Yesterday it was chilly and grey and the air was damp. After digging around in my renegade compost pile to move stuff around (one of my favorite things lately), I heard a red-bellied woodpecker flying up behind me. He flew almost to the side of the house and then made a quick turn to cling to a pine trunk above me. We looked at each other. He flew off a bit, but I could still hear him clucking.

I should mention that I knew a woodpecker made a hole in the side of the house again, but I had never seen what woodpecker.

I took a few steps down the hill behind the compost pile, crouched down, and got still. Red Belly isn’t stupid. He knew where I was. I suppose I backed up and became non-threatening enough that he eventually flew back to the pine tree above me, gave me a look, and then impossibly disappeared into the hole. It looked like he got sucked into a pneumatic tube.

Well, now I know. And I should call my landlord, but after I buy a woodpecker house or something to get the repair person to hang where the hole is now. There’s a slim chance Red Belly would move into that rather than start excavating another hole in the siding immediately as usual. While I do like the idea of him sleeping in the wall next to me while I am in my bed, I do not like the idea of him in there with the insulation. It cannot be good for him. I wish I could control who would fix the hole and when. I have a horror of them sealing the woodpecker up in the wall.

Anyway, after learning for sure that Red Belly is my close neighbor, I walked around in the woods for a little bit.

I am not sure how I missed this most amazing tree for so long, because it is very near the house but off at a weird angle. It is a huge, five-trunked tulip poplar. I must photographic it because it gave me chill bumps when I circled around the side of it and saw how three of the trunks join.

Then a little more walking, slowly, eyes scanning the ground and… what… oh my… THAT is a segment of a branch about the size of my upper arm… with a round opening and a cavity hollowed out… and mycelium wallpaper. Woodpeckers, woodpeckers, woodpeckers…

-=-=-

A week ago I walked home from campus between 9 and 10pm. I stopped for dinner on the way and walked slowly because there was still ice in places. Downtown Chapel Hill and Carrboro were deserted. Icy ghost towns. The temperature was in the low 20s/upper teens. A hoarfrost covered all the plants.

I do not know how or why I have never seen hoarfrost at night, but it may be one of the most beautiful things there is. Twinkling white Christmas lights are such a cheap imitation.

That morning I walked up the hill to downtown to catch the bus. Of course, I saw the bus I meant to catch go by while I was still half an icy block away. But before that… on the way up the hill… all was deserted and silent. Silent except for the thrillingly satisfying and LOUD cracking of the ice crust as I broke it with each step. I could hear the sound moving away from me as the crack traveled. I pretended to be Godzilla for a moment. It is true. I also giggled out loud and then looked around furtively.

Later that night I happened to think, “I haven’t heard any owls around here in quite a while. I wonder what’s up with that.” A few minutes later, I popped out onto the front deck to put some things in the recycling bin. And of course I heard a Great Horned Owl.

As I told my friend, I had a conversation with an owl. She asked, “What did the owl say?” I said, “I don’t know… the conversation was in owl.” I think it was probably saying, “God your accent is horrible,” or “Would you please be quiet, you ridiculous human?” Or maybe just, “Don’t worry. There are still owls here.” Who knows. Owls. They are never what they seem anyway.

-=-=-

Too late to do anything about it this past weekend, I learned that a pileated woodpecker was photographed in a not-too-distant state park just a few days ago. Also, I learned that bobcats are photographed at night by wildlife cameras in a few other state parks farther away, but not beyond a weekend trip. Of course LYNX RUFUS would also pop up. Can’t let the woodpeckers get all the attention.

And no, I do not think I’m going to go camp at a state park and see a bobcat, but just to be in a place where true wild cats live is what I want. Not since second grade, when I lived just on the line of the Olympic National Forest in Washington, have I spent time in an area with wild cats. Oh, and that area also keeps popping up.

I keep smelling the moist clean mossy wood forest smell of where I used to play. It may be the best smell in the world.

My friend keeps telling me the Rainbow Gathering is in Western Washington next year. I don’t know about that. I got stuck at finding out you have to poop in a trench in a non-secluded area. Yep. I don’t know about that one… I think my inner hippie may be more of a hermit that that.

The blowout from the Macondo well has created a terminal condition: denial. We don’t want to own, much less accept, the cost of our actions. We don’t want to see, much less feel, the results of our inactions. And so, as Americans, we continue to live as though these 5 million barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf have nothing to do with us. The only skill I know how to employ in the magnitude of this political, ecological, and spiritual crisis is to share the stories that were shared with me by the people who live here. I simply wish to bear witness to the places we traveled and the people we met, and give voice to the beauty and devastation of both.

To bear witness is not a passive act.

…

The system is breaking down not from one thing but everything.

–The Gulf Between Us: Stories of terror and beauty from the world’s largest accidental offshore oil disaster by Terry Tempest Williams

Finally subscribing to Orion, I think…

Randomly ran across a blog by one of those anonymous Internet somewhat kindred spirits. One of those things that reminds me that no, I am not alone in experiencing the world the way I do, which has the effect of reducing the existential trauma that often threatens to overwhelm me (see quote that rocked my understanding from the previous post…) Having that happen occasionally is why I continue to ever write anything on the Web—the thought that something I write might lighten someone else’s burden of alienation in some tiny way. See (post from aforementioned blog):

I have some cultural dysphoria. American culture seems abusive, needlessly controlling, morally debased, hopelessly cruel, shallow, and really just stupid.

“So when you look for guidance, direction, mentorship, we all look to institutions… but it’s really yourself that is the final arbiter. And if you keep yourself as the final arbiter you will be less susceptible to infection by cultural illusion. Now the problem with this is it makes you feel bad not to be infected by cultural illusion because its called alienation. But this is I can’t solve all problems. The reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. So the cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation.”
- Terrence McKenna (video link from last year)

–Hermetically Blonde

From a review of a book going on the to read at some point list:

But nature is humbling on both the largest and smallest of scales. You don’t have to be in the wilderness any more than you have to stay in bed to be awed, to be jolted or slowly prodded back into the world of the living, to feel connected. Look big enough or small enough, and all things start to take on a familiar geometry. Nebulas swirling in space, the tight twist of the double helix, the “marvelous spiral” of a snail’s perfectly curled shell. Size and distance become variable, unimportant. Bailey acknowledges that “Snails may seem like tiny, even insignificant things compared to the wars going on around the world,” but through her eyes we are reminded that nothing, no matter how small, is without significance.
–The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, reviewed by Kathleen Yale

Last night and this morning, I read The raven’s gift : a scientist, a shaman, and their remarkable journey through the Siberian wilderness by Jon Turk. I loved the part where, when Turk’s PhD advisor questioned him on why he had not been applying for any academic jobs, Turk basically said, “I can’t be in academia. I have to be able to smell the earth with my dog.” Also loved reading about Turk’s holding the tension between rational western mind and wonder mystery mind. I like that the latter gets the seat of honor at the table.

Finally, lynx are popping up everywhere. No, not literally, but it’s getting seriously a little spooky.

Last weekend, I watched this show (53:54) called In Search of Ecstasy:

In this episode of Global Spirit, host Phil Cousineau explores the ecstatic state — a global phenomenon found in all kinds of spiritual, religious, and wisdom traditions. Cousineau is joined by guests Sobonfu Somé, author and teacher of African spirituality, and Andrew Harvey, a British scholar specializing in the works and teachings of Jalaluddin Rumi. This lively discussion is interwoven with video segments that transport the audience on a journey inside different cultural expressions of divine ecstasy, asking why and how ecstatic trance is practiced around the world, and why it fascinates so many people today.

This episode includes unique video footage of a Sufi Zikr ceremony in Turkey – the practice of remembrance that brings participants to an ecstatic state of connection with God. Also featured are powerful scenes of traditional and modern day trance rituals which uncover the altered state experience which people seek through dance, trance and spirit possession. The program features Orisha priestesses from Nigeria and Brazil, and Shaman healers from the Kalahari and Korea, all pulsating to a provocatively similar beat with thousands of young people losing themselves at an all-night techno-rave event in an Australian forest.

First let me say that I want to hang out with Andrew Harvey and Sobonfu Somé. My computer screen was exuding joy just because they were on it. Andrew Harvey also said something that I loved (well several things, but this one…): that the West is a concentration camp of reason.

Second, the show reminded me that I have not been getting enough ecstatic bliss in my life over the past few months. Yes, there are not infrequent surprise hits… coming out onto the top of the parking deck just as the bats are emerging at dusk. Watching snow fall. A certain slant of light on one afternoon when the leaves are at a specific point in turning color and the wind just right so that the tree appears to be flashing on and off—standing there watching with mouth agape and forgetting to cross the street when the cars stopped. Being so in the moment while driving, accepting having only an illusion of control over what happens next, knowing that anything could happen next, that I laughed at the idea of the road peeling itself off the earth and flapping around like a length of caution tape in the wind. Getting down with my face close to the earth, entering my moss garden at different scale through a magnifying glass or jeweler’s loupe, and being so thoroughly immersed that I am surprised and for a moment terrified by the entry of an ant into my field of vision. Playing chase with Cuchulain and having to sit down because I am laughing too hard.

But I prefer to ensure a steady diet of intentional self-cracking* bliss. I am not sure when the impromptu dance parties in my living room ended, but it had been at least a few months. I remedied this last night and totally lost myself in music and movement for a while. I heard some parts of some songs I never heard before that made me feel like my face was splitting open from beaming.

I didn’t realize it until years later, but I believe ecstatic dance was among the things that preserved my ability to function while I was an undergrad. Goth/industrial/fetish clubs are not so exciting that they are worth driving to 45 minutes each way two or three nights a week. However, in the sort of mental space I was in during those years, moving my body to pounding dark music until I as I know me was driven out by sound and sweat and swirling and stomping and energy and breath, such that I would stop and find out an hour had passed… this was essential.

Clubbing was not for drinking, drugging, flirting, fashion showing, or dramawhoring. It was for Dancing. I did not need Gabrielle Roth. I had my own 5Rhythms:

• The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
• Cuts You Up
• Temple of Love
• Stainless Steel Providers
• Thieves

One might suggest that my relationship with dancing and music in general at the time was a mite unbalanced in a slightly unhealthy manner. Such a suggestion would not be untrue. However, it helped me keep myself together (mostly) until I powered up another level and was able to address some of my state more directly.

Cure shows–also bliss. Just thinking about certain moments in sets gives me goose bumps, wets my eyes, and makes my chest feels like it is expanding such that wings might burst out and I might take flight. I am not being flippant when I refer to them as a like religious experience.

I also have been writing too much Ruby code and not enough meandering stream of consciousness personal digging. Now, there is something to crafting some code that does something cool you could never do by hand without a warehouse of data grubbing minions. But it is more a satisfaction. Clearly I did this with my analytical brain.

But when time gets lost and suddenly I am finding myself writing things that make connections and unearth insights I had no idea that I had or knew. When I suddenly understand something deeply vexing I’ve been circling around for years by letting myself get sucked into the funnel of it, and the truth is suddenly just… there. When I paint for a couple of hours, and then realize my back is killing me from hunching over and I sprawl out for a while and sit back up and think, “Where did this amazing image come from??” These things feel like magic. A connection to something beyond what I go around thinking I am. Even if it is just my larger self, bliss. Ecstatic.

Like… it has suddenly become clear: 2009, Year of Danger. 2010, Year of Presence. 2011, Year of Ecstasy.

I wonder how much my sudden focus on this topic comes from the fact that I found out I could finally buy this song online. I will never again play this on repeat while I am at work. It has… side effects:

How do you feed your soul the recommended daily (weekly? monthly? ever?) allowance of ecstatic experience?

* Oh god, now I see in my mind: a giant nutcracker painted to look like Carl Jung.

On Monday, September 27, 2010, I went to the East Building of the National Gallery of Art to see an exhibition of Rothko’s black paintings.

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1964

I peeked in, noted that there were seven looming black pieces on the walls, and for a fleeting moment felt what I imagine many people might feel when faced with this exhibition. Something within me recoiled. A wave of ennui rolled through. A sense of annoyance at perhaps being the butt of some joke about the definition of “Art.”

Most people who came in while I was there peeked in, maybe walked into the center of the room or once around its perimeter, and left. For me, a brief jolting desire to flee rose from some deep place inside, but a bigger part of me knew better and was committed to spending time with these works. I ended up staying with the paintings for over an hour.¹ In that time, one other person actually took time with the paintings.

Here is how I approach a room of Rothkos. It does take time. Go to the center of the room. Turn around slowly. Take in the effect of being surrounded by giant portals of color, or in this case, mostly lack thereof. Turn around so slowly that you see the different shapes and hues emerging from each.

Then, meet each painting individually. Begin at middle distance, normal gallery viewing range. Focus your eyes. Unfocus your eyes. In-between focus. Do this long enough that the painting shifts from being flat to having infinite depth as you start to perceive the layers and shapes in them. Notice how they disappear literally in the blink of an eye, and then re-emerge. Notice the feeling tone as the painting opens up.

Then, become intimate with the painting. I’m a rude weird² gallery attendee in that I always like to view the works as closely as possible. This is how you see the brush bristles, the cigarette butts, the finger prints, the technical details. This is how the artist first viewed the image as it emerged and when it was finished. When viewing Rothkos, this step is essential in order to experience being swallowed by the painting. With his larger paintings, your entire field of vision can be filled by color. This close encounter often magnifies or transforms the initial feeling tone of more distant viewing. This is how Rothko wanted us to view his works:

I paint very large pictures. I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them however – I think it applies to other painters I know – is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command.

—

I also hang the largest pictures so that they must be first encountered at close quarters, so that the first experience is to be within the picture.

Rothko wanted people to experience his works as he did in their creation:

I also hang the pictures low rather than high, and particularly in the case of the largest ones, often as close to the floor as is feasible, for that is the way they are painted.

It is only through this intimate, direct encounter with a Rothko that his genius can be felt. And it is felt, not conceptually, intellectually grasped or understood. Once you have experienced it and felt it, you know it: Rothko was somehow able to paint the spectrum of human psychology³—the conscious and the unconscious. No figures, no words, just the bare experience of psychological states.

The first time I came face-to-face with a Rothko, I was moved to tears. I got it. I experienced it. I knew what he had been up to. Later, this intuition was confirmed when I read the following:⁴

I am not an abstractionist. … I am not interested in the relationship of colour or form or anything else. … I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. … The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!

As I said, I stayed for over an hour. Yes, there were tears. I felt as though I were ripping myself out of the room when I had to leave. The black canvases had become enormous magnets, or warm stones in a stark, cold place.

Amused aside: I just now realized I only went into the first room of the exhibit. There was another room with nine more paintings. An excuse to go back?

The first Rothkos I ever spent time with were the big red ones usually on display at the National Gallery. I was sucked toward them by just a distant glimpse. So why the moment of recoil at the black paintings this time? There is much in the psyche we do not want to own. All of this is referred to in Jungian psychology as the Shadow—that in the Self which people consciously disown or disassociate themselves from, but end up unconsciously dragging around in a “long black bag.”⁵ Personal growth necessitates periods of suffering, or “swamplands of the soul,”⁶ which no one looks forward to. The Shadow and the Swamplands are typically associated with blackness and negativity. It is our reflex to recoil from them, as I reflexively recoiled from the paintings.

Of course, the paradox is, in Jung’s words:

…that in the very darkness of nature a light is hidden, a little spark without which the darkness would not be darkness…the lumen naturae is the light of the darkness itself, which illuminates its own darkness, and this light the darkness comprehends

Paul Levy expands upon this:

In contrast to a light that, as the Bible says, “shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not,” the lumen naturae, the light of lights, is a light that the darkness intimately recognizes as its own nature. The lumen naturae is the luminosity within the darkness recognizing itself as it illumines its own darkness. This archetypal experience of the luminescence of the divine being found in the translucent darkness is referred to in various mystical traditions by names such as the luminous darkness and the black sun.

What Rothko achieved in these paintings is nothing less than representation and communication of the “archetypal experience of the luminescence of the divine being found in the translucent darkness.” He painted le soleil noir. Of course the paintings are initially repellent to the conscious ego. The work of individuation is that of spiritual alchemy and requires diving into the darkness to recover the light within. Individuation requires the death of the ego as it knew itself at the beginning of the journey. But once one has begun and seen a glimmer of the lumen naturae, one is inexorably drawn toward the darkness in which it may be found. Thus, the paintings became magnets after I truly experienced them.

I believe Rothko was working on The Opus. He called his art religious art, though he was not religious. He claimed to deal with the Spirit of Myth and was preoccupied with “finding a pictoral equivalent for man’s new knowledge and consciousness of his more complex inner self.” In a radio broadcast with Adolph Gottlieb:

If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.. …(they) express something real and existing in ourselves.

One week ago today, I attended a workshop with James Hollis. He cited Jung as saying The Opus requires three things: insight, courage, and endurance. Psychology can help with insight. Courage seems like an intrinsic trait which one may or may not be able to uncover in oneself. Endurance, particularly in a feel-good, instant gratification culture so inimical to The Opus, seems to be the most difficult as it must be continuously maintained in the face of our being worn down. Hollis says that we wake up every morning with two demons at the foot of our bed: fear and lethargy. To triumph over these and get out of bed is an heroic act. I know I have insight. I have confidence in my ability to muster courage. But I am prone to overwhelm and sometimes worry about my capacity for endurance. Perhaps I am projecting…

In 1967, Rothko completed the black-on-blacks. In 1968, he reduced his palette to brown, gray, and black. In 1970, he slit his wrists in his studio, overdosed on antidepressants, and died.

I believe that getting stuck in and swallowed by the nigredo stage is one of the risks of setting out on The Opus. The immensity of the Abyss can sap endurance and stifle vision. Seeing your own life against the scale of the Abyss can change your perspective on your mortality. At the workshop, an attendee asked Hollis about suicidality. In his response, he said something about it sometimes being a case of the ego choosing bodily death rather than face ego death.

I have not studied Rothko’s life or body of work in depth, and no one can really know why a person chooses to commit suicide. I only wonder what we might have seen if he was indeed stuck in the nigredo and had chosen egocide over suicide. What might he have created had he re-become himSelf? Maybe nothing. Maybe something more glorious. Can’t know.

I do know that the black paintings currently on display are products of genius, and that simply thinking about them now evokes the same feelings of wonder, awe, grief, gratitude, despair, comfort, fear, courage, smallness, strength, of being a stranger, and of being at home that I felt in the room with the canvases. All simultaneously. That is the beauty of the lumen naturae.

1. I would have stayed longer, but had a concert to get to later… [↩]
2. I say it’s rude and weird because I see few other people doing it, and it means I’m obscuring the view for those people who maintain normal middle distance from the works. [↩]
3. I use the term psychology in its literal meaning: knowledge or expression of the psyche, defined by Jung as “the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious” (Jung, C.G. (1971). Psychological Types, Collected Works, Volume 6, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, Def. 48 par. 797 [↩]
4. I also felt like less of a weirdo for crying in front of a painting of such surface simplicity and meaninglessness. Later, I read Pictures and tears: a history of people who have cried in front of paintings, which opens with a description of an art historian being moved to tears upon viewing one of Rothko’s black-on-black paintings and this quote, from page 3:
   

   There is no survey to prove it, but it is likely that the majority of people who have wept over twentieth-century paintings have done so in front of Rothko’s paintings. And of all Rothko’s paintings, people have been moved most by the fourteen huge canvases he made for the chapel that now bears his name.

   The seven large paintings in the exhibit currently at the National Gallery were precursors of the chapel paintings. [↩]

5. Robert Bly’s phrase [↩]
6. as per James Hollis [↩]

Have been a bit overwhelmed recently, which never goes anywhere nice.

A couple of things to note that I didn’t want to forget:

1. Sad : seeing a pigeon egg just about to fall off of a parking deck ledge. Walking over to get a closer look and seeing a broken egg on the concrete. Pigeons are really bad nest makers, so losing eggs this way is a common problem.

2. Amazing : Friday night I happened to get to the top of the parking deck at the perfect moment of dusk, when bats were emerging. I watched them swirl around in one formation and eventually disperse.

Saw Billy Bragg at Cat’s Cradle Saturday night. Good show.

And I don’t seem to be able to get enough sleep, so… zzzz.

This morning I found a crow feather. Or at least a very large, black until it’s blue feather.

I am amassing quite a feather collection. Tonight I was adding the recent finds to the rest, arranging feathers in nests instead of flowers in frogs.

This evening I went to student stores before class to buy a snack. An older, professorial man was telling one of the cashiers an anecdote, the end of which went “he referred to it as a heedless sufficiency.”

Cashier: “A what?”

Man: “A heedless sufficiency.”

Cashier: “Is that one or two words?”

Me: LOL

Class went well, but we are already a little behind, I think. I’d open the spreadsheet and check, but an invisible icepick is being driven through my right eye and out my temple, with hot streaks radiating down my jaw and neck into my shoulder.

each morning
i enter the library

first
into the glass airlock
through double doors
that help you push them
open, pause at their widest
collapse emphatically
resisting interruption
if your rhythm is wrong

then
the second double doors
inert and flimsy, no will
in the shadow of
the first.

then
hip high metal flippers
make me a pinball
ricocheting right
across the reading room
through clicking wooden door
into invisible library parts still quiet
when the phones stop ringing.

tuesday
in the airlock
a tiger swallowtail still
on the flat flush floor
sill of plate glass
surveying brick
behind a tree in a pot
beside a cardboard death trap

how do i see these things?
why must i notice
the hatchling in the leaves
the beetle struggling beneath bananas
the steel blue feather in the grass
the abyss in the eyes of strangers?

i walk alone, quiet, and look
i see more than most
i think
yet
i can’t fathom all the wonders
i do not see
despite looking

sometimes
i try to keep walking
leave the feather on the ground
do not carry the cicada
from the brick walk to the tree
do not tuck another fallen leaf
between the leaves of your calendar
but it is painful not to stop
not to treasure
not to honor
not to try

before
i make it to my desk
i know i will
drop my bags
power on the computer
turn around
out the clacking door
across the reading room
between the scanning sentinels
out the flat doors
into the violent heat

then
around around and back
airlock again
rustle behind the potted trees
the circulation desk
must think i’m touched

but
i touch you
tentative
your wing flaps up
and i had imagined
you were probably dead

so
careful careful
must get you outside
careful, touch thorax
touch abdomen
careful, touch not your wings

through flimsy doors
through flippers
ricochet left
wondering
at your strength in my hand
your wings slowly beat
why we walk around in circles
locks and one way doors

careful careful
please do not fly
not in the library
it houses a different kind of life
another kind of beauty

careful careful
just a moment more

see
i’m frightened
of trying to help
scared
i might instead harm

careful
through the flat doors
outside
where you belong
swallowtail, meet shrub

but
something
is wrong and sticky
your hindlegs tangled
in what might
or might not
be cobwebs

i pull the tacky mass
gentle
but my body betrays me
the more i need precision
the more
my heart pounds
my hands shake

hopeful i am not hurting you
afraid to pull the cobwebby clump

(can you even imagine
tearing the legs from a butterfly?

i can imagine why i have been
finding cicadas crushed
into concrete or brick
campus is full of students
now

and
i hope
but doubt
their steps
are accidents)

your wings beat faster
when i pull
do i project your fear?
pain?
your insect wild
need to flee?
i can’t hold you
can’t pull harder
you take flight

first
you struggle
so do i
apprehending the possibility
of watching you fall

then
you find
your rhythm

now
ascending black
against clear hot sky
ropy burden dangling behind

now
all that exists is you
flitting up
up higher
high into the blue
higher than i knew
even unburdened
papillons could fly

then
you are gone
behind roof line
out of sight

i am shaken
shaking i failed to save you
released you into danger
with a sticky weight
a mark upon you
dragging you down to
certain and soon
death

again
through the willful doors
the airlock, flimsy doors, flippers
fighting disappointment
fear of tears
or moistness of eyes
of people saying
once again
too sensitive, silly
crying over butterflies
or birds hit by cars
everything dies

but
taking flight
is freedom
is hope
spying a startled bird
alighting directly into steel destruction
is perverse

a butterfly
climbing
up and away
towing its sticky demise:
the same

like this
to office, to cube
to work, to meeting
to prepare
for disaster

emergency comes in flavors:
fire
wind
buildings collapsing to earth
security
which means a human with a gun
or two or four

amid this
listening, talking
planning, debate
subsides
the ache in my chest
behind my eyes

later
the sadness finds me again
and i wonder
why is it
contingencies of human evil
distract from the centered ache
and
what it means
that this is so
and
how many ways exist
of being a traitor
to your own kind

* I haven’t claimed to be a poet in over 13 years, but some things just want to come out in fragments and images and this is one of them. An unpolished unrevised ramble.

Found:
- Smooth, shiny red magnolia seed on the sidewalk, free from its burr and seeming quite jewel-like
- Feather. Grey at the bottom, white at the tip. That’s not very notable, but there is a grey triangle in the middle of the white tip.
- Cicada on sidewalk. Was not sure if it was alive or dead until I picked it up. It was alive so I put it at the base of an oak tree.
- Butterfly

Seen:
- Big black cat with yellow eyes watching me from atop a car in the parking deck
- Nest on the ground, falling apart. I had nothing in which to carry it and it looked like squirrel had rooted around in it anyway.
- At least 5 cicadas squished to smithereens on sidewalks. Number of these seen previous to return of students for Fall semester: 0.

Received:
- One red egg filled with the philosopher’s stone

Noted:
- The dead tree looming over my house from across the street has finally been cut down. Given the distribution of twigs and pieces of branches scattered by the removal, it is a damned good thing they cut it down before it fell.

Did not want:
- Cats yowling outside at 5:30am causing two of the cats in my bedroom to freak out and have a rolling-around, screaming-in-that-creepy-(and really loud)-cat-fighting way.
- My cell phone to have been automatically set one hour late for at least 3 hours Tuesday morning, including the time I normally wake up. The effect was that my cell phone alarm went off at 8:15 (so it displayed) but the rest of the clocks read 9:15.

Enjoyed:
- Writing a quick script to save a colleague a whole lot of time and tedious work.
- Last night’s class session on cataloging in context and FRBR.

Astounded:
- That it is September already.

Wishing for:
- Rain

Experienced:
- Monday night, depersonalization/derealization episode of unsettling strength and duration. Also file under “Did not want,” but here’s to knowledge and intact reality testing.
- Kensho-esque span of some amount of time upon ascending the stairs of the parking deck to open expanse of night sky Tuesday night.
- Intense head pain for an hour and a half last night.

These three things might not be unrelated.

Nature teaches us simplicity and contentment, because in its presence we realize we need very little to be happy. Since we are part of the animal kingdom, our senses are naturally more alive in the outdoors. The rustle of leaves or the rapid flight of birds could indicate the presence of a mountain lion or bear. Hiking in places where we are not the only predator¹ helps us understand that all of life is intimately interwoven and that we are a part of that web.

— Mark Coleman, “A Breath of Fresh Air“

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Then, the most amazing thing. There is a little fenced garden next to Manning Hall. A small hedge blooming with small white flowers pads the inside of the fence all the way around. This morning there were SO MANY Eastern Tiger Swallowtails² eating from these flowers. The hedge appeared decorated with living ornaments—yellow and black wings with luscious blue at the bottoms fluttering everywhere. If you looked deeper, past the butterflies—which was difficult—there were even more bumblebees moving around in there.

A plasma display window?—The shifting baseline problem in a technologically mediated natural world
Peter H. Kahn Jr., Batya Friedman, Brian Gill, Jennifer Hagman, Rachel L. Severson, Nathan G. Freier, Erika N. Feldman, Sybil Carrère and Anna Stolyar
Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 28, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 192-199.

ABSTRACT: Humans will continue to adapt to an increasingly technological world. But are there costs to such adaptations in terms of human well being? Toward broaching this question, we investigated physiological effects of experiencing a HDTV quality real-time view of nature through a plasma display “window.” In an office setting, 90 participants (30 per group) were exposed either to (a) a glass window that afforded a view of a nature scene, (b) a plasma window that afforded a real-time HDTV view of essentially the same scene, or (c) a blank wall. Results showed that in terms of heart rate recovery from low-level stress the glass window was more restorative than a blank wall; in turn, a plasma window was no more restorative than a blank wall. Moreover, when participants spent more time looking at the glass window, their heart rate tended to decrease more rapidly; that was not the case with the plasma window. Discussion focuses on how the purported benefits of viewing nature may be attenuated by a digital medium.

Last night: I was not consciously nervous about today’s phone interview, but some part of my brain was because it would not let me get to sleep and stay asleep. When I was asleep I dreamed about scanning down a column of series headings in Excel. I got maybe 4 hours.

Today: Tired. Only needed to work 4.2 hours, but I went in at normal time to do other stuff while present in case of bibliographic emergency. As the interview time drew nearer my body started having full on anxiety symptoms. Nausea, heart rate up, lips numb, dizzy, feeling of floating above my own head going, “Oh come on body, you are going to talk to people you work with every day and impress on a regular basis. Just stop these shenanigans.” I did some sitting with my breath, but honestly, I don’t think that helps very much. It just heightens the physical sensations of anxiety for me. Or maybe I just don’t do it right. Anyway, the interview was not terrible, but I was frustrated with myself for feeling inarticulate and rambly, and for forgetting to make a couple of points I had down on my notes sheet. Was so jangled afterward, trying to shush the “you screwed that up” fear, that it took me the rest of the afternoon to copy catalog a website.

Read in McCorkle Place for a while, then had dinner with a friend at Pepper’s. He dropped me off at Forest Theater, where I was headed to see Paperhand Puppet Intervention’s Islands Unknown. Going in, I saw the most beautiful dog. It did not look like a Great Dane to me, but its nose probably would have hit the lower part of my chest. It was lanky and glossy black. It struck me such that I told the man walking it, “That’s the most beautiful dog I’ve ever seen.” Went in, immediately spied a friendly acquaintance from circulation, waved, sat down, and then was invited down to sit with him and my ophthalmologist and his family. Just as the show was starting another friend who has been out of town came in and sat right in front of us.

Favorite parts:

• a real butterfly at the edge of the stage when the books in the library became butterflies
• the book on the library shelf pushing itself out to get the girl’s attention
• the cat puppet
• shouting ENOUGH!
• bats flying around overhead
• the information overload puppet
• the movement of the ocean puppet
• the real moon rising up at the back of the theater, opposite the stage moon

Wednesday a friend and I were talking about how Paperhand’s message can be boiled down to “Nature good, Man bad.” That’s a view I can definitely get behind most days, when I witness and hear about humans being bad, bad animals all over the world. There is definitely a Paperhand formula. You know what to expect from one of their shows. But the execution is always different and wonderful. My sense of this show was that it was less “Nature good, Man bad” and more “Nature good, Man part of nature, Man who could be in more balance with nature but chooses not to move toward balance bad.”

On Wednesday, I noticed someone had scratched some moss off a rock. I got so angry. This hatred welled up for whoever thoughtlessly put their desire to make a mark on something ahead of the fact that a tiny plant was growing there, being alive and doing its thing. It billowed out to include the people who mulched over the tiny trees in April, and those who dumped the disgusting ugly mulch over the moss growing in my small front yard area in January and planted shrubs that are now dead. I got to a moment of wondering why we couldn’t just leave things alone and wishing I could avoid causing the demise of any living thing, before reminding myself that I don’t want to have to hack through dense vegetation to get into my house, that I do love McCorkle Place, which is an entirely groomed artificial “nature,” and that I cannot abide a mouse-sized spider running amok in my kitchen. As I said to my friend Wednesday, “It is so hard to avoid being a big hypocrite in this culture.”

I mean, how many carbon credits does the creation and run of a Paperhand show eat up, between hauling materials and puppets, people traveling to rehearsal and performances, lighting (that confuses night flying creatures) and sound amplification, etc.? Less than many less worthwhile things, I’m sure, but still.

1. When I hear a person claim to be “top of the food chain,” I want to transport them to the wilderness with nothing but their wits and see how superior they feel. [↩]
2. I identified the species tonight using my new favorite website: http://www.discoverlife.org/ [↩]

I would urge you to do so as soon as possible.

It is like the scent of freshly mown grass, aged for a hundred of years until it is clean deep wise warm green.

After a storm the other day I found some large oak leaves on the ground at McCorkle Place. I tucked three into the notebook I carry in my purse, which lately serves more as a receptacle for found leaves and feathers than as a notebook.

I thought it might be interesting to play with some printing using the leaves. When I got home that evening and opened the notebook to retrieve them, the scent of the leaves burst out and overtook me.

Now, when I walk through McCorkle Place, I can pick out the oak smell.

I imagine I will become an inveterate leaf sniffer now.

I had a nice dinner at my friend’s new house tonight. I took my Vitamix over and made Krank Juice while he whipped up some vegetables we ate with soba.

Now a thunderstorm is rolling in.

This was the word that kept coming to my mind over the weekend: respite.

First, the heat broke. It will be back up to 93°F tomorrow, and I’ll close the windows and turn the A/C on before I go to work tomorrow. But since Friday afternoon, the windows have been open, letting in fresh air and cicada song.

Second, I took an unplanned rest retreat. The only souls I spoke to from Friday at 5pm until this morning at 9:45am were my cats. And they aren’t very good conversationalists. I didn’t play any music, except for a drumming recording last night as I was preparing for bed. After working for a little while on Saturday morning, I mostly avoided the computer, except to watch a documentary Saturday night. I read. I slept. I went feral and loved my silence, solitude, and the smell of the crooks of my elbows. By Sunday evening, I felt recharged enough to take on some neglected cleaning projects. I finally took care of a fairly large energy/emotion suck from my downstairs that I hadn’t been able to bring myself to dismantle in the aftermath of a recent relationship end/shift/change. I feel home in my home again.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Walking across McCorkle Place this evening, I stopped at Dancer the oak and gathered some of the sawdust still in little piles beneath her. I crouched at her foot and leaned my back against her trunk, observing mushrooms poking up through the mulch.

Ah, the mushroom connection…. le-champignon… that’s another story for later (and/or years ago and possibly still buried somewhere around this site…). What struck me about them today was how the mushrooms themselves are fairly soft and squishy, usually velvety to the touch. Yet suddenly, here they are, appearing to have silently exploded from the earth when I wasn’t looking. Mulch and soil are pushed aside like so much rubble.

I was quickly beset by vicious mosquitoes, so I did not linger with Dancer and the mushrooms. I did notice, however, that her fallen limb was purposefully cut. I assume this would not have been done without good reason, but the fact that it was done in such a way that two lower limbs were damaged made me a bit angry. So it goes. Breathe it out and inhale perspective. How many of my lifetimes would fit in the lifetime of that tree right now? How many of me would fit inside her trunk? What are my concerns really worth? The answer is so faint it passes like one leaf scuttling across the brick path.

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After work I went grocery shopping and was once again astounded at how expensive it is to eat the healthy food I do these days—mainly fresh organic fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. And some cottage cheese, maple nut Clif bars, and cherry Larabars. Oh yes, and frozen Indian entrees. I’m not that virtuous. I am very grateful that I can afford my diet. I couldn’t afford to eat this way before January, and there are a billion ways things could unfold. I don’t assume I’ll always be able to afford it.

Part of the weekend’s unplanned retreat was avoiding the grocery story by raiding the freezer and pantry for some older staple foods like pasta and some frozen vegetables. I love pasta, but I can notice a big difference in how I feel after a big bowl of pasta versus a VitaMix full of grapes, celery, kale, and apple. I just note this and appreciate the fact that I can keep myself well-stocked with fresh bright things to eat if I deign to leave my house.

Speaking of being grateful for good food, I started The Fruitful Darkness this weekend. It is written in a somewhat revelatory tone, but most of what she is saying is not news to me. Animals and trees deserve respect? We are all connected at the root of things? Yes. Being reminded doesn’t hurt, but seeing animals and trees is a better reminder than reading it in a book. A number of things I’d like to read more about seem like mere sketches. All that said, I’m still reading it, so I’m getting something out of it. I mention it here because it includes this Zen gatha by Thich Nhat Hanh, to be recited before eating:

In this plate of food,
I see the entire universe
supporting my existence.

I have a fairly visceral negative reaction to being asked to stop and say something, or listen to someone else say something, before I eat. This comes from years of being forced to hold hands before sitting down to eat in order to listen to someone ramble on to/about the “heavenly father,” who had the power to “bless the hands that prepared this food and the hands that brought it to us,” and to bestow “traveling mercies” on anyone who would be leaving after the meal. There is nothing offensive in the literal experience of this, but it taps a much-deeper vein of memory of assimilation by the Southern Baptist Borg at a time when resistance was truly futile. The quoted phrases above are enough to make me want to kick something if I dwell on them for a moment or two.

These days my practice is to push right into harmless things to which I have a knee-jerk negative reaction. This is what led to me doing karaoke “I Wanna Be Sedated” in my friend’s yard a few months ago. I do not do karaoke, see. Oh yeah? I’ll show me.

The above gatha resonates just enough that it may be the thing to deflate my pre-meal blessings reaction. We’ll see. If I can remember to think about it. Speaking of mental lapses, I apparently forgot I ordered The Fruitful Darkness and ordered it again, because I now have two copies.

I came to my computer to post something else from the book, and talk of food got me off track. This is unattributed on p. 157, and I love it:

Soil for legs
Axe for hands
Flower for eyes
Bird for ears
Mushroom for nose
Smile for mouth
Songs for lungs
Sweat for skin
Wind for mind

As I slowly drove the winding narrow road home from the grocery this evening, a hawk flew low across the street. Right in front of my car he seemed to transition from head-first laser-targeting to talons-first landing in the woods. All I really caught a glimpse of were barred tail feathers spread out as he disappeared behind foliage.

Treasures, all around… magic things…

God made love to me,
Soothed away my gravity,
Gave me a pair of angel wings,
Clear vision and some magic things.
God is love to me.
Thank you for those things.
Understand the world we’re living in—
Love can mean anything.

–Tim Booth

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

— by David Wagoner, reproduced in David Whyte’s book, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, p. 261-2.

When I was a child, I named the trees around our various houses¹ and had a ritual of walking to each of them and saying hello. In fourth grade I wanted to be a dryad. I wrote something for school in which the main character was a dryad. I don’t remember anything about the plot, but I do remember my teacher marking off points because, he commented, you cannot just make up words like “dryad.”² I tried to explain to no avail, and remember this moment clearly—a snapshot of impotent frustration and rage.

Since I began working as electronic resources cataloger at Davis Library on January 11 of this year, I have crossed McCorkle Place nearly every work day. Here is a description of McCorkle Place from a June 18, 2008 UNC tree and foundation plant evaluation of the space:

Over 680 taxa were cataloged. The number reflects the building foundation shrubs and small trees. However, the essence of McCorkle resides in the splendid diversity of noble trees anchored by the Quercus alba, white oak, with 88% (22/25) rated “high” and three “moderate”. These white oaks may parallel in age those on Polk Place. The exciting aspect is the exceedingly vibrant health of these trees. Canopies were full and dense, foliage saturated blue-green, leaves plump and oversized, bark and trunks without wounds and abrasions.

At least 15 Quercus taxa were identified at McCorkle. In fact, the genus constitutes 54% of the total trees. The three Quercus michauxii (could be Q. montana), swamp chestnut oak, are magnificent. …

…McCorkle should never be cluttered with small-stature trees. The great boles of the noble trees, the canopies providing cooling shade, architectural winter silhouettes, subtle to riotous fall colors, early fresh green from the Liriodendron to the mouse-ear-gray and -pink of the Quercus alba…Heaven-sent. McCorkle only needs tweaking.

All of that and it’s the cement-filled Davie Poplar that gets everybody’s attention.

I consider mindfully walking through this space to be part of my spiritual practice. Of course, some days I miss it completely because I am trying to explain things to a maladaptive introject or planning my work tasks for the day. But most days I am silently saying hello to the trees, thanking them for their lush shade, and feeling the places in the brick path where their roots create subtle bumps.

Family portrait

In April, there were many “small-stature trees.” They sprang up where the large-stature trees had dropped their acorns. I’m not sure what was done to them, but it wasn’t friendly, because the areas beneath the trees were soon covered in neat, clean mulch with no fresh green popping through.

Looking out at the big wide world

Over time names have come into my head for some of the trees. One is Jonah. My favorite is Dancer, the “mom” in the above family portrait. I was slightly horrified on Monday to come upon her surrounded by caution tape, one of her limbs cut into pieces on the ground beneath her. Her large lower limb³ now has a scar from this higher limb’s fall.

Jonah's foot

There are certain things that come up time and again in my own personal mythologizing (or psychologizing), and thus my dreams, my art, and my words. Trees are one of them, which is not surprising given the richness of tree symbolism across world cultures. It is time for me to begin writing about these symbols and themes in a more organized manner than I have in the past, so this may be the first in a series of personal mythology posts. We’ll see.⁴

At any rate, two lovely tree-related things that have nothing to do with me except that I’ve purchased them:

The Night Life of Trees

Book: The Night Life of Trees by Bhajju Shyam, Durga Bai and Ram Singh Urveti

Intricately drawn visions of trees fill the pages of this sumptuous book of art and folklore from the Gond tribe in central India. In Gond belief, trees stand in the middle of life, and the spirit of many things lie in them. They are busy all day, giving shade and support and shelter and food to all. Only when night falls can they find rest for themselves, and then, under quiet dark skies, the spirits that live in them are revealed. Recreated from original art by Ram Singh Urveti, Bhajju Shyam and Durga Bai, three of the finest living artists of the Gond tradition, The Night Life of Trees is a tribute to the majesty of trees, and to old ways of relating to the natural world. Each painting is accompanied by its own poetic tale, myth or lore – narrated by the artists themselves recreating the familiarity and awe with which the Gond people view the cosmos.

Necklace: Tree of Life pendant from ccvalenzo on etsy. The shop carries the same tree image on pendants of different shapes and colors. I’m very tempted to pick up a black and white one.

Tree of Life pendant

1. One year we had four in three states. Sequentially, not simultaneously. [↩]
2. In studying library and information science, I have learned it will actually get you cited a lot if you make up new words. [↩]
3. the one on which a barred owl perched and stared me down while being pecked by mockingbirds [↩]
4. I have taken to saying this a lot in the past year, usually with a smile, and always thinking about the linked story. [↩]

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~Mary Oliver

Hello, imago.

on my front porch tonight.

Ok, so the cicada is not as dainty and pretty as the butterfly, but I think it is a much better symbol of transformation, as it spends years living underground, living off the roots of trees before emerging:

Cicadas live underground as nymphs for most of their lives, at depths ranging from about 30 cm (1 ft) down to 2.5 m (about 8½ ft). The nymphs feed on root juice and have strong front legs for digging.

In the final nymphal instar, they construct an exit tunnel to the surface and emerge. They then molt (shed their skins), on a nearby plant for the last time and emerge as adults. The abandoned skins remain, still clinging to the bark of trees. (src)