some notes from my journal the other day...
We're back at Wing Gap for Week 2, but right now we are at Delaware Water Gap listening to jazz again at the Deer Head Inn. The grooves are coming and the blues are flowing. Exhaustion is setting in, and tomorrow I will be a rock crusher by morning and a road warrior by night traveling all the way on blasted 81 for over 7 hours to see my baby for her birthday in Blacksburg. She and dog fish head await me. She is enough and the dog is an added bonus. Nearly broke my right thumb today as Harry and I turned over a monster rock and he was one oomph ahead of me, causing the rock to pivot and crash on my thumb since I could not hold all its weight being smack downed by the unforgiving lover of gravity. It won't stop bleeding, but the nail may not be lost luckily.
A week later the nail remains, as do I, forever stuck to this body, at least for now. We are back at Twin Lakes, next to Bear Mountain in Ny. Two screech owls are talking across the water. They are conversing. Fish randomly jump up for a bug and subtly I float back and forth, up and down with undulating water on this small floating dock. Getting aligned with the rhythm. All is very calm but I can hear the road not far away in the faint distant, and these people drive like they've got places to go. Fast and aggressive.
I am losing light fast and rain is coming.
It is crew midnight, 9 pm. Me es muy tired from crushing rock and carrying rock, and I am content in my tent.
Insects sing in resonating echoes, answered rhythmically by other echoing chants. The chant of night. Forest acoustics come alive in a different way, a nocturne indeed. It is fitting for the end of our day: tired, finished, done for the time being. The nocturnal lullaby that in all its darkness is refreshing, very fitting sounds to finish the revolution's orchestra preparing us for the break of dawn. At which time the alluring aubade is born.
The answer is in front of us, it always has been, and always will, and we will continue to overlook it.
What is reflection but seeing yourself in nature, a part of it, part of this fragile ticking biological system, and realizing your place in it at that time in your existence. Seeing the truth in everything. The pieces fit. As ripples roll across a lake and slowly out of sight, clarity rolls over me like a wave of enlightenment, fulfillment, and righteousness. Nature is spiritual without a doubt, for its beauty and reflective tendencies, as well as its place as a piece, like us, of the Creator, our God.
Reflection is integral to growth, part of a balanced diet. This special time is sacred, for it is yours, and it is you in control of your life at that moment. Which brings up the concern of why is modern life cutting down so much on time for reflection. Could our large brain power be for more than being caught up in the material and intellectual culture of the fruits of our intellect? We can’t fit reflection into our schedules. That is without a doubt, insane, and sad that so many are in that boat for whatever reason: personal, victim of the system, one of the doomed generation, ignorant, frivolous, flagellate, enmity, whatever blemish puts them on that ship of fools, I feel for.
Reflection reminds me who I am. Not seeing my reflection literally, which can be mindful when its been a week, but internal reflection really reveals ourselves to ourself. We learn what we always know and sometimes, just sometimes, we even surprise ourselves. These are cherished events that increase in frequency and amplitude upon further reflection, meditation, and slow calm hikes in the woods, anywhere but preferably mountainous. Life is much too short for distress. We should demand better of ourselves and friends and family. We must push ourselves, for that is the most important part of learning about reflection and seeing a glimpse of what we have the potential to become. To push ourselves is to truly be alive, making the most of life, a raw rare thing of thoughtless beauty, the highest level and hardest to achieve.
Going beyond one's comforts teaches us to adapt, to acclimate quickly, and that my friends, is a valuable skill to have in this day and age, believe you me. It will only get more extreme, the magnitude of swift changes while we live in the hypersonic times of exponential growth while it lasts. We need thinkers, innovators, teachers, farmers, organizers, politicians, businessmen and woman, and whole communities that reflect and actually care for all of the above. We should all ask ourselves who and what do we care for? We should say, all of the above. In toto. All or nothing. Nothing is lonely, trust me.
All is a wondrous thing to see.
It is time for a change of the societal mythos. Call it evolution of self preservation, call it trendy, whatever you may it is time. Society's mindset is about to adapt to an ever changing world out of necessity. If our hypersonic rise in the last century wasn't enough to vibrate our cerebrums and frontal lobes into confusion and chaos we better get our ducks in a row and hunker down for the next wave. Anyone who has been on a rollercoaster knows this sensation when the next corkscrew approaches. Mental preparation is integral to healthy change when moving at these rates. It's too easy to become detached otherwise, as is easily apparent now in our detachment from nature and all that has branched from it as the agrarian reform and wilderness generation passed away to urban sprawl and suburbia, seemingly in a blink of time's eye, and in the process we lost so much knowledge and experience we are left little to do these days except watch television and read and write blogs.
We can be all that our dreams desire, but we must act, we must sacrifice, and we must be determined. Nothing good comes easy on this scale of things, this magnitude of mental stability, flexibility, and vulnerability to environmental cursors and energies surrounding the present spatial strata of terra firma. Feeling off of, feeling into, or connecting to nature, however you prefer to look at it at the time, it can be empowering and a catalyst for results from reflection. For some this is not possible. They are not wired this way. For others it is an extreme sensory overload. And for some it is invigorating, refreshing, and spiritual. And for many it is unfamiliar.
It is something special to feel small. To feel not insignificant, for everything is significant and nothing is random, but to feel your size in relation to creation and feeling the immensity of your surroundings itch at our atavistic yearnings, spiritual sutras, days forgotten. It is humbling and empowering.
These primordial reflections remind me I am alive.
Nature is the great reflection contrivance, the great reflector. What we see from other animals, plants, any interesting observation normally reveals something about ourselves as well. Its not egocentric but teachable moments. It’s all related, it’s biocentric. These universal themes exist at all levels in all things. Everything is interconnected. He or she who goes to the woods to learn about some species, especially for extended periods, oftentimes learns more about themselves in the end than their subject. It is the nature of nature. The nurture of nature. The never ending awe and complexity of nature, our one and only home.
These primordial reflections caress the coals of this inner fire, stirring my soul and reminding me the meaning of this transient existence. These primordial reflections remind me I am alive and that truth, love, and beauty is all we need to trust and all we need to surround our hearts with to have a worthwhile, enjoyable, and lasting life.
These primordial reflections are the flames of being, flickering and glowing, exposing and showing us glimpses of what could be. They are the fires of the mind, finally visualized as opposed to the smoldering haze of mediocrity. There is a purity present there that is a rare thing indeed, hard to grasp, hard to reach, but there nonetheless, always right in front of us, waiting to be realized, waiting to be felt.
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