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Late Night Thoughts
Late Night Thoughts While Listening to Hildegard of Bingen (A
Modern Eccelsiates)
October 2001
I've had an awful week, actually. Some of that is dealing with
clients and the multiplied communication errors that happen during
Mercury Retrogrades. It takes a lot more work just to get an idea
across without misunderstanding, and I'm exhausted. Some of the
awfulness, too, is "recompression" (dealing with driving in the
Big City again, partly, and knowing I have to fix my truck soon,
and there's STILL no money coming in) from spending four days
up on the North Shore at Grand Marais. I had a good time up there,
once I started just being in the moment.
Sunday night's sunset, after an afternoon of cold, bone-penetrating
rain, was spectacular. The sun pulled beneath the cloudbanks that
were heading off to the southeast, burning brilliant gold and
perfectly outlining the Sawtooth Mountains, highlighting why they
got that name. The surf was pretty high out on Artist's Point,
crashing against the basalt ledges; backlit by the sun, crashing
literally at my feet, since I wanted to stand as close to it as
I could without getting drenched, and the force shakes your feet
through the rock as the water spills into pools reflecting the
blue of the sky and the gold of the sunset. A sickle moon revealed
by retreating clouds, pinked at the edges, a single gull pierced
by its horns. Waiting till your arms and legs cramp, waiting to
trip the camera's shutter to catch that perfect wavesplash. I
shot up at least three rolls of film, saving nothing for later.
The past dozen weeks, I've spent a lot of time on the North Shore,
photographing, walking, being silent, and those times have been
the most centered and peaceful I have felt in weeks and months.
I'm tempted to move up there, and get back into the small town
lifestyle I had in Wisconsin before moving to Minnesota in 1997;
I miss that slower pace of life, and the relative friendliness
of rural folks. The last time I was up in Grand Marais, the day
I returned to the Cities was the day the WTC towers fell--what
a homecoming. There's too much compassion and pain about that
to feel all at once, and this weekend it was good to NOT hear
about it, to have NO TV or radio, and not talk about it if at
all possible. It has been dominating all of our minds too much,
and has invaded our hearts as well as our discourse: there are
wounds no-one has yet begun to plumb. There are times I completely
lose hope for humanity; we are capable of such beauty, and such
horror. Shadows and Light.
Photos of gulls sailing directly above me, inexplicably flying
away from the shore and towards the stormclouds just passing over
the Lake. More wavesplash, and the Grand Marais harbor light starting
its pulse just as the sun dips behind the Sawtooths. The air so
clear you can see for miles. This is what I needed, more than
anything, this trip: a gift of Grace from Universe, from Spirit,
a reminder that there is still beauty in the world. Creation itself
a book about God. Meister Eckhart said, "Every creature is an
emanation from God, and a book about God. If I could spend one
true hour with a caterpillar, I would never need to preach another
sermon." The sinful inanity of human self-absorption, the truly
banal evil of TV "situation comedy" shows like "Seinfeld," which
are totally self-centered on the selfishness of humans and their
lusts, when all of Universe invites us to drown in its song. (The
Austin Lounge Lizards song, "Bonfire of the Inanities" nails it
down.) Is that what it means to be a mystic? To touch more with
the Divine in a caterpillar than even in relationship? Sometimes
I despair even of the so-called spiritual groups, and wonder if
we can ever create a viable community; there is too much woundology,
somedays it seems, too many walking wounded, too much typical
self-absorption, no more or less of which I too partake of as
a vice. Nothing but self, self, ego little self. Whine, whine,
whine. If you don't drag the contents of your Shadow into the
light to be examined, you let the Shadow rule your actions by
default. Groups have their Shadows just as much as individuals
do. Why do we worry about fixing each other when we can't fix
ourselves?
Photos of inukshuk, the Inuit-styled "men of stone" made by standing
flat rocks together in little effigy forms. Is putting rocks together
into effigy mounds an innate human desire, an archetypal response
to the vastness of geologic time? Stone men turn up all over the
world, in almost every culture. Am I a stone? No, my home is with
the Dragons, a Black Dragon invisible amongst his outdwellers
and indwellers both, whose element and heart is Stone and Earth
and Time, coiling together almost silently, only the hiss of sapphire
scales on stone and scale, a nest of lithe forms and intertwined
blacknesses, on that dark plain below the burning stars at galaxy's
core, only their eyes glowing: stars moving in patterns on the
black plain below the patterned stars moving overhead in the depths
of infinite space. The Door into Starlight. Resting place between
incarnations. This life or another. The ancient Celts (my other
people) said, "Born again. From this life, to the next." Craters
of the Moon national monument in southern Idaho: the black-shocked
volcanic rock of the plains north of the Snake River, and the
billion stars of the night sky overhead as you sleep on the earth.
I came home from up north Monday night to an even dozen phone
calls, every one of them a telemarketer inquiry, and not a friendly
voice among them. Was expecting that a web-design client would
have left a message, as their demands before I left for the weekend
seemed designed to delay my departure, lots of last-minute requests
for "just one more small change before you go." Nothing. Void.
Sent out inquiries today wondering about the project's status,
since it looks like they took last week's work and ran with it;
now suddenly the work they wanted me to do for them is greatly
diminished, and they're not returning my emails. Wonder if they'll
neglect to pay me? I hate having to fight for what I'm supposed
to receive; it's a waste of time and energy. Just symptomatic
of more self-absorption; the classic corporate use-and-discard
pattern. Tragically familiar. Well, no huge surprise, since I
had trepidations from the start about these folks; they were disorganized,
and not really very clear on what they needed from me. The art
of the follow-up seems to be a lost art. Maybe this is the sef-absorption
that lies at the root of hating the Other; we get so drowned in
our own little needs that we neglect to remember that the world
is filled with others who need our compassion.
Photos of the basalt shelves and staircases, that columnar weathering
pattern, superlit by golden light. Words drowned in the huge voice
of the surf. Have to shout to be heard, so don't bother, just
wave and smile at the friendly couple walking by above, with their
beagle and other dog whose breed I can't identify. Evening walk
on this island connected by a tombolo, a sand-bar beach, to the
mainland, Artist's Point. Strange how this most photographed and
painted place in Grand Marais is so empty of people, for this
grandest sunset display ever. No-one but me out here with camera
or easel. An unknown person in silhouette on the breakwater by
the harbor light perfectly fits into the frame of my picture,
the human dot on the golden canvas, providing scale and soulful
content. When will I ever have the money to finally develop all
the photos I've taken in the past two years? An unbelievable backlog,
treasures waiting to be dug into, even stuff I've probably forgotten
all about, it's been so long. I can't stop taking photos, though,
because these camera walks are solace and support and refreshment,
one of the few activities that keeps me in touch with the Divine
and my purpose in life, and gives me peace.
Impossible to explain this. Fewer words every year. My poetry
critique group, valuable as it is for shaping written art and
craft, often overlooks the problem that not every poem that perfectly
articulates the inscape of spiritual experience, the mystical
visons I cannot escape even if I wanted to, while perfectly capturing
the moment so that other experiencers "get it"--will not always
be an artistically perfected poem. Sometimes you have to resort
to cliches, because there's nothing left to say but the familiar.
Similarly, it's impossible to argue with someone whose mind is
locked into the scientific-rational mindset, that there are possibly
valid alternate ways of looking at the Universe; such minds dismiss
this as non-scientific, completely missing the point that that
is *precisely* what it is. They forget that science is a method
of discovery, an approach to the Mysteries, and not in itself
a worldview. They invest too much hope in its experimental method,
and the technological fruits of research. We are creators, and
in creating we are the imago dei, the image and likeness of the
Creator. But if we deny our creativity, we give our creation to
our Shadow-impulses, and so we make bombs instead of bread. Scientific-rationalism,
deifed and reifed as mindset and quasi-religion, origin of mythos
and dismissive of both eros and poesis. Those so afraid of spiritual
intimacy that their Shadows fill with denied superstitions. Every
erotic/agapic moment, making Love with God, reduced to a classification
of psychosis. We miss the boat on that one, left with only betraying
words to try to use to communicate with each other. Speaking from
the heart, but using words to do it: an innate betrayal. "Naming
is already murder." (Dennis Hopper and Rumi sharing this same
thought.)
Is this North enough for you? Not yet. Not yet.
•
exuberant laughter of surf
dancing at the feet of inukshuk
ladders of alignment, bright arcs
auroraed internal instant, in inside stone
every atom afire with inspirited lifelove
gull's wings, heart arrows towards desolation
perfect flight of the leaving of the self--
body, remember these other names--
the loyalty of fire dogs, to what of when
this timeless turning, this life or the next
heart of green aurora burning eyes filmed over
erosive sculpting of stone and wave and stone
polished agate, worry-stone, faery-tear green driftglass
flint of the heart struck against the steel of time
gunflash flinch of woodpeckers working over dead branches
where the flesh thickens and becomes soft
where sasparilla rivers meet cold tears of the inland sea
where what's polished is the crusted mineral of your own heartache
where an entombed caterpillar preaches its sermon of rebirth
above the roar of winter coming in to sleep, again
—the Unnamed Mystery
A Spiral Dance essay, © 2001 Arthur Durkee/Black Dragon Productions.
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