Survive And Advance

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

The wild. I have drunk it,
deep and raw, and heard
it's primal, unforgettable roar.
We know it in our dreams,
when our mind is off the leash,
running wild. Outwardly, the equivalent of the unconscious
is the wilderness:
both of these terms meet,
one step even further on,
as one, wrote Gary Snyder.
It is in vain to dream of a wildness distinct from ourselves. There is none such, wrote Thoreau. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires the dream.
And as dreams are essential to the psyche, wildness is to life.
We are animal in our blood
and in our skin.
We were not born

for pavements and escalators
but for thunder and mud.
More. We are animal not only
in body but in spirit.
Our minds are the minds
of wild animals. Artists,
who remember their wildness
better than most, are animal artists, lifting their heads to sniff a quick wild scent in the air,
and they know it unmistakably,
they know the tug of wildness
to be followed through your life
is buckled by that strange
and absolute obedience.
(You must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star, wrote Nietzsche.)
Children know it as magic
and timeless play.
Shamans of all sorts
and inveterate misbehavers know it;
those who cannot trammel themselves into a sensible job
and life in the suburbs know it.
What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness:
it is precious and necessary.
--Jay Griffiths
Wild: An Elemental Journey

CONGRATULATIONS
TO THE GATORS,
BADGERS, HUSKIES
AND WILDCATS
FOR ESCAPING
INTO THE FINAL FOUR.

a pair from Unkar Rapid
outside Hance Canyon
pilgrim above Hermit Gorge
inside Seventy-five Mile Canyon
Animal Liberation Front grafitti