Grinding cardamom
Green pods snap and yield dainty seeds
Already pungent, they jutter beneath pestle
I breath the deep question
Mind following curiosity, the soul of belief
Another one crushed: volition
Result of limitless causes
Pungent but also empty
This is a giant oak from Hatfield, in the UK. It is huge and moving in its grandeur. I thought I would show it to you, as the following start to a story has such a large and lovely oak in the background as well.
The Birth of Paris
She has been waiting such a long time, since her body grew too old to function, too old to stay in this place of air, earth, and water, woven into life. Or has it been a short time? She reminds herself that the body and its memories are not who she is; they are only a function of biology, of molecules responding to the laws of the universe. Her ‘being-ness’ though, that is the Great Awareness that she should have melted into by now. Still she remains. She waits. Nahasdzaan Shima, named for Mother Earth, waits and wonders in a place between.
Long before Shima lost her corporal image of herself, she heard a whisper. It came in tendrils of passing dreams and in scents on the breeze. Something was moving in the ground; something was coming forward from a place of stillness, a place of long rest. Something had allowed itself to be recognized at last, to awaken, and to function in the world of humankind: something very old, and very interesting. The aspect of Shima that still held this memory, also held the long slow smile of knowing it.
Thirty-five years before the now (my how time flies), two very determined people were preparing to have a child. It was not their cognitive intention to co-mingle their respective genetic materials, but since the universe supplies limitless causes throughout time (flying or not), without any preamble or discussion, it was probably unavoidable.
William Buller (whose good-name had French roots, meaning ‘Scribe’), was academically inclined, but not a scribe at all. He was a young Department Head at Cambridge, with deep interests in Celtic Studies, in a century when this arcane subject was barely surviving, due to the fact that human survival had become a far more insistent topic than it ever had been. In public he was very dry, a little vain, and not inclined to laugh. His Cambridge persona was something he had inherited, along with a hefty bank account and a very traditional, but often empty, stately home situated somewhere northeast of London, perhaps near Kettering? He seldom mentioned it.
Will had met the woman named Bijou Dubois, while on Easter Holiday in London, where he let down his hair, so to speak. Her name was apparently also from French roots, by way of Haiti. Will had cultivated a group of friends from his college days who also had inherited uncomfortably large amounts of credits (they seldom mentioned it), but far fewer societal restrictions. Among them he could comfortably explore what he thought of as his ‘true-self’; something with lots of unexamined, and momentarily undisguised, appetites. In many ways Will was a very simple man.
Bijou was a bright young woman who had seen more of life than she had strictly wanted to, before leaving home. Now she wanted to see the world and this time on her own terms. Bijou was an exchange student from Haiti, studying in London. One of Will’s friends had her as a student in his classes there, and hoped to have her elsewhere as well. He had invited her along to these parties with that outcome in mind. Instead, Bijou and Will did one of those things that people sometimes do, regardless of the differences in their ages, cultures, economic situations, or sexual inclinations; they fell in love. Will’s friend was momentarily perturbed, but he was nothing if not a man of the age, and gracefully gave up the suite he had taken in anticipation, just down the road, for his friend and company.
This is where terms such as ‘whirl wind romance’ are coined and earn their authenticity: in the scattered clothing, the foolish comments, and the primal longings of the heart. They had only 10 days before classes resumed, so Will, after having used his friends’ suite well, took Bijou back to his ancestral home. He boldly knocked up, frightened, and then reassured the elderly staff, and preceded to show Bijou the life that she was pretty sure she had been born to.
On the last day, a day of unusual warmth and sunshine in the burgeoning spring, they chose to have a picnic lunch, out the back, across a wide lawn, over the hillock, and some yards beyond the folly. There grew a ponderous oak of unknown age. Beneath its shade they took their repast and made their child.
Before anyone assumes that our dark, small, delicately featured, Bijou had any specific intentions when she forgot to bring her birth control on holiday, remember the words ‘whirl-wind’ and also remember the most primitive parts of the human brain, and how for some indefinable reason, no matter how difficult life becomes, no matter that you end up raising children with the Neanderthal in the next valley over (and loving it), or you bring home the cheese monger from another continent who will never learn to speak your native tongue (except in the most intimate of situations, when you are sure you have just resolved all of the worlds philosophical conundrums, but failed to care), remember that humanity would rather fall in love and reproduce than remember any other thing on earth. Cut her a break.
The point of this, however, is not love, however it may seem so. The point of this is the oak, or rather, the oak and its complimentary fungus, growing slowly and resolutely in the grass beneath. Sweet William and his darling Bijou forgot about the blanket that the cook had packed for them, and the butler had pointed out before handing off the picnic basket. They talked and laughed and drank wine. They nibbled sandwiches and each other until the need for or even the location of the blanket was superfluous. They scrambled and rolled and… Let us just say that the molecules that it took to conceive a child were similar in size to those molecules of bits of the tree and its loving fungus. It might be good to consider the oak as a vast storehouse of learning and wisdom, and its mycorrhizal fungi as something like the Internet. Or perhaps not.
There now, enough said. In the months ahead, the discovery of a certain child in a womb was considered a sweet thing, and set various other things in motion. A wedding was had, a small cottage in Cambridge was purchased, a man, 21 years older than his wife, knew himself to be smitten and didn’t mind, a young woman of only 20 years felt blessed and contented and at ease with the world. A child was born whole and healthy, and named for the most romantic thing her mother could think of, and everyone was happy. It is one of life’s most wonderful realities; no matter how lovely or poorly things seem to turn out, they are bound to change.
Returning to the now, where the story began: the oak is long dead; its trunk was cored by some eager graduate students some 5 years after the birth of Paris, they had discovered it as one of the last English oaks surviving, and chose coring as a direct route to determining its age, Will and Bijou had split only two years after the birth of Paris, when Bijou was invited on a longish holiday to the continent, by a ‘friend’ of Will’s, that she never remembered to come home from, and Paris has long since learned to take care of herself very well and has reasoned that she has nothing in common with her parents, although she too is now smitten, perhaps just as they were, with a young doctor named Alan.
Also, just as an aside, Nahasdzaan Shima, with whom this story began, will soon have some of her questions answered. Due to the fact, that every action has a reaction, and that limitless causes have preceded every single bit of happenings in the known universe, of which this is only an excruciatingly small detail, a tiny window into existence; everything is still as it should be. Interesting.
Before you stands the beautiful Tane Mahuta, a huge and lovely Kauri tree (Agathis australis) in the famous Waipoua forest of New Zealand. There is an article on Wikipedia which is titled “List of Superlative Trees”
found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superlative_trees#Tallest
It lists not only the tallest, oldest, deepest rooted, etc, but the beefy ones too, of which Tane Mahuta is one. Third largest by trunk volume: 18,200 cubic feet! It is figured to be about 2000 years old.
The name “Tane Mahuta” is that of the Polynesian god of both birds and forests. This particular name pleased me, as trees would not be as they are without the roosting feathered ones, and birds without trees would be only sheltered by rocks and sky scrappers until every one of them looked like a pigeon. How would we have ever known the predator lurked, were it not for the call and flight of birds! It is in the subtle things that our guidance lies; as Ray Bradbury states in my favorite quote from Dandelion Wine:
“Crossing the lawn that morning, Douglas Spaulding broke a spider web with his face. A single invisible line on the air touched his brow and snapped without a sound. So, with the subtlest of incidents, he knew that this day was going to be different.”
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
This simple image etched my childhood mind with an understanding of the world which has remained magical and so real at the same time. To this day, I am often found listening to the subtle messages brought by nature. (Thank you Ray!)
Lost (1999) By David Wagoner
Poet of the Pacific Northwest
Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen.
It answers, I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.
Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.
Whispers
by Mary Oliver
Have you ever
tried to
slide into
the heaven of sensation and met
You know not what
resistance but it
held you back? have you ever
turned on your shoulder
helplessly, facing
the white moon, crying
let me in? have you dared to count
the months as they pass and the years
while you imagined pleasure,
shining like honey, locked in some
secret tree? have you dared to feel
the isolation gathering
intolerably and recognized
what kinds of explosions can follow
from an intolerable condition? have you walked out in the mornings
wherever you are in the world to consider
all those gleaming and reasonless lives
that flow outward, and outward, easily,
to the last
moment the bulbs of their lungs
their bones and their appetites
can carry them? oh, have you
looked wistfully into
the flushed bodies of the flowers?
have you stood
staring out over the swamps, the swelling rivers
where the birds, like tossing fires
flash through the trees, their bodies
exchanging a certain happiness
in the sleek, amazing
humdrum of natures design-
blood's heaven, spirit's haven to which
you can not belong?
Some recent springtime ago, I was camping on the edge of a desert, where the remnants of a different ecosystem had survived due to a valiant spring, forming a pool.
Here, the Night Hawk preformed his display of arching spins and dives which caused his feathers to whistle. It was mesmerizing. It was joyful to watch as twilight fell.
Words are so useless in conveying experiences. I can only supply you with a suggestion, which your own experience will dictate in the end.
In the same way, Mary Oliver has chosen words that may or may not remind you of sometime in your life. Maybe it is a time you will wish to turn from anyway, to forget rather than gouge up the unfiltered emotion for.
We human-kind prefer to feel pleasure, that is how we are made. We seek life, pleasure, and continuance over it’s opposite. So here is the possible purpose of poetry, of fairy tales, and even science fiction; it provides the shield from what is here and disturbing, while allowing us to still see.
For the last few weeks I have been reading:
“The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman.
I can only read it in small segments, as I have a very active imagination, which I try to protect for the sake of sleep. His premise, revealed in an interview some years ago, was that he could discuss very difficult environmental issues, and not lose the attention of his audience, by placing his discussion in a world where mankind no longer lives. We have been erased, no reason given. Why are we more comfortable with this than, say, the many dystopian stories where we struggle to survive, or the very useful factual, scientific articles? Hmmm.
He begins the book with a quote, (in german and in english) from the Chinese poet Li Tai Po, “The Chinese Flute: Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth”.
Das Firmament blaut ewig, und die Erde
Wird longe fest steh'n und aufblüh'n im Lenz.
Du aber, Mensch, wie lange lebst denn du?
The firmament is blue forever, and the Earth
Will long stand firm and bloom in spring.
But, man, how long will you live?
This begins his book with the reminder, that in earth’s own history, many have come and many departed. For some reason, the concept goes down easier with a poem.
Chapter one is located in the Polish primeval forest (Bialowieza Puszcza). A place of huge and nearly unsullied trees. For now. Mr. Weisman describes the changing laws that will eventually destroy this last wilderness, like all the rest.
Throughout the remainder of the book, we get to see what will happen to all our productions, our creations, the bones and poisons of our civilization. Given enough time, the world recovers from us, and given enough distance we can all discuss it.
Have you ever walked in a forest and known that your very foot steps heralded its end?
Could you hear it listening to you, to your foot strike, your breath, and knew it would
embrace you with love to the bitter end?
Have you ever wandered a forest and felt the beat of only the one heart?
Let's go for a walk, shall we?
On this day set aside to remember,
take a moment to imagine
a world so completely different
that none of this is possible.
One image becomes a collective image.
More than a wish, all change begins here:
Take a breath and imagine.
A Brave and Startling Truth
by Maya Angelou
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist.
BY GARY SNYDER
Old Woman Nature
naturally has a bag of bones
tucked away somewhere.
a whole room full of bones!
A scattering of hair and cartilage
bits in the woods.
A fox scat with hair and a tooth in it.
a shellmound
a bone flake in a streambank.
A purring cat, crunching
the mouse head first,
eating on down toward the tail–
The sweet old woman
calmly gathering firewood in the
moon . . .
Don’t be shocked,
She’s heating you some soup.
“Old Woman Nature” from Axe Handles. Copyright © 1983 by Gary Snyder.
(Gary Snyder has been described as the “poet laureate of Deep Ecology“. Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the American Book Award. His work is said to reflect both Buddhist spirituality and nature.)
We tend to see Nature in a lovely pastoral landscape: pretty flowers, verdant meadows, things we might like to eat. There is the dark, the alien, the deeply frightening aspect of Nature though, and this is ours to love as well. Why do we like to shock ourselves with the dark, the surreal images? Perhaps it is the contrast which reminds us we are still alive, or more to the point, we are not yet dead.
One of the images of the Darkness is in the changing of the seasons. I see the tanning of grass, the shedding of layers of leaves, and the flocks of birds as they migrate. I remain, beneath clouds, considering the stillness and silence that has overtaken my world. Persephone has gone in to somewhere more warm, but I remain. Should I feel sorry for her?
My forest is simply waiting for snow and ice to cover its lost mantle. In this stillness I am content only for a while, but it is enough. When the cold finally drives me in, or away, I find that I have brought the silence with me.
“…one aspect of silence is emptiness, and yes, it is often lonely. In the presence of silence, the conditioned self rattles and scratches. It begins to crumble like old leaves or worn rock. If we have courage, we take silence as medicine to cure us from our social ills, the suffering of self-centered alienation. In silence, sacred silence, we stand naked like trees in winter, all our secrets visible under our skin. And like winter’s tree, we appear dead but are yet alive.”
The Fruitful Darkness, Joan Halifax
Come. Scrabble with me into this darkened place. I will keep you warm. I will keep you safe. I am not hungry at the moment, but perhaps you would like some soup?
Find the instructions for this word challenge (Silence and Stillness) at the above link. Enjoy the variety, join the fun.
“These Things are One. They are Unity. They are Ourselves.”
These are the words of Ramon Medina Silva: The Mara’akame of the Huichol people of Mexico. He describes seeing the world reflected in ourselves. Seeing ourselves in all things; the collective dream.
The landscapes of dream are often where my clearest images erupt; transforming, healing, and integrating what has lain on the surface of my conscious mind, too thinly scraped to call attention. This realm is a place of understanding that is so very difficult to form into words. Sometimes I wonder if the Earth may be dreaming us in her attempt to understand. May she understand.
In Joan Halifax’s book ‘The Fruitful Darkness’, she shares her own understanding of the Huichol people:
“The myth of the journey to Wirikuta is at once a sacred journey and a collective dream. The history recounts how the Ancient Ones, the gods of the Huichols, fell ill through forgetting, yet, returning to the traditional ways, were healed. The myth is also a collective dream reminding the people of the value of the continuity of traditions, particularly as they apply to place, to sacred and real locales.”
So far removed am I from my traditions in the waking world, that when they call my name in the dairy isle of the market, I hear only the blare of music and read those mythic labels with dulled uncomprehending eyes.
The wonder and the mystery are so easily lost.
So for the moment I will try to share that wonder, beneath the tree. I may be stricken, I may be wounded, but I still do dream. Small impoverished dreams perhaps, but even the smallest thing has its place in the grandeur.
Part Six: What May Enter Here
Culley sat waiting for his grandmother’s attention, cross-legged before the fire in her private rooms. He did not mind. Time between both worlds moved for Culley in a way that neither world seemed to notice. He would have been hard pressed to put it into words, had anyone asked. No one did.
He had noticed a shift in his mother after the thing that had happened to her. It was as if she were more still, rather than different. Her tone and her manor had not changed much, but the time between her words seemed to rest within a plane of its own. She now seemed, to Culley, to be nearer kin to the trees than to their surrounding human neighbors. He did not find this to be a bad thing, having been friends with the trees for a very long time, but any change in ones own mother seems to be a cause for deeper attention if only to reassess that all is still well.
Todd had become, if anything, a more vigilant and now insistent caretaker since that happening. He was soft spoken and humorous as always, but his word brooked no gainsaying when it came to the issues of safety. This had forced Todd to travel more openly in the world of man, since he would not leave Culley’s Mama to travel alone. At first Culley had been stunned to see such an unflinchingly courageous fellow change color and twitch when riding in the auto to the market, but Todd quickly adapted and even attempted to operate the hulking ancient Citroën his mother had kept from her fathers estate, long before Culley was even born. Considering the normal self-adjustment that takes place when a Citroën is ignited: a rising and shifting due to the hydro-pneumatic forces, which gives the impression of sentience, this was an act of true bravery.
Todd was only allowed to cruise the small road that bordered the fence of their property in the end. Culley’s Mama had to explain licensing requirements, and identification issues, to Todd in great detail, again and again, and how they prevented him from traveling farther afield. Todd seemed to think that there must be some sort of loophole that would allow an unremarkable fey fellow to trundle down the roads of man-kind. She eventually came close to losing her temper.
“You are not The Doctor waving psychic paper!”
“Sorry, what Ella? Not Who?”
Culley knew exactly what she meant and smiled ear to ear to hear Todd step unerringly into the ‘who’ joke. Season’s 1 and 2 of ‘Doctor Who’ were the only DVD’s that his mother had ever owned. The tiny flat screen TV, and the DVD player, along with the two best seasons, were a gift from a college friend from long ago; before she had met Culley’s father. The entire device lived beneath a colorful Costa Rican tapestry and Todd had thought it was an art installation; so much of the house was scattered with such things. Culley took him by the hand, sat him down, pulled the cover off with a magicians flair, and then pluged the device into an electrical socket. Todd was delighted.
“You have never seen a movie?”
“I had heard rumors, but who would believe such a thing existed.” Todd leaned into the picture so as to catch every word, while Culley watched him with a smile. Ella was talking softly to the groceries in the kitchen. Since she always had done this, neither of them paid much attention.
“Most of the neighbors have something like this. I think it is too noisy though.” Culley informed him.
Todd cast him a worried glance. “Where does this man live? Is such magic common place, if so many have seen these things?”
“Only the magic of the machine. This is merely a Bard’s tale, captured by the machine. Such magic is long gone from man’s world, if it ever were here at all.”
“But the machine itself is magic, so why not the magic it portrays?”
Culley paused, feeling an unusual sense of frustration. “Todd?” He tried at last. “When you encounter a sense a magic in yourself, can you say where it grew from?”
“No, not truly. I can remember the things that led to my knowing, but not the true path itself.” Todd was intensely curious about this and had pushed the system’s ‘off’ button on the block that Culley had shown him would control the device. “In other words, it seems unexplainable: true now, but hidden before,” he added.
Culley nodded, still unsure of what he could explain. “When a human understands something in mans ‘science’ or ‘magic’, and sees how it works, he might feel the same way as you; shifting from not-knowing to knowing. However, he captures each part of the process, so that he can hand it to another human, sharing it with them as a practice of opening. He understands the physical properties of this world so well that he can teach their use, by repeating the process in tiny events, each entirely under his control.
“So, there is no mystery?”
“There is always a mystery. In Fey the mystery is held differently. Most men fail to hear it, or smell it, because the other ways they ‘know’ are not only very loud, but considered proper. To use the methods normal to Fey is considered either weak or perhaps mad.”
Todd seemed to consider this deeply, silence resting with him for some moments, then he slide the remote over to Culley with a sheepish smile. “I believe I will help your mother prepare the dinner.”
That had been last night. Culley still felt some sense of guilt. He had destroyed Todd’s wonder with simple unadorned facts. Even now he was not completely sure that he understood the whole of it. After all, his own knowledge of science came only from books, not experience. Behind him, he heard his grandmother rustle her papers and cork her inkwell. She now cleared her throat; a long standing sign between them that he would be given attention now. Culley smiled to the fire and stood, turning to face his Queen and kin.
“Good evening Grandmother, are you well?”
“Yes, child. As well as might be at my age.” She winked at him and he smiled back, meeting her eyes for a moment. “What is it you wish to speak to me about?”
“I wonder if I might stay here in your home for some time to come?”
She crinkled her brow and spread her hands in inquiry, but held her peace.
“I have work to do of a nature that must be constantly attended to.” Culley looked down to gather his thoughts. “I believe it will benefit from the air of Fey.”
His grandmother nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “I will inform the household. Will your mother be pleased with your choice?”
Culley barely moved a shoulder in answer. “I will speak with her soon. She has always been my support.” Then he paused in a way that held his very heart in check for a moment before going on. “May you and I speak with ease in this room?”
She watched him with the same still care. “Yes.” she answered softly, none the less, and then turned to close the door. She indicated the chairs by the fire and lifted a cordial in its cut crystal decanter from the table set between, filling one glass, then after a pause, filling the other by half as well.
Culley smiled and tilted his head as he watched her. She returned the gesture as she handed him the full glass and seated herself to listen, taking a small sip. Culley also took a sip and set the glass aside as he curled his legs up onto the chair beneath him.
“Who are they Grandmother? I need to know.”
She looked seriously at him for a few moments, with a thoughtful frown. “I suppose you are planning to tell the trees?”
Culley lifted a shoulder a fraction, in answer, as his grandfather was wont to do now and then.
Much later, as the queen still sat, eyes resting on the fire, but not seeing its flicker, a rap on the door brought her back into the room.
“Enter!” she called a bit shortly, feeling startled and not liking it.
“Only me, my dear.” Her consort stood leaned with one arm against the carved wooden frame, his stick thrust under the other arm, un-needed. He tilted his head and looked so much the rascal, that it forced a laugh from her. “Dinner?” he asked, the epitome of casual disinterest.
“Have I kept you waiting?” Her eyes twinkled.
“Only this last hour. Your cook is displeased, I am merely curious.”
“Come in and shut the door. I have been talking with Culley.”
“You are concerned?” He asked this with a sudden serious turn of attitude.
“Not so much concerned as thoughtful, but yes, there may be cause for concern eventually. He is so much like his father.” Dain’s own father walked to the other chair and sat down facing her.
“What has he discussed with you?” He was brisk and serious.
“He wants to know who our enemy is and why.”
“You have told him?”
“What I have told is true.” She looked down, the glass still in her hand catching firelight. Her face folded in anxiety as she spoke.
“What you must tell is all. He will suffer if he does not fully understand.”
“What do any of us understand?”
“Do not equivocate, my darling. We made a mistake in not fully warning Dain, in waiting. You must be blunt and clear.”
“You are right,” sorrow and worry flooded her eyes. “I will speak with him when he returns.”
Her heart’s love stood and bent to kiss her lips tenderly, before guiding her to dinner.
Mary Oliver (the 1984 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) wrote a poem about Stanley Kunitz (named United States Poet Laureate in 2000).
I would like to share it with you.
Stanley Kunitz
by Mary Oliver
I used to imagine him
coming from his house, like Merlin
strolling with important gestures
through the garden
where everything grows so thickly,
where birds sing, little snakes lie
on the boughs, thinking of nothing
but their own good lives,
where petals float upward,
their colors exploding,
and trees open their moist
pages of thunder –
it has happened every summer for years.
But now I know more
about the great wheel of growth,
and decay, and rebirth,
and know my vision for a falsehood.
Now I see him coming from the house –
I see him on his knees,
cutting away the diseased, the superfluous,
coaxing the new,
knowing that the hour of fulfillment
is buried in years of patience –
yet willing to labor like that
on the mortal wheel.
Oh, what good it does the heart
to know it isn’t magic!
Like the human child I am
I rush to imitate –
I watch him as he bends
among the leaves and vines
to hook some weed or other;
I think of him there
raking and trimming, stirring up
those sheets of fire
between the smothering weights of earth,
the wild and shapeless air.
Of his own work, Kunitz said:
“The poem comes in the form of a blessing—like rapture breaking on the mind.”
Kunitz was also remarkable for his courageous stance as a conscientious objector.
I read Mary Oliver’s take on him:
“Knowing that the hour of fulfillment
is buried in years of patience –
yet willing to labor like that
on the mortal wheel.”
And I knew in that moment, that my own uncertain struggles:
attempting to understand the whole of life, and my childish practice of wishing it well,
may in time have its own fruition.
Without excuse I fell down Alice’s rabbit hole. Neither she nor her friends were there.
I was frightened.
I am not entirely sure where this all began last week, but I have a feeling that the words of Goethe were a trigger. In the title page of the book I was reading, (Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person by Mary C. Richards), were his words:
“Then only are we really thinking
when the subject on which we are thinking
can not be thought out.” Goethe
This is a wonderful description of the Zen Koan: a tool intended to bring the mind to its knees, and crack it open, changing its position of perception, its perspective. According to the Zen based teacher, Adyashanti, enlightenment is only that: a change in perspective. He explains that nothing else changes, only how you perceive the world.
I was pleased with dear Goethe, but set him aside for later.
Then I chanced to read about the author Alyc Helms, while shamelessly wandering through the Internet as I looked for possible literary agents. She caught me with a fox (and I do love the fox), by listing her literary interests as: (not in this order)
Fanfic (Fan fiction) is the fractal spreading of a story as it erupts from its fans. In other words, the fans cannot get enough, so they write it themselves.
Critical Theory is “a philosophical approach to culture, and especially to literature, that seeks to confront the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures that produce and constrain it. The term is applied particularly to the work of the Frankfurt School.”
The Frankfurt School is at Goethe University.
(Ah, there is his dear name, who was he, this Goethe-name of inner sanctums, of stone foundations, and library walls?) I haphazardly went to look at the Frankfurt School and found there many names (Kant, Freud, Marx, and other well known European fathers, all vetted and true).
I was already in the rabbit hole, too far down to see the sky, as this slurry of dense information spilled down on me, slick and sweet as honey.
“I need to understand all of this!” This thought arose, even while I was convinced, at the same moment, that I would soon be overwhelmed and buried. I was so overwhelmed with the extent of my flagrant ignorance of the truth, that I turned the page and began to read immediately about Kant and Transcendental Idealism:
“The doctrine is most commonly presented as the idea that time and space are just human perceptions; they are not necessarily real concepts, just a medium through which humans internalize the universe.”
Ah! Time and space! I am simply quantumly entangled with Schrodinger’s cat, right?
(Oh god, don’t let me drown.) (Remember to not ever open the box. Remember Pandora!)
This is where it ends. I am not playing cats cradle with Indra’s Net. I am a child with a kaleidoscope who thinks she can un-fracture the world with it.
The world remains fractured.
Whatever emphatic grain has caught in my teeth, I cannot shift it, I cannot spit it out. I must soften it. I move to images made of ink, film, clay and canvas. I rest in them. I must rest.
The child’s brush is blunt; its bristles are splayed from contact with dry paint cakes.
Yellow, blue, green find the paper randomly.
More often face and arms are marked with the shaman’s magic.
The pan of water tips and shaman swims.
Swimming through the trees: great kelp forests.
Feeding on swaying kelp, sweet, salty: shaman knows an umami delight in life.
Shaman is swallowed by the Great Fish.
Water flows, fish ends, shaman becomes cloud.
Cloud becomes tree.
Tree becomes paper and brush in the child’s hand.
The Myth of Trees 
