Category: Uncategorized

The Blog or the Tree

The Blog that ate reality. (Only consider the indigestion.)

Perhaps this is closer to the electron vs. the tree product? I would not know. I am not sure at all what the blog is in terms of my real world. This is not due to diminished tech ability so much, but rather to a lack of curiosity.

I was given stern instructions to begin a blog, if I ever wanted to produce marketable writing and be able to sell it; to have an electronic presence. I made the effort, thinking that I would open a door to creativity and meet people of ‘like mind’.

I have a very different view today. Somedays I think I am shouting down a well, on others, I am walking along whispering to myself (which is cause for some worry).

Today, it seems I am talking to a very small group of ‘friends in the shadows’. It has a magical and unreal quality to it. I feel myself reaching out and taking a hand, or starting a conversation here and there. Sometimes I simply brush someones cheek with my knuckles and look deeply into their eyes with an attempt to understand who they are. I am looking deep into a mystery that eludes me. You.

Ever Onward

It is this sense of presence in an electronic world that has ignited my curiosity again. What is this web we weave? How does it penetrate creativity? Is the glue still kindness, or does the ego rule?

For me to even voice these words, feels strange. Clearly, the precipice of my ignorance is high and airy. I lean out and see only hints along a skyline. I know nothing. Perhaps knowing nothing, much more is possible. Perhaps I can fly after all.

I will let you know.

Ganges River

Wild Wild West

Cattle Drive

This grainy old-time view is how I hope to display a world that is passing: two cowboys, a rare cowgirl, a couple of cattle dogs and a herd of 30 head. The next generation won’t see this happen. There are too many folk, too little land, too large a drive for money and power. Thus, the world changes as it always has.

Do not, please, assume I am denying change or supporting the meat industry. I am simply playing observer and noting the inevitability. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder if we can play the part of guide in this process. Often the very idea of inserting myself into the maelstrom of change terrifies me. How dare I, how could I? Certainly there is very little that I know about the balance of man and nature, the balance of man and mankind. I wonder if it is simply the process of bringing authentic kindness to the process each time we move. This too terrifies me, as I am so inadequate to the task.

Hot Dusty work.

So I left the boys, girls, and dogs behind to travel another road, where my inadequacy will be forgiven, if it is ever noticed at all.

The land is dry here, the road is inches deep in the dust of a dry lake bed. The map is torn.

Perfect.

Road North

Other travelers have stopped here to discuss something, some story, some prayer. I stop and open up to what I see.

Sky, cloud, life.

Your Story

This basalt block holds the key to a mind long past. These images, tapped patiently into the rock surface, are thought to be as old as 12,000 years. I am caught by the truth that I will never know what the meaning of all this felt like for them. It is so simple to take a bit of poetry, a bit of some novel, and place myself within the perceived meaning. I realize though, that whenever I write, or read, or gaze at art, that the meaning slips here and there, never the same for artist or art gazer.

Really, this is the point. I do not wish my creations to have some kind of solid, inflexible meaning that will be prattled on about in a classroom. I want the bubble that exploded from my heart and mind to engender a bubble of yours. It is a form of touch. I reach for you and you return the gesture. There is a deep mystery in this, a beauty.

Stone Yard Biota

Here is a change of perspective. See the stone-yard biota above? This is the other side of the picture rock I just showed you. Moss and lecithin making its own lovely message heard above the roar of the universe. Here, below is hot spring biology with the same gambit.

In just such moments, it is the striving to understand that precipitates change within. There is no correct answer, there is only the quest.

Hot spring biota
Out Beyond
by Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrong doing
and right doing,
There is a field. I will meet you there.

When the soul lies down in the grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
'each other'
does not make any sense.

Body and Earth

Puzzle Bark

To understand an eccosystem, you must be able to see that every part effects every other, creating a delicate balance. Modern man carefully placed himself above the rest of existence, so as to safely rule it. Slowly, he is finding out that such a pinacle is both unsafe and unreal.

Wild Wood

“You are what you eat” has long been a part of common parlance, but what we are beginning to recognize is that we are what we eat, breath, drink, touch and even think.

Spring Fed Stream

It is difficult from our present position to see a world where we are integral, not dominant. I suspect that we must look back at story telling and myth for guidance.

In ‘The Fruitful Darkness’ by Joan Halifax, this idea is brought forward:

“Yes, stories are threads that draw one back into the fabric of the Earth. Bright fibers that join worlds, stories illumine our deep past, our origins, our ancestors and the ancestors of all creation, and our psyches and societies.”

Green

The startling beauty of nature, combined with our creative capacity may provide information which our hard, inflexible minds otherwise refuse to comprehend.

Northwest Native American Pictograph

Let’s read a story, tell a story; dig deep into the past, future, or flights of fancy. Open your heart to whatever may be.

I invite you to bring it forward.

Quartz, azurite, malachite: Earth candy!

Trees that never give up.

Juniper fell in 1987 fire; note green branches!

Here are my few ‘wonder trees’ and a site that has brought many more forward. Take a look if you love them, they are uplifting: https://blazepress.com/2017/08/15-trees-that-wont-give-up-despite-all-the-odds/

Moving slowly forward, I seek the beauty in each little thing.

In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke:

"The core of every core, the kernel of every kernel,
an almond! held in itself, deepening in sweetness:
all of this, everything, right up to the stars,
is the meat around your stone. Accept my bow..."

From the Prickly Perch

Safe

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye


Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Stand tall