Fork & Knife

Stillness is relative

The full rush of summer planting, weeding, harvesting, and selling has silenced me for quite awhile and I apologize. I feel like a comet on a strange, short orbit in the shape of the infinity sign. I accelerate rapidly toward the sun getting scorched as I scream by at perigee or apogee (whichever it is). I then head into deep space thinking centrifigal force may overcome centripetal force, but then my acceleration slows and I arrive at a moment of near stillness, only to feel the tug of the sun again. Another day, acceleration, scorching, screaming, near stillness. The illusion of stillness, everything relative. Earth spinning on its axis as it revolves around the sun, galaxy spiraling and exploding away from that original event horizon of the big bang. Now they say the universe may expand forever as the empty voids of space are, suprise, not empty, but filled with dark matter. Electrons, like mini-planets, screaming around the sun-like nucleus and occasionally getting blown loose. Everything made of smaller and smaller particles and subtler and subtler forces. We are a nanosecond from nanotechnology and to think Robin Williams might have known "Nanoo Nanoo".

Double Double Vision Rainbows

Leaving work to go to the farm on Tuesday to pick for Wednesday's delivery the sky was as black as jet, the wind was howling, and lightning was streaking out of the clouds. The action was building just to the southeast of town and before it could get going, it blew right on by which was good because the ground has finally been dry enough to work here on Calvert Hill. I got to the farm without incident, or any rain.

While picking the sky was cloudy much like it is today, but it would become clear from time to time and it was hot. It has been so dry at Dad's that he has actually been watering things. While I was picking snap peas and Dad was digging potatoes his dogs appeared and were making a nuisance of themselves by practically climbing on us. I had a feeling the weather was about to change, dogs are very sensitive to this. The temperature began to drop slowly. I turned to the south and the sky was ominously black. I finished picking peas and had started picking spinach when it started to rain and then lightning began off in the distance. That was enough for Dad, he put down the spading fork and started shooing the dogs away (he repeats the superstition I always heard my Grandma and Grandpa Clark say, "Dogs and cats draw lightning"). I kept picking as the work had to get done and I was not busily sticking a metal object in the ground on top of a hill. I got nearly through the spinach when it really cut loose. I made it to the house only moderately drenched. No sooner than I got inside the wind bent the cottonwoods in front of Dad's over dramatically and the sky was phosphorescent white before the clap of thunder rattled the windows. One of the dogs nearly tore the screen door off trying to get in the house.

It rained for awhile pretty heavily and then settled to a drizzle. I headed back out. Upon reaching the yard I looked to the northeast to see the storm retreating away from us and there it was, a perfect double rainbow that I could see from end to end. One was brighter than the other and their colors were reversed. I stood in awe for five solid minutes and then the work called me back.

Strangely, in the middle of this post Luci came and asked to go out. When I took her and Diogenes out to the playpen, there was one end of another double rainbow. These were much less intense, but no less a marvel.

Sense of place and person

Lots of thoughts about nomadism and sedentary existence. I have always been a battlefield for these conflicting desires, among others. I love to travel and every fiber of my being screams out for Morocco. I love to grow things and the season is upon me in full thrush, the very dirt calling me to my knees in fecund prayer. It is like a benign fight or flight terror.

Right now, the realities of earth: planted gardens, empty gardens, fruit trees, subscribers, customers, the market, responsibility have ascendent powers of gravitation. Morocco remains distant, but present in dream, desire, reading, plans, and futures. Travel will wait; and if I'm lucky, the world, and its enraged citizenry, may look upon me with more trust and less horror. For now, I read the news with horror and work in the fields of presence.

The trick for me has been the realization years ago, after years of strife, that the idea of the universe being contained in a grain of sand is not merely symbolic. Right in front of me, all the time, is more beauty than I could comprehend in a thousand lifetimes. Eight acres that I barely know despite walking back and forth across it on numerous exploratory sojourns alone and with dogs. Every time I look, I see something different, smell something different, hear something different, feel something different. Everything moves so quickly that I fear Heraclitus' statement, "You cannot step in the same river twice." has become, "You cannot step in the same river once." For now, exploring eight acres with a fertile mind must intercede for exploring eight thousand miles from an airplane window. I must admit, I feel richer for the wait. Expectation picques exploration. Blue sky here is the same sky as there, cool rain remains the same, summer heat is hot everywhere, the smells of a well kept garden are all about earth.

This rootedness is a kind of faith. Focus on the present, the work at hand, paying attention to the myriad details and beauties, in the moment leads inevitably to the future, or to that actual focus on the present that will be. I may not go to Morocco until I am 70, but I will go. Until I do, I have dreams, desires, reading, planning, and the present of presence, or is it the presence of the present (in all its senses).

One small leap leads to personhood. My idea is that by working hard on my current endeavor I will eventually enable myself to sojourn further afield while maintaing a buttressed center; a sort of sedentary nomadism or nomadic sedentariness. I think this is an excellent "as above, so below" example for personal identity. The battles I have faced internally, and continue to wrestle with, are part and parcel of who I am now. Conflicting desires, attachments, ideas, behaviors, fears, and the demands of living in the world shape who I am and how I act. But no amount of past and future weighs anything compared to the infinite present. Every flashing instant I am, I do, I choose, I think, I fear, I am, I am, I am ad infinitum. Working through the desires, attachments, ideas, behaviours, and fears leads to a stronger center that allows me to sojourn further afield intrapersonally and interpersonally. It takes a strong center to hold a spinning wheel together as the Sufi's certainly show.

Focused attention is the magic that binds together practices as diverse as yoga, psychotherapy, championship athletics, Sufi whirling, juggling, writing, and gardening. My interest in everything (part of my gemini nature) leads to a difficulty in maintained focused attention. I have a laser-like ability to focus that has made me very good at many things including baseball, skateboarding, cooking, gardening, academentia, writing, photography, friendship, and loving, but my mercurial nature has kept me from achieving greatness at anything. But I continue to try. For now I love, garden, and write as well as I can every day.