Amazonian Ruminations

We can as much control our feelings as the rains. Yet we can flee from them, or shelter from them under a thick roof in a cozy sweater... or dance in them, which is the most challenging, dangerous, and rewarding path.

A Dead Spring

Where, in fancy, has my vigour flown?
Did it sense my winter
as I frolicked in the orange leaves?
Left alone I feel lonely,
fixing in the freeze,
lost mid dreams of a dead spring.

A Weasel's Dream

Back among the burrows
'neath the bumblers and breeze
a weasel's family sleeps
a quiet snooze with dreams
of meadows green
and mice too plump to flee.
Life, offer me
the happy feel
of a weasel's snoozing dream.

Feint

I live in sunny days doomed to fade. I chisel not my name upon the Mountains of History, nor mine their depths for buried brilliance. I paint with water; I craft with sand. I write on recycled paper I one day recycle. Immortality is the breath each word breathes; I need not their mirage. I write to unveil humanity, this fickle play without plot. I write to understand myself, this actor who forgot if there ever were lines to be forgotten. I write hope where worry dwells, compassion where complacency broods, laughter where silence reigns. I write because I need to, and I resent it.

Why can I not drift in silence unanchored? Why destination need I to chart a course? Why purpose need I to chart a life? Why grief suffer I?--and what grief be this but a lingering shadow from an old dream, hidden beneath the cacophony of thought? Can I love what is? Can I love what is not? Have I the courage to emerge from this swarm of self-pity as the chick from the egg? Have I the insight to know this is not me but my challenge?

Yes. I am the eternal I. All else is but the game. I was lost within it, but I did not lose.

The Sadness compresses me, crushing, squeezing from me my air, cheating from me my time, blurring my vision, whipping my thoughts to a flurry to a storm, choking my love. The Sadness enlists, enlivens, provokes my innate fear of the All and of the None, of the Unknown and of the Unveiled. The Sadness is so tangible I can almost taste it, souring my breath, repelling others, sickening my lungs and my stomach.

The Sadness is, of course, not real. It is just another mirage, a feint played well by the opposition, but perhaps too often. So like It to play such a clever ploy: undermining as it plows through, bamboozling, disarming as it stabs, distracting as it steals. So like that wily Death!

And I? you ask. I am Life; I learn, I adapt. Each mirage, as powerful as convincing as it may be, bears the same rankling whiff. While Death seeks to lead me from dream to sordid dream, I now know there is but one of matter; and though still I often stumble, my reactions quicken, my feet grow stable, my eyes sharpen, and my laugh and my silence make love.

For I am Awake. Your move, Death.

Sandcastles

I am the old man on the porch. Mount Baker sits across the bay, rising above the clouds to capture the mid-afternoon sun. The tide is at its lowest. A dozen sandbars of varying browns stretch out in its wake, beaching speedboats, dotted with humans and crabs.

I sip water from a blue cup, appreciating my gift from nature. The conversation lulls, we elderly folks sinking into a familiar trance. The dream-world before us crawls upon our porch, creeps among us, stealing our words to leave soft silence.

Our family is out on the beach, enjoying the ritual of a young tradition. They are shovelling substance, carving character, hands in a relentless pat against the sand: creating a dragon. The ramparts of yesterday's castle, a ring of sand and stone, became her hollow belly. The first task was to rebuild their height and girth, simultaneously digging a moat. My son Joseph, the lead architect, began the dragon's head as a sand heap and a request for a log this long (three feet) and this wide (half a foot), to support her upper jaw. Waiting, he formed her lower one: its distinction from the dune, the lip, the sharp teeth, even a lolling tongue. The upper jaw was more fun: flaring nostrils, a scaly snout curled into a goofy snarl, arching eyebrows, eyes of blue-grey rock. Spikes trail from forehead down the neck, up, splitting at the top of the walls, following the height of each to rejoin and dip with the curling tail. Four of my teenage grandchildren take on a limb each: the left arm is built long and skinny, with manicured nails; the right arm curves bonelessly, bearing six talons; the left leg is beefy, the foot as big as a steering wheel, claws blunt; the right leg trails off at the elbow (abandoned when Naomi joined my nieces to see if the tide reached the mile marker today).

The site is a hive of activity. Naomi announces her return with a sandball splattering onto Joel's back--he shrieks, jumps up and starts chasing her. Phoebe teaches her daughter Eileen to toss the frisbee for our half-blind Australian cattle dog. Isaac, Marc, and Theo wrestle, before flopping dramatically into a tidepool to rinse the sand out of their hair. People stop to admire, strike up a conversation as their dogs sniff about the dragon (with little regard for art) or chase seagulls. Joseph shades his eyes, counting the eight remaining sandbars. My nephew Alex stands to greet his wife, who just left the porch to tell everyone that lunch is ready.

This is the annual family gathering, when relatives from my side and my wife's drift in and out for potluck dinners, late-night card games, picnics, general relaxation, and, of course, sand sculpting. This is how I've spent every August for as long as I recall.

The children are leaving the beach: dropping their spades and skimboards, splashing through the nearest tide-pool, toeing across the barnacle-encrusted rocks, sprinting through the hot soft sand, climbing up the grass, washing their feet in the kiddie pool, and ascending the stairs to meet the old man on the porch.

"Hey Grandpa!"

Sandcastles II

I am the old man on the porch, encompassed by an unfathomable blue sky. Capped in a glory of white, the eastern mountains dapple their green toes in the far reaches of tranquil ocean waves. In the afternoon sunlight the dark brown dunes stretch on by the dozen, beaching speedboats, traversed by humans and crabs.

I sip water from a blue cup, doing my best to appreciate a gift too often taken for granted these days. The conversation has lulled, we older folks sinking into a familiar trance. The dream-world before us--hidden in plain sight among the bedlam of today's world--swiftly and stealthily crawls upon our porch unannounced but not unwelcome. Creeping among us, it steals our words and grants soft silence.

The youngest contingent of our family resides out on the beach, enjoying the ritual of a young tradition. In the early hours, when the moon coaxed the waters toward different shores, a remnant was revealed: a formless, water-scrubbed hump, understood only by the memory of yesterday's triumph. Upon this foundation, they are shovelling, carving, hands in a relentless pat against the sand: giving birth to a dragon. A fresh manifestation resurrected from ancient imaginations, the dragon is a being of toil, camaraderie, and craftsmanship. This titan of sandcastles is a physical testament to the spirit of labour and enjoyment; this crude etching in the sand a reflection of our proud, tumbling lives.

My days of working on the beach are over and gone. Four years ago I surpassed my last worldly hurdle by paying off my debt and this cabin, and I retired. In the same stroke I stopped building sandcastles with my grown kids and growing grandkids, a soothing task I loved. You may ask why? and I cannot answer. Perhaps because I was tired of fighting every day of my life. Perhaps because it brought balance, and I was returning to my centre. My final tide draws near.

The children are leaving the beach: filtering from the rising behemoth, splashing through the nearest tide-pool, toeing across the barnacle-encrusted rocks, sprinting through the hot soft sand, climbing up the grass, washing their feet in the kiddie pool, and ascending the stairs to meet the old man on the porch.

"Hey Grandpa!"

the Gardener II

Once upon a Dream
beneath the cool shade of Willow
the Gardener sips tea
smiles on all Creation
wonders
imagines and dreams
a dream within the Dream
and the dream is thus:

The Gardener kneels at the edge of Pond
sifts Clay
to find a Seed
a new complexity of the Seed of Life
the Gardener smiles
knows how to tend it.

Around the Seed
the Gardener traces a Being
of the Gardener's own imagination
as all Beings are
and the Being is thus:

an Eye to seek Beauty in the extraordinary
an Eye to realise Grace in the ordinary

an Ear to seek Wisdom within the Word
an Ear to realise Truth within silence

a Voice to speak the Word when sought
a Brain to realise what language to speak

a Nose to seek taste when surviving
a Mouth to realise a smile when thriving

an Arm to lift when climbing
an Arm to cradle when falling

a Hand to mix paints and stretch canvas
a Hand to brush a Masterpiece

a Leg to seek Adventure in wandering
a Leg to realise Stability in resting

a Foot to seek Wisdom when following paths
a Foot to realise fertile soil when planted

a Sex to transport the Seed through danger
a Sex to embrace and nurture the Seed to fruition

a Lung to Breathe
a Lung to whisper Wisdom within the Word

a Chest to Protect
an Abdomen to hold Life to the Being

a Mind to guide the Being through Life
a Heart to guide Life through the Being

the Gardener covers the Seed with Clay
in a little hole in the center of the Heart
a hole the Being will never find
but ever seek
a hole the Being will never understand
but ever realise
the source of the Being's dream within the Dream
holding the Knowledge of the imperfection of knowing
the Understanding of the imperfection of understanding
the Wisdom of Equilibrium:
Good and Evil as two halves of one whole
Dark and Light as one
Feminine and Masculine as one
Being and Nonbeing as one
Reality and Dreaming as one.

The Gardener awakens
traces his dream steps from Willow to Pond
in the Clay are two babies
one is Adam
one is Eve
the Gardener smiles
tends for them as they grow.

Waves Trailing Deceased Dreams

Waves trailing deceased dreams
leaked as salty droplets from eyes of
spirits made flesh by breath
who hesitated on the threshold of Living
evaporate into Sky as water biding time till reincarnation
fall heavy onto Mountain
dance lightly down Stream
drift along River
disperse into Ocean
eaten by lower life beings
eaten by slightly higher lower life beings
discarded as feces.

Waves trailing deceased dreams
scuddle-black on trembling Beach
pecked by gulls
these grandiose fantasies of little substance
reduced to their meager physical incarnations
to seep back into Earth
and dissolve into Sky
to find some other dreamer
who may hold them dearly
for she understands
they are Life.

The Gardener's Dream

Beneath the cool shade of Willow

the Gardener sips tea and dreams

a dream within the Dream

and the dream is thus:

The Gardener kneels at the edge of the Pond

takes clay

with patience and surety

there is formed a being

one in the Gardener’s own image

as all beings are

and the being is thus:

an Eye to seek Beauty in the extraordinary

an Eye to realise Grace in the ordinary

an Ear to seek the Word within Sound

an Ear to realise Wisdom within Silence

a Voice to teach the Word when sought

a Brain to know what language to speak

a Nose to taste when surviving

a Mouth to smile when thriving

an Arm to lift when ascending

an Arm to cradle when falling

a Hand to mix paints and stretch canvas

a Hand to brush a Masterpiece

a Leg to seek Adventure in wandering

a Leg to realise Stability in rest

a Foot to seek Wisdom following Paths

a Foot to realise fertile soil when planted

a Sex to transport the Seed through danger

a Sex to embrace and nurture the Seed to fruition

a Lung to Breathe

a Lung to lift the Word beyond noise

a Chest to Protect

an Abdomen to hold Life to the being

The Gardener looks at the perfect creation

and knows that the most difficult task arrives:

the creation of the imperfection

that which will hold the being to imperfect Life

and the imperfection chosen is thus:

a Heart to rejuvenate all other organs with Life

to remind and to guide

in the center of the Heart

there is a little hole of pure Love

a hole the body will never find

but always seek

a hole the body will never understand

but always realise

the center of each being’s dream within Dreams

holding the Knowledge of the imperfection of knowing

the Understanding of the imperfection of understanding

the Wisdom of Equilibrium:

good and evil as one

dark and light as one

male and female as one

being and nonbeing as one

In the morning the Gardener awakes

and lying in the clay there are two babies

one is Adam

one is Eve

the Gardener smiles

and guides them gently as they grow.

the Child Eaters

If, while we eat, we destroy living beings or the environment, we are eating the flesh of our own sons and daughters.

- Thich Nhat Hanh -


*However, this must be taken in the context of the fact that life constantly consumes life to live.

Here I Am

Here.
Here I am.
So strike me!
Come on!
I know you want to
and I know you will.
Strike me
strike me to the ground.
In the beginning
you will accomplish nothing
without Fear
and a little anger, as well.

What is the difference
between humanity
and the rest of the animals?

Perhaps
we realize that survival
is not the purpose
but the means.
But we too often do not
acknowledge this.
And so enters sadness.

Locusts

Taken from the novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn:

One day the gods were considering the administration of the world in the ordinary way, and one of them said, "Here's a spot I've been thinking about for a while--a wide, pleasant savannah. Let's send a great multitude of locusts into this land. Then the fire of life will grow prodigiously in them and in the birds and lizards that will feed on them, and that will be very fine."

The other thought about this for a while, then one said, "It's certainly true that, if we send the locusts into this land, the fire of life will blaze in them and in the creatures that feed on them--but at the expense of all the other creatures that live there." The others asked him what his point was, and he went on. "Surely it would be a great crime to deprive all these other creatures of the fire of life so that the locusts and the birds and the lizards can flourish for a time. For the locusts will strip the land bare, and the deer and the gazelles and the goats and the rabbits will go hungry and die. And with the disappearance of the game, the lions and the wolves and the foxes will soon be dying too. Won't they curse us then and call us criminals for favoring the locusts and the birds and the lizards over them?"

Now the gods had to scratch their heads over this, because they'd never looked at the matters in this particular light before but finally one of them said, "I don't see that this presents any great problem. We simply won't do it. We won't raise a multitude of locusts to send into this land, then things will go on as before, and no one will have any reason to curse us."

Life Moves On

Consider life itself:

Scientists cannot understand what drives life. There is no physical explanation, because the answer is not contained within our physical dimensions, and so we can never understand it with our physical brains.

Neither do scientists understand what drives death. My theory? We are vessels of consciousness. We burst forth from the womb with boundless potential for growth in so many dimensions. We are concentrated bastions of Creativity, coming and going, never the same, never still, building and reorganizing. But we, as everything, are impermanent. Life, Creativity, moves on.

And for life to keep flowing, which is not an option, it can have no permanent bastion on the earth. If we live a giving life, we will live forever in dimensions and levels of consciousness so much greater than those we are physically aware of. So live on.

Creationism

After watching the movie Prometheus, I got to thinking about the creation and manipulation of life. It would be impossible for humans to "create" life in the pure sense of the word. Even if we were to create some new species through genetic manipulation, it would be that--manipulation of life. The building blocks are there. And so, at the incredible rate we are advancing scientifically, I see it as very possible, if not probable, that we will be able to harness the power of building within the near future (be it ten years or a hundred). That leads to several questions.

Why would we build? Two of the three reasons I can think of were included in Prometheus, as it happens:
     1. to use for comfort and entertainment purposes;
     2. for war;
     3. because we can.

Who wouldn't want a genetically modified smart-dog that could understand you? Or go to a zoo and see a saber-tooth cat?

However, that's not what interests me. Would we, if we could, build humanoids? These would be very different from robots. Computers obey, animals respond. It would be insanely dangerous for humankind. But then again, that's a question of morality and not science, and so it is moot (there are many scientists currently attempting to find out how to stop the aging process--imagine the ramifications of 7 billion people who could live "forever"). So, we would build some humanoids, and my bet is we'd send them to war.

Although, if I were in charge, which I sure as hell won't be, I'd do this: make them asexual. That, of course, might well be impossible. Castrate them at birth (would it be called "birth"?)? Create a eunich army? Civil rights groups would be up in arms, and soon, I imagine, we'd have two different races of people inhabiting this planet.

the Weary

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another

--Kahlil Gibran