Canoe in the Mist

2011-10-07T12:01:00.002-04:00

"The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health – his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s…The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order – a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, “hard facts”; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind." ~Wendell Berry

What I want to be when I "grow up"

2011-09-01T19:33:00.000-04:00

"I wish to be
an inspector of volcanoes.
I want to study cloud formations
and memorize the wind
and learn by heart the habits of
the ponderosa pine."
~Edward Abbey

Nothing

2011-07-30T08:29:00.005-04:00

The Farmer with 84 Problems

2011-07-23T16:46:00.000-04:00

(Excerpted from the book Wabi Sabi Simple: Create Beauty, Value Imperfection, Live Deeply By Richard R. )

Once, a farmer went to tell the Buddha about his problems. He
described his difficulties farming - how either droughts or monsoons
complicated his work. He told the Buddha about his wife - how even
though he loved her, there were certain things about her he wanted to
change. Likewise with his children - yes, he loved them, but they
weren't turning out quite the way he wanted. When he was finished, he
asked how the Buddha could help him with his troubles.

The Buddha said, "I'm sorry, but I can't help you."

"What do you mean?" railed the farmer. "You're supposed to be a great teacher!"

The Buddha replied, "Sir, it's like this. All human beings have
eighty-three problems. It's a fact of life. Sure, a few problems may
go away now and then, but soon enough others will arise. So we'll
always have eighty-three problems."

The farmer responded indignantly, "Then what's the good of all your teaching?"

The Buddha replied, "My teaching can't help with the eighty-three
problems, but perhaps it can help with the eighty-fourth problem."

"What's that?" asked the farmer.

"The eighty-fourth problem is that we don't want to have any problems."

2011-07-14T12:21:00.000-04:00

2011-06-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

"To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day."

~Lao Tzu, from chapter 48 of the Tao Te Ching

2011-05-30T17:25:00.000-04:00

Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Keep your mouth closed.
Guard your senses.
Temper your sharpness.
Simplify your problems.
Mask your brightness.
Be at one with the dust of the earth.
This is primal union.

He who has achieved this state
Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,
With good and harm, with honor and disgrace.
This therefore is the highest state of man.

Chapter 56, Tao Te Ching (Feng and English translation)

We are not unique

2011-05-07T09:54:00.000-04:00

"Strangely enough, even as a population mass operating under unified corporate management machinery, most Americans believe they are unique individuals, significantly different from every other person around them. More than any other people I have met, Americans fear loss of uniqueness. Yet you and I are not unique in the least. Despite the American yada yada about individualism, you are not special. Nor am I. Just because we come from the manufacturer equipped with individual consciousness, does not make us the center of any unique world, private or public, material, intellectual or spiritual. The fact is, you will seldom if ever make any significant material or lifestyle choices of your own in your entire life. If you don't buy that house, someone else will. If you don't marry him, someone else will. If you don't become a psychologist, lawyer or a clergyman or a telemarketer, someone else will. We are all replaceable parts in the machinery of a capitalist economy. "Oh but we have unique feelings and emotions that are important," we say. Psychologists specialize in this notion. Yet I venture to say that none of us will ever feel an emotion that someone long dead has not felt, or some as yet unborn person will not feel. We are swimmers in an ancient rushing river of humanity. You, me, the people in my Central American village, the child in Bangladesh, and the millionaire frat boys who run our financial and governmental institutions with such adolescent carelessness. All of our lives will eventually be absorbed without leaving a trace."

~Joe Bageant, from "Escape from the Zombie Food Court"

I have been thinking a lot about...

2011-04-17T11:51:00.001-04:00

..."self-sufficiency" or a more self-sufficient, sustainable lifestyle...and how far one can take that...how far I would want to take it...how far I am even capable of taking it.... This excerpt touches briefly upon what I see as the problems of modern non-self-sufficient life, as well as some of the reasons why one might entertain the idea (freedom, etc....). Also, it touches briefly upon the real and sobering difficulty of actually entertaining seriously the idea that one might opt out of the bullshit that the modern society has become....

"Self-sufficiency by definition is a state in which someone or something can self-sustain oneself without using outside resources. If you take that statement literally, it is impossible to obtain. Each and every living creature on this planet is dependant upon outside resources in order to survive. For instance, all animals need food to live. Most animals (excluding humans and the animals we feed) hunt and gather food as they did thousands if not millions of years ago. The majority of humans on the other hand, rely on others to produce food. We are no longer hunters and the gatherers, but rather consumers. This interdependency for the most part works. Most people buy their food instead of foraging for food themselves. Of course, buying food means that we must have money. And in order to have money, most of us need a job. Thus starts the vicious circle that has gotten most of us removed from the basics of being self-sufficient.

Besides food, we need other things too - water, shelter and warmth. Again, most people today rely on outside resources to provide these things. People get their water from a faucet, live in a mortgaged home or apartment and rely on heat from an electric or gas utility company. So what does being self-sufficient mean in today's society?

We can be self-sufficient by using our own physical and mental skills to produce food, shelter and warmth in order to sustain one's own existence. It means not relying on others for things that you can do yourself. It is a way of life that reduces our dependency on external resources in order to live. Self-sufficiency for most homesteaders means rekindling the skills once commonly used by past generations: growing, raising and preserving food, making and repairing tools, cutting and drying firewood, mending and/or making clothes and even building a house or a barn.

This is by no means an easy feat. It requires a ton of self-discipline and a determination not found in most people. Especially in today's society where over the years we have grown accustom to depending upon others to provide for our basic needs. As technology makes life "easier", we move further and further away from the basics and lose the skills that once sustained us.

What is gained by self-sufficiency? A greater sense of freedom and greater control of one's life. You will also eat healthier knowing what went into growing and raising your own food. You will reduce your dependency on money and reduce your need to work a stressful, 60 hour per week (or more!) job. Instead of paying a repairman to fix something, you take pride in fixing it yourself.

How self-sufficient one becomes is entirely a personal decision. There are plenty of things to consider and weigh. It is up to each of us to determine how self-sufficient to become."

From here.

Self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-sustainable (whichever name you want to call it by) living is certainly not for the lazy or faint of heart. I might add that it is also not for those who truly do give more than a rat's ass (which is most of us, myself included, I am afraid) about what society (in the form of neighbors, friends, family, those we may meet socially...) thinks about us.

Silence

2011-04-14T05:26:00.000-04:00

This is the seventh of seven poems in a series.

Silence

Nothing is quieter than the Abbey Church
in the middle of the day when all the monks
are at work. Nothing is quieter and more still,
even when the footsteps of a passing monk
echo off the stone walls, and
the lawn mower is heard outside in the distance.

Nothing is quieter than the meditation hall,
even though full of lotus squatting bodies....I hear
the breathing of the bloke beside me.
And the city bus screeches to a halt
at the bus stop outside the window.

Nothing is quieter than this room at 3:00 AM,
even though the dog snores and
the fire crackles and pops in
the fireplace beside me, and
I hear the tires of a car on
the rain soaked pavement outside.

Nothing is quieter than these woods.
An airplane flies over, and I look up.
And then back to my footsteps on the trail,
and the crunching of leaves and twigs
Under my feet. And the wind in the branches,
and the chipmunk squeaking on the log
as I pass by.

Nothing is quieter than the lake at dawn
when the mist rises....
Even though the mourning doves coo
and the woodpecker makes his racket,
and my companion is still snoring in the tent.

Nothing is quieter than silently holding in my arms...
and stroking the hair of my wife...or my daughter....
Nothing is quieter in my heart than this.

Its all silence

Silent night, holy night.

Space

2011-04-11T17:04:00.001-04:00

This is the sixth of seven poems in a series.

Space

The house had been dark for days,
the curtains drawn.
Imperceptibly almost, the mood
darkened and dankened.
When the light came in through
the windows....
What was that weight that was sitting on my head?

Her house was full of antiques,
things beautiful and old and full
of an artisan's care.
Wood and stone buddhas,
tapestries, rugs, old jars,
precious knick-knacks
of every description.

Too much. My mind clogged.

No faith in me. Not even a shred.
I still find peace in the stark and spare,
the bright and air,
of a Trappist church.

I stayed there one night, the monastery,
in a room with a bed and a chair and
a window on fields and woods.
That's all.

I slept deeply and peacefully.

Solitude

2011-04-09T08:34:00.002-04:00

This is the fifth of seven poems in a series.

Solitude

It's not the woods, it's not the wilderness.
It's only a corner in the walk-in closet.
Or a comfy chair beside the fireplace,
dim light, and there's that buddha
on the mantelpiece.
It's early morning before the sunrise,
or late night after the kids are asleep.

But it is precious, it is clear,
It is the slowing.
It is the food of breathing.
It is the longer thoughts.

It is solitude.
Just a tiny bit.

Ahhhhhhhhh.......

2011-04-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

"I left my heart to the wild hunt a comin'.
I live until the call.
And I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone...."

~From "The Wild Hunt" by Kristian Matsson (aka The Tallest Man On Earth)

This reminds me of a post I wrote almost three years ago.

Clean

2011-04-04T03:27:00.002-04:00

This is the fourth of seven poems in a series.

Clean

I had a moment while vacuuming, noise and all.
And another moment while washing the dishes,
warm soapy water on my hands.
I do not know what to call these moments.

Trite to say that I did not know for a second or two
where I ended and vacuum began.
Trite to call it "oneness"? Seems a silly thought
to be one with a vacuum cleaner.

But it was the same
As climbing a mountain.
A moment on a slope when
effort became effortless,
and there was no more desire for destination.
To reach the summit.
There was rhythm to my gait
but I was not aware of my speed as I climbed.

Equilibrium.
In one's whole being.

No longer thinking ahead.
Each footstep, each movement of arm and vacuum,
or each dish...each an event in itself.

A thought:
I do not wish to live only for some future goal.
A great thought, but thinking it
killed the moment....

And later I sat in my clean house
and felt good about
the uncluttered, freed...sacred...space.

2011-03-27T13:13:00.000-04:00

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony." ~William Henry Channing

I don't know that I'll go so far as to proclaim that this will be "my symphony", but I think it is a worthy aspiration. Easier said than done, I'm sure, but a worthy aspiration nonetheless.

Craft

2011-03-22T06:47:00.001-04:00

This is the third of seven poems in a series.

Craft

In my dreams (sleeping and waking)
sometimes these days
great cabbages and cauliflowers
watermelons and zucchinis
beans and vines of all descriptions
invade the back porch, the front porch,
overrun all space.

But just beside the house.
There is a small patch,
perhaps 2x10, where herbs
and a few veggies grow feebly,
in too much shade

Just a beginning, feeble, small,
a tiny personal act of rebellion
against a cheap plastic crap globalized
mass produced world...a cheap plastic
crap globalized mass produced life....

At least that's what I tell myself.
And I'm sticking to that.

Gonna make my own soap soon too.

At the end of the day, swamp crawling is the only way.

2011-03-19T07:18:00.000-04:00

"We need to radically increase the ratio of grunts to visionaries, with fewer grand pronouncements made from podiums and more belly crawling through the swamps." ~Auden Schendler in "Getting Green Done."

Amen to that. And though Schendler is writing of a green/sustainability revolution, I think the principle applies in many parts of human endeavor. Too often I live by words alone. And "great thoughts." At the end of the day the only thing that gets things done is to do them. Belly crawling through the swamps of life. Too many of us too often live in the realm of desire only and never take much action. We want things--the great things, the needed things--to be done...but we don't want to be the ones to do them. We don't want it enough. That would require getting all dirty in the swamp. That could be the swamp of trying to live a greener, more sustainable life, or it could be the swamp of dealing with one's own inner shit and unhealthy patterns, behavior, etc. No shortcuts in life. Only gruntwork.

An Epitaph

2011-03-18T05:05:00.002-04:00

"If you want to do something for me after I'm gone, live so as to not defile the precious earth." ~Calvin Rustrum

Vision

2011-03-15T17:06:00.002-04:00

This is the second of seven poems in a series.

Vision

I began to see (not with just my eyes)
one morning as I poured my coffee
into the earthen mug that my wife had
brought home from the pottery stand
at the farmer's market.

Mindfulness they say, the meditation folks....
Is that what it was?
I certainly wasn't trying
but there I was.
I was there with and in
every wisp of steam that rose upward
from the glassy surface of the black liquid.
I was there with the fired and shaped clay
in my hand and felt the care that had
been taken in its making.

Simple. Nothing really. Not much.
Just a moment.

Simple.
And the deepest thing.
A way to live that sees and is one
with all the simple beauty that is
literally
everywhere
and
in everything.

The Day the Dams Crumble

2011-03-14T15:23:00.019-04:00

Edward Abbey looked for a day when Glen Canyon Dam would crumble. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes of day when dams both concrete and internal crumble....

"I think we should all raft down the mighty Colorado river in the Grand Canyon at least once in a lifetime. I think sometimes of how it once was, if you could build by hand your own raft well enough, if you could fell the tree, if you could carve the oars, if you could provision yourself by hunting and fishing, if you had body strength enough, then the big water was all yours.

Nowadays, in actuality, in order to keep humans from overdoing it with various flim and flam in a pristine wild land, there is a lottery for rafting the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. Many many apply. Many. Few few are chosen. Very few. Desire to be with, in, near Nature right there, right now, is not enough. One has to have a permit. One has to have a license to ride the river, a paper made from a tree to run the rapids.

Yet, long ago, my grandmother told me that all the huge concrete dams holding the rivers of the world back, would someday crumble and fall down, and that then all the water would run free again... as it was meant to...as we were and are meant to.

Thus, I only know there is no lottery for the right to go crashing and bashing through the rapids of the psyche and life, there we still make our own conveyance, we carve the means to direct ourselves, we hunt and fish for the ideas and endeavors that will sustain... in us the big river of imagination and creativity are still ours...that with work, rather than time passing, tis true, all the dams we have ever built... will crumble and fall down, and all that is meant to flow through us, will flow through us.
for longing is like water that already knows the way ... and water alone can wear through stone."

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Slow

2011-03-13T08:13:00.004-04:00

(Introductory note: This is the first of seven poems I wrote recently, and hope to post here over the next few weeks. Though they are seven separate poems, they go together, and I guess as a unit I'll call them something like "How I Want to Live." I don't claim to write great poetry. These poems are uneven and presented published here without edit...for whatever they may be worth to whomever may read....)

Slow

On a bright day in May I came back to the city,
back to the concrete and steel from which I was bred.
How long had I been away in lake and forest,
in silence and mostly solitude?
Not that long really, but long enough....
Long enough to be jarred
into realizing for the first time
that the beat of my heart,
the rhythm of my my life,
the cadence of of my mind,
was frantic.

And so was everyone and everything I knew.

I was quiet the next day.
I called in sick to work.
I didn't shower that morning.
I walked the city streets all day.
A cold breeze rose in the afternoon and
I was chilled in my shirtsleeves but I walked on.
There was motion, endless motion everywhere.
And to what end? I did not know.

They think I am a weirdo now, I know they do.
I walk. I bike. I wash my dishes by hand every day.
And I don't really get much of anywhere.
But seems like getting all the places I used to think
I needed to go...lost importance somehow.

What matters is that I know, as I take each
steady and strangely lightened step,
that the cadence inside me
(Thoreau's "different drum"?)
if the rhythm of peace.

2011-03-07T17:46:00.000-05:00

"Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another" --Juvenal

The Practice of Simplicity

2011-03-06T18:26:00.002-05:00

Found at Turnstone:

Do not make anything larger, more complex, or more serious than it needs to be.
Let nature and solitude be enough for my daily pleasure.
Always remain conscious and present with the task at hand.
Remember that some things are best left undone.
Minimize exposure to ‘news’ and commercial advertising.
Follow Goethe’s advice to ‘hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day …’
Keep nothing that is not either useful or beautiful.
Remember that every act of consumption has environmental and social consequences.
Don’t waste time attempting to rebut the arguments of foolish people.
To quote Alice Longworth Roosevelt, ‘fill what’s empty, empty what’s full, and scratch where it itches.’

2011-01-02T16:54:00.005-05:00

"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places...." ~Psalm 16:6 NIV

So that's what happens when one has been steeped from youth in the pages of a book we call the Bible. At curious and uninvited junctures, a verse may come...even though one has put faith in the rear view mirror...and even though its view grows more distant even when looking there....

It is a rainy afternoon, the second day of the new year, and I was married yesterday, 1/1/11.

I'm sitting here gazing out the window at the drear and the rain falls steadily, Death Cab for Cutie plays on the iTunes, and the mood that is set is melancholy. Yet I am filled with a contentment with my life that I have never known before. Truly. I'm not even exagerrating. Not even a little. And into my head pops an artifact from long ago: "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places...."

I have finally landed in a good place. The best place.

It was not a given across these past years of turmoil life that I would land such. But I did. And my gratitude is immense.

More later? Perhaps. I never make any promises anymore with this blogging stuff. But I felt like getting this out.

Peace

2010-10-23T19:28:00.000-04:00

"I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a 'surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow'. Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hyprocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleeting sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon." ~Edward Abbey

If this is what a curmudgeon is, then perhaps I would not mind being/becoming one....

Abbey's Road, Part 3

2010-10-12T13:04:00.001-04:00

A hopeful Ed Abbey.

Abbey's Road, Part 2

2010-10-11T12:12:00.002-04:00

Part 2. Again, I don't agree with some of what he says here. But he touches upon important issues that need to be addressed whether it is comfortable to do so or not.

Abbey's Road, Part 1

2010-10-10T12:14:00.000-04:00

I don't agree with everything he says here, but I love him nonetheless and think he's a voice worth listening to.

Wendell Berry eulogizes Edward Abbey

2010-09-29T00:41:00.000-04:00

Each of these men is one of my greatest heroes, my most important influences....

Wendell Berry Delivers Abbey Eulogy from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

What is real?

2010-09-27T17:03:00.000-04:00

"I am leaving this tower and returning home. When I speak with family, and comments are always the same, 'Won't you be glad to get back to the real world?'

This is my question after two weeks of time, only two weeks, spent with prairie dogs, 'What is real?'

What is real? These prairie dogs and the lives they live and have adapted to in grassland communities over time, deep time?

What is real? A gravel pit adjacent to one of the last remaining protected prairie dog colonies in the world? A corral where cowboys in an honest day's work saddle up horses with prairie dogs under hoof for visitors to ride in Bryce Canyon National Park?

What is real? Two planes slamming into the World Trade Center and the wake of fear that has never stopped in this endless war of terror?

What is real? Forgiveness or revenge and the mounting deaths of thousands of human beings as America wages war in Afghanistan and Iraq?

What is real? Steve's recurrence of lymphoma? A closet full of shoes? Making love? Making money? Making right with the world with the smallest of unseen gestures?

How do we wish to live And with whom?

What is real to me are these prairie dogs facing the sun each morning and evening in the midst of man-made chaos.

What is real to me are the consequences of cruelty.

What is real to me are the concentric circles of compassion and its capacity to bring about change.

What is real to me is the power of our awareness when we are focused on something beyond ourselves. It is a shaft of light shining in a dark corner. Our ability to shift our perceptions and seek creative alternatives to the conundrums of modernity is in direct proportion to our empathy. Can we imagine, witness, and ultimately feel the suffering of another."

~Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams

2010-09-26T11:24:00.000-04:00

"This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers."

"The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves."

"Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing -- faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives."

"The middle path makes me wary. . . . But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement. . . . In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set. . . . We become missionaries for a position . . . practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world."

"Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find."

"Our kinship with Earth must be maintained; otherwise, we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out."

2010-09-19T10:25:00.001-04:00

"May the love I feel at this moment for columbine, girl, tree, symbol, grass, mountain, sky and sun also stay, also grow, never die." -- Edward Abbey

2010-09-11T18:45:00.000-04:00

"Chop wood. Make things. Play with your child. Share with your friends. Grow something. Moderate your wrath, moderate your anger, pacify your hatred. Build a cabin in the woods or a hut in the desert. Avoid the cities." ~Edward Abbey

2010-09-06T11:06:00.000-04:00

“Regret is the worst emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff.” ~William Shatner

Gotta love the Shat. :)

2010-08-07T15:41:00.000-04:00

"Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?" -Sam Harris (Author, The End of Faith)

Love, Dreams, and Aging

2010-08-04T16:25:00.000-04:00

(Note: I originally wrote this on November 17, 2009, but did not post it. At the time I had a very physically demanding job in which I did a lot of walking.)

When I am working I often think about hiking. I guess it is all the walking I do that puts me in that mind sometimes. I remember when I used to backpack out in the Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains in California that it used to be said that 20 miles a day average was considered a really hard day for a really in shape hiker with a full pack. I wonder if I do 20 miles a day at my job. Damn it feels like more than that sometimes. In any case I put on a lot of miles every day.

I took my first backpacking trip when I was 13 or 14. It was only a two nighter, not that far from home, and with a church group. I remember that my imagination was immediately fired up. I spent my hard earned and saved paper route money on backpacking books. It was not long before my investigating nature discovered The Pacific Crest Trail. I must have been 14 or 15 by then, but I had a dream of one day through hiking the PCT, all 2, 560 miles of it, starting at the Mexican border in early April, and finishing in October at the Canadian border, hopefully before the snows fell. I read all I could about it. I had all my resupply points planned, etc. Eventually, I learned about the Continental Divide Trail and the Appalachian Trail and dreamed a dream to through hike all three of them.

And of course, as with so many "dreams" (like the one to be a "great writer" or poet) I have had through the years of my life, it never happened. There is so much, of all descriptions, that...never happened. For so many reasons. One's life takes all kinds of turns, detours, rabbit trails...at least mine has. Life "gets in the way" of dreams. Life even gets in the way of even doing the stuff that one loves and gets energy from.... And it seems that if one does not summon up a determination of steel, that dreams never happen. Some dreams seem childish at times. Many seem selfish, irresponsible...like a "grown up" should leave such foolishness behind. Yet, some dreams have never left me...not entirely. They still appear at times, though I thought they were dead. They were only laying dormant...buried.

One of the things about growing older is that dreams start to fade. When the above mentioned dreams return after a dormancy, stirred to life again by some circumstance, they are weaker than before...each time. One begins to realize that many things will never come to pass. They are not to be. They will remain a wistful memory of a kind of passion that the young possess in such great measure. A passion that one hopes is replaced with wisdom as one ages. One hopes. No guarantees. And then, there is also time...it begins to work against you, against "dreams" as you age. There is the lessening of physical ability to do the things of youth....

I hear of some people making "bucket lists." All the things they want to do before they die ("kick the bucket," hence "bucket list"). Mountains to climb, etc. I knew that I had fundamentally changed (or is it just growing...up? old? just growing?) when I sat down to write a bucket list and what I most wanted before I died...was simply to love and be loved...by a few dear friends...by a family (not my own, unfortunately)...and by someone...to take me completely as I am, understand me...with passion, desire...love...beyond words and description. That was the first thing on the "bucket list." The second was " to arrive at peace.

Peace. To me the word evokes images, and these images come with feelings. An image of a canoe on a still northern lake at dawn. An image of sitting alone along the rocky shore of Lake Superior. But also...two souls lounging silently on a couch...and one falls asleep in the other's arms...in my arms. These are peace...These and all that they represent, all the sundry things that can be unpacked from them.

Happiness is a fleeting phantom, and try as one might...it slips through the fingers that grasp it. And grasp it we always do. This is our nature: we cling to that which we cannot keep...and run from what we cannot avoid. The Buddhists have taught me that one should learn how to simply be present with all things, both "good" and "bad," One teacher said something to me and it struck a chord. He said "It's all just stuff happening, phenomena being known."

There is a "dark side" to that...one that I don't know if the teacher intended. But knowing him, I bet he was including this nuance as well. Sometimes when the soul is weary from living...sometimes I feel like everything is just stuff happening. Like there is really no good or bad, right or wrong, it's all just stuff happening, phenomena being known, and our brains assign meaning to it....

And then I experience love, a smile, a laugh, a tender kiss or embrace, a passionate desire, a sacrifice of one's self...and so much more that love can be.... And then I experience love, and I think that if there is anything that is right in the world...love is right. It is the only God, the only meaning, the only thing worth even staying alive for. The rest is just stuff happening, phenomena being known...until we die.... Details. Details will differ. But love. Love is worth giving one's life for.

These are things I think about, at 50, as I contemplate what to do with the rest of my life (Less is left than I have already lived.)...and what is left of all those "dreams"...and what really matters....

The universe is neither bevevolent nor malevolent. It is indifferent.

2010-07-13T20:09:00.003-04:00

"Theologians worry away at the "problem of evil" and a related "problem of suffering." On the day I originally wrote this paragraph, the British newspapers all carried a terrible story about a bus full of children from a Roman Catholic school that crashed for no obvious reason, with wholesale loss of life. Not for the first time, clerics were in paroxysms over the theological question that a writer on a London newspaper...framed this way: "How can you believe in a loving, all-powerful God who allows such a tragedy?" The article went on to quote one priest's reply: "The simple answer is that we do not know why there should be a God who lets these awful things happen. But the horror of the crash, to a Christian, confirms the fact that we live in a world of real values: positive and negative. if the universe was just electrons, there would be no problem of evil or suffering."

On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus are exactly what we would expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice." ~Richard Dawkins, in River Out of Eden

2010-07-13T19:52:00.004-04:00

Pondering....

2010-05-23T03:49:00.002-04:00

"The world is a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives." ~Joseph Campbell

Edward Abbey, 1927-1989

2010-05-15T11:09:00.001-04:00

Abbey on NBC from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

Ed Abbey schools William Devane from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

Abbey and Devane from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

Abbey Devane 3 from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

Abbey/Devane #4 from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

Final Abbey Devane from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

Abbey's Speech at the University of Utah 1988 from Eric Temple on Vimeo.

Ask the Hawk

2010-05-14T14:27:00.001-04:00

This is why I go to the wilderness. Abbey sums it up pretty well:

"This was the forty-fifth trip down the Grand for Smith, and so far as he could measure, it's pleasure was not staled by repetition. But then no two river trips were ever quite alike. The river, the canyon, the desert world was always changing, from moment to moment, from miracle to miracle, within the firm reality of mother earth. River, rock, sun, blood, hunger, wings, joy--this is the real, Smith would have said, if he's wanted to. If he felt like it. All the rest is androgynous theosophy. All the rest is transcendental transvestite transactional scientology or whatever the fad of the day, the vogue of the week. As Doc would've said, if Smith had asked him. Ask the hawk. Ask the hungry lion lunging at the starving doe. They know." ~Edward Abbey, from The Monkey Wrench Gang

A Brief History of Disbelief 3

2010-03-25T08:40:00.000-04:00

A Brief History of Disbelief 2

2010-03-24T10:02:00.000-04:00

A Brief History of Disbelief 1

2010-03-23T12:34:00.000-04:00

Epicurus

2010-03-22T18:16:00.001-04:00

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"
~Epicurus

"Why should I fear death?
If I am then death is not.
If death is then I am not.
Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?"
~Epicurus

What I Believe-Edward Abbey

2010-03-22T08:37:00.001-04:00

"Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses...." ~Edward Abbey

2010-03-18T10:01:00.000-04:00

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness." ~Robertson Davies

2010-03-17T10:33:00.000-04:00

"Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." ~Erica Jong

What I Believe

2010-03-12T16:55:00.002-05:00

I believe I contradict myself. Ok then, I contradict myself. (Thank you, Walt Whitman.)

I believe that in most cases, humans do what they ultimately want to do. They choose. They may be so self unaware as to think that they have not chosen and do not want what they have chosen. But they have chosen. Suffering. Yes, me too.

I believe in something I will call "the eternalization of character." Our multiplied choices have the effect of wiring (or rewiring) our brain chemistries and thereby our entire life paths. The more one makes a certain choice, the more those pathways are reinforced, until in some cases a person loses the ability to choose otherwise than what has been chosen for so long...and ultimately this leads to self destruction. This is what can happen in the most extreme cases of addiction. But one can choose and reinforce wise, loving, healthy pathways....and these too can be "eternalized" over time....

"I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it."
~Michael Blumenthal

I believe that all meanings, purposes, and "truths" are a construction of the human mind. What is my purpose? What is the meaning of life? They are what I choose them to be. I spent (wait, wasted) far too many years of my life looking for meaning and purpose outside of myself.

I believe that all life can ultimately be explained in Darwinian evolutionary ways. That is not to say that we possess all explanations or that we ever will. Of course not. But it is to say that all the explanations were we able to access them, would be evolutionary in nature. I believe all human behavior and motivations, and even all the myriad developed sophistications of human (the most sophisticated of animals) societies have at their origin an evolutionary adaptation.

I believe the human species is doomed, and probably sooner than later. I have little confidence in my fellow humans. We will be the architects of our own extinction, and even now, we are doing this as we continue an unabated destruction of our home, this planet earth. I have little hope. I will not say that I have no hope. But it is little.

I believe that:
I am of the nature to get sick; I cannot escape illness.
I am of the nature to get old; I cannot escape aging.
I am of the nature to die; I cannot escape death.
All that I love and all that I hold dear will one day be taken from me; I cannot escape loss.
I am the owner and heir of my actions.

[Note: The preceding five are a version of the Buddha's "Five Remembrances."

And finally, I offer two more remembrances and two more things I believe. I believe that:

--Love is ultimately all that matters in this world, and
--The present moment is all that is....

LOVE. Love your partner, your spouse, your lover. Love your kids. Love them desperately, love them completely. Give yourself to love. Love all beings as much as you can. You will love imperfectly. You will fail. Sometimes you will fail so badly as to find hate in yourself. It is there. But love, and love again.

Do it today. Repeat for as long as you breathe. I believe nothing else ultimately matters.

The Great Poem

2009-06-13T08:12:00.005-04:00

I seem to have completely lost the ability to put anything on paper (or to the screen) that isn't completely awful drivel. I've recently ripped page after page from my notebook to cast into the flames. Crap that made me cringe to read it.... Well, this too shall pass...hopefully....

And then this morning I saw this at the Writers Almanac. I've bolded a part resonant with me. I've bolded and italicized a part most resonant...:

The Great Poem
Lawrence Raab

The great poem is always possible.
Think of Keats and his odes.
But we shouldn't have to be dying,

What I'm writing now is not
the great poem. After a few lines
I could tell. It may not even be

a particularly good poem, although
it's too early to decide about that.
Keep going, I say. See what happens.

But trying hard is one of the problems.
since it shows in the lines as a strain
or struggle that reminds the reader

too much of the writer, whereas
most readers want to listen alone.
The great poem, I think, will arrive

when I no longer care. Perhaps
I'll have abandoned art altogether,
and I won't even want to write

the poem down. But then I'll remember
what I once would have given
for this moment, and I'll go back

to my desk. And I'll write the poem
as though I were another person,
someone I will never be again.

from The History of Forgetting.

Yes, I think that's exactly when the great poem will probably arrive. Kinda reminds me of another post I once made.

Just to say thank you

2009-06-08T05:13:00.000-04:00

This simple thank you to all of my readers and commenters was inspired by the great discussion on my previous post. This is certainly not the first time there have been such discussions in the comment space....

One of the strengths/weaknesses of my particular wiring is that I like to make people think deeply about things. (Hmmm, maybe I wish to infect everyone else with my own "disease"? ;) And often here on this blog, I float some half baked, incomplete thought out there for consideration, perhaps things that I am thinking about, that I have not formed a firm opinion about (and perhaps never will), or something that I hope will provoke...just a bit. I try to be a gentle provoker....

And many times here when I have floated these half baked thoughts, many of you have offered wisdom, insight, and your own provocations to my thinking. On many occasions you have taken my prompts for pondering and worthwhile discussions have come about in the comment space.

And I am very grateful. I count myself fortunate to have the thoughtful readers and commenters that come to this blog.

Thank you. Thank you all for reading, for offering your thoughts, for listening....

Peace to you all

2009-06-07T06:47:00.001-04:00

"Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did."
—Lillian Hellman

Things I think about at 3:00 AM, #228

2009-06-05T11:56:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I wonder, are we really more "advanced" than many of the other creatures that inhabit this planet with us?:

"Unlike humans, wild creatures strive for survival and die without complaint or expectation of anything better." --Flandrum Hill

Just a question.... I actually claim very few answers....

Life and death. On and on. Here in the north, whether in Flandrum Hill's Nova Scotia or here in my Minnesota, "Nothing makes the outdoors more uninviting at this time of year than blackflies and mosquitoes. There are thick swarms of them in the more humid areas.... It’s the females that are after blood to enable them to incubate their eggs, and they’re relentless in their pursuit. Any warm-blooded creature will do. But it won’t be long before they’re gobbled up in turn by baby birds. The cycle of life and death goes on."

Profundity from a Nova Scotian "pen." And I thought I would pass along the pondering....

Peace to you all today.

Addendum, Sunday, 7 June:

Or, a counter point to ponder offered by The Rambling Taoist (lifted from the comments box):

"How do we really know if other species "die without complaint or expectation"? Since we don't speak their language nor understand very much about the complexities of their worlds, they may complain just as loudly as we do and we simply don't realize it."

Thanks, RT.

Further addendum, Monday, 8 June:

I would also encourage you to check out the rest of the excellent discussion that ensued in response to The Rambling Taoist's comment above, and as well as his post "We Don't Know Jack," which was inspired by this discussion.

How to Climb a Mountain

2009-06-05T05:23:00.002-04:00

how to climb a mountain
Maya Stein

Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you're lucky, a hawk will
coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you're lucky,
a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
perforating your calves. This is called work, what you
will come to know, eventually and simply, as movement,
as all the evidence you need to make your way.
Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
Level your gaze to the trail you're on,
and even the dark won't stop you.

Song of Myself

2009-05-31T17:41:00.006-04:00

Today is the birthday of Walt Whitman, that "sweaty-toothed madman," one of the earthiest of poets, a contemporary of Thoreau, both of them most often lumped with Emerson and others in the "Transcendentalists" of the mid-19th century in America. As a nature lover and a wannabe poet, Whitman is one of the "gods" for a guy like me...and so I celebrate him on his day.

His Leaves of Grass was a revolutionary work upon the poetic landscape at the time of its publication. Whitman changed the face of modern poetry. He changed the way poets did poetry from his time onward. Almost every poet since Whitman owes him a debt, acknowledged or not. His poetic descendants come down to today, even to another voice of the earth such as Gary Snyder.

Whitman was an earthy poet, but he also wrote unabashedly of his innermost passions and struggles. He admittedly "celebrated" himself. That is not a style that this reserved Scandinavian tending toward self-deprecation is comfortable with, but 'ol Walt could pull it off as few ever have. Here is an excerpt from one of his more famous pieces, the Song of Myself:

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make
appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of
hair,

This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica
on the side of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
through the woods?Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids,
conformity goes to the fourth-remov'd,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
counsel'd with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones....

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
myself,And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or
ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can
wait.

A "song of myself;" in a sense, is that not sort of what a blog is?

Here's a video bonus for you from one of my all time favorite films, in which Uncle Walt figures prominently. Enjoy:

Saint Regis Reflections

2009-05-25T12:28:00.004-04:00

For those of you who have never experienced the magic, never fallen under the spell...of a northwoods canoe trip...and even if you have...

Chris Loomis of Tenzing's Adventures has captured and documented the experience well in a short film he made called Saint Regis Reflections, about a trip he made in his home waters in the Adirondacks in New York State. Visually, the landscape in the film is really indistinguishable from my beloved Boundary Waters here in Minnesota, or any of the vast tracts of "canoe wilderness" of the Canadian Shield from Saskatchewan to Quebec. I have posted parts 1 and 2 below. They run a little under seven minutes each. I hope you will sit back and take a few minutes and enjoy them, and let them weave just a little bit of the spell....

The Patience of Ordinary Things

2009-05-20T16:42:00.000-04:00

The Patience of Ordinary Things
Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?

How the cup holds the tea,

How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,

How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes

Or toes. How soles of feet know

Where they’re supposed to be.

I’ve been thinking about the patience

Of ordinary things, how clothes

Wait respectfully in closets

And soap dries quietly in the dish,

And towels drink the wet

From the skin of the back.

And the lovely repetition of stairs.

And what is more generous than a window?

Source: Another River: New and Selected Poems

Facing Fear

2009-05-18T17:56:00.003-04:00

The following thoughts were precipitated by an exchange in the comments box on my One Man, One Canoe post between myself and the author of the excellent regional (Nova Scotia) nature blog Flandrum Hill.

It occurs to me that those of us who love, cherish, revere...nature, and find spiritual (whatever that perhaps overused word means) connection there, may at times have a tendency to romanticize nature, and thereby distort its reality. Those of us who have gone beyond the few hour nature trail (not to slight that in the least), and spent extended time in real wilderness know that nature is in fact often not as romantic as we would portray it. It can, in fact, come to us in an impersonal "brutality," if you will, demanding a respect, a healthy "fear" if you will, that we were not immediately in mind to give.

Flandrum Hill related a story about her husband. She wrote, "I'm reminded of my husband's solo camping trips whenever I look at his hands. He found himself alone and injured in a remote part of Algonquin Park in Ontario, and consequently burned off part of his finger to avoid gangrene. Fear of such scenarios keep many people from venturing out alone in the woods...." I find that I face fear...on some level every time I go into the wilderness. Being with that fear...and not letting it stop me, are, as far as I am concerned, an absolutely integral part of the wilderness experience.

There is, of course, a broader application to life. In facing our fears, whatever they may be...facing them down, being present with them...we find that they will lose their power to rule our lives...a power that we give to them and that they cannot have without our permission. This does not mean that a particular fear will then evaporate and go completely away. In fact, in my experience, that is quite often not the case. I have been in open canoes on big water in wind and wave conditions and been afraid many times, and as I am not a strong swimmer, I in fact face some fear--however well I have learned to control it--every single time I take a canoe out on a big lake. The fear has never gone away. Not even though I have successfully navigated dicey situations over and over again. And actually, I am not even sure any more that the fear should go away. Each time I face a fear, and go through it, be present with it...and don't let it stop me...I re-learn a valuable lesson.... And facing fear in the wilderness has taught me about facing fears in other situations of my life. It doesn't mean that the fear will go away. It may never and I have learned not to even expect that necessarily. But it means that I can be with it, go through it, and I'll be okay on the other side.... And it's a process that has to happen again and again whenever the fears come....

Flandrum Hill wrote something else in that exchange that was entirely profound: "If you're not comfortable in your own skin, then you'll never feel comfortable anywhere on the planet." Truth, and the facing of fear is a part of the work of becoming comfortable in one's own skin.

2009-05-14T07:42:00.002-04:00

"Ask the world to reveal it's quietude-- not the silence of machines when they are still, but the true quiet by which birdsongs, trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms become what they are, and are nothing else."

~Wendell Berry, from III, Sabbaths 2001, in Given

Acadian Flycatcher

2009-05-12T08:09:00.003-04:00

The leaves are finally all back on the trees here in the north, and the landscape is once again transformed by this riot of green. I love the four seasons. The winged migrants are here and rioting themselves in the treetops. Winter may have it's quiet pensive--if sometimes stark and harsh--beauty, summer its brightness and fire, autumn it's calming down... Spring has glory. Glory in the trees! Here is a little tribute from Mr. Berry to the glory, the glory that in spring says, "I am here, I am here again!"

"The Acadian Flycatcher, not
a spectacular bird, not a great
singer, is seen only when
alertly watched for. His call
is hardly a song--
a two-syllable squeak you hear
only when you listen for it.
His back is the color of a leaf
in shadow, his belly that
of a leaf in light. He is here
when the leaves are here, belonging
as the leaves belong, is gone when
they go. His is the voice
of this deep place among
the tiers of summer foliage
where three streams come together.
You sit and listen to the voice
of the water, and then you hear
the voice of the bird. He is saying
to his mate, to himself, to whoever
may want to know: "I am here!""

--Wendell Berry, from IV, Sabbaths 2002, in Given

The beauty only of himself alive in the only moment of his life....

2009-05-11T04:47:00.002-04:00

On a visit to the river yesterday for a sit and a think, I saw a Yellow-throated Warbler, and I was reminded of this beautiful snippet from Wendell Berry (not as beautiful as the warbler though, and I am sure Mr. Berry would agree):

"The yellow-throated warbler, the highest remotest voice of this place, sings in the tops of the tallest sycamores, but one day he came twice to the railing of my porch where I sat at work above the river. He was too close to see with binoculars. Only the naked eye could take him in, a bird more beautiful than every picture of himself, more beautiful than himself killed and preserved by the most skilled taxidermist, more beautiful than an human mind, so small and inexact, could hope ever to remember. My mind became beautiful at the sight of him. He had the beauty only of himself alive in the only moment of his life. He had upon him like a light the whole beauty of the living world that never dies." --Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

2009-05-10T16:00:00.003-04:00

As a poet, there is nobody who speaks to me more...right to the very core of me, over and over....

In the next few days, I'll be sharing Berry with you. I may post other things as well, or I may not, but each day for the next few days I hope to give you a dose of Mr. Berry.

Peace to you all, this Sunday. And may it be the peace of wild things.

One man, one canoe

2009-05-09T18:00:00.004-04:00

Heritage Lake, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, 1995 (And no, I don't look like this anymore! :)

"What's it like to camp in the wilderness alone...especially in the Northwoods? I mean, what was it like for you?"

That was a question posed to me recently in an e-mail from a friend. For whatever it may be worth, I thought I would share a part of my reply. Of all the trips I have made to the Boundary Waters, only one was a solo trip and that was many years ago now. Too many. That situation needs to be rectified.

"What is was like for me to camp alone in the wilderness when I did it, and what it would be like for me if I did it now.... I think these are probably two different things. When I took my solo trip to the Boundary Waters many years ago now, I had not yet learned to appreciate solitude as I have in the years since. This was long before I got to know the Benedictines and had learned all they taught me about silence and solitude. Solitude was actually a little scary back then; it doesn't scare me now. In fact, I seek it out and need it now in ways that I did not know I needed it in those days. I was only just awakening--or not even yet--to its depth and riches, and to what it could give my spirit. That is not to say that there isn't always an element of slight fear at what could happen when one is alone in the wilderness. That remains, and I actually think that is healthy. It means one will be cautious and not take stupid chances.

What I experienced on that solo canoe trip mostly was loneliness. I was unable to tap into what I would be able to tap into now in the solitude. But I was just lonely. I had already done several group trips at that point, and wanted to test my skills I had been building against a solo trip. First, a solo trip is more work in some ways. There is nobody to share camp duties with, such as cooking and hanging the food pack, you do everything yourself. In a group setting, it has been my experience that people tend to find the niches that they are good at and can contribute the most. Also on a solo trip, there is nobody to share a spectacular sunset with, or the morning mist and complete stillness...etc. And there is some melancholy in that.

But now, while all those things would still be the same, I think I would be much more okay with the solitude than I was then. Since those days, I have spent a good amount of time in solitude and silence, and I've taken many silent retreats. I know well how to navigate silence and solitude now. I would not be afraid of them, but welcome them instead, for now solitude and silence have become my friends and are not something that I fear at all. So perhaps one day again in the not so distant future, I will be able to try a solo trip again.

That said, the best trips will always be with a small group of like minds with whom one can share the experience. Or maybe just one other if the one is right. Some things, like the power and beauty of wilderness...need to be shared...and they become even more beautiful and powerful for it.

Hi there--Are you still there?

2009-05-07T10:53:00.006-04:00

So, I haven't been blogging. My last post was on April 15, more than three weeks ago, and the post before that was on April 3.

I have sometimes "prided" myself on being a person who can handle the truth, criticism, bring it.... I wanna know the way it is, the way it really is, clarity, stark, no delusions.... But sometimes I hate the truth, the way it is.... And when is that? When it is painful, inconvenient, and makes me look bad or weak, of course. Hmmm, that means I hate the truth quite often, I'm afraid....

The painful, inconvenient truth--for me anyway--is that I stepped away from the blog because I have been in the midst of a time of great personal crisis. I hate to admit that, of course. It got to the point where I just couldn't write.... Certainly, I wasn't going to put my life's mess and crisis out there for any and all. Might as well barf on you, as far as I'm concerned. That's just me though. If you want to be barfed upon I'm sure you can find a blogger who will do that for you. They are out there. And apparently some folks do want to be barfed upon, because those blogs seem to often have a lot of readers. But I digress. So I couldn't write.... And merely posting other's quotations (as great as some of them are) grew stale for me. In fact, one reader, a friend, even told me in an e-mail that my blog had become stale. I winced a little at the honesty, but knew she was right and appreciated it.

So I had to step away. And it was good. In its own small way, it has been quite freeing to not think about this blog, and even (gasp! but please don't take this personally, anyone) to not have read but the odd post from any blog over the past month plus. But now I feel like I want to blog again, at least a bit, and like I might actually have a thing or two to say that isn't regurgitated "wisdom" from someone else (although I am sure that such gems will still be a regular feature here). I am in a much better space than I was a month ago. That is not to say that much of anything has changed in my personal life circumstances. The mess, the crisis, is all still there, and may actually get even worse before it gets better. My life as I know it may fall completely apart. But I already know that I'll be okay, no matter what. Read on.

I have changed in some fundamental ways over the past several months and not to brag, but I find myself emerging better able to deal with the crap of life than I think I ever have before. Things are what they are. And I have learned that if I cling to what I cannot hold on to, (That's not to say that I still don't try that in many cases; old habits of the heart/mind are hard to break.) or run from what I cannot avoid, I only create suffering for myself and others. I have to be with what is, the pleasure and the pain. It comes, it is here for its time, and then it goes. Yes, it always does go, whether pleasure or pain. All things are impermanent. Rather than being a sadness to know that...in a way it is actually a comfort. Because it means that you can make it through anything if you'll just be there...with it.... Now, if all of that sounds vaguely "Buddhist" to some of you, well, that's because it probably is, but I may talk about that a bit in another post down the road.

So, I am ready to write here again a bit. It's interesting to me...I checked my stats yesterday after not even looking at them for a month, and amazingly it looks like I didn't lose much in the way of readership during this "hiatus," and I even picked up a couple of "followers" on Blogger during this time. For whatever any of that is worth, which is probably not much. I do believe that any "addiction" to blogging has really been broken for me this time, and I will be keeping this all in healthy perspective. I confess that that has not always been the case for me.

I do not need to be here in the blogosphere. I will only be here (and on your blogs as well) when I want to be. It is possible that any post here could be the last one I'll ever post.

I have a life. :)

And it's a good one and getting better despite everything. I think I'll continue to give it my primary attention.

A couple of other notes before closing this too long post. I considered changing the name of this blog and my moniker. I originally chose the name "Forest Wisdom" because of my love of the northern forests (the Northwoods), and because at the time I was doing some reading and investigating of the Thai Forest Tradition of Theravada Buddhism. I have long had an affinity for monastics--I may elaborate on that in a coming post--and the Thai Forest Tradition caught my attention because of their use of remote wilderness as a training ground for spiritual practice. Well, that sounded right up my alley.... But naming my blog and myself "wisdom" seems pretentious to me now. Most days, especially recently, I don't feel very wise, and I certainly don't pretend to be dispensing wisdom to any and all who chance by this space. Nevertheless, wise or unwise, it is how you have all come to know me and this blog...and therefore "Forest Wisdom" remains.

So hello again. I will be making an effort to drop by all of your blogs again in the days/weeks ahead and catch up with you all. You're cool folks, the lot of you. You're why I came back. Because I do miss you and I do still want to share in the community. Also, a blogroll or blogrolls should be going back up as soon as I get the chance.

I wish you all much peace.

2009-04-15T16:41:00.000-04:00

"At all times and in all places and under all circumstances,
give your attention to people and events one at a time;
Otherwise you will never give your attention to anything.
Be as honest as you know how;
Otherwise you will always rage against your own lies.
Curb your will to control events and people;
Otherwise you will always be unhappy.
Give freely to others;
Take freely what others give:
Otherwise you will give and receive nothing."
—Balto's Tonic, Dick Ringler, Mogador

Some days I want my life to be like this.

Wild

2009-04-03T01:51:00.004-04:00

"There had never been anything wrong in my life that a few good days in the wilderness wouldn't cure." --Pam Houston

"A literature of bloodstains, a bit of piss, a whiff of estrus, a hit of rut, a scrape on a sapling, and long gone." --Gary Snyder

Via The Solitary Walker

Awake at Night

2009-04-02T03:19:00.006-04:00

Both from Collected Poems, 1957-1982:

Awake at Night
Wendell Berry

Late in the night I pay
the unrest I owe
to the life that has never lived
and cannot live now.
What the world could be
in my good dream
and my agony when, dreaming it,
I lie awake and turn
and look into the dark.
I think of a luxury
in the sturdiness and grace
of necessary things, not
in frivolity. That would heal
the earth, and heal men.
But the end, too, is part
of the pattern, the last
labor of the heart:
to learn to lie still,
one with the earth
again, and let the world go.
--------------------------------------

Let me wake in the night
and hear it raining
and go back to sleep.

XII in Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer

Thank You, Mr. President

2009-03-31T02:54:00.004-04:00

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama signed legislation Monday setting aside more than 2 million acres in nine states as protected wilderness.

Obama called the new law among the most important in decades "to protect, preserve and pass down our nation's most treasured landscapes to future generations."

...Obama said the law guarantees that Americans "will not take our forests, rivers, oceans, national parks, monuments, and wilderness areas for granted, but rather we will set them aside and guard their sanctity for everyone to share. That's something all Americans can support."

The law — a collection of nearly 170 separate measures — represents one of the largest expansions of wilderness protection in a quarter-century. The measure confers the government's highest level of protection on land in nine states — almost as much wilderness as designated during the past eight years combined....

The whole story is here.

What if?

2009-03-27T17:16:00.004-04:00

I'm stealing this from Barry today, Jon Kabat-Zinn:

I think this one will be going in my sidebar.

I know I've not been posting as often as before and when I have I've been "coasting" lately, not offering anything original but only posting rehashes from other blogs, videos, and the like.

"You prepare yourself...arrange your ballast and then the wave swamps the boat." ~Garrison Keillor, A Letter from Copenhagen

Truth is that I've had waves swamp my boat, so to speak, in several areas of my life at all at once in recent weeks and months. It's not stuff that I feel like I can write about, I just can't be that kind of blogger. I never have been able to be that kind of blogger. It's a wonder/contradiction that such an intensely private person such as myself even has a blog. :) Furthermore, creative juices are not flowing much right now, and circumstances seem to have also conspired to keep me away from much of any contact with life giving nature.... Add it all together, and...I got nuthin'....

Perhaps the present vicissitudes are why the above video resonates with me so much. I do know one thing: my mindfulness mediation practice is saving my life right now.... Interesting coincidence also that Barry posted this video and I happen to be reading Jon Kabat-Zinn's book Wherever You Go, There You Are....

Ok, now that I've rambled on only semi-coherently and said too much...so long until next time, whenever that may be.

Peace

Earth Hour is Saturday at 8:30 PM Your Time

2009-03-25T11:07:00.004-04:00

Kudos to the Aussies for starting this two years ago. Let's keep it going and make it even bigger! Via Digital Dharma:

2009-03-23T15:07:00.006-04:00

If your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.

--Wu-Men

Are we living in The Age of Stupid?

2009-03-21T05:56:00.002-04:00

"London is underwater, New Orleans won’t be rebuilt a third time, the arctic is ice free, and agriculture is failing, which leads to global food riots and ultimately the collapse of civilization…. This is the premise of the new crowd-funded British independent film The Age of Stupid.

Set in 2055, the film portrays a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by the worst impacts of climate change, and looks back at the critical period between 2005 and 2015 to examine why we didn’t save ourselves when we still had the chance.

In an opening sequence, the narrator (played by Oscar nominee Pete Postlethwaite) takes us through a montage of news reports describing visible impacts of climate change: A 101 degree day in London, 700 dead after record flooding in India, record breaking drought in Melbourne, desertification in China progressing at the rate of 3 miles per year, dozens of Antarctic ice shelves collapsing faster than anyone predicted, 18 million affected by flooding in parts of Africa, and a glacier in France having shrunk 150 meters since 1945.

The fact that the clips in this montage are all real-life news reports from 2007 and 2008 is chilling. Indeed, although framed by a post-apocalyptic narrative set in the future, the bulk of the film is actually a documentary about the impacts of climate change that we are already seeing in 2009...."

From Climate Progress. You can read the rest of the post here.

A Letter From Copenhagen, Part 2

2009-03-19T08:37:00.005-04:00

Part 1, with introduction and explanation, is here.

Our people aimed for Oregon
When they left Newburyport--
Great-grandma Ruth, her husband John,
But they pulled up in Wobegon,
Two thousand miles short.

It wasn't only the dangers ahead
That stopped the pioneer.
My great-grandmother simply said,
"It's been three weeks without a bed.
I'm tired. Let's stay here."

He put the horses out to graze
While she set up the tent,
and they sat down beside their blaze
And held each other's hand and gazed
Up at the firmament.

"John," she said, "what's on your mind
Besides your restlessness?
You know I'm not the traveling kind,
So tell me what you hope to find
Out there that's not like this?"

The fire leaped up bright and high,
The sparks as bright stars shone.
"Mountains," he said. "Another sky.
A Green new land where you and I
Can settle down to home.

"You are the dearest wife to me.
Though I'm restless, it is true,
And Oregon is where I'd be
And live in mountains by the sea,
But never without you."

They stayed a week to rest the team,
Were welcomed and befriended.
The land was good, the grass was green,
And slowly he gave up the dream,
And there the journey ended.

They bought a farm just north of town,
A pleasant piece of rolling ground,
A quarter-section, mostly cleared;
He built a house before the fall;
They lived there forty years in all,
And by God persevered.

And right up to his dying day
When he was laid to rest,
No one knew--he did not say--
His dream had never gone away,
He still looked to the west.

She found it in his cabinet drawer:
A box of pictures, every one
Of mountains by the ocean shore,
The mountains he had headed for
In the state of Oregon.

There beside them lay his will.
"I love you, Ruth," the will began,
And count myself a well-loved man.
Please send my ashes when I die
To Oregon, some high green hill,
And bury me and leave me lie
At peace beneath the mountain sky,
Off in that green and lovely land
We dreamed of, you and I."

At last she saw her husband clear
Who stayed and labored all those years,
His mountains all uncrossed.
Of dreams postponed and finally lost,
Which one of us can count the cost
And not be filled with tears?

And yet how bright the visions are
Of mountains that we sense afar,
The land we never see:
The golden west and golden gate
Are visions that illuminate
And give wings to the human heart
Wherever we may be.
That old man by dreams possessed,
By Oregon was truly blessed
Who saw it through the eye of faith,
The land of his sweet destiny:
In his eye, more than a state
And something like a star.

I wrote this poem in Oregon,
Wanting the leaden words to soar
In memory of my ancestor
And all who live along the way.
God rest their souls on a golden shore,
God bless us who struggle on:
We are the life that they longed for,
We bear their visions every day.

--Garrison Keillor

A Letter From Copenhagen, Part 1

2009-03-18T10:12:00.008-04:00

Garrison Keillor is an institution here in my home state of Minnesota. He is, of course, the host of the live weekly music, comedy, and variety radio show A Prairie Home Companion, which has been running in various incarnations now for 35 years on public radio here in the United States. His voice is as famous as he himself is, a breathy baritone that Keillor himself once described as being like "soggy milk-toast" and which can put one to sleep, though certainly not through boredom at what is being said. He also does The Writer's Almanac. He is a respected novelist and humorist, known for his creation of the fictional small prairie town of Lake Wobegon. Though he has written many novels, his acclaimed masterpiece remains the partially autobiographical Lake Wobegon Days, first published in 1985. Keillor is something akin to a Minnesotan version of Mark Twain or Will Rogers. He is at once both "homespun" and sophisticated (as is his beloved state :) Much of his work tries to lovingly poke fun at, while painting an accurate portrait of, quintessentially small town Minnesotan life. In my view he succeeds at this masterfully.

In 1987, Keillor published a "sequel" of sorts to Lake Wobegon Days, called Leaving Home. It is actually more like a loose collection of Lake Wobegon stories than an actual novel. My "Bleak House" poem of yesterday reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of Keillor's writing, a piece titled "A Letter From Copenhagen" which served as an author's introduction to the first edition of Leaving Home. A few weeks ago I was in a bookstore and picked up a new copy of Leaving Home and saw that "A Letter From Copenhagen" has been removed. It is no longer in the latest editions of the book. This is too bad, in my view, for I think it was Keillor at his best, and I can't imagine why the piece would have been removed....

I'm going to share one of my favorite passages from "A Letter From Copenhagen." Because it is long for the blog medium, I'll post it in two parts, with the second part tomorrow. The second part is actually a poem with which Keillor finishes off the piece. So now that you've read my introduction, settle in and feel this:

"When I was little I didn't think of grownups as having bare skin; grownups were made of wool clothing, only kids were bare naked; now I'm older than they were when I was little and I lie naked under a quilt made of their clothes when they were children. I don't know what makes me think I'm smarter than them.

Every time I read a book about how to be smarter, how not to be sad, how to raise children and be happy and grow old gracefully, I think "Well, I won't make those mistakes, I won't have to go through that," but we all have to go through that. Everything they went through, we'll go through. Life isn't a vicarious experience. You get it figured out and then one day life happens to you. You prepare yourself for grief and loss, arrange your ballast and then the wave swamps the boat.

Everything they went through: the loneliness, the sadness, the grief, and the tears--it will all come to us, just as it came to them when we were little and had to reach up to get hold of their hand, when we knew them by the shape of their legs. Aunt Marie had fat little legs, I held her hand one cold day after a blizzard, we climbed snowdrifts to get to the store and buy licorice whips. She said, "Come on, we can make it, don't slip," and soon she was far behind, a fat lady in a heavy coat with a fur collar, leaning into the wind, wheezing from emphysema, and sometime later she died. She knew that death was only a door to the kingdom where Jesus would welcome her, there would be no crying there, no suffering, but meanwhile she was fat, her heart hurt, and she lived alone with her ill-tempered little dogs, tottering around her dark little house full of Chinese figurines and old Sunday Tribunes. She complained about nobody loving her or wanting her or inviting her to their house for dinner anymore. She sat eating pork roast, mashed potato, creamed asparagus, one Sunday at our house when she said it. We were talking about a trip to the North Shore and suddenly she broke into tears and cried, "You don't care about me. You say you do but you don't. If I died tomorrow, I don't know as you'd even go to my funeral." I was six. I said, cheerfully, "I'd come to your funeral," looking at my fat aunt, her blue dress, her string of pearls, her red rouge, the powder on her nose, her mouth full of pork roast, her eyes full of tears.

Every tear she wept, that foolish woman, I will weep every one before I am done and so will you. We're not so smart we can figure out how to avoid pain, and we cannot walk away from the death we owe."

Bleak House

2009-03-17T10:59:00.003-04:00

"The present moment can sometimes feel like a very bleak house to live in." ~Forest Wisdom

Yesterday some words came. I wrote them down. My apologies/thanks to Charles Dickens for stealing the title, although my use of it in no way resembles his. You may listen to the words below the text.

Bleak House
Me

There's a weathered old farmhouse
out on the county road, northeast of Luverne.
It stands out stark and alone on the
bare prairie, as so many like it all across
the central plains of the continent,
whether Saskatchewan or Kansas.
The white paint is peeling, the roof
needs new shingles, the outbuildings
show some disarray. And these all
actual subtle indicators,
mirroring the life within it.

It is dawn, and the farmer
awakes without alarm clock,
as he has done each day
for more than thirty years.
But this morning he does not arise,
put on his boots, and head out to the barn.

He drifts in and out of slumber,
and visions fill his dreams.
Visions of blizzards, snowdrifts,
and 40 below, of a sky so massive
it is a presence all its own,
and horizon...everywhere....
Done with sleep he continues
laying in the darkened bedroom
and thinks about a cup of coffee.

The last time he had coffee with her
was on a Saturday. They took
a drive up the interstate, and then
off on to smaller roads. They ended up
several counties from home.
And they stopped for pie and coffee
in a diner in a small town. He couldn't
even remember the name of the town.
He did remember staring out the window
of the diner, at a semi truck idling
in the parking lot, and the prairie
stretching endlessly, almost featureless,
massive sky. He remembered thinking,
"Why do we live here?" and a desire to
see forest and the ocean. He had
forgotten about that day. But many
thoughts came and went as he lie in bed,
all of them as ordinary as the cobweb
in the corner above the bedpost.

When she died he had taken her ashes
out to the mountains in Montana
where she had grown up. That was her wish.
"Scatter my ashes on that high ridge where
we picknicked that day whenwe were courting."
And so he did, camping alone
in the canyon the night before.

There was a moment, just after dawn:
there in the morning half-light of the canyon,
a Townsend's Solitaire called its high pitched "tew."
He felt his body and his footsteps as he climbed
the ridge...lifting and placing...it all became one....

In its way, it was not unlike the moment
this very morning, when rising from his bed at last,
he opened the living room curtains
for the first time in days. He couldn't
even remember when it had been.
When his eyes adjusted to the bright sunshine,
he stood naked in that moment,
staring at horizon...and massive blue sky.
And they were all one. And he knew not
if the moment was four seconds
or forty minutes.

Mobile post sent by forestwisdom using Utterli.

When Cold Water is Needed

2009-03-16T09:26:00.002-04:00

I don't feel like I can exactly explain why, (Words don't seem to be my friends these days. I've not had my usual intimacy with them of late.) but this little snippet of poetry hit me right between the eyes when I read it this morning:

Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water --

Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.

~Jane Hirshfield

Thanks once again to Barry Briggs. You can read his explanation and the background of the poem here.

2009-03-15T18:37:00.003-04:00

“Love of the wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need - if only we had eyes to see." ~Edward Abbey, from Desert Solitaire

I would like to thank Chris Townsend for reminding me:

"Twenty years ago today Edward Abbey died and the world lost a defender of freedom, a protector of the wilderness, a desert anarchist, a cantankerous troublemaker, a controversial iconoclast and a damn fine writer. Abbey wrote essays, stories, novels, adventures, letters and more. All are worth reading. And his message of wildness and liberty is as valid today as it has always been.

But just reading Abbey is not enough. We need to think, feel and act as well. Abbey wrote to provoke anger, dissension, discussion, disturbance. He wanted readers to react to his words, even if it was in disagreement, and to go out and do something, anything, to show they were human, to show they cared enough about freedom and nature to defend them. Those of us who remember him and hold his words important need to do more than read and agree." ~Chris Townsend

It is certainly true that Edward Abbey wrote to provoke anger, discussion, disturbance.... I have been reminded of that as I have been slowly (too slowly) making my way through Desert Solitaire again after first reading it many years ago. As I sat down yesterday and was able to spend some time reading for the first time in several days actually, it occurred to me that no matter who you are or what you believe, sooner or later in reading Edward Abbey you will find something that offends you, jars you.... I've been re-offended a few times in recent chapters as I read through...but also re-inspired....

It's a role that is needed in society at some level, the "prophet" who says things that make us supremely uncomfortable. Abbey did it as well as any and better than most, and sometimes with sardonic humor. That he devoted his voice...his gift largely to the defense of the natural world...I am grateful for.

I've been mostly away from the blogosphere (both posting and reading) in recent days due to the present exigencies of my life. I'm not sure how often I can or will be posting presently, but after reading Chris Townsend's excellent tribute to one of my favorite writers, I took the opportunity to post in small tribute myself and poke my head in here to the blog to say "Hello."

Peace to you all.

I can't change the world, but....

2009-03-11T15:31:00.001-04:00

"I can't change the world. But I can change the world in me." ~Bono, from the song "Rejoice" on the album October. (And this from a man who has personally done more to "change the world" recently than most of us on the planet.)

"If we seek to seek to make this a better world, we have no choice but to work with ourselves - our venality and untrustworthiness, as well as our beauty and decency." ~Barry Briggs, from "Global Warming and Human Nature"

Today's musical video bonus:
U2 performing "Rejoice" live in Belgium, 1982. What a blast from my past. Bono and I are close to the same age (I'm about a year older). Ah such earnest youngsters we were, and I think that shows in the video. This doesn't look anything like the mature U2 that one would see in concert today. Who knew then that they would become one of the most iconic rock bands of all time.

I hope you'll enjoy:

Testing Utterli/Bees by Jane Hirshfield

2009-03-10T07:56:00.009-04:00

Mobile post sent by forestwisdom using Utterli.

Update (2:50 PM): As per Northland's excellent suggestion in the comments, and owing to the fact that the audio on this turned out a bit indistinct in a few places, I'm posting the text of the poem below.

Bees
Jane Hirshfield

In every instant, two gates.
One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.
Mostly we go through neither.

Mostly we nod to our neighbor,
lean down to pick up the paper,
go back into the house.

But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror?
Or did you think it the sound
of distant bees,
making only the thick honey of this good life?

From The Lives of the Heart

One Must Know When to Stop

2009-03-09T12:29:00.001-04:00

Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.

From the Tao Te Ching, chapter 32

Everything is Amazing, Nobody is Happy

2009-03-07T04:53:00.003-05:00

The video below is funny, but as often with humor there are nuggets of truth there. The video below is funny, but it hints of weightier matters, questions about a simple life, and what do we really need to be happy.... Have a look, and don't worry, it's short. :)

PS Wow, fourth day in a row that I've put a video in a post, that's a record...but the streak will cease. :)

Via Graceful Yoga

A 20-year tale of hope

2009-03-05T01:22:00.001-05:00

From TED:

By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans -- and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems.

Willie Smits has devoted his life to saving the forest habitat of orangutans, the "thinkers of the jungle." As towns, farms and wars encroach on native forests, Smits works to save what is left

Via Digital Dharma

Welcome to the Epicenter of Global Warming

2009-03-04T12:34:00.003-05:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again, and I'll paraphrase Edward Abbey (See the quotation under the header pic.) when I say it: "This blog is not a travel guide. It's an elegy."

Things like this make me sad as hell. Please watch this extraordinary (and short, yes, we're all busy and our attention spans aren't what they used to be) video:

Via Climate Progress

Labels

2009-03-02T10:32:00.002-05:00

Well, since I broached the subject of labels yesterday, here's more:

Labels. They work really well on jars. I find they are somewhat less satisfactory placed on the complex creatures called humans. I recoil at people labeling me. And yet I use labels for other people quite frequently. Sounds contradictory, doesn't it? I am reminded of some lines by Walt Whitman in his Song of Myself: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

"I am large, I contain multitudes." That seems to me a pretty fair description of the complexity of human persons. And therein lies the unsolvable problem of labeling people. (Aside: of course, some folks are not at all troubled by labels, I know this, but for those of us who are, it seems you can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em....) The problem with labels is that while they constitute a useful shorthand in some ways that may aid our understanding...they also allow us to put people in nice neat little ideological boxes (or personality boxes, or what have you) where we don't have to think about them anymore. "Oh, so and so is an X? Oh he's one of those? Well that means he's like A, B, and C, and believes in D, E, and F.... Oh I see, I get it...." We all do that about people. All the time. The problem is that so and so may be labeled an X, but only be like A, and not like B and C. She may in fact believe in D and E, but not in F.... But the convenient label allows us to put someone in a box....and we so need boxes for people, don't we? We must....

So and so is an Atheist, or a Buddhist, or a Christian, or a Democrat, or an environmentalist, or a fundamentalist, or gay, or a hippie, or an "ISTJ" (or whatever other Myers-Briggs label), or a lesbian, or a Muslim, or a Republican, or a "tree hugger", etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. Puke. Labeling people is inevitable, of course, and society could not function as well in some ways if we did not use their shorthand.... But the caution is that at their worst, labels can reinforce an "us vs. them" way of looking at the world. Those "others" you know, they are the problem.... And maybe we even "hate" those Xs and Ys, we have labels for them, and boxes, and so....

We don't have to actually treat them like other human beings.

I do this. I am guilty. I have fought it all my life and continue to fight it, but...I am guilty....

Are you too?

Some days you feel like a silly label...

2009-03-01T19:47:00.003-05:00

...or like taking a silly internet quiz.

The Religious Identity Test Your Result: Humanist You are probably a humanist. You approach the world from a natural standpoint, giving little weight to organized religion or traditional dogma and creed. You value reason and experience over superstition and supernatural beliefs. In identifying yourself, you would be inaccurate if you described your religious beliefs as Christian or as consistent with any revelation-based belief system.


The Religious Identity Test Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

What makes things like this interesting to me (and perhaps only to me, I dunno) is that once upon a time (in another life long ago and far away) I spent 13 years as an Evangelical pastor. And that's only the tip of the iceberg of my long journey....

"Humanist" doesn't even begin to tell the whole story, but then no label does.... Labels don't tell our stories. More on that in another post perhaps.

What I Believe

2009-02-28T04:05:00.000-05:00

What I Believe
Michael Blumenthal

I believe there is no justice,
but that cottongrass and bunchberry
grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting
will kill a man,
but that his wife will remarry.

I believe that, the older we get,
the weaker the body,
but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night
in an empty bed,
the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually
in a sea of our making,
but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny.
And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when all
the clocks break,
time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever
pulls us under,
will do so gently.

so as not to disturb anyone,
so as not to interfere
with what we believe in.

From Days We Would Rather Know

Truth Can Make You "Ouch"

2009-02-27T15:06:00.000-05:00

From a post by The Rambling Taoist:

"If we're at all honest with ourselves, a blog is a form of vanity. It's a modern way of saying, "Hey, look at me. Look at what I can do." It's true of every blog I visit and it's just as true for me. I'm certainly not suggesting that there are not other motivations involved -- as for most of us there ARE -- but when we clear the cobwebs from our eyes, there is a streak of vanity staring back in the mirror."

It's true.

More:

"I once wrote here that one of the things I like about blogging is that I seem to collect and integrate my thoughts better in writing. So, I reasoned, this format allows me the opportunity to put pen to virtual paper and then to read what I have written. But let's get real! I could very easily set up something akin to a blog on my own computer for my eyes only. I have chosen instead to put my private thoughts and words in a public forum. Vanity strikes again!"

But it isn't just vanity.... It's the community of like minds found in blogging. And the inspiration that can come ordinary folks through their blogs.

And if you don't have blog...It's hard to play, so to speak.

But I would be lying if I didn't admit that what the Rambling Taoist writes is true. At least in my case.

And I can't say I like the feeling very much. Truth can be like that.

The Present Moment...is Not...

2009-02-26T07:34:00.001-05:00

...really the present moment after all:

"A person has all sorts of lags built into him, Kesey used to say. One, the most basic, is the sensory lag, the lag between the time your senses receive something and you are able to react. One-thirtieth of a second is the time it takes, if you’re the most alert person alive, and most people are a lot slower than that. Now, Cassady is right up against that 1/30th of a second barrier. He is going as fast as a human can go, but even he can’t overcome it. He is a living example of how close you can come, but it can’t be done. You can’t go any faster than that. You can’t through sheer speed overcome the lag. We are all of us doomed to spend our lives watching a movie of our lives — we are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past, and we will never be able to control the present through ordinary means. That lag has to be overcome some other way, through some kind of total breakthrough. And there are all sorts of other lags, besides, that go along with it. There are historical and social lags, where people are living by what their ancestors or somebody else perceived, and they may be twenty–five or fifty years or centuries behind, and nobody can be creative without overcoming all those lags first of all. A person can overcome that much through intellect or theory or study of history and so forth and get pretty much into the present that way, but he’s still going to be up against one of the worst lags of all, the psychological. Your emotions remain behind because of training, education the way you were brought up, blocks, hang- ups and stuff like that, and as a result your mind wants to go one way but your emotions don’t –

… … Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script."

~An excerpt from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, via here, via Bodhi Tree Swaying.

I found it interesting. 1/30 of a second is imperceptible to us and for all intents and purposes that lag makes no difference, but I bolded the part that really made me think. As often here, I may or may not agree with all of this; I post stuff that makes me pause and think.... Maybe you will too. Discuss if you like...or not....
Peace

Loving Minnesota

2009-02-25T11:10:00.005-05:00

As many of you know, I live in Minnesota, a state smack in the middle of the nation on the east-west axis, and north, hard against the Canadian border. A state of prairie farmers in the south, and deep forests in the north, with one of the most spectacularly beautiful places, the North Shore of Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake/sea. And lakes! At times it seems like there is more water than land here. Minnesota is called "the land of ten thousand lakes," but depending on what size body of water one defines as a lake the real count is in the 12 to 15 thousand range. I've seen some estimates that even put the number close to 17 thousand. And a little south of the midline of the state and closer to the Wisconsin border, are the clean and cosmopolitan "twin" cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, where I make my home, near the banks of one of the world's most famous rivers, the Mississippi.

I really hesitated more than once in posting this. I lived in Texas for the better part of a year many years ago, and I found Texans to be some of the friendliest people I have ever met anywhere. Many of them did, however, have one little habit that I confess I found a bit annoying: They were constantly bragging about how great Texas was.... So, in true "Oh-I-don't-want-to-annoy-anybody" Minnesotan fashion, (We call it "Minnesota Nice" here, and we like to think of it as politeness and courtesy, although in many places I think they might just call it being "passive-aggressive." ;) I didn't want to annoy anyone with bragging....

But we should all love where we live, right? (Aside: of course, I should admit that if opportunity arose I would not hesistate to live further north...say in Canada.... I am truly a northerner at heart.) If you don't love where you live, then...move to where you love.... Of course, I know that's not always possible. I'm not originally from Minnesota; I didn't grow up here, but it is my adopted home, and feels more like "home" and "me" than any place I have ever lived, and the other day a few things started some gratitude in me that I am here. When I came to Minnesota, I immediately felt like "I know these people; these are my people...." Perhaps it is because I grew up in a Scandinavian family, and even though Minnesota has become a "melting pot" of sorts in recent decades, the effects of generations of predominantly Scandinavian settlement can still be very much felt in the culture here.

Here what originally got me on the path of gratitude these last few days:

(From showmappingworlds.com--a wonderful site!--via A DC Birding Blog.) The graphic shows the ranking of states in breeding pairs of Bald Eagles, our national symbol, and once an endangered species, but now a success story of environmental protection. As you can see, Minnesota is ranked #1, that is, we have the most breeding pairs of Bald Eagles of any state.

(image source)

They truly are beautiful, majestic, and awe inspiring birds. One of my fondest memories of was once in the Boundary Waters when I paddled my canoe around a bend in a river, and was suddenly not 25 yards from a nesting pair of Bald Eagles in the top of a tree just on shore. They were quite angered by my sudden intrusion into their world, and let me know that in no uncertain terms by their loud squawking and agitation. But I paddled by very slowly nonetheless. I wasn't going to miss a chance like that to be so close to these birds....

Then this morning thanks to a recommendation from fellow Minnesotan Deb, who blogs at A Sand Creek Almanac, I read a very evocative piece that captured much of the "essence" of this state I have called my home. Another Minnesotan, The Barefoot Gardener writes:

"A land of folks proud of their pragmatic and stoic way of life. A land of gossipy old Church Ladies, leathery farmers, resourceful farm-wives, and Grumpy Old Men. A land where the only appropriate comment when the weather is -30 degrees is "So, is it cold enough fer ya?"

We are obscenely proud of the fact that we will go ice fishing in temps that keep Polar Bears under wraps, and no snowstorm on earth is enough to keep us all from getting up at o-dark-hundred to take our little selves off to work. We are private people, unwilling to air our arguments in public and terribly embarrassed when others do.

Sometimes, especially in small towns, it seems that the cold has frozen the hands of time. It seems that everything is the same as it has always been; the same as it always will be."

Yep, that's the place I call home, the people I love...a pretty damn good description. I recommend Barefoot Gardener's whole post.

Happy to be here. That's all. And that's a good thing to be.

Standing Deer

2009-02-24T17:02:00.003-05:00

(Image source)

Standing Deer
Jane Hirshfield

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

From The Lives of the Heart

So, recently I've discovered the poetry of Jane Hirshfield for the first time, and it has been resonating with me, speaking to me.... How did I miss this gem of a poet until now?

I may be sharing more from Jane Hershfield in weeks to come.

Update: Faithful reader and frequent commenter Val, posts another powerful poem by Hirshfield in the comments. Don't miss it. :)

When one has nothing to say....

2009-02-23T22:44:00.003-05:00

"Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times." ~Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Or if not beautiful then one hopes at least restorative, freeing....

Wonder

2009-02-21T21:35:00.001-05:00

Richard Dawkins: Seven Wonders of the World (1997). In three parts, all of which are below.

Suit Yourself

2009-02-20T19:39:00.006-05:00

Delicate Arch, Arches National Park, Utah

(Bold emphasis in the excerpt below is mine.)

"There are the inevitable pious Midwesterners who climb a mile and a half under the desert sun to view Delicate Arch and find only God ("Goldangit Katherine, where's my light meter, this glare is turrible"), and the equally inevitable students of geology who look at the arch and see only Lyell and the uniformity of nature. You may therefore find proof for or against His existence. Suit yourself. You may see a symbol, a sign, a fact, a thing without meaning or a meaning which includes all things.

Much the same could be said of the tamarisk down in the canyon, or the blue-black raven croaking on the cliff, of your own body. The beauty of Delicate Arch explains nothing, for each thing in its own way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (There is no beauty in nature, said Baudelaire. A place to throw empty beer cans on Sunday, said Mencken.) If Delicate Arch has any significance it lies, I will venture, in the power of the odd and unexpected to startle the senses and surprise the mind out of their ruts of habit, to compel us into a reawakened awareness of the wonderful--that which is full of wonder.

A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ability to remind us--like rock and sunlight and wind and wilderness--that out there is a different world, older and greater an deeper by far than ours, a world which surrounds and sustains the little world of men as sea and shy surround and sustain a ship. The shock of the real. For a little while we are again able to see, as the child sees, a world of marvels. For a few moments we discover that nothing can be taken for granted, for if this ring of stone is marvelous then all which shaped it is marvelous, and our journey here on earth, able to see and touch and hear in the midst of tangible and mysterious things-in-themselves, is the most strange and daring of all adventures."

--Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Apocalypse Now

2009-02-18T15:43:00.001-05:00

"A disturbing development in the march of global warming, revealed in science’s use of the English language.

Not long ago, most climate scientists stuck to the future tense when they talked about the impacts of global warming. Now, they are using the present tense — and using it more and more often. Now, they tell us the damages have arrived in the United States.

In other words, climate change isn’t just a problem for our kids anymore. It’s here and now and getting personal.

What concerns climate scientists today is not only that the adverse impacts are showing up faster than they expected; it’s that political leaders are moving slower than they should. Climate scientists from around the world will meet next month in Copenhagen “to warn the world’s politicians they are being too timid in their response to global warming,” according to The Guardian...."

Via Climate Progress

A Man's Gotta Have Priorities, Ya Know

2009-02-17T09:02:00.002-05:00

;)

"...poetry and revolution before breakfast." ~Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

And....

"When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful." ~From A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Thanks, Val, for reminding me of this one :)

I think I'm going to make that last one my motto for the rest of my life. I'm so serious so much of the time....

And I thought I would change up the pic I usually use of Abbey. He looks rather sinister in this one, doesn't he? I think I have now talked about Edward Abbey on this blog almost as much as I have Wendell Berry. There is a luminary of mine who is largely missing...Sigurd Olson. I must rectify that in weeks, months, posts to come. In my universe, 'ol Sig deserves equal standing with them....

Paradox and Bedrock

2009-02-16T16:17:00.002-05:00

Balanced Rock, Arches National Park, Utah (source).

I confess that I don't know that I completely get all of exactly what it is that Abbey is saying here, but I think I like it nonetheless.... :)

"Leading me away from the narrow dirt road, an alluring and primitive track into nowhere, meanders down the slope and toward the heart of the labyrinth of naked stone...looming over a bend in the road, is a balanced rock about fifty feet high, mounted on a pedestal of equal height; it looks like a head from Easter Island, a stone god or a petrified ogre.

Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and the filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow remains intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock." --Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Exponential Curve

2009-02-15T19:59:00.001-05:00

For any exponentially growing quantity, the larger the quantity gets, the faster it grows.

"The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems....

Unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere as the result of "feedback loops" that are speeding up natural processes. Prominent among these, evidence indicates, is a cycle in which higher temperatures are beginning to melt the arctic permafrost, which could release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon and methane into the atmosphere."

Source: Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates

This Totally Ordinary Moment

2009-02-14T14:10:00.004-05:00

This Totally Ordinary Moment
by me

I see her standing in the kitchen
leaning back against the counter
waiting for the kettle to boil.
She is staring out the window
at the cold, gray dawn
rising over the white silent landscape.
She appears lost in thought.
I watch her through the open door
from my seat on the couch in the next room.
All is silent, except for the gentle rumble
of the kettle beginning to boil.

She wears her baggy cotton sweatsuit.
She is barefoot, her hair is mussed.
But for a moment as I silently watch her,
a vision appears to me. She is still
standing there against the counter,
but it is a bright summer day, and
she is twenty again. She is in that
pink dress she used to wear so long ago.
And the bobby socks and those
crazy checkered shoes she was so fond of....
Her fresh face shines, as the sunlight
from the kitchen window alights on her,
and she is smiling at me.

It is just for a moment, this vision,
and then I see that it is not summer.
The wind whips up and begins
to howl outside. A chill runs through me.
I grab a blanket beside me to
wrap around me. And she is still
leaning against the kitchen counter,
still lost in thought, waiting
for the kettle to boil, fifty, not twenty,
with wrinkles and extra pounds,
just like me. Standing there in
a baggy sweatsuit, barefoot,
with her hair mussed.

Sitting at the table, we drink
our tea mostly in silence.
Here and there a word or a few,
about the day ahead.
This totally ordinary moment
holds the microcosm of our lives.
Here is all of it at once.
Here is comfort, here is strain.
Here is history, the good and the bad,
the beautiful and the ugly.
Here the hot liquid is comforting.
In this moment is felt no need for more.
Right now is enough.

22 December 2008

2009-02-12T05:20:00.002-05:00

"There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still to close to him in time. In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting." ~Milan Kundera

My thanks to regular reader and commenter Bella for this one.

The Coming Dark Age?

2009-02-11T05:33:00.000-05:00

Returning to a previous topic:

"Dark ages are times of forgetting, when the advancements of the past are underutilized. If we forget how to use our powers of deep focus, we'll depend more on black-and-white thinking, on surface ideas, on surface relationships. That breeds a tremendous potential for tyranny and misunderstanding. The possibility of an attention-deficient future society is very sobering."

~Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

Just posting some things that make me go "Hmmmm" folks...as usual....