one by one
And friends, too
I’ve come with hands above my head
I’m damned if I’ll try to break your door down
If you ever come out just call me
I’ll still be armed with the memory of one evening when you smiled at something
Sadness spreads like a black stain
But I know by now that’s not all there is
There’s a blue flame inside of you so beautiful and rare
And love’s not something you decide to do
You’d be so hard to love if love was not just there
You tell me women get you down
And as for men, they’re all bastards
I wonder what world you call home
And I wish I could learn their language just enough to make you laugh just one time
Yes, it was nice to see you, too
Although I’m never sure you mean it
I pick up the tab and you won’t thank me
Not that I mind, but in my dreams it’s all so different – we even kiss, imagine this
Bitterness is a black hole
But you know by now you got more to give
There’s a blue flame inside of you so beautiful and rare
And love’s not something you decide to do
You’d be so hard to love if love was not just there
Impossible to love if love was not for some strange reason there
Walls are for the finite world. In the infinite realm walls do not exist. They see all, they know all.
– boundaries –
here we sit and think.
walls define Self and Not-Self
still we all are One
– walls –
we can’t live with them
yet cannot live without them…
boundary issues
– grateful –
castles in the air
self-constructed in my life
have carried me home
no more haiku, dear….love j.
OKFriends… now I have LOTS, alot more, to think about. I appreciate these additions to the musing on walls and what they mean to us.
Rex, I am really nonplussed at that thought. Never questioned that there are walls in the infinite, – so, may there be walls that are transparent? We can see thru, but not move though?
Rodney- that song scared me. I was afraid it might be describing me, but not sure in a good way or not ( not that you meant it to do that, but inside the walls of my mind, you know!) Or maybe it was an “old me” and the who I am now. Who does it speak to in your own life? People you knew, people in general…or?