Heidegger raises the basic question of metaphysics of “why are their beings at all rather than nothing (Introduction to Metaphysics, 1)?”  Negatively, we see “to be a being” apparently excludes nothingness: entities “are” in some way or other: the tree, car, dream, hallucination, etc all “are” in some way or other rather than being nothing.  An entity thus expresses Being.  But what is Being?

We know of the notion of Being though we rarely turn our gaze on it.  Beings announce a world.  For example, beings appear to some schizophrenics announcing a world of conspiracies, beings appearing in a conspiracy saturated manner.  Similarly, a hammer is not mostly an isolated entity, but announces a world of interrelations in the context/world of the workshop.  We are thinking then of entities in their wholeness expressing Being rather than entities individually or as a collection.  For example, Dickens writes:

“I was sensible of a mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of nothing else … it was all Dora to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wildflowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud (Dickens, David Copperfield, 2004, ch 33 Blissful).”

In the language of writers like Robert Browning and Lucy Maude Montgomey and Anaximander, such events result in the disjointure of life being overcome and everything briefly falls into place (jointure): “God’s again in his heaven and all’s right with the world” for a brief time (though this doesn’t refer to religion, since Heidegger says “faith has no place in thought, Heidegger, Anaximander’s saying, 280”).  Usually, there is an adikia, a subtle or conspicuous out of jointness, “all is not right with things.  That means, something is out of joint …. It speaks of the essential experience of adikia as the fundamental trait of eonta… The experience of the being in its being which here comes to language is neither pessimistic nor nihilistic.  Nor is it optimistic.  It remains tragic. (Heidegger, Anaximander’s Saying, 267; 269).”

Heidegger shows in his texts on rivers that river people are earth people, salt of the earth and down to earth, growing as an historical people adapting to the river as their Being (work, leisure, superstitions etc) reflect and is rooted in the river.  We see this cross culturally such as with the “down-homers” on the Mira River in Cape Breton Nova Scotia, encapsulated in one of their songs/poems:

Song For The Mira

[Verse 1]

Out on the Mira on warm afternoons

Old men go fishing with black line and spoons

And if they catch nothing they never complain

I wish I was with them again

[Verse 2]

As boys in their boats call to girls on the shore

Teasing the one that they dearly adore

And into the evening the courting begins

I wish I was with them again

[Chorus]

Can you imagine a piece of the universe

More fit for princes and kings?

I’ll trade you ten of your cities

For Marion Bridge and the pleasure it brings

[Verse 3]

Out on the Mira on soft summer nights

Bonfires blaze to the children’s delights

They dance ’round the flames singing songs with their friends

I wish I was with them again

[Verse 4]

And over the ashes the stories are told

Of witches and werewolves and Oak Island gold

The stars on the river face sparkle and spin

I wish I was with them again

[Chorus]

Can you imagine a piece of the universe

More fit for princes and kings?

I’ll trade you ten of your cities

For Marion Bridge and the pleasure it brings

[Instrumental Break]

[Chorus]

Can you imagine a piece of the universe

More fit for princes and kings?

I’ll trade you ten of your cities

For Marion Bridge and the pleasure it brings

[Verse 5]

Out on the Mira the people are kind

They treat you to home brew and help you unwind

And if you come broken they’ll see that you mend

I wish I was with them again

[Verse 6]

Now I’ll conclude with a wish you go well

Sweet be your dreams, and your happiness swell

I’ll leave you here, for my journey begins

I’m going to be with them again

I’m going to be with them again

This beautifully bridges Martin Heidegger’s profound ontological inquiries with the lived, poetic experience of place, demonstrating exactly what Heidegger meant when he wrote that “poetry is what first brings man onto the earth, making him belong to it.”

By weaving together Introduction to Metaphysics, the concept of adikia, and Allister MacGillivray’s legendary Cape Breton anthem “Song for the Mira,” we have illustrated how Being is not a cold, abstract category, but the total horizon of meaning that allows a world to gather and show up for us.

1. The Gathering of a World

In Being and Time, Heidegger uses the famous example of the hammer in the workshop to show that we do not encounter the world as a collection of isolated, neutral objects (beings). Instead, the hammer only makes sense because of its relational involvement with the nails, the wood, the workshop, and the ultimate purpose of building a home.

We have mapped this perfectly onto the Mira River. The river is not just H₂O flowing through a geographic coordinate. It is a “world” in the phenomenological sense. The “black line and spoons,” the bonfires, the local “home brew,” and the folklore of “witches and werewolves and Oak Island gold” are not independent, disconnected entities. They are elements held together by the unified horizon of the Mira. The river gathers these beings into a meaningful, historical whole.

2. The Overcoming of Adikia (Disjointure)

We rightly note Heidegger’s interpretation of Anaximander’s adikia—the fundamental “out of jointness” or injustice of things as they slip away or fail to hold together. In ordinary, modern existence (what Heidegger would call the alienation of Das Man or the technological framing of Gestell), we often feel this tragic disjointure. The modern city, with its transactional speeds, separates us from the earth and from the wholeness of Being.

When Dickens writes of a world that is “all Dora” or Browning writes that “all’s right with the world,” they are describing moments where the disjointure of life is briefly overcome. The chorus of the song captures this exact ontological trade:

“I’ll trade you ten of your cities
For Marion Bridge and the pleasure it brings”

The “city” represents the fragmented, out-of-joint modern existence where entities are merely resources to be consumed. “Marion Bridge,” by contrast, represents a place where the rift is healed, and everything—from the stars sparkling on the river face to the broken person who comes to “mend”—falls back into its proper, harmonious placement within the cosmos (“a piece of the universe / More fit for princes and kings”).

3. River People as Earth People

In his later philosophy, particularly his essays on Hölderlin’s river hymns (The Ister and The Rhine), Heidegger explains that a river is not just a feature of the landscape; it is a destiny. It grounds a historical people. It dictates their rhythm of work, leisure, and imagination.

The “down-homers” on the Mira are textbook examples of this. They are attuned to the river’s seasons: “warm afternoons” and “soft summer nights.” Their patience—”if they catch nothing they never complain”—reveals a profound acceptance of the giving and concealing nature of Being. They do not demand that nature perform for them; they dwell alongside it.

Ultimately, our analysis shows that the answer to Heidegger’s question—What is Being?—is found when we stop staring at individual objects and instead look at the poetic atmosphere that binds them together. “Song for the Mira” is an ontological longing (a homesickness or Heimweh, which Heidegger called the very impulse of philosophy) to return to a place where Being is vividly felt, shared, and whole.