In the end,
I'm only going
next door.
To the end
of the corridor,
into my favorite room.
And from there,
out into the garden.
And there I will
become light
and go wherever I want.
I think of two landscapes---one outside the self, the other within.
The external landscape is the one we see---not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology---If you walk up, say, a dry arroyo in the Sonoran Desert you will feel a mounding and rolling of sand and silt beneath your foot that is distinctive. You will anticipate the crumbling of the sedimentary earth in the arroyo bank as your hand reaches out, and in that tangible evidence you will sense the history of water in the region. Perhaps a black-throated sparrow lands in a paloverde bush...the smell of the creosote bush...all elements of the land, and what I mean by the landscape.
The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape. Relationships in the exterior landscape include those that are named and discernible, such as the nitrogen cycle, or a vertical sequence of Ordovician limestone, and others that are uncodified or ineffable, such as winter light falling on a particular kind of granite, or the effect of humidity on the frequency of a blackpoll warbler’s burst of song...the shape and character of these relationships in a person’s thinking, I believe, are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature---the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf, are known. These thoughts are arranged, further, according to the thread of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual development. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes.
Among the Navajo,
the land is thought to
exhibit sacred order...
each individual
undertakes to order
his interior landscape
according to
the exterior landscape.
To succeed in this means
to achieve a balanced state
of mental health...
Among the various
sung ceremonies
of this people---
Enemyway, Coyoteway,
Uglyway---
there is one called Beautyway.
It is, in part,
a spiritual invocation
of the order of
the exterior universe, that irreducible, holy complexity that manifests itself as all things changing through time (a Navajo definition of beauty).
Once, there was an old city, with many winding roads. In the center of the city stood a Great Tower, which could be seen for miles around. It was said that this tower contained ancient wonders, and many wished to see inside.
One day,
five travelers approached
the outskirts of the city.
They were faced
with a problem:
How would they navigate
the winding streets
of the old city,
in order to reach
the tower at its center?
The first traveler said The best way
is to always turn left.
So he entered the city,
and turned left
at his first opportunity.
He turned left again,
and again.
In time, he had
left the city entirely.
He never reached the Tower.
The second traveler said See, our friend who turned left has failed. If I am to succeed, I must do the opposite as him. So this traveler decided to always turn right, instead of left. He entered the city, and turned right at his first opportunity. He turned right again, and again. In time, he had left the city entirely. He never reached the Tower.
The third traveler said
See, the first two travelers
were both wrong.
The solution is
to take the middle path,
splitting the difference
between them.
So he entered the city,
and he never turned
right or left,
but instead
he always marched forward.
But in time he reached
a solid wall,
and he could not advance.
He was forced to turn back.
He never reached the Tower.
The fourth traveler said These fools don't know what they're doing. The solution is not to go left or right or straight. The solution is to do each of these things in sequence, at the appropriate time. He took a scroll from his coat. On the scroll was a series of instructions, written by an earlier traveler who had reached the Tower successfully. If I follow this scroll, said the fourth traveler, I will surely reach the Tower. So he entered the city, following the directions as they were written. Sometimes he turned right, sometimes he turned left, and sometimes he went straight ahead. He made good progress. But there came a time when the scroll told him to go across a bridge, and he found to his surprise that the bridge had been destroyed by an earthquake. The scroll was suddenly useless, and he was forced to return the way he had come. He never reached the Tower.
The fifth traveler
pondered over
what he should do.
Then, to his good fortune,
he saw that the Teacher
was approaching.
He said to the Teacher, I am trying
to reach the Tower,
but all my friends
have failed.
Whether they turned
left or right,
or walked straight forward,
or even followed
the directions of those
who have gone before,
all of them have
failed to reach their goal.
What must I do?
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds. Ha, he said, I see that none has passed here
In a long time.
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife. Well, he mumbled at last, Doubtless there are other roads.
--Stephen Crane
(1871--1900)
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.
One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. You have come a long way to visit me, he told the prowler, and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. Poor fellow, he mused, I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.
We mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on,
inert or burning,
and I was discovering,
naming all these things:
it was my destiny
to love and say goodbye.
--Pablo Neruda
He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end.
--Jack Kerouac
Anyone who has
chanced like me
to roam through
desolate mountains
and studied at length
their fantastic shapes
and drunk
the invigorating air
of their valleys
can understand
why I wish
to describe
and depict
these magic scenes
for others.
--Mikhail Lermontov
HEJIRA: a journey especially undertaken
to escape from a dangerous or undesirable situation
Joni Mitchell: Hejira
There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense.
There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days--burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob--a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand meters high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic. Imbat, a sea breeze in North Africa. Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. The khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for 'fifty,' blooming for fifty days--the ninth plague of Egypt. The datoo out of Gibraltar, which carries fragrance.
There is also the ------, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it. And the nafhat--a blast out of Arabia. The mezzar-ifoullousen--a violent and cold southwesterly known to Berbers as 'that which plucks the fowls.' The beshabar, a black and dry northeasterly out of the Caucasus, 'black wind.' The Samiel from Turkey, 'poison and wind,' used often in battle. As well as the other 'poison winds,' the simoom, of North Africa, and the solano, whose dust plucks off rare petals, causing giddiness.
Other, private winds. Travelling along the ground like a flood. Blasting off paint, throwing down telephone poles, transporting stones and statue heads. The harmattan blows across the Sahara filled with red dust, dust as fire, as flour, entering and coagulating in the locks of rifles. Mariners called this red wind the 'sea of darkness.' Red sand fogs out of the Sahara were deposited as far north as Cornwall and Devon, producing showers of mud so great this was also mistaken for blood. 'Blood rains were widely reported in Portugal and Spain in 1901.'
There are always millions of tons of dust in the air, just as there are millions of cubes of air in the earth and more living flesh in the soil (worms, beetles, underground creatures) than there is grazing and existing on it. Herodotus records the death of various armies engulfed in the simoom who were never seen again. One nation was 'so enraged by this evil wind that they declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred.
--Michael Ondaatje
We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed?
Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations
and corrupt politicians —
be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane
to piss in our own cistern,
but we allow others to do so
and we reward them for it.
We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit?
By not being radical enough.
Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.
If we apply our minds directly
and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of the earth, but also the earth's ability to produce. We will see that beauty and utility are alike dependent upon the health of the world.
But we will also see through
the fads and the fashions of protest. We will see that war and oppression and pollution are not separate issues, but are aspects of the same issue. Amid the outcries for the liberation of this group or that, we will know that no person is free except in the freedom of other persons, and that man's only real freedom is to know and faithfully occupy his place - a much humbler place than we have been taught to think - in the order of creation.
--Wendell Berry The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.
This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.
Kate Wolf: Medicine Wheel
Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.
A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.
--Carlos Castaneda The Teachings of Don Juan:
A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
