fresh start

            “In the beginning everyone is a beginner.  That’s the first thing.  Some think the conventions of time can save you if you get a handle on the arm of the clock.  You only need that if you’re talking the thin kind of time that rushes past you so quickly that you feel you might go over the rapids.   That thin time really slides but of course it’s no good.  No good at all.  And besides, now people just get swept away.  Now there’s not even the little hand to grab hold of.  Digital  changed all that.  Now they’re just doing some serious numbers crunching.  Try to survive that.” 

            “First we got turned around chasing the spheres in the sky.  Then from the sun and moon going through all their phases like the stilted, speedy rhythm of time lapse photography folks got dizzy. They had to sit down till the swirling settled.  Something had to be done.  Someone called for organization”

            “Too bad everybody forgot about the options we had.  Now so many are just rushing down the road hoping boulders don’t drop a dime on them.  Hoping it ain’t their time yet.   Thin time, what’s known as linear time tends to pull us into pieces.  We become fragmented and even separated from our own experiences.  Our conception of time is now a pale, melted Dali watch.  There are deeper layers of time, richer than this surface tick tock telling of events.  Do not deny the shadows.  The spaces between.”

Conversations with Nic available at  http://amzn.to/14jUNUs

 the wild blue is available at http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i

 

the song of the earth

When I was growing up the word ‘pollution’ was something people actually heard. It didn’t put your mind asleep. You had to twist it around your head.  It forced meaning upon you. It’s totally different today. We’re shut down to words like pollution and cancer. Everyone in my family has died from cancer. These are big words meaning big things; entire eco-systems, our bodies’ immune system. 

     Entire regional ecosystems are in danger. It’s not just any longer about how many hectares or acres a tiger needs in order to be a tiger.  It’s not just about the curves in a river a salmon needs in order to be salmon.  Finally, in our lifetime, we’re seeing some dams taken down. We wait for the salmon to wiggle waggle up the river again.

     Today, we know that major dams, the largest constructions in the world, can cause seismic activity. We’re talking earthquakes. But the earth’s health is not even just about this sort of thing anymore either. It’s about how we’ve become threatened by our own existence. 

     Every day we hear about new extinctions.

     How do you talk about this enormous loss that all of us are facing?  Those that have little ones. Those that like to think about futures.  Like to think about the summer sun or kitchen gardens feeding families in Kenya.  The movement of people and animals. Rhythms.  Maybe the drumming of the caribou influencing our music.  We don’t really know how any of the subtle or even the strong rhythms transform or change the flow of the blood in our veins. What we do know, we know so well that we’re starting not to hear it. We know that mountains in Switzerland have to be covered to protect them from melting.  We know that bugs that have natural enemies are free to destroy because the cold that would suppress them no longer does. 

     We know that our opposable thumb is unopposable. 

     How do you talk about this and relate this to the loss of someone you love without making it seem like you’ve made too much of a leap and that people aren’t important?  When people rank priorities of life, we’re always at the top of the list. Do people have to be the most important? Of course they are to you. Those that love you; those that give you meaning, and gravity and ground. But what about all those other beings and bodies living on this planet that sustain all that you love? What do you know about that?  How close are you to it?  Is your ear to the ground? 

     Enki, in ancient Sumeria, the place that gave us writing, meant wisdom. Enki literally meant your ear to the ground. Can you hear the smooth turns a salmon makes up a winding river?  While in the belly, salmon eggs learn how to follow the river and to mind their way back to the open ocean.

     Every day another extinction.  Aldo Leopold said an intelligent tinkerer saves all the pieces.  We’re losing the pieces.  Rhythms are changing.  Some of the sounds that make up the song are disappearing.  Some of the movement in the river is stopped by dams and diverted waters. We should celebrate our differences. But we have to distinguish between difference and loss.  We know that the Earth has tremendous capabilities of renewal. Some people call wetland habitats the earth’s lungs.  If given a chance wetlands not only transform toxic wastes but thrive again and become open invitations to ducks flying overhead to rest during their migration.  Every being is a significant part of this world. Every living being, every body of water, every parcel of land. How do we learn how to hear what we’ve put into the background?  We need to start listening again.

the wild blue available at http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i

the dream to be human continues

under the tree and away from the city; beneath the moon but far from the sea. salt is in the air.  grass circles around the bare earth where the deer wait and have left the bones of the tree roots exposed to the night. here is where the deer wait to become human. the tree is magic but only because it is an integral part of the whole scene. you can see clouds of air from the deer’s nostrils. it’s that cool out this evening when they’re trying to be human and their breath is that warm. there is no music in the tree because it is winter and the leaves are in another reality not even dreaming of their unfurling. winter’s brief gusts of winds have a sound. they feel lonely.

why is it that deer would want to be human?  only they know. only the human that imagined this story knows.

when we have so much trouble being the best of what human has been storied; why wish that upon an animal that can come and go in silence and know the intimacies of winter, difficult and not, that brace their sides and frost their snouts.

so much of our time together as family members or friends; as extended family or in-laws or outlaws, those of us not legally in-laws; or as people we know through work or from the stores we shop at, so much of our time together is about the experience of becoming human. each encounter a way to open up more of ourselves to this experience that in the story of the deer is something to be desired.

my friend brian died recently. for him, his leaving was a part of his experience that he believed will bring him close to his ancestors. he is on a journey. his human qualities still to unfold after leaving this life.

in this life or the next maybe we are like the deer waiting under the tree. it is the night that transforms them if they wait under the tree in the moonlight with winter near and the wind quietly passing through.