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Iyer on quiet

In a New York Times article titled “The Joy of Quiet” writer Pico Iyer reflects on solitude and alone-time in contemporary U.S. society. Here is a representative quote:

The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html

Brought to out attention by a friend of Hermitary.

On the Hermitary website is Iyer’s essay “The Eloquent Sounds of Silence” published in Time magazine in 1993. Iyer has long had an interest in this topic.

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Zuloaga’s “Anchorite”

“The Anchorite” of Zuloaga seems entirely 17th century Velasquez, with the elongated human figure, and the whirlwind of sky and dwarfed town like the latter’s famous Toledo. But the artist is Ignacio Zuloaga, who painted it in 1907. Zuloaga did make Velaquez his earliest subject of study. The landscape has become an odd counterpart to the desert, to the world as desert, and though his vestment is conventional, the hermit’s expression is not. The unshaven, barefoot hermit has not a pious but disengaged expression on his face, wistful or mad, the input of centuries of Spanish art, peaking around Goya. The anchorite is not approachable, for he is no longer of this world. In the Musee d’Orsay.

Zuloaga: The Anchorite
Zuloaga: The Anchorite
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“Hermit” of Fukushima

A number of articles about Naoto Matsumura have appeared in the media, variously describing him as loner, solitary, farmer — and this one as “hermit.”

Naoto Matsumura has elected to remain within the 12 mile/20 kilometer exclusion zone around the failed Fukushima nuclear plant to feed and care for animals (cows, dogs, cats, etc.) abandoned by people fleeing the zone.

Surely he understands the health risks, and his motive is never clearly described (he smokes, eats what he admits is bad food, canned). But he is not a martyr or an activist. Matsumura says he does not want to see the abandoned and contaminated towns revitalized — he wants them to disappear.

URL: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/The_hermit_of_Fukushima_staying_put_despite_risks_999.html

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Broeder Hugo, Netherlands hermit

Brother (Broeder) Hugo is a Dutch Catholic hermit, born in Drendts, Netherlands, in 1976, a convert. He lives in the vault of an old church in Warfhuizen, in northeastern Netherlands. The church itself is open to the public, attracted by Broeder Hugo’s Marian devotion. His growing popularity is due in part to his embrace of social media (using a web site, Facebook page, and Twitter) for spiritual counseling, his practical advice and recommended readings, and his youthful and friendly manner.

The website (titled “Kluizenarij OLV van de Besloten Tuin” or Hermit of Our Lady’s Enclosed Garden”) is all in Dutch. Includes a video (“Kluizenaar de Film” – “The Hermit on Film”) that follows Broeder Hugo on a typical day.

URL: http://www.beslotentuin.nl/
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_the_Garden_Enclosed

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Hermit drama

“Next Time I’ll Sing to You” is the title of a play by James Saunders, produced in 1962 and occasionally performed, most recently at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond (London). The play has also been staged briefly on Broadway in New York. The play is a “play within a play” with actors/characters waiting for the hermit James Alexander Mason, the “Hermit of Great Canfield, Essex,” to arrive. A summary of the play as found in a recent article in the Richmond Twickenham Times:

The play follows four actors trying to find out the truth about a hermit named James Alexander Mason, who decided in 1906 at the age of 48 to sell his cottage, build a hut in a field beyond his village, surround it with ditches, hives of wild bees, barbed wire and two tonnes of corrugated iron fence to take up solitary residence. His brother left him food every day, but he was not seen again until at the age of 84, when he was brought out dead.

The characters explore a variety of philosophical questions, and moments of Mason’s life and thought are recreated in a non-linear drama that challenges audiences to reflect on meaning, society, and self.

URLs: http://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/9372586.Next_Time_I_ll_Sing_to_You_offers_something_to_think_about/
http://playstosee.com/page.php?sad=play&id=333