"It's not pretty" Blog #8

Thursday, March 28^th, 2013 3:38 p.m… Cold…Cloudy… Drizzly… 41 degrees of uninspired, unchanging and cheerless weather.

I didn’t find Punxsutawney Phil last week, but that’s ok. It seems that little rodent has been indisposed. While millions of people were blanketed in snow last week, it seems that I am not alone in shaking my fists with rage at that conniving, lying groundhog who so casually convinced us that we would see an early spring.  An Ohio lawyer, Butler County Prosecutor, Mike Gmoser, has decided that he won’t sit idly by and watch this fur-covered liar get away with it. He has decided to indict Phil for “misrepresenting an early spring”. What I proposed as a joke last week of “strangling that little varmint” has now been put into action as Mr. Gmoser intends to pursue and punish Phil by lethal injection. Yet another strange confluence between man and nature illuminating the lack of connection we have with it and the resulting

mental instability.

This is revolting; not surprising, but altogether disheartening. Just as dead canaries are indicators for miners not to further excavate their caves this is a baleful harbinger that we have indeed lost our way and our minds.  With all of the global, national, environmental, and social issues of the day, this prosecutor has taken arrogance, embarrassment and absurdity to new heights. This is the kind of story that can really disillusion a person. I suppose that he doesn’t have better things to do. In lieu of arraigning a helpless groundhog for shameless notoriety, perhaps he could be of better use to society exercising his political influence to regulate guns so that they might remain in more responsible hands limiting the amount of atrocities perpetrated by the madmen and sociopaths he should be busy prosecuting instead; just a thought.  There is an old saying that prosecutors can indict a cheeseburger if they want to. This moron intends to prove it, instead, replacing the cheeseburger with a groundhog.

Today, Flagstaff Hill is all shades of brown: a russet no -color sepia; even the grass appears oxidized with rust. On the surface, it seems fallow and lifeless. There is a spirit and soul missing today. It is mine; no doubt. I project onto her what I bring, seeing on the outside what has materialized internally.  I just can’t help it today. Some days you just don’t have the endurance to see beauty. It brings to mind a poem, by Charles Bukowski, called “I Met a Genius”. In it, he is on a bus rolling down the majestic California coast with its prodigious cliffs cascading into the beautiful expanse of emerald sea. He is sitting next to a young boy who is looking out the window. The epiphany happens; the profound moment of clarity happens for the both of them. The boy turns and looks at him and says, “it’s not pretty.”

There isn’t always beauty in what we are supposed to think is beautiful. Perhaps beauty must contain a semblance of ugliness for it to transcend the merely mundane and become truly beautiful. Whatever it is, I realize what I am looking at today is not pretty. My mind is far away; I can’t stop thinking about our upcoming project along with other end of the semester activities and papers all due at the same time. It is that extremely stressful part of the semester that sneaks up quickly on everyone. There never seems to be enough time, so I am never completely present. Instead, I worry about what I am going to do;  when I am going to do it; how to structure my day, dividing it into partitions of what times will be devoted to which project and the type of work needed in order for all of it to get done.  Phew! Just saying that is convoluted and tiring. I pant and worry and struggle to search for the energy to conjure up the creativity and brain power to find the words to fit my ideas and structure them into something of coherence. It seems entirely possible to suffocate under the weight of ideas constantly forming and disintegrating and coming back together, reconfigured, wanting what you had before only to realize that it is gone. I must trust, have faith and stay with the new; it will be reworked anyway. One thing at a time.

 All this swirling has made me dizzy. I put my head in my hands as I sit awkwardly on a hard bench that doesn’t assuage my mental agitation. I take my own advice and do one thing. I look straight down within the frame composed by my two hands holding the sides of my face that are perched by elbows resting on my knees. In between my two boots, firmly planted on the wet ground, I meet a stranger: a small terrestrial creature; it is miraculous I was able to notice it. It is beautiful in its living. Its copper-colored, dark olive brown camouflage fits in perfectly with the surroundings. I only notice it because of its bluish-white and moderate size umbilicus on the underbelly of its cone shaped shell and slow paced, lugubrious movement.  Looking down, I saw nothing but forest debris consisting of perforated broken sticks and mud, but this is another universe. This intrepid little wanderer has come out from under a log or possibly the ground to explore. Some snails are “burrowing” snails and only come out during or after a rain. Either way, his exposed vulnerability is admirable. He moves so slowly yet with purpose. Am I projecting meaning onto this creature? Undoubtedly; but nature is communicating. The snail’s dogged determination to do what it is supposed to, and nothing else, without question, propels a burst of determination into my own sense of purpose  I don’t have to feel inundated or suffocated by other people’s ignorance or my own tasks at hand. It doesn’t serve or provide for me or my work in any way. It is what is in front of me that is my small purpose for today. Even if I must crawl like the snail, I will move with purpose to accomplish that which I am supposed to do. I lift my head and look up. Maybe Schenley Park isn’t pretty today, but once again, nature has provided its wisdom and inspiration, given me clarity and shaken me back into coherence.

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Blog #7 Hunting for the Rite of Spring

Friday, March 22^nd, 2013…

1:36 p.m… 30 degrees… windy…

cutting-cold…bitter…

The promise of Spring disappoints. She betrays my trust. She had better be resting for an unprecedented fireworks display of life. Can’t come a day too soon.The always propitious and gilded sun seems insouciant today teasing us from above.  She smiles her incandescent glow for short luminous intervals then creeps back behind preteritious clouds.  Today is not a day for meditations on life and beauty nor contemplations of nature and experience. Today, I will participate and move within the park. I will not sit and wait for things to reveal themselves to me or arrive for my observational necessities. No, today I look back on our previous readings on hunting because today I am going to hunt that little bastard, Punxsutawney Phil, and wring his little varmint neck. I’ll show him a shadow: a huge, looming, ominous and inauspicious one. Short winter my ass; there is another imminent approaching snow fall arriving Sunday.

I take a few breaths; regain my philosophical passivism, my composure and acceptance.  I move on peaceably through the park. I haven’t explored or scrutinized other parts of Schenley Park since starting these blogs.  I have sighted only a paltry number of wildlife species from atop Flagstaff Hill. There have been a few wrens, a cardinal, and some grey tree squirrels, but not much else.  I would have thought the park would be teaming with wildlife and mammals, but it turns out that Schenely Park is really an account of humans and their activity in the park.

 There is no nook or cranny within this great area that hasn’t been explored, disturbed, utilized or vandalized by humans in some fashion.  Everywhere I go, the signs are unmistakable. Empty bottles, cans of beer and soda, yesterday’s newspapers, rags, wrappers, boxes, napkins, plastic knives, paper cups, plastic containers and other unmentionable debris defy the best efforts of the City cleaning department.

 A hillside looks “woody” and wild to the casual observer, but closer inspection reveals a ground cover of man’s making. What appears to be an impenetrable thicket turns out to be a jungle for the youngsters, crisscrossed by the paths of their youthful explorations. A seemingly sheer bluff takes on the aspect of a haven for mountain goats, but as I come closer, I see man’s footprints.  Narrow shelf-like paths zigzag back and forth, where the ardent wanna-be mountaineers have made their first timid climbs. 

 

Every open meadow is an ideal spot for picnics, sunbathing, throwing footballs, tossing Frisbees and at the highest point in the park is a green velvet haven for golfers; great for all of us city dwellers, but not so much for the wildlife. The roads and bridges are many. They are the arteries that allow us to reach the over 426 acres throughout the park, but they cut and slice and divide it into partitions. We, nor the wildlife within the park, can walk for any considerable distance without being interrupted by one of these concrete passage impediments.

It is hard to visualize the area as it was over a hundred and twenty-four years ago: a rich farmland, studded with pastures, fields and woodlands. Wildlife must have been abundant then, especially when considering that it was only one hundred years ago that the otter still played and thrived in Homestead, where  the great factories, steel mills and vast housing schemes have wiped out their last chances of survival.

 As I walk down the path towards Panther Hollow, the handsome bronze panthers that adorn Panther Hollow Bridge give mute testimony to the existence of those graceful and noble felines from the not too distant past. They are gone now; a growing city spreads rapidly, under the pressure of expansion, and engulfs the richest farmlands as its restless population grows and seeks haven from the hub of activity. City parks, like Schenley, are the answer to an urgent desire for outdoor recreation. They provide a veneer of cultivated wilderness, and an escape from confinement. The park is a place for the children to run, over green meadows, unrestrained by the fear of traffic, (as long as it is far enough away from the myriad of thoroughfares that run throughout the park) and where their parents may lounge in leisure, enjoying the sun or walking quietly along the path gazing into space or examining the ground for flora and fauna and wildlife, always listening and hoping that their children will wear themselves out before bedtime. This is a place for people to enjoy themselves, and for them, the park becomes a little world all of its own.

 

I share in this feeling as I continue my search for wildlife. My hunt has been distracted by my enjoyment and awareness of the scene around me.  Nothing is too small or too ignoble to lack meaning; there is always something to examine, and so, I continue my quest.

I reach the bottom of the path to Panther Hollow Lake. It has been known as “acid lake” by  

generations of Pitt students due to recreational activities which often include taking a “trip” to the lake. I thought it was because of the rancid smell the lake gives off. The lake isn’t just fed by streams and ground water; it is supplied heavily by storm sewers within its watershed. Leaky sewers are a huge problem that continuously contaminates this body of water and surrounding area. 

Before retreating back up the path, I finally spot something; there is movement in the bushes. I follow the movement of the grasses and get closer thinking it is a squirrel or possibly a rabbit. It reaches the open daylight and scurries across the path. It is a furtive, sly brown form slinking from rock to rock about the edges. I recognize its long, thick, naked-skinned tail; it is a Norway rat, as they are called here in Schenley Park. Most people just refer to them as alley rats.  They are the most abundant mammal within the park; not surprising considering they follow closely the pathways of man.  They have followed man in all his travels, shared his ships and means of transportation, and lived in shelters while they pillaged his food.  Although they are true wild animals, they have become almost domesticated in its dependence on man. It is a dangerous animal however. It spreads disease and can be vicious. It is bold, cunning and aggressive. When it is cornered it will jump to attack, biting with fury anything in its path. Here, in the park, he seems wary but wanders freely not worrying about its enemies. Its hair is coarse, rather long and lax, and its ears are prominent and almost naked. It has big black eyes that seem alert, but cold in appearance. It darts away before I can get any closer. There is very little good that I can say about this villainous rat stealing away with garbage we have fortuitously offered; I have always been weary of them; however, I am reminded that their presence invokes, once again, the imposition of man. Our garbage that feeds, and the pollution we cultivate, always gives a hand written invitation to this wild/domesticated mammal prompting me to remember the urban intrusion on our natural places.

 

Whether it is we that absorb, build and bend nature into the tiny bits of island green oases within our oceanic sized concrete and metal deserts or that it is nature that is absorbing our technology-driven modernity and social expanse, it is redefining what nature is today. Either way, it is clear that we are inextricably linked with one another for better and for worse. If only non-human nature would need and could enjoy our part of the equation as much as we need and enjoy hers,  our unison would really set off  a new kind of Spring resplendent with an unprecedented  fireworks display of life; a Spring truly worth waiting for.

 

Sacred Sun Blog #6

Sunday, March 9^th, 2013 4:12 p.m. 61 degrees...I see a strange shining obelisk in the sky, a mysterious golden disc. An unfamiliar gleaming orb hanging from the heavens….Is it… could it be?  Yes….

I sing in exultation: “It’s the brilliant sun” high in the sky; particles and energy radiants, massive gravity squelches, only emitting radiance, vibrating warmth...“Where have you been?” I ask. The ever burning sun, kissing her moon every night, caressing the earth by day has been silently hiding behind her guardian cloud fortresses. The mind of the Sun delivers a red hibiscus smile from her center, an image conceived  between 10,000 and 170,000 years before its energy can leave the sun's interior and then be emitted from the surface as light. I ask: “Is there anybody on earth who does not long for your smile?” I say to myself: “No, no one; everyone wants your smile.” My heart bows to it in adoration. 

The sun is what i need to survive, so I will stay with her for as long as it takes, deal with her burns and heal within the light of the sun to see what is beyond, and within; I must have the sun to guide the way. Sunshine, traveling through miles of space, gentle and kind on my face, chases away sorrow: brings levity and revelry. I, like the world, take her generosity from need with reverence and appreciation and yet, even after all this time, the sun never says to us,“You owe Me.” Instead, she reminds me: “I will never stop giving; I am the energy of life.”  Look what happens with a love like that; it lights the whole sky.

Has anyone ever seen anything in their life more wonderful than the sun beaming so brilliantly, so effortlessly, so relaxed, floating in a pale blue liquid sky or experienced more pleasure than the sun reaching out to fill you as it warms? The sun blesses my mind with joy; blesses my heart with peace.

Today, in Schenley Park, an ancient connection with the light has been rekindled with the sunshine. It is a spectacular domain and a breathtaking sensation. In the sunlight there is a soft and fresh breeze; it has the smell of a natural and hot perfume.  The sunshine is suffusing the park with swarms of new, strange animals as if they came from the fantasy of my winter’s imagination

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There is a jubilant convocation of activity amongst the living. Wild life has joined in the procession of worship. Gray tree squirrels, fast and agile, are scaling trees and jumping from tree top to tree top with great speed. They are active and dart from one area to the next using their tails to keep them balanced as they fly through the air. Their eyes are sharp and detect movement well as they react to objects that come too close. I spot a silver one with an off-white belly and rusty markings on its side. He is eating something hard, an acorn or perhaps some kind of nut. They love nuts: hickory nuts, beechnuts and walnuts.  Gray squirrels smell out nuts they have previously buried for winter food. The unrecovered nuts sometimes sprout and grow into trees. In this way, squirrels help ensure continual forest growth.

Two more come close by and share in the banquet. They feed side by side. The sun has worked her magic on them as well; they seem gregarious and not the least bit territorial. As I trace the movements of a last squirrel in a distant tree with a leaf in its mouth, a scorching scarlet red announced its blaze: a bloodshot ruby placed strategically in a high reaching branch near the sky by an invisible paintbrush to enhance the composition. A fauvist red drop illuminated by an impressionistic sun guides my attention to a Northern Cardinal; it has a shade of red I can’t keep my eye off of and is a perfect combination of familiarity, conspicuousness and style. Before I can take in its supreme reflection, I notice that its crest is raised and pointed, a sign of agitation, it flies off, somewhat reluctantly, on its small rounded wings into the light’s radiant rays that brought it here. 

I look into its flight until the sun’s light beams too bright; the tears shimmer and make my vision sparkle.

The beneficent, magnanimous sun has brought people and wild life to co-exist in this park today. The community of nature was held through the light that was offered. What life wasn’t seen in the previous promenades came out today from the mysteries of the forest dark into the dreams of a star.

Good day and good night sun. Although you never stop burning, rest and bring us night; I embrace and welcome its dark if only because it makes me love you all the more the next time you come.  Welcome back…         

Blog #5 What a Moment a Moment Can Be

Sunday, March 3^rd, 2013. 12:42p.m.- 1:27 p.m. Flagstaff Hill, Schenley Park… 30 degrees... Gray… Cold… Flurries…

Although the Calendar says March, I believe it is February 2^nd, Groundhog day. Everything up here on the hill resembles the last three weeks. The weather has more or less stayed the same: drab, cold, cutting, windy, cloudy, gray, somber, ashen, smoky Pittsburgh. I have come to accept this. I don’t fight it anymore because it is as it is and so it shall be. 

There is no one here once again, which is fine and good. I have come hoping for solitude, for a time when the machine of thinking can rest and enjoy its own living. I just want to stare into the clouds and look over the dreaming fields of this worn mound. The sky has a thick impregnable form. It sits atop and surrounds announcing its dominance. I try to peer into her vastness, but her gray mystery won’t be penetrated today. My thoughts, dreams and memories of today will be exhausted into the great sepulcher. Let her do with it what she will.

I will not ask of nature anything more than what is offered. Rather than wanting, I will practice the art of receiving. 

My entire body softens as I prepare myself for the ritual of opening. I must prepare for this most natural of all natural states. The duality and separateness of the mind and body from presence always has us catching up to it and naming it after it has arrived. Oddly, I must acknowledge and embrace the duality and separateness before I attempt to dissolve out of it. It seems that every experience is in this sense new, and every moment of our lives we are in the midst of the new and unknown. If I could stay open, I might receive nature’s codes and language of experience without resisting it through naming it from memory; in doing so,  the whole sense of conflict between “I” and the present reality might vanish. Either that, or I will be in a perpetual state of anxiety and fear since it is well known that the “unknown” is the greatest cause and source of insecurity and dread.

This real present in which we live is the constant unknown that laughs at us in the midst of our coming into being. We haven’t ever really learned how to live with it. I can feel real feelings trying to reconcile with this programmed state of resistance to this unknown. I feel cautious, hesitant and too often on the defensive, leading me to calamitous reactions in an attempt to circumvent these uncomfortable sensations. If not thrusting myself unthinkingly into the moment with complete disregard to avoid this insecurity, I am clinging fearfully to the past and the known leaving me in a perpetual state of limbo, in purgatory and stuck in stasis. 

Staring out onto my “place” today has me experimenting with the art of living with this difficulty. I sit on the cold wet grass. Dampness infuses itself with corduroy, seeping through to my skin. A sharp, assertive and acute impression, it doesn’t seem as if I was behind in that moment of feeling, trying to catch up with it, by naming it. It was immediate, definitive, and indisputable; it needed no words for confirmation. I am here to receive, so I sit. Rather than contracting to the frigid saturation, I soften to gently give into this opposing force; I absorb it.

 Looking out into this natural world  reminds me of examples to follow. In January, I came after one of our snow storms. The unyielding tree branches of the White Ash and Norway Maples were holding up the accumulated snow. More storms and accumulation would crack their stiff branches to the ground. The supple willow would survive infinite accumulation as its springy bough would just bend under the snow’s weight, drop the excess snow, and jump up again.

I remember being caught in the strong undertow of the Pacific Ocean, it is fatal to resist. I almost found out the hard way. You must swim with it and gently and gradually edge yourself to the side. When in a car accident it is often the person who is asleep, or in some cases, drunk, who comes away unscathed because their limbs were not stiff in anticipation waiting to break upon contact. If the driver was able to relax like the person asleep or like a cat falling from a great height, they would most likely come out uninjured. Living in California exposed me to earthquakes. If a building doesn’t have any “give” in its structure it will collapse.

I want my mind to have this same kind of “give” or pliability so it can absorb shocks like water or a cushion.  I want to give way to the “unknown” new experiences in each moment, not runaway.

Like water being pushed away as the tide rises, if I push against it, it won’t retreat like a scared child; it gives at the point where you are pushing it and encloses itself around you. This is how I would like my mind to function around each moment.

Explaining this is like trying to explain how the heart beats, how we breathe, how a leaf grows and a tree ages: complicated and unnecessary; In my case, maybe impossible. By sitting on the saturated grass, absorbing its wetness, enveloping the cold and staring into this inchoate and amorphous sky, I believe this “place” has pushed me into thinking in more harmonious ways with nature. I am at the cusp of the experience with the interconnectedness of all things: the natural order of cycling between both living and non-living parts of the environment and biosphere.

Is it possible that the Shawanos or Shawanees tribes of the Lenni Lenapes, buried beneath the grounds we walk on, had the kind of openness of mind I am seeking? Their ecological balance sheet seems to suggest that they had some sort of sensitivity to experience that we cannot access so naturally.

This solitary day was meant as a way to stop the machine of thinking. Perhaps this was unsuccessful, but Flagstaff Hill, on this day, has given me a thorough house cleaning of consciousness, removed some if it’s clutter and brought me a little closer to the spark. The moment. There it goes... And so it is…