Everything is in Motion
There is a
trail near where I live - just down the road - that I walk at least two or
three times a week. It winds its way up into the foothills among juniper and pinyon.
Here and there, poking out of the trees, I can see the adobe walls of the
houses of the very, very rich. "Those who live on the hill."
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| Bobcat Tracks |
Along the
trail are stones, broken by wind, occasional rain, sliding down the
mountainside, on their slow pilgrimage back to their source. Dust in the dry
washes. Deer prints, coyote prints. Every so often, bobcat prints. And, right
now, mountain blue birds darting in and out of the pinyon, on their migration
north.
Everything
is in motion - the birds, quickly; the stones, slowly.
I am
fascinated by, and have a deep heart-felt attraction, to stones. Their texture,
their color. The lizards that will soon appear out from under the rocks,
crawling out from the dark tunnels that connect this world to the underworld, sometimes
understand - in brief flashes - the language of the stones. It is far older
than the lizard's tongue. The blue-collared lizard speaks in a language that
can only be interpreted as various shades of blue. But the stone-language is older
than the color blue…
Animism: Everything is Alive
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| Horned Lizard |
I could be
labeled an "animist." Animism (from the Latin anima, "breath,
spirit, life") is the understanding that objects, places, and all
creatures are alive. I feel sentience and spirit in everything. For me, it is
not a "belief" that everything is alive, it is more of a lived
experience. Granted, what I mean here by "alive" is a bit vague.
While a stone is not alive in the same way that a human is alive, is not
sentient in the same way as a bobcat or horned lizard is sentient, it
shares in the shimmering, pulsating, transient motion that is life on earth,
life in the universe.
Maybe what
I'm talking about when I say sentience or spirit others would call
"energy." Maybe I am feeling the energy of a thing. Look up into the
sky. How is it not possible, in moments of stillness - accidental or purposeful
- to feel that the stars, the moon, the planets, and the sun are also alive?
There is a language going on between all things - an exchange of atoms - that
is heard deep, deep in the body, on the cellular level. When I look up into the
night sky, there is communication going on between my cells and the blue light
of Sirius, the red of Mars…and the weed stalks rattling near my feet.
The Dragon in the Rock
There is a
place on the trail where two sandstone boulders have been sitting on a ridge
for god knows how long. One of them resembles a dragon. Dragons, in both
eastern and western traditions, are energy incarnate. I have spent a lot of
time sitting next to that dragon rock. At the foot of the rock, there is a
great view of the Jemez range.
Lately, I've
noticed that the tips of the pinyon branches all along the trail are turning
rust-brown. This is probably from lack of water. Or black scale. We are in a
drought. It is the result of climate change. The terrain is beginning to change
because of the lack of rain, snow; rising temperatures. We barely have a winter
anymore. It is heart-breaking to see the hillsides tinged with brown in early
spring.
At the same
time, from where I sit at the foot of the dragon, I see the looming triangle of
the foothill Picacho to the south and the Jemez range to the west. It's always
a stunner. And, as I sit here, one thought keeps coming back: at what point,
ten thousand years ago or more, did human beings decide that they needed more
than this? The need to accumulate, hoard; to make surplus for themselves and so
deprivation for others; to destroy in order to stockpile. To claim one can step outside the web of energy, the interconnection between all things, reign over it, and create a world of "houses on the hill." What wounds in their hearts?
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| Jemez Range |
The world
has been wrecked. Things are going to get so much worse before they get better.
And probably not in our lifetimes. But there are moments - sometimes brief,
sometimes long - where I am stunned, possessed by a feeling of wellness, of
being part of the living, breathing, beautiful and terrible web all around me,
always in motion…and joy spirals through me.
However brief
these moments are, they get me through. I wish you those moments, too.
Song of the Lover of the Dragon in
the Rock:
A Praise-Chant
Shadow in the cupola at the top of
the long horse-snout
where the left eye watches me;
curious, fierce.
Every rock has a name
the dead must learn to sing
Green crustose lichen tattooed across
his side, where
feathers, flaps, and flags of desire
once clung, now solidified.
Every rock was once a
flame
Circle of orange-yellow lichen,
mid-forehead. Third eye
follows the progress of four ravens
in the valley below.
Every rock is a mouth
keeping the silence before the name
Black wings, black bodies merge,
separate. A continually changing
black hieroglyph: grass-sorrow,
pinyon-laughter, heart-lightning…
Every rock is continually
unravelling back to the place it was made
Wind through juniper, he rides flying
snow-dust, escapes
this geo-spell for a few seconds,
body equal to the sun.
The dead sing the
names, but they don't know yours,
they don't know yours,
will never know yours
(previously
published in The Bitter Oleander)
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| Badlands, New Mexico |
