(ONOMATOTREEah)
Traumnesia:
a loss of recall, abandoned by all the shimmering echoes once left by life itself. . . stranded, untethered in an ache for
remembrance
of what song(?), once carried in the heart, yet still uncontained, merging towards the tree line at the same point that the tree line moves back into my being, singing ... singing ....
how one speaks to oneself: aware of the participation with thoughts that rise too fast to be caught in words. my private lexicon. recognized or no, every human has one ... part of what limits us to humanity ...
meanings, associated images scatter seed so softly - across sawdust or concrete - growth nonetheless occurs - so swift, unconscious feeling tones below liminal lines - if pulled together to produce some physical version of a book - a dictionary, "airy" indeed - mine, floating up out of the reader's hands and bidding or forbidding them to follow - come move through the world with me
i will show you my language
~words not defined with more words in endless tedium but defined with images - things more often found in scrap books, or Lost and Tossed Antique Shops ....
however, even "cat" would not then simply have a picture of a cat - wish in a way it were that simple.
it is not - not like that. a tree would certainly not have a picture of a tree.
but the word wisdom.
there would be the tree. having stated that words make poor tools for explaining or defining inner language, i now set out to use them towards explaining why i feel this is so
... a fool's errand.
Defining Wisdom
over the last year, the "wisdom tree" has become an ungroomed forest tree with just a few limbs, maybe a couple, fecund and foliaged, but most are bare: no longer growing or showing signs of new life. the whole of it still potent with a tender volition, it is clearly a life force - inclusive -shimmering with a silence that is and does what it does in love - at least that is what i see ...
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that's what i see and this is the pivotal point - how it does that - how it "knows" which branches to leave alone. there are problems with that question in itself and why knowledge has NOTHING to do with my dictionary's wisdom.
HOW TO DRAW A TREE
recalling a favorite art class (and teacher) in college - on a warmer day nearing spring break, he sent us out to (wait for it...) draw a tree. the class scattered at distance for better perspective. i sat with my knee resting on a big base root at the point it began its subterranean plunge.
our teacher let us work for a couple hours, then gather to share what we'd done. everyone else, and i mean every one - had a full drawing of the whole tree. lots of talented people in this class, so they were all very, very good . mine was ... i don't know .... it was nowhere near complete, and miniscule as compared to the whole; part of a part of a limb - i'd worked on one segment of a branch - striving to include every junction and crook ~ following one, then going back and REALLY trying to be true to each unraveled, twining limb and its countless offshoots with each of those, same again, sending out sending's ... from stick to twig to tendril. thankfully, no leaves yet - imagine the vein schemes in every one of those (and again, the root system with its mostly unseen implications) - i painstakingly over-describe what i went through in that couple of hours, intentionally, i looked up synonyms (which I RARELY do but had few in my own recall) for "branching out" and there aren't many that satifactorily invoke that thing trees do so well - the exponential tributary phenomenon. it occurs all over ... our bodies and the natural world - my drawing was an earnest attempt at the impossible, a pencil draft of possibility - looking back, i think too, i was drafting (most especially) an image of the way my thinking mind presents thought itself.
train of thought ... not - no clear linear clean bullet train where word by word, one idea connects to the next in logical fashion and order, A pretty good metaphor for this - Lego blocks - clean fit - this to this - things make sense, yes yes that clicks for me - very satisfying -
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- it's always already never been Legos for me - the inherent ache in communicating via human speech - a grief built into its lack - Legos cannot touch .... much. not really. "When you come to a fork in the road, take it (Yogi Berra)." sage advice ... and humbling - this conundrum, drumming my fingers at every fork with various varying prongs, pronging on and on ....
The Lego Solution does have its appeal - on the surface - a false comfort offered in the age of reason - through its mechanisms we become logically "inoculated to mystery (Joseph Campbell)." In my dictionary -years of acquired knowledge or learning or erudite scholarship or IQ or books read do not add up to wisdom
... ....
French philosopher Derrida will not use the word KNOW unless he puts an x through it -Peter Attia (physician and researcher) comments about research and the scientific method: "no thought structure is right, but at particular times for particular people, they can be profoundly helpful .... until they quit working ... (but) even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes." his skepticism might offend, but Ben Bikman PhD and many other care full researchers point out that science SHOULD be most skeptical, especially of one's own agenda and confirmation bias. We have lost this and scientific enquiry has been largely replaced by consensus and science fiction.
RESEARCH (versus) INVESTIGATION (verses)
met so many people that "do their own research" by typing questions into their favorite search engine and clicking on a link they are predisposed to prefer. This generally comforts them and reinforces their Lego pieces are the right ones. if they accidentally find something counter to this process, they can click again or talk to someone that agrees with them and will help them explain away any horrible encounter that may have rocked their certainty.
whereas investigation requires an investment- it's time consuming, confusing and uncomfortable, if not painful (this might be a sign you are actually DOING it). it's likely to deconstruct some of your favorite Lego blocks down to bare boned false presumptions (those self evident truths we take as given to be correct but are often ... not). investigation seeks asking unanswerable questions that open into more of the same and call one to wander into places where you listen to those people, once so disagreeable to your own sensibilities, and realize your beliefs were lacking - missing something or maybe... yes ... ok. you were wrong. you made a mistake ....
i had a counsellor that oh so gently corrected me in my word choices - when i said i had made a mistake and was wrong - she clucked her tongue and said a better way of putting that (espoused by more than one dharma teacher i've listened to) is to say i was unskillful -
i thought about that and well - a couple things - it could be something lost in translation to western culture, but i don't see this semantic shift as helpful (this probably deserves much more musing and elaboration -as does, about everything ... to my point - but i will press on). Mis-take - what's your take on this? ever been asked that? what's your interpretation of .... something - and that is all we ever do as humans, and so. if you misinterpret. or mis understand - which is another thing we often do as humans - it is a mis-take. i don't need flowery language to obscure this - it isn't a bad thing. i think it is quite skillful to say i was wrong. it was a mistake.
i heard a story about Gandhi- i don't have the details, but he was at a huge conference and disagreed with someone about a line of text from a book they were discussing - they went back and forth - until someone provided the actual book so they could look it up. when it was revealed that Gandhi was incorrect, he started to laugh gleefully and say over and over, i'm wrong, i'm wrong .....!!!
a joyous event - i applaud such a gentle rebellion against hubris, and the unfortunate human stance that we could ever be "right." being right is a fantastic way to stunt growth. we risk dependence on it as more and more individual's habitually begin sentences with "I am a..." and then identify with ideologies, labels, organizations - I am a democrat, nra member peta founder bra burner pacifist authority ... please see the sign in my yard and correlative bumper sticker .... gonna be hard to shift those beliefs if one's me maker is defined and infused by them.
Lego my ego - a tree doesn't categorize or cling to any limb - or judge its self as compared to its neighbor - or perhaps even do the "self" thing at all - it's innate "wisdom" to know which branches require attention so they will foster leaves and growth and which hold a dormant place in time at present time - still part of the whole, but inert in forward motion - archival somehow for the system - connected to a deeper ring in the trunk from a gone season.
my mind's splatter paint ruminative tendency, heat lightening volleyed between memory and imagination - looking through its wild spinning schema - towards them - the trees - how to hold an old branch without returning and tangling through its dormant intricacy - lost in replay - all the different reasons it's no longer in my present life. - neural branching beliefs and habits are tricky, those symbolizing relationship with others - particularly difficult - especially with those, now gone - by death or decision, theirs or mine - i do not want them cut away - there my be a place for bonsai or landscape services, but not in my dictionary. not in my heart.
- some of the most comforting, loving relationships i have currently are with beings (people and a dog) that died some time ago. i still consult them and our connection is as good or better now than when they were alive - what about a branch like that? still growing? just sketched in smoke, and only deeply past dusk - expansive where no one can see? it still shapes me.
Let go the Lego
pushed far enough, most metaphors and verses start to break down. left empty and open on wonder's doorstep and there is - the branch - in winter, full of dead leaves - how? the winds have gusted up to 70 mph amidst blizzard sub-zero, but still they
did not let go.
how many past times, passed by, unseeing, because we have the word "tree" blocking intimacy with that being or phenomenon that has little to do with the word or concept (Legos tend to do what they are).
the season of winter.
levels the playing field. not as a season of death, absence of life ...you simply can't tell - life might await anywhere in continuum - is the branch without buds or leaves dead? can it feel me here asking - can it feel ... WHAT IS THE FEELING in feeling from the inside out, without out or in - liberated from description and proclaiming. then saying, without script and reverence without scripture, scripting love and service without lip service questions not towards answer questions branching into more of their own kind in kind askance, not toward eureka exclamation but a soft honor of possibility humbled at the anterior of what's possible at all, and that most dear the possible connection with a thought or another soul - as if i could ever be aloof to this, to you, whether you are here now or far gone,
those portrait lines retrace and skin scent rises ascendant, hidden fallen into the understory.
if you are gone
i will not fear you for that absence;
i will still sometimes call and recall you, aware there can be no voice on the wind to answer. and in this i am fully human (humus - of the soil) and i don't know what to do
about that beautiful lively branch hacked away with a dull blade and a twisting fist. how does wisdom carry this? .
.
no recovering - just uncovering
