It’s 9:50 AM and the days I’ve been waiting trickle away into minutes. I bust out the door of Main Hall with a purpose, and reach for my phone to dial for James. As expected, he doesn’t answer. The night before, he claimed that he would be waking up early to go to the dining hall and score some fruit and bread to provide a little nourishment for our empty stomachs while we spend the day in exploration of a patch of nearby woods. So, I figured he’s out and about in preparation. The plan for the day? There is no plan for the day. No specific plan anyway. Only the hope that our experiences open our eyes to a more vivid understanding of the world, decide upon what is and what should be, and to provide perspective to our desire. We know our goals, though the events of the day are up in the air. As I approach James’ residence hall, I feel my pocket vibrate. I pull out my phone and open it. Out of the speaker comes the familiar voice of my partner in crime,
“Hey man, sorry I’m just waking up now, let yourself in and I’ll leave the door open for you while I get ready.”
If this were anyone else, I might have felt the beginning signs of the anxieties that have plagued me for my whole life, the anxieties that I never really understood and are only starting to grasp along with my “coming of age” so to speak. I’m historically a prompt person, and lateness to pre-planned events has always been a pet peeve of mine. But knowing James as well as I do, I’m sure that his routine won’t take him more than three minutes. Three and a half tops. James dons his signature Doc Martin’s “Bouncing Sole” boots and his vintage unicorn pullover with a hood reminiscent of a praying monk. He grabs his messenger bag and fills it with his essentials; a bag of craisins, and a blanket to make meditation on the cold damp forest floor a little more bearable. James is ready. I can see it in his eyes behind his thick rimmed Buddy Holly glasses that he’s as excited as I am. Or perhaps I just see the slightly crazed appearance of a man who hasn’t consumed anything but water for a day and a half.
This is the same appearance that I see when I look in the mirror. We made the decision to forgo food and fast on water the day prior to our adventure. Now when I say nothing but water, I mean nothing but water. This might seem easy to some, but food was the least of our worries. Everyone has a vice, and James and I are no exception. If anything, we’re living examples of chemical dependence. Whether it is the desire for my morning tea, or his morning coffee, the desire for his first cig of the day, or my afternoon hookah fix, not to mention our fairly consistent habits with other less-than-savory substances, these things make up a scaffold of our desires, every support of which we make ourselves acutely attuned through cessation. Then suddenly, cessation ends.
My legs feel slightly chilled as I trudge up and down the hilly landscape toward our destination. It’s been a bitterly cold winter and it would be an utter disappointment not to take full advantage of the two-day Indian winter that random chance has blessed us with this fine February Friday. I look to my feet and see the sneakers that I know won’t last long. If you’ve never walked through the woods barefoot, you should really try. You’d be surprised at the beating human feet can take. Or perhaps my ancestor’s evolution brings me just a little closer to the hobbit. I like that thought. My ironic hipster cutoff jeans rest just over my knees, and I can’t help but notice the waist is a little tighter since I last wore them in the fall. A button down flannel is the only barrier separating the never-ending West Chester wind from my torso. On my back, I carry a bag with my essentials; water, meditation blanket, paper, and pen. As I run the checklist through my head, I can’t help but notice a certain feeling of youthful wonder creeping through my body. It’s 10:30, and euphoria is setting in.
James and I cross the damp, wooden bridge connecting the land on either side of the creek that acts as the border to the woods and search for our first forest home. We start by following the trail. Though as our minds wander, so do our feet, and soon enough we’re trudging through a mosaic of rotting leaves and underbrush. We spot a promising fallen giant and upon further inspection, it looks like the perfect place to make camp. James decides to wonder off, but I’m not finished here. I’m a creature of comfort, and I feel reassurance from regularity, so this log strikes me as the perfect place to start exploring my thoughts. I sit in half lotus position and begin taking in my surroundings. The leaves coat the entire forest floor, creating natural pointillism. Up close, individual fragments of tan and brown become a familiar gold sheen at a distance. I close my eyes and hear the sound of gusts soaring through the jungle of lifeless trees and bushes, fallen logs and ancient stones. I expand my earshot and hear birds coo high above the trees, and even higher the airplanes that are half hidden above the canopy.
Though the forest is seemingly saturated by the smell of rotting plant matter, the potential for life is evident. I am not saddened by all of the decay, for our universe operates a system based on the beautiful transition of energy. With every rotting tree trunk, I see the possibility for a new tree to arise. Somewhere, something is benefitting from the nutrition provided by this decomposing Goliath. Sitting here in what most would consider wilderness, I feel a peculiar awareness for the ever-reaching arms of modern technology. Though I sit on a rotting log above a sea of plants and animals, the sound of sirens, cars, busses, badly lubricated breaks, and an indistinguishable hum produced from who-knows-what, pollute the whispers of the creek not more than two minutes walk away. This awareness prompts me to present the question, “Is it valuable to distance oneself from technology? Would this liberation lead to a greater wisdom for right thinking?”
These last thoughts are interrupted by nature’s natural alarm system, rustling leaves and breaking sticks. I turn around to see two figures walking toward me. Both were high in stature, though the one on the left was slightly taller and skinnier. The figure on the right was leaning forward and swinging his arms in a way similar to what my mind conceives of Sasquatch. I knew immediately that the latter was James. As they approach, it becomes clear that the other walker was,
“Ben!”
“Hey man! I’ve got my hoodie here, but I forgot the knife. We don’t have anything to cut the sleeves off of this thing with.”
“That’s alright, even better.” I go on, “We’ll have to make some tools anyway if we want to put together a shelter.”
“A shelter?” he asks.
Ben doesn’t seem convinced that anything we construct today will keep us sufficiently dry. The last month brought near two feet of snow that took its time to melt, providing the ground with daily doses of moisture during the day before freezing back up at night. However, we decide that it would be a fun project anyway. We begin to toil away, searching our surroundings for anything that would make for building materials and move them into a pile near our fallen giant. Ben and I work to put together a frame that at first looks promising, but after countless slips and cracks we conclude that the wood is too damn moist and rotten for us to make any reasonable shelter.
“These logs don’t want to be our home!” I cry out.
Ben considers our fallen shelter for a moment and supposes, “These logs can still be our home. We just need to give up the idea we had for home before. Then, anything will be comfortable.”
“Like this log?”
“Yeah, like this log.”
“So we’re home?”
“Yeah, we’re home.”
I walk the twelve steps up the hill and sit back on the log carefully draped by my meditation blanket. As I consider my conversation with Ben I realize the arbitrary, fluid nature with which individuals find meaning in words. The word “home”, for example, strikes me with thoughts of a big brick house with red garage doors on a suburban street in Eastern Pennsylvania. The word “home” probably means something dramatically different to say, a Tibetan refugee in Dharamsala, or even more dramatically different from say, a chimpanzee. Every word in every language is the embodiment of a complex wealth of definitions, precepts and biases. And even among cultures, there is always going to be a spectrum of these traits exhibited by its individuals. My mind momentarily ponders the subject until Ben and I come to realize that we haven’t seen James in at least a half hour. As if by divine command, we hear the nature alarm sound off again and upon turning our heads we spot the Sasquatch figure plodding over the ridge.
While waiting for our friend, Ben and I stand around with our eyes glued to the uppermost branches of the forest’s trees, watching the breeze blow their twisted tips to and fro. The way that the trees reacted to the wind, one could say that they were breathing. Our thoughts were interrupted when James finally reached us,
“We should move. I want to walk around the woods more. Maybe we can find a better home base.”
I was hesitant at first, being that I had become so comfortable at our current position. I already felt attached to our location. We had left our mark on it. There was the attempt at a shelter, and my meditation blanket was ever so comfortable. But when considering my thoughts, I realized that I was being ridiculous. Our shelter was nothing more than a pile of sticks and the blanket would be comfortable just about anywhere else in these woods. I decide to say yes for a change, agree to move camp, and while I’m at it, I take off my shoes.
The bottom of my feet felt an array of stimuli as I hiked aimlessly through the wood. Crunchy, soft, dry, moist, sharp, smooth, my feet felt just about every adjective under the sun. The discomfort was invigorating. Along the walk we make jokes and engage in mindless wordplay.
James jokes, “We should start telling people that we’re hicks, and that will give hicks a good name.”
Eventually, we find a prime spot for camp. Several trees had fallen in a way that provided coverage from behind and on both sides while leaving the landscape in front of us plainly visible. I lay out my blanket, take a seat, cross my legs, sit tall, and place my hands on their respective knees while Ben and James pretend to be acrobats on the trees that compose our new home base. Finally, I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Breathing this forest air felt like the first breath after swimming the entire length of a pool. The crisp, pure air satisfies my lungs like the stagnant air of my apartment never could.
My mind’s thoughts wander from my lungs south, toward my barren stomach. I must say that my expectations for my fast were a little off the mark. My original hope was that avoiding food and substance would help to diminish my physical desires. Instead, I only feel more aware of my desires. At first, this upsets me, but upon further contemplation I realize that this awareness is exactly what I was looking for. Life is filled with desires, and these desires are the cause of my suffering. That being said, I am not prepared to give up all the things that I desire in my life. I like food, I like my computer, I like chemicals that make me feel good, I like sex, who doesn’t? The point being, it couldn’t hurt to take some time to consider moderation.
Despite all the desires that act to enhance our worldly suffering, I am consoled by the words of Jack Kerouac, “Though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are still pretty glorious.” I don’t think that Kerouac is speaking solely of a literal “flesh”, but rather using the term as a hyponym representing all suffering. Some may argue against the glories of life, though I would argue that all of the desires, passions, motivations, captivations, experiences, relationships, random encounters, one night stands, successes, failures, all of the moments that have the power to move you or rip you apart, good or bad, the very fact that one can feel so strongly about anything is evidence enough that existence is inherently valuable.
The world is something We care about. The “We” being all creatures, not just humans, beast and plant alike, along with all other life forms that we don’t have a name for yet, truly, the Earth and its children strive together. We are all striving for the least restrictive environment in which no man or woman is ever denied or marginalized based on socially constructed factors such as economic class, race, or gender. Nor should any human be marginalized according to biological factors such as sex or sexual orientation.
A truly just society is exempt from such groupings (including those of religious affiliation). Religion allows a few top dogs to make decisions for the masses without need for logical substantiation. I think Ayn Rand put it best in her famous interview with Phil Donahue when she said, “(mysticism) gives man permission to function irrationally, to accept something above and outside the power of their reason.” She goes on, “…it is evil to place your emotions, your desire above the evidence of what your mind knows.” It isn’t wrong to denounce religion if the religion in question is being used to retard the progress of human rights. The just society must have no tolerance for intolerance, even if the intolerance is promoted by a “loving god”. And in all major world religions (with the exception of Buddhism), the holy scriptures claim salvation for the “righteous”, and damnation to the rest. No such tenant can be substantiated in a just society because at its core, it breeds a false dichotomy that marginalizes a population.
This same concept is true for nationalism. Once one gets caught up in the idea that America is the best country in the world and we need to defend our freedom from the socialists that are trying to take it away, we are fostering a system that resists change toward social progress. Making such a claim arrogant. It’s like saying “we are the best, fuck the rest”. Only in a nationless society, that is, a society in which small communities work in cooperation and are citizens of the Earth, can equality be truly attained. Think back before the days of Rudyard Kipling. One must remember that the concept of race was unheard of before Columbus landed in the Americas. And then, look what happened when “race” was accepted as a biological standard in the United States. Slavery. No more race, no more nationality, no more religion, stop the labeling of minority groups. It is of no use, for the Earth and its children strive together.
I begin to wrap up the day by wrapping up my blanket. Crawling up and over the ridge behind me, I see Ben and James still engaging in acrobatics, climbing arm-thick trees as high as they can until the trunk gives way and arcs, lowering them back to the ground.
“Are you guys ready?” I ask.
They are. We gather our things and begin the journey home. The warm sunrays of the afternoon are long gone, and the breeze carries a chill. Exhausted, I feel as though things are finally winding down. My mind is operating with some semblance of normalcy while the abstract, free associative thought that earlier beset my mind lessened and lessened. Today offered me a menagerie of mundane experiences that painted my mind with complex musings, emotions, and realizations. I didn’t undergo any major changes in my perspective, I only unfogged the glasses through which I already view the world. Finally, upon reaching my apartment I slip into my door and under my covers, content.
No comments:
Post a Comment