12.6.20

I can scarcely apprehend the spirit of some of those before me. The hellish tribulations of the first Antarctic explorers. Vitamin deficiencies in the coffins of a maiden ship. Hopes dashed, turning slowly toward the ocean floor. Watching light escape your sight for the last time. I think often of these men and women. I think of wagon trains across the great plains of North America as much as I think of Soviet Gulags as much as I try to understand the spiritual nature of all cultures. Their plights and prayers. Their battles and sacrifices. I watch the arrows flying as much as the multi-generational effects of displacement, scarcity, and ideological evolution. I look as far back as known history has allowed me and then some, where scant circumstantial evidence shows a world beyond our scope of imagination yet still there, occasionally offering a relic or a carbon-based clue frozen alongside another for context. 

I listen to stories in the plastic detritus blowing across the street. "A father in China. Two kids. A wife. A Factory. A life. Their own dreams up against the usual expectations. A shipping container that takes a month to reach the shores of San Diego. The man who drives the cargo ship. The dock workers. The musicians they listen to on lunch break. The woman who packs the Marlboros they smoke on their breaks. Each one of them silently trying to grasp something between moments, or competing with each other for nods of approval, 401k options, two more months until the insurance kicks in, one more year until the house is paid off, $249.87 that has to cover a month of food. Somehow. As long as there's school lunches. As long as there's school."

 I see the struggle of the timid. The weak. The victimized. I see the struggles of the rich and powerful, of the brave. The fearless. I see those who would rather die than compromise. I see those who have known nothing but compromise as though compromise were a single path with the same untouchable light at the end.  

I watch the hopeless eddys of lowered values, demoralization, culturally and chemically castrated and I watch people of high intelligence aloft without ethical bearing or a semblance of wisdom or context to guide themselves in. The mantra from all classes is generally the same: "Take. Take. Take. One chance. One chance. One chance."

But I also see people of another calling who understand even deeper tomes often lost upon the general public. Perhaps they're handed down through family. Perhaps the football coach told them about bravery in a way that clicked one summer afternoon. These people to me, seem fearless or at least they keep moving through every grim potential with the same stride so as to appear this way. Perhaps they see all of humanity in themselves and so they act on behalf of an idea or principle, not because they're compelled to by mandate or social pressure. They keep moving because the Great Challenge is timeless and only a few are called to it. Only a few will recognize it. Even less will appreciate its true character beyond what every tome has said of it. 

Michelangelo said the sculpture is done when the obstacles in its path are removed. I find this relevant especially-so today. 

Never before has humanity been more harangued or menaced by the accumulated invisible stains that result in the general implicitness of everything.  The implicit expectations that define modes of motion through corridors of the banal and the implicit knowledge that seeking something truly authentic is akin to social suicide while useful social mores have been so thoroughly degraded that self-isolation is the only 'group activity' that millions of people have in common and even in groups, we often feel more 'lonely' as opposed to 'alone'. 

I only suggest this as theory from some odd precipice that accounts for the long traditional history of rites and fertility rituals and good harvest tidings and the like. I write it only to be considered in contrast to the thousands of years of epochs and accumulated legends. Nor would I suggest that some of these epochs don't appear (at least on the surface) to be quite insane by today's standards. But what of 'today's standards'? What would any ancient culture call more insane than a life devoid of meaning? What could be more batshit crazy than living your entire life indoors, staring at screens, saving pennies to buy this or that object? What would they consider more ludicrous than walking around in a state of near-permanent passive entertainment, disconnected from any reality of the natural world and its implicit functions, and complaining when you aren't validated by the blind? That is, by all interpretations, the definition of Bablyon. A great phony artifice that everyone still believes in. 

I see the piece of plastic lazily blow across the winter street in little jerks and whirls. On all sides I'm surrounded by Ponderosa forest so dense that I wake with the aroma wafting through every sill and seam. I walk the streets to the trails to the snow lines. I stare at the sunsets wondering my own wonders. Trees have their own stories too. I've got a lot of respect for them, sitting alone for centuries in the elements, battered by hail and snow and wind and sun. They don't say anything (which makes them all the better). They just are. A moment of shade. A log to enjoy lunch upon. A place for birds to be birds. Anything and anyone can have a story. We seem to conceive and narrate with gusto but we must choose and decide whether our stories are sacred or meaningless-

Or whether they simply undulate as all things must...