Narrated Essay: The Baring Season

Nearing the end of January, I’m only beginning to feel the sinew of this new year. Here in the United States, we’re reckoning with what seems like a sudden surge of authoritarianism—though, as Hemingway reminds us in The Sun Also Rises, collapse happens “two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” The hubris we’ve unleashed from within now sends shockwaves through the world, unmooring the institutions we’ve depended on and unsettling the nervous system of our species.

Staying human amidst the swirl has become a practice unto itself. We must maintain the pleasantries of our daily lives, yoke ourselves to the people and practices that organize and buoy the mind, and make actionable the indignance of our deeper values—all while sifting through the muck and shimmer of the collective unconscious.

Of those in privileged circumstances, many are divesting themselves of accountability or arming up for an uncertain future. Even a question like “How’s it going?” can land strangely if it feels insulated from the existential tremors of the moment.

Winter, of course, is the barest season. It’s a time when thin, long-shadowed light clarifies sight and stillness disciplines attention, when branches shiver as the wind exposes the decorative notions of warmer seasons.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with two friends, David Keplinger and Lindsay Whalen, whose companionship is like wool wrapped around the cold turnings of life. Our purpose was to interview Lindsay about the poet Mary Oliver—the subject of her forthcoming biography from Penguin Press—and to trace the threads of synchronicity and coherence among us.

I imagine that rendering anyone’s soul requires discipline and sustained concentration. But Mary’s life, as her poetry reflects, was singular, cloistered, and prolific, demanding of her biographer an uncommon devotion. In our conversation, Lindsay explained that she misses Mary less than she might another deceased friend, given that she remains in constant contact with her. Yet there’s one quality of Mary’s presence she said she misses: “When she looked at you, she really looked at you. It was a sustained gaze.” David, whose friendship with Mary spanned decades, smiled in agreement: “In her life, as in her work, she looked longer instead of looking away.”

The word concentration derives from the Latin concentrātiō, meaning “the action or act of coming together at a single place.” It breaks down to con- (“together, with”) + centrum (“center”)—literally “bringing to a common cent