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October 8, 2001
New World?
Jet plane, cell phone, fiber-optic cable. With these we bridge the distances. The “New” World and the “Old” are drawn ever closer. Yet on this Columbus Day the gulf between Worlds seems wider than ever. It’s widely claimed that all of us have entered a New World; that we are marked by the late events; changed: never to be the same. So it was for those who held these shores five hundred years ago, when strange craft and strange men came from the sea to give the world a new name. Even so, the peoples of this continent did not own the land, and had only come here ten, fifteen, at most twenty thousand years before. A mere moment ago, in geologic time.No one is native to America.
No one is native to this fallen World.
We are all here as exiles, trying to piece together what was broken in the Beginning.
One way by which we join, instead of sunder, is through our relationship with the Land. Itinerant animals though we may be, we do come to identify with the places we inhabit. Not that we own the Land, but we establish a bond with it. Not that the Land owns us, but it gives us Life, and continuity, if we tend it with Love. If we rape it, despoiling while returning nothing, it becomes the Wasteland, where Life cannot survive.
Half a millennium after the European arrival, we have grown close to this Land. The places where we are born, where we grow up, where we live out our lives; these are as close to Home as we will ever come in this World.
Ancestry not withstanding.
Still, Old World names are strewn about out landscape, bespeaking our nostalgia for a deeper, truer Home. We do not find it in any particular place, though our language leads us back to Britain. We live in the New York, not the true York, but we are closer here to Rome, and Troy, and to other names which remind us that our Home is located among ideas and meanings, as much as in places.
We even honor a few of the old “Indian” names, remembering the people who were not Indian, and were not native, but were here before we came.
I think it’s worth recalling that confrontation, as we contemplate our actions another half way round the world.
I don’t think anyone is proud of the way we behaved back then, but the assumptions of the time now seem so outlandish as to absolve us of current guilt.
How could we think that we had the right to come to a place and just take over?
We certainly wouldn’t do that now.
It must have been a different World.
But it’s always a different World;
mere Time excusing a blindness that’s enduring.
Sometimes I stand beneath a tree in the Park and look up at a bird, just above me, yet obtuse. It’s so close that I think I’m going to get a real “good look”, but then it’s silhouetted, shrouded by foliage, a few partial glimpses, and only of underside. Frustration, but what are you going to do? You move on, and try to find another vantage. And maybe at a distance, and with some elevation, you can get a different view into the same tree. And with the light in the right direction you can easily see that the bird is indeed just another Magnolia Warbler (as you thought, but weren’t quite sure). A beautiful, but common, species. And the rub is that at this distance, even though you can identify it, you don’t quite get the full beauty, the satisfaction of the good look.
That’s a Mystery of Vision, and of the space through which we must peer. But there are Mysteries within Mysteries, each an adumbration of one greater. Our metaphorical vision is no less bent than our eyesight, and our vision of the future is no better.
Physical or spiritual, Relativity remains the same:
a failure of Unity.
In this World, where we are separate, and not unified, Mystery obtains.
Even when things look obvious, something crucial always goes unseen, though it were right before our eyes. This we should remember when judgment appears clear, and the distance between continents collapses, even as the gulf between us grows.
It’s the same old World.
It cannot excuse us.
It must inform us.
September 22, 2001
Fall
How far is it?The towers of the World Trade Center were each less than a mile high, and their footprint was less than a city block.
You could bury the buildings in Central Park twice over, yet like the Park, they were a world unto themselves.
There are things, and there are places, but these skyscrapers were both.
They were made to be seen from too far away.
At vast distance, we lose the details. We see a simple generality, easy to categorize, but not examined in detail.
We see a symbol.
I saw details.
Saw from a few blocks away, through binoculars, people hanging out of upper story windows, flickering between the columns like birds among the meadow stalks. I saw people falling that impossible distance.
Not a mile, but forever.
Fall
Fall
Fall
We are all fallen
and falling still.
We never do settle
in this world.
By some sad pun of circumstance today’s occasion is the Autumnal Equinox, and the first day of Fall. The season seems appropriate: the Year turning the corner into retraction, darkness and death. But even when all the leaves lie dead on the ground, the tree survives, to bloom again in time. And first there is the harvest of the fruits, and the beauty of the change; the south-bound birds and butterflies that glorify the atmosphere. All going on now, without regard for our concerns.
A wonderful season, the Fall.
I’ve spoken here before about our Fallen World, and of my (as Irenaeus put it “falsely so-called”) Gnosticism. I am hardly the first to fall back on spirituality; indeed some have fallen forward on it, as on a sword.
I have no beliefs, and do but offer my understandings, limited and flawed. I know it may seem ridiculous, not to mention pompous, not to mention escapist, to retreat into such musings. An intangible net of unverified imaginings about the unknown can hardly contain the reality of our current pass, but it’s what I’ve got. And it’s something to work with, when reality fails, as it so spectacularly has.
Gnosticism says that reality always fails; that it is not we, but God that is Fallen, and that Creation is the consequence of this Fall. The World is born of some desperation or distress, some instability in that which should be perfect, immutable and unchanging. Yet even shattered into Being, the fragments of Divinity intuit restoration and return. I would choose the Garden of Paradise over the Holy City, but all our visions are just that: visions; tantalizing us with intimations of some ultimate destination beyond our comprehension.
If reality ever succeeds in getting there, it will be its own undoing.
Yet that is our true desire, and with this faith we proceed along a mysterious path. Now and again we earn a revelation of just how we may serve this end, but mostly we go in darkness and uncertainty. Our Ecstasies point the way, but the terrain is twisted into a maze, with no direct path. Our morals and our ethics, traditional or ad hoc, must guide us where illumination is lacking. Our progress seems as slow as our lives seem fast, and there are always those who would force the issue and speed us headlong to the brink; a danger to themselves and others.
A danger most of all to God.
For our failure will be God’s failure, and Creation may yet climax not with the transformation of Matter into Spirit, but in final dissolution, each shattered particle adrift, alone, inviolate: never to be reunited.
How far is it?
From here to the Apocalypse.
From here to Paradise.
As far as forever, as far away as the gods we only imagine.
As close to us as death is every day.
As close as we hold what we love.
We will achieve it.
Near or far, we will find the right way.
I say this in faith, but also in knowledge, or whatever sort of knowing I have gained by everything that I have seen and lived. I know it by every pattern of my mind and heart that finds harmony with a pattern larger than myself.
Laugh with me,
for the whole World is a disaster, and one more cannot defeat us.
Let it teach us the better way.
Cry with me.
We will only win by knowing better.
And by acting better than we have.
That we can do this, I have no doubt, for we house a sacred force. We have seen it in the selfless sacrifices. We have seen it in the will to persevere. It is the same force that weathers Winter’s wasteland, then blooms again in Spring. Our Summer slain, still it ripples in the Autumn leaves. And if the billows of red, yellow, and orange that will unfold amid the green should recall a vision of terror, we will know better.
We will be better.
Pray with me.
A wonderful season, the Fall.
September 3, 2001
Laborious Days
Not working is one of those things that makes Humans different. We’ve accrued leisure enough to skew our schedules. The End-of-Summer Holiday marks the passing of an indolent season for some, but I’ve been working overtime; too pressed to write much, or even visit the Arboretum with the frequency I’d wish.So it was nice to take a break, enjoying the hospitality of DMTree matriarch Jeanne, while all around Summer culminates in nuts and fruits, and a few early withered leaves, the cost of August’s week of heat, which averaged out an otherwise mild Summer.
But how can I divine from the recliner the effort that the Pokeweed must expend to turn its berries purple? Do they ripen for the purpose of the south-bound birds, or do the birds delay on their behalf? Do I rise at dawn, or sleep into the sun? Do we work to purchase leisure, or rest but grudgingly and from necessity?
We work to live.
Mere existence entails incalculable effort. Leisure requires more than that. So we honor laborers by resting, rather than by having everyone else pitch in. The lilies of the field have toiled all Summer, and gone to seed will make a working-man’s bouquet.
August 28, 2001
Squint...
August 8, 2001
Can We Keep It?
Back again, slithering through Summer.Hard to work up much energy, but I’ve got to tackle that alligator.
Not literally, of course, but then, it wasn’t really an alligator, and I think I can handle a two foot long Spectacled Caiman if it comes down to it.
It was a classic tabloid news story: alligator in Central Park. Well, almost. Sewer-gators are a staple of the New York mythos, lurking beneath the surface of our psyche, if not our city. Here was a real one, albeit on the small side. A gator-wrangler was brought up from Florida to subdue it, which seemed like a bit of overkill. In the end, it was his wife who nabbed the poor thing, comprising, perhaps, a manifestation of the Goddess, embracing a traditional reptilian familiar. Or maybe it was more a dismissive jest of the Male power, spoofing the paucity of our local wildlife. I’m not quite sure, but the crocodilian supposedly got sent home, everybody had a good laugh, and nobody got hurt.
The Caiman was lucky. It’s no myth that people flush unwanted pets down the toilet, if they can. I don’t know why you couldn’t just hand the animal over to a shelter, but larger creatures require another strategy once they’ve worn out their welcome. Like dumping them in the Park. Which probably explains the foot-long lizard I saw the other day, ambling through the underbrush on the slope of the Point. As far as I know, turtles are the only reptiles that manage to live in the Park, spending most of their time in the water. This was no doubt a pet, likely let loose because it had a large tumor on its back, which may have degraded its exotic cachet. No cute news item here.
Wild animals are compelling.
Hence birdwatching, and every other approach, including zoos and hunting for sport. I’ve come around to the birding philosophy, in which simply seeing a natural occurrence of the beast (or plant, for that matter) is fulfillment enough. I don’t need to own it, and I certainly don’t want to kill it, but I’m afraid the two often go together.
I’ve kept various reptiles, amphibians, and arthropods. Even a skunk (very briefly). But all of this was as a child, and all it taught me was that to keep a wild creature is to kill it. Some may fare better than others, but it’s always clear that these exotic pets do not enjoy their captivity in the manner of truly domesticated animals.
Cats and dogs have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship with humans. They make good enough pets. Our world is their environment, and a good relationship with a domestic animal is one of the most humanizing experiences we can have. Wild animals signal the Mysteries of a natural world from which we are alienated.
We are ourselves domesticated.
A side effect (which is to say, an effect) of domestication is neoteny: the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. Humans can be understood as neotenous apes. Like infants, we have scant body hair, as well as big heads, relative to body size. An oversize head means a big brain, which may have something to do with why our cognitive capacities appear to outstrip other animals’, but it’s still the juvenilism that makes the difference. It’s not just the size of our brains, but the fact that they keep learning, even after we reach sexual maturity. Learning is juvenile behavior. What we call play, when a child or a kitten does it, is actually an arena for exploratory and imitative experimentation. But while most animals settle into a routine of stereotyped behavior once they pass puberty, we keep playing, learning new things. We are virtually unique in carrying this behavior into adulthood.
Our neoteny may derive from a sort of “self-domestication” , a concept which could represent the transformation of Evolution from a physical to a cultural vector. Or perhaps we’re just not willing to admit how much of a two way street domestication is. We have been changed as much as the plants and animals we breed. And let’s face it, plants had the original “domestic idea” to begin with: staying in one place; making their own food. Maybe they started the whole thing.
Grains and farm animals are our most important domestics, but we don’t pay much attention to them. We want something wild amidst all our domesticity, so we keep our would-be wolves and wildcats, curled at the foot of the bed. Which is all well and good. There’s some sort of dialectic at work here, as culture and nature interact, and we may all be hot-house flowers in the end. I wouldn’t want to dissuade children from bringing home a wild thing or two, but I draw the line at harboring crocodiles. And leaving them in the Park is downright irresponsible.
Childishness may make us Human, but we’re going to have to grow up sometime, so I’ve got a compromise for those desiring a wild familiar. Come to the Park, and adopt a Grass Spider. Spiders make fine pets, if you insist on something unusual. A Tarantula was the most successful exotic I ever had, though she may not have seen it that way. Ten years in a glass box can’t have been much fun. I used to keep Grass Spiders in fruit jars, but why bother with the container at all?
In the Conservatory Garden, you can have your pick of arachnids. Summer’s hedges are covered with webs. Grass Spiders weave funnel webs: tubes that open into broad sheets stretched across the tops of the hedges. The spider sits in the shadows of the funnel, then races out to attack whatever insect finds its way into the web. Fierce predators always make the sexiest exotic pets. All you have to do is catch a fly or a grasshopper and throw it into the web. (This is OK, because they breed in vast numbers, and are meant to be eaten.) The spider will pounce, and you’ll get a thrill. You may even feel parental, but the spider won’t show much affection. If you look too close, it will dart back down the funnel, into the dark recesses of the shrubbery. Then you can decide whether to wait for it to reappear, which might take a while. Maybe you should just move on to the next web. Your choice will help us decide if you’re mature enough for a pet of your own.
Anyway, it’s good clean fun, and brings you closer to nature, as we like to say around here. So brush up on your fly catching, and be sure to bring the kids.
But please, no crocodiles.
July 4, 2001
The Fourth of July
Independence Day is our country’s birthday.Independence is a right (or rite) of adulthood, not of birth, when we require care from others.
We are born from something; we are born into something.
We are dependent coming and going.
A nation goes on longer than a person, yet it is not independent of its citizens. No one of us is America, but all of us are. And when we are gone, I imagine America will remain.
That’s how it is with the other species. Every Red Maple is just that: another Red Maple, replacing those that fell before. Every Robin bears the same two names: Turdus migratorius. Seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. Rarely do we have time to see elsewhere in the World the individuality we find among our own kind.
So independence is a matter of perception, and, at least in this matter, ours is keen. Keen enough to see boundaries between people who are much the same. Homo sapiens all, but each with our own names. And our own lineages.
I’m moved to think of mine.
The occasion is an impending family reunion.
A family is not quite so abstract as a nation, but is much like one. Family groups appear, at least briefly, in many vertebrates, but the lines are lost among generations of unmarked individuals. Keeping track of the line is like drawing a border. A lot of the old countries really are families in a way that America is not, their boundaries drawn along ethnic “ranges”.
The American family is bred more of myth than genes.
In my family, in my mother’s line, the mythology is Scottish. We’ve reached our fourth American born generation, but you’ve got to start from somewhere. The details are not particularly mythological, but the romance of the old place endures, providing a sign under which to gather. For my part, I need to come up with a few suitable words, so to speak; a toast, perhaps. These things must be kept in perspective, and I don’t want to say that the affair is a distraction from the Park, but it will remove me for a while, and something, great or small, will be missed.
Much of history is missed in our 4th of July parties, but myth is well celebrated. As luck would have it, I met two Scottish gentlemen in the Park, keepers of History and of Myth. Maybe they’ll give me some advice on what to say.
June 21, 2001
The Edge of Summer
June 17, 2001
Fatherless Day
It’s now over eight months since I lost my father.Since he died, that is.
I’ve learned a little bit about mourning, and mourning continues. I think the Traditional period is a year and a day. Mourning is a way of formalizing; of focusing the inarticulate ache of absence. The presence of his memory must replace the emptiness of missing him.
I feel better than I did, and I trust I will feel better yet.
Still he comes unbidden to my mind, in untoward guise.
The use of mourning would seem to be in gaining control of his memory, which constitutes my inheritance. All else is but his ghost, returning wearily to warn me against myself.
The ghost would rather rest.
I’ve lately seen the Mourning Warbler.
Named for its dark “hood”, the bird is no more grief-stricken than any other, though many of our songbirds are declining, and might have reason to morn. It’s the last of the Warblers to come through, signaling the end of the migration period, a cause for mourning only among bird watchers. Its late passage, along with skulking habits, make it one of the less often seen Warblers, and I missed it last year.
This time, one was pointed out to me in the Loch. I got a pretty good look, but not the thrill that comes from discovering the thing for yourself. I got that later, in typically unexpected fashion. I was heading to the exit at west 72nd Street, but ended up below it, in a cut where the Bridle Path passes under the street. I don’t often look for birds here, but the steep banks of the cut are covered with vines and brushy growth of the sort that certain species favor, and indeed, there’s a flash of yellow, and the ecstasy of surprise, and of recognition.
Before one sees a bird in the field, you’ve usually seen it in a book. You form a mental image; an expectation of how it will look.
It never looks quite like that.
Or like the picture in the book, for that matter. It’s always much more real and specific, and can even bring disappointment, if we are too taken with our imaginings.
I must say that the Mourning Warbler was actually more beautiful than I expected. The blue cast to the gray hood; the way it blackens at the face and breast; the richness of the yellow underparts, these do not always render clearly. In real life, it’s quite a striking creature.
Some say that death is like that.
A passage that will exceed our expectations.
Mourning shares no such belief, but proclaims its one hard fact in the face of Mystery.
The Mystery has not answered yet.
Still, mourning runs its course, and I will hope to emerge from it, not in control of his memory, but at ease with the truth of it.
And if that happens, by this time next year, I’ll have my father back.
June 13, 2001
New in Town
Baby birds,that's what it's come down to.
Most of the migrants have passed through, but a few will stay to nest, and the residents have already fledged their first broods. Most publicly, the Red-tailed Hawks on Fifth Avenue play to admiring crowds below, with three young ones making their first flights in the last week. People were cheering the Hawks on, in their ongoing confrontations with the Crows, although the corvids are said to be among the most intelligent birds, and the raptors are known killers. Nobody roots for a Crow. But there you have it, the intellectual as villain (black, no less), against the blithely murderous action hero. It sells in the Park just as well as Hollywood.
Actually, the Hawks' parental attentions are impressive, and it's hard not to write our emotions on their instincts. Still, most birds show the same tenacity when it comes to their offspring. Nesting is a delicate and highly fraught endeavor, and those who can accomplish it in the Park are to be congratulated.
The Hawks may be heroic, but it was a little Trickster took my heart, as I came upon a family group of Carolina Wrens, on what must have been one of the fledglings' first outings, in the Conservatory Garden last Saturday. I mentioned the parents back on Valentines Day, extolling their monogamy, but I didn't really explain what wonderful birds they are. Chief among their virtues is that they help me make it through the Winter. Not really migrant, they winter in the Park, and unlike most species, the male sings all year long. In those short, sere days of little to look at, and less to hear, there is nothing like the ringing Wren-song to summon my soul from hibernation.
I started birding in the Fall of '99, and the Carolina Wren was one of the first birds I got to know. A pair spent that Winter along the Loch, but they disappeared in the Spring, or maybe I lost track of them among the more exotic migrants. This time around I was aware of a good number early in the Winter, but they seemed to thin out as the season progressed, until the pair at the Garden were the only reliable ones. This is perhaps in keeping with their natural history profile, which claims that the northern edge of their range expands and contracts, depending on the severity of the Winter. Whether some perished, or just left town, I can't say, but at least this one pair made it through the worst Winter we've had in several years. I dared to hope they would nest here, but it still came as a surprise when I pointed my binocular at the high-pitched, sibilant twitter coming from a Yew, and found myself looking at four little ones, huddled on a single branch. They already had their parent's pattern, but with the juvenile proportions which automatically evoke our "oh, they're so cute!" response.
The parents soon appeared with food, and they're pretty cute themselves, but there's something about Wrens that goes beyond cuteness. Compact and cocky, they're bold and noisy birds, belying their small size. The ancient Celts considered them sacred, and told how the Wren became the King of the Birds. A contest was held, with the highest flying bird to be named the ruler. It looked like the Eagle would soar to the kingship, but the Wren hid away in his tail feathers, and used the raptor as a launching pad to the crown.
A Trickster, indeed.
Some strange remnant of Wren sacrifice still goes on in Ireland today, but our local species have sacrificed enough just getting through the Winter.
Birds cannot afford the long childhood we enjoy. Wrens and Hawks alike must quickly learn to fly and fend for themselves. In these brief weeks we gain a little insight into the speed of their lives, while pausing for a moment in our own. Cheering for Hawks, or peering into brambles after Wrens, is no more attention than we would give our children, or wish for from our parents. An appropriate attitude towards Nature will put us in both positions, yet leaves us ever viewing from afar, like Eagle-lofted Wrens, carried beyond our bounds.
May 31, 2001
Put Away the Maypole
Too soon, the season runs its course.The trees are fully leafed-out now, and though their greens are still darkening, the dense foliage has but few birds to hide, as the migration draws to a close, along with the month of Maying.
It all happened so fast.
Spring is part of a pattern, yet each Spring has a pattern of its own. This one came to a head in a brief spell of unseasonably warm weather early in May, but then, in an inversion of the usual pattern, turned cool and damp towards the end of the month.
Still, its charges are accomplished.
The calendar shows three more weeks of Spring, but the next warm front is apt to smack of Summer. The first broods of fledgling birds have already left the nest (these are local breeders), while seeds of Maple, Elm and Ash are in the wind. The Groundhog, however he spent the Winter, has overcome his fear of shadows, and was seen on the Mount last weekend.
Me, I just turn in circles, chasing after last year's patterns, or last week's, until the moment overcomes my preconceptions, revealing naked acts of being, patternless as Now.
These moments may be strung together, through memory and through anticipation. In such a way, we may discover just where it is we stand today.
Today we say goodbye to May.
I will leave you with what I sought at the beginning of the month, but, typically, could not obtain until its end. After a gray and rainy stretch, Memorial Day dawned with a morning beyond the dreams of those who slumber through the break of day. Fleeting in its glory, its lucent beams creased by the trees, igniting banks of dawn-spawned mist, one last May morning coalesced inside the camera lens.
This was it.
May 29,2001
Beech Party
May 28, 2001
Memory Day
Memorial Day again, and I think I’ve said that I don’t have much use for martial commemorations. There are no holy wars, and holidays are markers of another sort. For every war is meant to be the last, while every holiday is but the next, the latest repetition of our way of being. “Remember, lest we repeat”, they say, but what we remember is what we do; memory itself is repetition, and war is best forgot.We remember, and we forget.
Memory cannot embalm the living moment,
nor forgetfulness vitiate the existential fact.
To turn towards, or to turn away:
the Holiday is in your choice.
On this day that ushers in the leisure season, memory serves to ingratiate the past in the eyes of the future; to ease the passage of the one into the other. The point of exchange is the site of celebration.
Here is a bargain between past and future, and the fulfillment of a promise.
The American Chestnut, recalled from the depths of forgetfulness. These are the trees that were planted last Spring, atop the Great Hill. The latest in blight-resistant cultivars, these Chestnuts seek to reintroduce a forgotten presence to the local biome. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Hill grows another Chestnut, this one a literal memory. It is not planted, but likely a sprout from what remains of one of the old trees, killed back by the blight. The roots do not die, but continue to put forth new stems, which eventually succumb to the pathogen, a fate the new trees are designed to escape.
For now, it’s all in the past and in the future. The trees look indistinguishable, though separated by heritage and potential. Between those poles, new leaves unfold, ephemeral as Spring.