a little Donald Judd for the morning
When we are children we wonder who we will become, when we are adults we wonder who have become.
Between Becoming and being…we are all apart of the extensive continuum.
We are constantly becoming ourselves. And Simply being along the way.
how do we find nature in a world that is overly built? And how do we convince those living in urban environments that the magic of nature is there among the streets and buildings and cars? That we have a choice to see or not to see.
We all make choices. to live fully immersed, or live a life half-way between what is built, what we build against and that which is unbuilt, that survives beyond us. We make choices to allow electronics to encircle our lives, to structure our days, and then we want to blame something that has no “legs” that it rules our lives.
Some of us just can’t cut it. Cannot take the relentlessness of humanity, its pain and joy. We cannot find the place, space, or time to recharge. To wake up happy the next day after some tumultuous previous day. Looking for some archaic purity that never really existed anyway. Because certainly in the “real” wilderness we would be hunted while hunting. Nature made calm, nature removed of its power and original struggles is nature controlled. These are degrees of the world held within our control, just a version of agrarian reality. The inability to soak into the fullness of humanity leads us to believe that we must choose its opposite, even though it might not exist anymore….
Learning to live with the wild wolf and the grizzly in spite of fear is easier for some of us than the trauma that arrives from the constancy of an overpopulated and densified piece of land we call a metropolis. But are we really learning to live with the wild creatures that are left on the planet? Or are we simply living beside them as we do in a city when we learn to tolerate the neighbors and their peculiar social activities that we cannot relate to? These are the annoyances of living.
The real issue is where do we come face-to-face with transcendence? Where do we feel at home most in a world that is difficult and risky to navigate? Where does our truth lie? Do the woods, stream, mountain and desert allow us to ignore the aspects of the world that we cannot fully come to terms with in the same way that thousands of people surrounding us on an urban street corner requires our attention more than any speck of nature that may be present at the same time and place.
believing that the urban condition reduces the presence of the natural world allows us to ignore the real work that must be taken on to retain a creative mind. Blaming the fact that we live in a dense human environment is no excuse to not daydream, to watch the moon rise or the sunset. To smell the rain on pavement. To see the green of plants growing between those things we build and then ignore.
I chose this more loosely defined, blurred environment between the built and the unbuilt, between the rural and the wild, between dogs running lose on the streets and grizzly bear swaggering down trails and mountainsides because it makes the most sense to me. This reality is the one that feels the most accurate to me, churns my mind and stirs my creativity. this place is where my god lives, where I transcend myself to something that extends beyond me. In this choice I gave up the day to day stimulation of a collective human nature, a creativity that feeds upon itself. I gave up the experience of the constantly spinning greatest cultural expressions. And I am willing to go without this, while recognizing what I lose and what I gain. This giving up is not to say that a certain great culture does not exist where I live. Great culture abounds, but it is not the culture that grows from the human intensity of a metropolis, not the culture that spins at such a high rate that change happens in the single spin of the earth.
But what I find difficult to accept is those who live in these places of great human density, where the built rivals the unbuilt, who claim that there is no inspiration where they live that comes from nature. That there is no ability to capture transcendence in their lives, in the things they make, in the raising of their children. We must all seek out the truth of the places where we live. This is our responsibility. If we do not easily find the truth then we must seek it out. Truth is us in nature, however large or small. Truth is the rain we run from on a winter day, it is the line of grass that arrives between the cracks in the concrete, it is the sun that rises on one side of the city and sets on the other, with all of the colors that come with it. Truth is the reflection of sun on our buildings. Truth, if we recognize it, is transcendence, the vastness of the world and our smallness in it.
Revelations arise through many avenues. Sometimes they come quietly when we are on our own, until bam! The power for potential change is revealed. Sometimes it is our friends who point out an obvious quality in ourselves we fail to recognize on our own. Or maybe we know this quality but we simply do not give it much thought, because we simply are who we are.
I credit a friend to the recent consideration of my “black and white” point of view. Is it too extreme? Am I missing out on other possibilities in life because choices, positions and decisions seem so clearly “to be” or “not to be”? And it’s not that I align myself with anyone else’s sense of black and white, right or wrong. I simply have my own point of view.
I know this practice and way of seeing the world serves professional accomplishments. But what is the outcome for our personal lives when we are living within the mushiness of another’s sense of the world, timing and spirit ? The either/or view of the world seems ultimately Limiting when living in relation to another. Even when looking from the outside with respect to social conventions of what’s acceptable behavior, the over simplification of choice , when taken to the extreme “good” or “bad” seems never rich enough for life’s unfolding expression. Perhaps the black and white of choice is a matter of survival when we find ourselves on a tricky path.
The last month or so I have been challenging my decision process , stretching choice between black and white to feel what living in the gray is like. Gray is certainly a more muddy, less clear sense of reality than I normally choose. Gray gives us longer to consider choices. Living the gray broadens the sense of understanding in the world. And it can reassign the poles of black and white with other truths. Living the gray is messy, more inclusive, less simple. Living the gray is like singing a note and holding it as long as possible to feel what that note can become as it is sung.
Living the gray is living in a world where past limits fall away to new truths. Where the separation between earth, water, and air vanishes.
rear view
Why is it we look to the past to measure ourselves , our lives? We look to the past and find our fears for the future. Looking into the mirror tonight as I drive home I see the place I have come from. The past. The brilliance of a Bozeman sunset. The rain of fuscia across the sky. The lace of intense light on the edge of clouds. Brilliance to be sure. Purples gain over pinks and orange and my day passes into intensity of night and darkness. All of this is just behind me. I know these now and can fear I may never experience such brilliance again. I can stay where I am and dwell on the past. The setting sun. And another day. Or I can continue to drive forward into the darkness of night, the unknown, appreciating my experience of what passes. I choose to not fear what I do not know of the future when looking into the past, to search for the truth of a future I do not know. Looking into the past to verify the future is the trap of our fears, not the embrace of the songs of our life we have yet to write. Night comes and the stars of the universe rise .
The Tetons
Yes. It’s an over used phrase. Perhaps because we are still learning to practice silence. The truth that come from silence for us seems impossible to recognize in these days of constant buzz. I even struggle in the mountains of Montana. A week ago I was in Texas preparing to leave for Montana. The miles pass fast in a car at 75 mph. We arrive to anything but silence. The humm of our anxieties, the blurr of the road. Arrival. Leaving the last place a distant memory we cannot tie to our present. But here they are. The mountains standing against our travels, our anxieties, the unmoored condition of the my days, the loss of identity as we move somewhere between here and there. And if we could learn to practice silence, if we could recognize silence from within, perhaps then we would learn the sound of silence.
Polling in the Bayou
marsh
end of the day, bayou style
“this is much more fun than learning…” she said. And like a passage from “Alice in Wonderland” after Alice fell down the rabbit hole I responded,” but you are learning and you haven’t even realized it .” The day was glorious. Full of new experiences. Immersed in the world as we all should be, learning from the world and each other. Not in a room, or from a text book lesson. Boat rides to the beach edge , walking the ridge alive with ancient oaks, the first line of protection for the marsh from hurricanes . Up bayous and dispersed in groups of two and into the marsh to wander through a vanishing landscape. Polling the boat through shallow water . Pulling caught catfish from the line. Knowing where your dinner comes from. This is the best source of learning. Learn to live and love. Be passionate about the things in life you care about.
between here and there 