11. The Second Re-awakening: 1. A Soul Connection

 

My second great awakening, in 1982 when I was 42, was brought about by two remarkable men. It followed my time running poetry workshops in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne. 

John

(not the one who was my first love)

I’ve written about those workshops in an earlier memoir, Breaking Into Pentridge Prison, and about falling in love, very much mutually, with a prisoner called John. Readers of that account and then this might find them confusing. That first book was written from the perspective of a social history, addressing very different issues from this one, so I left out details which do belong in this memoir but would have been greatly out of place in the earlier one.

Also, John and I were ourselves highly confused! 

First of all, such a thing was utterly unexpected by either of us. Secondly, to act on it would have breached all sorts of rules and taboos (I was married, I was a lot older, I was his teacher, it was a prison ...) and even to acknowledge our feelings (though we eventually did) had to be secretive, in that situation where no conversation or letter was private. 

Then, we had all the usual self-doubts: How could someone love ME like that? Am I imagining it? And so on and so forth.  (Exacerbated, of course, by the necessity not to be open about it.) Re-reading his poems now, I realise he woke up to what was happening quite some time before I did, and was declaring it in poetry though not identifying me. A fellow-inmate and friend of his, who (freed) became a lifelong friend of mine, said years later when I finally told him, 'I knew from his poems there was someone, but I didn't know who it was.'

Underneath or alongside our mutual confusion, the most incredible psychic rapport was happening. I described it to myself as having a line into each other’s heads. Somehow we just knew each other, on the level of our innermost thoughts and reactions, and knew that we both knew we did. Now, I think of it less in terms of the mind than the soul: a soul connection, deeper and more intimate than any other I’ve ever experienced. Back then, it was both revelation and shock. 

The first such awareness was soon after the workshops started, when he turned up for one workshop a little earlier than the others – not unusual, as he was in a different division of the prison – and on this occasion we were confronted with startling disorder in the room we used: chairs upended all over the place, and in one corner an untidy heap of thick black curly hair on the floor – apparently from a rather drastic haircut.

‘They’ve been scalping someone in here!’ I exclaimed. 

We stood side by side a moment in silence, staring at the mess. Suddenly I felt something I still don’t know how to describe (nothing to do with what we were seeing): a strong, instantaneous, almost electrical connection between us, a ‘This it it!’

Although it was unlike any experience or description I knew of falling in love – in fact was passionless, a deep quiet rather than fireworks – I must have recognised at once what it was, because my immediate reaction was:

‘Oh no! THIS wasn’t supposed to happen.’ 

It wasn't uttered / thought in dramatic tones so much as fatalistic ones. To this day I don’t know if I actually spoke it aloud, very low, or only thought (and heard) it, clear and distinct, inside my own head. 

He stood very still a moment beside me. I stood very still beside him. Both of us were frozen in the moment: standing next to each other a hand’s width apart, not touching, not looking at each other but straight ahead at the room. Yet I was acutely aware of him, and felt, intensely, that he was of me too, as if physically connected. (This too in a quiet, fatalistic way; albeit also startling, disconcerting ...  all kept inward.) In a strange way, our energies matched exactly. Then, as one, we moved forward without another word or any signal, and began separately straightening the chairs. The others arrived, and the moment passed.

How can I convey it? In that brief instant I was at once shocked, appalled, and filled with a sense of inevitability. Whether or not I spoke aloud, I felt his awareness leap to join mine in exactly the same experience. Yes, it was somewhat as if an electric shock had passed between us – yet in a very still and silent way. At the same time, it WAS a very brief instant, and one which was never outwardly acknowledged between us, then or later. 

Nevertheless, from that moment we had ongoing insight into each other’s thoughts and reactions. We just knew each other! This despite the fact that we were outwardly, and even inwardly, very different people: differentiated by circumstances, ages, genders, opinions, beliefs, experiences … in almost every way, it seemed. Yet (oddly, on the face of it) not by our core values. There was huge mental rapport, quite public, in which we delighted; and there was this astounding, private, inner connection too, which felt – simultaneously – too delicate to even breathe on, and also perfectly natural and normal.

None of that was discussed as such. It was revealed over time, via poems and conversations (including letters). Of course, much was NOT revealed: in a prison situation many topics are off-limits: a matter of safety for all concerned. 

On one hand was uncertainty: how can any of this be true or real? On the other, a mutual conviction – sometimes even addressed in words, albeit obliquely – that we absolutely KNEW, as well as loved, each other.

I won’t tell you our story in detail all over again. Perhaps you will read, or have read, the previous book. It took me over 40 years to be able to write that one, because it culminated in tragedy. What I am telling you here (apart from minimal necessary background) is what I didn’t address in the earlier book: mainly, the aftermath of that tragedy, for me.

The situation was of course highly stressful. There came a time when I handed the running of the workshops over to someone else, and cut all contact with the prisoners, for the sake of my family and my sanity. Maintaining my willpower for the lack of contact was very hard, with them all (they all felt like friends by then) and particularly with John. And I still felt the connection in thought, felt that I knew something of how he was thinking and feeling, and that I could tell when his thoughts were particularly reaching out to me (especially in the hours after the prisoners were locked in their cells for the night). 

[Of course there is no evidence that I was not deluding myself. I am not writing to try and convince anyone; that is beyond possibility. I am simply reporting.]

In those times when I felt his mind and emotions reaching out to me, I felt we could have communicated on that level – but I resisted, believing it was best for all concerned to break the connection completely. 

Poster

The fox on my wall

in a field of snow

flakes like flowers

tracks out

away from the little city

closed for the night

on wet black prints under stars

arrives fully composed

eyes and ears and planted feet

stopped at my face

waiting

for love

that he wants me to say

spanning a distance of inches

colder and further

than gaps between planets

the longest

of locked moments

the quietest

head-on collision.

© Rosemary Nissen 1982

from Universe Cat, Pariah Press (Melb.) 1985

and in Secret Leopard, Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2005.

First published Fringe network’s anthology Network

Also in Walking the Dogs (Pariah Press anthology)

24/6/82 – 2/7/82

(We had sometimes likened each other to the fox and the rose from The Little Prince.  Also I did at the time have on my wall the poster described.)

Though I am as certain as I can be that he did reach out in thought, as my thoughts yearned for him too, in the world of action it had reached a point where he had pushed me away, warned me off – for both our sakes. Because of the circumstances, things simply could not continue. It must have been obvious to him that nothing less would have had me withdraw.

Not that we could break the connection entirely. The prison workshops gave birth to a collection of poems, Blood from Stone, which was compiled, edited and prepared by the prisoners with minimal input from visiting tutors, and published under the Abalone Press label that my husband, Bill and I had recently created. This book was duly launched within the prison (I did not attend) and John sent me a copy with a loving and grateful inscription. I sent back a verbal message about how much that meant to me, which I was glad to learn later he did receive.

It has been suggested since, though only by people who never met him, that he was probably insincere. He signed the book he sent me, 'All my love.' I put that together with everything else I knew about the man I met (who had by then been in prison a long time and gone through all manner of changes and growth). We were over, ties had been cut; there was nothing for him to hope for, nothing for him to gain, from writing such a message. And it was a private message, not flaunted. The love was true.