1. Mosquitoes: or, Lucifer in Disguise
Nature, the missing connection. What does it mean, in this day and age? Beyond Walden, and even the Kootenay Cooperative Land Settlement Society (est. 1973). Or is there still that idyll of a pathway to survival, of whatever social formula or default (charter or hermitage)—connected to Nature?
The aboriginal ways, our ancestor’s ways…
History intervenes, says give it up, Jack. Progress is our most important product, and we’re signing you up to help make it happen.
Forget all that savagery, violence and plunder. We’ve got all that covered, under wraps. We’ve gamed the system, for everyone’s benefit. If you don’t believe us, that’s your choice.
But we are your future.
Back to the forest, the trees bear witness. The summer-dry creekbed, the screes and chirrups of attending birds, unidentified insects…
There’s one: a visiting mosquito. All is not without inducement to flee. That sting, for example…
Enough of this. Back to the home office, to continue in a more conciliatory mood.
Counting the compromises, the departures, the destruction and neglect. Explaining, justifying, surrendering to the momentary discomfort.
If that kind of suffering has not been addressed adequately, the time is now to solve it. A myriad of methods, pathways to explore.
For now, rise and walk.
2. Forest Haiku
what clever creatures
we are, enamored with words,
our significance
these kindred shapes, new
in painting universes
with each utterance
mere simulacra
yet, isn’t every live thing
playing its own part?
3. Summer Stillness
Plunging in the lake, moving in the water, floating on my back, held in the womb of the world under the blue sky and summer sun, I knew this was my life’s purpose. Immersed in the present moment, all time to swim in, stroke by stroke.
Later, I imagine, this must be “life’s purpose” for a porpoise. But what do I know? They like we might just as well be preoccupied with “getting and spending,” their currency in krill, and fear of killer whales.
Still, there are the moments we choose or are given, out of a business of days, of vagaries of weather, of restless sleeps or relentless obstacles of work and worry. There is respite here, as when Invited to engage in the web of energies on the dance floor, alive and moving as one. Now the sense of touch is activated body-skin-wide in the flow of water, the rush of variant temperature. Feeling, in motion, the throb of rhythms interwoven in melodic tapestry, elastic tempo. Then, surfacing…
A pause of breath, a wonder.
A steady stillness.
A waiting, a letting go, a letting be, a being.
Another stillness, reaching away, beckoning within the next breath.
