Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing
I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
*
This is an excerpt from W.S. Merwin's poem "For A Coming Extinction". I like when nature writers take a more conservative stand-point towards nature. Perhaps "conservative" is the wrong word, though. But I must admit, poems that idolize animals and celebrate nature on the surface can be very cliche and boring. This poem is not celebrating endangered or extinct animals on the surface, but is idolizing humans in a demeaning way. The truth is...is that the poem is very honest. There are several types of honesty, though. An objective and a subjective honesty. And the strange thing is that I don't know which is which. One type of honesty would be that we, as a human race, determine what is important. And what is important is us. Everything is based on our perspective. If we really wanted animals to have rights, we would let them vote. That type of thing. We naturally override everything natural around us because we obtain a consciousness that allows us to do (or think) so. The other truth is that we are not, really, any better than the natural world. "Better" is subjective, for it is a term that we create and strive for as a human race. But in the long run, just to sound like a broken record on purpose (which is what this poem is doing, and I like that), like the manatees and whales, we're all going to die.
Another interesting approach to nature is embodied in Lucille Clifton's poem "defending my tongue". Not only is nature landscape in this poem, but it is also lifestyle and voice. The natural voice of this poem is very evident--that of an uneducated African American woman defending the tongue of her ancestors.
Both of these poems are very blunt and verbal poems, which I like. I find it interesting, though, that I also admire Pattiann Rogers' poem "The Hummingbird: A Seduction". The title itself hints at sexuality, and although there is sexuality in this poem, it is very subtle and I like how it doesn't seem forced or too blunt.
And if I saw your sweeping and sucking
Performance of swirling egg and semen in the air,
The weaving, twisting vision of red petal
And nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your win
In its grand confusion of arcing and splitting
Created completely out of nothing just for me.
*
This is a love poem. Some of it gets a bit carried away, in my opinion, but there are beautiful parts in this poem that show a sincere celebration of the lover. "I would bless the base/of each of your feathers and touch the tine/of string muscles binding your wings..." Such a beautiful image right there! It is interesting that the poet chose the hummingbird to demonstrate this love, for the hummingbird is quick, easy to not notice, and brash in its movement while at the same time very deliberate, beautiful, graceful, and in flight. Personally, if I were to write a love poem that concerns a bird, I would choose something larger, perhaps. And slow. Something that perches high up and observes, then swoops down for a closer look or a kill. Something predatorial, but only because that is what it must do. Predatorial might be wrong. Maybe I'm searching for intent and deliberation. A goal. A desire to pursue. To pursue with grace.
An uneffective poem would be "Milkweed" by James Wright. The poem is too self-indulged to the point where the "me-ness" drowns the image or essence of the milkweed. I'm not even sure what is going on in the poem because I am so concerned with what the narrator is explaining about himself. When I think the milkweed is being alluded to, I doubt myself, thinking, "This isn't the milkweed, this is something else. Something more alive." I need a better description or presence of the milkweed in order to understand the presence of the narrator.
Because poetry is a technique that allows us to narrow or zero in on something particular, one would think that nature would be an easy subject for poetry, but it absolutely isn't. For all the comparing of nature to humanity that we do, we do not always compare nature to our own personal lives...the simple things we do between walls and underneath roofs. When we think of people vs. nature or people & nature, we think pluralistically, rather than individually or singly. It is easy to use nature as a metaphor or soundboard for how awful we can be as humans, but we don't often write poems about how nature reflects our experiences in the bathroom as we brush our teeth or do the dishes or say goodbye to loved ones. I think it would be interesting to see more of that. Interesting. And mandatory.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Wild Spot
There is not a cloud in the sky today. And it is warm. The weather is very fickle and it is interesting to watch the landscape here go from sopping to crisp. The ground isn't so cold beneath me and the lichen has resumed to its crumbly texture. It's amazing how dry everything has gotten. I noticed it yesterday, too, when I was in Millvale with my friend Dan. We hiked to the top of a large hill, started a small fire, and boiled some noodles over it. The fire a decent size in just a matter of minutes and it burned hot against the legs of our pants.
I woke up with a tick on my thigh this morning...from being in the woods with Dan yesterday. It must have crawled up my pant leg and was feasting on me all night. I scraped the sucker off and struggled to flick the thing into the drain of the sink. Right after I washed it down the drain, I regretted it, thinking that I should have kept it and analyzed it. But I was in too much shock. With all the hiking I have done, I have never had such a huge tick on me, just small ones.
It would be interesting to scavenge this area, looking for bones, broken glass, rocks, and pieces of metal. It would be easy to do a small excavation here. Before the end of the semester, I would like to perform a small excavation and see what I can find. Another thing I would like to do before the end of the semester is visit this place at night. I need to do both of these things before it gets too cold. Especially the excavation, because I don't want the ground to freeze too much.
I wish rivers made more noise, much like how an ocean does. I wish the tide was stronger and more turbulent. The Allegheny River is supposedly very fast and dangerous. Although it is intriguing for something so dangerous and slick to be silent, it would be very interesting to be able to hear the river from here...or from my house which is only four blocks away from the river. I don't hear the barges on the river right now, but I still hear the mechanical clangs of the factories across the river. The crows are still cawing in the canopy as it undresses itself in the wind. Soon the crows will be nothing but silhouettes on naked branches, their beaks open like the shadow puppets I used to make when trying to fall asleep as a child.
I have been staying up later. And so I have been even more intrigued to explore outside the confines of my house after the moon has risen. I shall come here soon, quietly, and with little help or light. I will sit here where I am now, maybe a little distant from the entrance to this cave, so that I do not disturb what may go in and out of it in the night. I want to explore the world that people retreat from when the sun goes down or when the weather is disagreeable. There is a whole world that we miss when we go in when it rains or gets dark. People tie these to danger, but I would like to tie them to wonder. Instead of just seeing the footprints, I'll see or hear the feet. Instead of walking through the bowing grass of deer-beds, I will see the glow of their eyes or the weight of their hoof.
I woke up with a tick on my thigh this morning...from being in the woods with Dan yesterday. It must have crawled up my pant leg and was feasting on me all night. I scraped the sucker off and struggled to flick the thing into the drain of the sink. Right after I washed it down the drain, I regretted it, thinking that I should have kept it and analyzed it. But I was in too much shock. With all the hiking I have done, I have never had such a huge tick on me, just small ones.
It would be interesting to scavenge this area, looking for bones, broken glass, rocks, and pieces of metal. It would be easy to do a small excavation here. Before the end of the semester, I would like to perform a small excavation and see what I can find. Another thing I would like to do before the end of the semester is visit this place at night. I need to do both of these things before it gets too cold. Especially the excavation, because I don't want the ground to freeze too much.
I wish rivers made more noise, much like how an ocean does. I wish the tide was stronger and more turbulent. The Allegheny River is supposedly very fast and dangerous. Although it is intriguing for something so dangerous and slick to be silent, it would be very interesting to be able to hear the river from here...or from my house which is only four blocks away from the river. I don't hear the barges on the river right now, but I still hear the mechanical clangs of the factories across the river. The crows are still cawing in the canopy as it undresses itself in the wind. Soon the crows will be nothing but silhouettes on naked branches, their beaks open like the shadow puppets I used to make when trying to fall asleep as a child.
I have been staying up later. And so I have been even more intrigued to explore outside the confines of my house after the moon has risen. I shall come here soon, quietly, and with little help or light. I will sit here where I am now, maybe a little distant from the entrance to this cave, so that I do not disturb what may go in and out of it in the night. I want to explore the world that people retreat from when the sun goes down or when the weather is disagreeable. There is a whole world that we miss when we go in when it rains or gets dark. People tie these to danger, but I would like to tie them to wonder. Instead of just seeing the footprints, I'll see or hear the feet. Instead of walking through the bowing grass of deer-beds, I will see the glow of their eyes or the weight of their hoof.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
"Blue Iris" by Mary Oliver
There is a struggle in Mary Oliver's poems. Even in the poems beyond her book Blue Iris. Within her poems are dual worlds which the narrator straddles and contemplates. One world is that of ambition and the other seems to be the sanctuary of nature. Ambition concerns money, fame, success, and the daily-grind. Nature concerns an inner-knowing, peace, and appreciation. Here is an excerpt from her poem "Black Oaks" that embodies the struggle between ambition and nature.
Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another--why don't you get going?
For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.
And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money.
I don't even want to come in out of the rain.
We are living in a time where idleness is the enemy and ambition is the force. In her poems, Oliver wants to choose idleness and encourages sleeping in the grasses and lounging near the river. Her poems make me think about Rachel Carson's essay "The Sense of Wonder", about how we need to encourage children to be curious about nature so that we, as adults, can learn something from these children.
A poem by Mary Oliver is very easy to recognize when looking down at the page. Her poems trickle down the page like formed raindrops, in stanzas where all the words seem to count. When reading these poems to myself, I realize that the form and line breaks of these poems makes me really want to hear these poems be read aloud. In my desperation to hear a Mary Oliver poem be read aloud, I went to youtube and found this video of a woman reciting "Wild Geese" while waiting in the car for her husband while he was at a doctor's appointment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqmQ829qYRc
Her poems make me, as a human being living in this world, feel delicate. Like I am in touch with the soft animal of myself. That I should allow this body to to crawl into whatever hole or nook that it desires. And lately, to be honest, I have been allowing this.
At the Entrance to the Cave
I am
a soft stone, sitting
and waiting for the moss'
green down to spread across
my back. The cave breathes
come in. The spiders spell
home with silk ink
that stretches above my head
like the black, slick roof
between two streets
where my mother waits to greet
this body. This shiny skin.
Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another--why don't you get going?
For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.
And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money.
I don't even want to come in out of the rain.
We are living in a time where idleness is the enemy and ambition is the force. In her poems, Oliver wants to choose idleness and encourages sleeping in the grasses and lounging near the river. Her poems make me think about Rachel Carson's essay "The Sense of Wonder", about how we need to encourage children to be curious about nature so that we, as adults, can learn something from these children.
A poem by Mary Oliver is very easy to recognize when looking down at the page. Her poems trickle down the page like formed raindrops, in stanzas where all the words seem to count. When reading these poems to myself, I realize that the form and line breaks of these poems makes me really want to hear these poems be read aloud. In my desperation to hear a Mary Oliver poem be read aloud, I went to youtube and found this video of a woman reciting "Wild Geese" while waiting in the car for her husband while he was at a doctor's appointment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqmQ829qYRc
Her poems make me, as a human being living in this world, feel delicate. Like I am in touch with the soft animal of myself. That I should allow this body to to crawl into whatever hole or nook that it desires. And lately, to be honest, I have been allowing this.
At the Entrance to the Cave
I am
a soft stone, sitting
and waiting for the moss'
green down to spread across
my back. The cave breathes
come in. The spiders spell
home with silk ink
that stretches above my head
like the black, slick roof
between two streets
where my mother waits to greet
this body. This shiny skin.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Wild Spot
As I climbed up the hill to the mineshaft, I came across an old, white, dirty golf ball. This past summer, I went on a mushrom hunt with the Western Pennsylvania Mushroom Society and they warned me not to get too excited when I think I see an amazing mushroom ahead, because it will most likely be a flourescent golf ball. It was very appropriate today, though, that I found this golfball instead of some psychadelic shroom.
My grandpap passed away Friday night at 10:30, about four hours after I visted him as his last visitor. He squirmed in his hospital bed like a tiny bird, unable to breathe. I stroked his feathery hair and guided his hands to restful positions.
My pap loved golf. He ventured onto the green hills well into his eighties. His partner of thirty-one years, Cindy, told me that if I have something to put in his coffin, I should do so. I had no idea what to put in there.
Until now.
If I think about it, my pap is more connected to this place I'm sitting at now than anyone else. The dark places I have explored in my childhood and now adulthood are pretty much his backyard. I am close to the Allegheny River right now. In front, I hear the barges and their heavy metallic noises on the water. My pap lived right near the river where he used to send thousands of golf balls arching into its current. He used to work at the old glass factory near here that has been shut down and now mounds of glass blocks and shards accumulate. He lost his eye at that job. It was ironically replaced with a glass eye. And I don't think that I am forcing a connection as I sit with this old golfball at my feet, next to a hole in the ground. A hole I had entered not too long ago, alive, breathing, in awe.
But at the same time, it feels like I haven't been here in a while. The ground is now covered with leaves and the foliage down below, where the deer sleep, is less dense. The temperature has definitely dropped these past two weeks and frost has settled. Snow has accumulated not even 150 miles east of here. Dew droplets dot the scraggily spider webs above my head, weighing them down. They look more like a scene after a celebration when all the ribbons are loose and balloons are deflated. There's definitely a lot of lowering and dying going on.
I'm going to take home some leaves and press them, maybe make a boquet of them to hang on my bedroom wall. I am still in the long process of moving back home and I have a forest of things, but no place to put them. Hundreds and hundreds of books. I sleep on the floor and it makes me feel like I am here for some reason, at my wild spot, taking in my surroundings.
I feel like I am going through a "wildening" of my own. I've been withdrawing into the outside. Even in the most public of places like the book store I work at, the school I go to, or the grocery store. I feel that everything is asking me to hold my breath and crawl into it as an observer. I feel I don't belong in any of these places. At my pap's viewing, I took solace in the flowers and a curl of hair on a baby's head. I'm taking all these steps back all of a sudden and I have not yet ran into a wall.
I like it.
The entrace of the mine shaft still smells like peanut butter. Leaves are still falling their propelling fall and the birds I wish I could identify are still calling their call. I was prompted to buy two magazines about birding when I went to buy my new 2010 Farmer's Almanac. Hopefully I'll learn something. The lichen, to the touch, is not crumbly since it is now wet. It is more like makeup and it sticks to my finger like foundation. I never wear makeup, but I just smeared an arc of the calcium green foundation across my forehead.
I hear two men walking the path together. I don't think that they can see me up here.
He makes enough mother-fuckin' money...
It's amusing that such thoughts and conversations exist in a place like this. And why wouldn't they? Anything normal can happen out here. I can read a book and drink tea here. I can serve freshly baked cookies here. I can call the bank here. I can worry about my school loans here. I can have my final thesis board meeting here. That last part was a joke....although I'm sure that quite a few professors would enjoy it.
I'm glad to be here right now. I'm not saying that because I see this place as an escape from the loss of my pap, either. I can cope with the inevitable, even though it is hard. I don't like using nature as an escape. When I venture into it, it's not to lessen anything or leave anything behind. If anything, it's to gain. To think more. Be engaged. Have an adventure.
I'm glad I'm here.
And I'm glad that I didn't find a mushroom.
My grandpap passed away Friday night at 10:30, about four hours after I visted him as his last visitor. He squirmed in his hospital bed like a tiny bird, unable to breathe. I stroked his feathery hair and guided his hands to restful positions.
My pap loved golf. He ventured onto the green hills well into his eighties. His partner of thirty-one years, Cindy, told me that if I have something to put in his coffin, I should do so. I had no idea what to put in there.
Until now.
If I think about it, my pap is more connected to this place I'm sitting at now than anyone else. The dark places I have explored in my childhood and now adulthood are pretty much his backyard. I am close to the Allegheny River right now. In front, I hear the barges and their heavy metallic noises on the water. My pap lived right near the river where he used to send thousands of golf balls arching into its current. He used to work at the old glass factory near here that has been shut down and now mounds of glass blocks and shards accumulate. He lost his eye at that job. It was ironically replaced with a glass eye. And I don't think that I am forcing a connection as I sit with this old golfball at my feet, next to a hole in the ground. A hole I had entered not too long ago, alive, breathing, in awe.
But at the same time, it feels like I haven't been here in a while. The ground is now covered with leaves and the foliage down below, where the deer sleep, is less dense. The temperature has definitely dropped these past two weeks and frost has settled. Snow has accumulated not even 150 miles east of here. Dew droplets dot the scraggily spider webs above my head, weighing them down. They look more like a scene after a celebration when all the ribbons are loose and balloons are deflated. There's definitely a lot of lowering and dying going on.
I'm going to take home some leaves and press them, maybe make a boquet of them to hang on my bedroom wall. I am still in the long process of moving back home and I have a forest of things, but no place to put them. Hundreds and hundreds of books. I sleep on the floor and it makes me feel like I am here for some reason, at my wild spot, taking in my surroundings.
I feel like I am going through a "wildening" of my own. I've been withdrawing into the outside. Even in the most public of places like the book store I work at, the school I go to, or the grocery store. I feel that everything is asking me to hold my breath and crawl into it as an observer. I feel I don't belong in any of these places. At my pap's viewing, I took solace in the flowers and a curl of hair on a baby's head. I'm taking all these steps back all of a sudden and I have not yet ran into a wall.
I like it.
The entrace of the mine shaft still smells like peanut butter. Leaves are still falling their propelling fall and the birds I wish I could identify are still calling their call. I was prompted to buy two magazines about birding when I went to buy my new 2010 Farmer's Almanac. Hopefully I'll learn something. The lichen, to the touch, is not crumbly since it is now wet. It is more like makeup and it sticks to my finger like foundation. I never wear makeup, but I just smeared an arc of the calcium green foundation across my forehead.
I hear two men walking the path together. I don't think that they can see me up here.
He makes enough mother-fuckin' money...
It's amusing that such thoughts and conversations exist in a place like this. And why wouldn't they? Anything normal can happen out here. I can read a book and drink tea here. I can serve freshly baked cookies here. I can call the bank here. I can worry about my school loans here. I can have my final thesis board meeting here. That last part was a joke....although I'm sure that quite a few professors would enjoy it.
I'm glad to be here right now. I'm not saying that because I see this place as an escape from the loss of my pap, either. I can cope with the inevitable, even though it is hard. I don't like using nature as an escape. When I venture into it, it's not to lessen anything or leave anything behind. If anything, it's to gain. To think more. Be engaged. Have an adventure.
I'm glad I'm here.
And I'm glad that I didn't find a mushroom.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Wild Spot with my Guest-of-Honor
This is not a cave. It's a mineshaft.
I brought my boyfriend to my wild spot. The leaves were falling like a surrender and we meandered all around the cave before finally lowering our bodies into it. It is about time that I brought another set of eyes with me to my wildspot. While my eyes scanned the ground, finding old bottles that I now collect and display in my kitchen, rocks, acorns, leaves...my boyfriend Jeremy found a nest of baby raccoons in the crevasse of a tall tree. The little masked children looked down at us without fear, not knowing, maybe, that we are typically something to fear. Look, Jeremy said, pointing up at them and I was in love in more ways than one right then.
We continued to follow a familiar path I had followed before. A very rough path that if you took the wrong step, you'd fall or slide off the side of a steep grade. Grasping on to weeds, jutting roots, and crumbling rock walls, we continued on the trail until we reached a look-out spot that overlooked the Tarentum Bridge that connects New Kensington to Tarentum/Natrona Heights. It was a beautiful view. It's interesting how when all your senses are working together, you create one scene. But if I were to close my eyes, I would hear traffic and a phone ringing. If I were to close my ears, I'd see a wide, meandering river, hills and hills of changing trees. If I were to close my eyes and ears, I'd smell the herbs I was unable to identify. At first it smelled like peppermint, but I know what peppermint looks like. Jeremy found the source of the smell and I pulled several from their roots. Over breakfast the next morning, he hung them upside down in my kitchen to dry.
I entered the cave/mineshaft first. This was my second time and I was a little bit nervous. I was very relieved that Jeremy, after seeing the not-so-welcoming entrance, was as giddy to enter the cave as I was. We entered like a backwards birth, into the cave. We located stalagmites and calcium deposits that were about a decade old. We came across raccoon tracks and their scat. On some of the scat, there was a strange mold that grew. It appeared like white hair and when I touched it with a stone, the white hair melted away from the rock towards the cave floor and turned black. Amazing! We were so excited. We were so excited, yet another underground excursion for us. We are growing used to being the warmest things.
I brought my boyfriend to my wild spot. The leaves were falling like a surrender and we meandered all around the cave before finally lowering our bodies into it. It is about time that I brought another set of eyes with me to my wildspot. While my eyes scanned the ground, finding old bottles that I now collect and display in my kitchen, rocks, acorns, leaves...my boyfriend Jeremy found a nest of baby raccoons in the crevasse of a tall tree. The little masked children looked down at us without fear, not knowing, maybe, that we are typically something to fear. Look, Jeremy said, pointing up at them and I was in love in more ways than one right then.
We continued to follow a familiar path I had followed before. A very rough path that if you took the wrong step, you'd fall or slide off the side of a steep grade. Grasping on to weeds, jutting roots, and crumbling rock walls, we continued on the trail until we reached a look-out spot that overlooked the Tarentum Bridge that connects New Kensington to Tarentum/Natrona Heights. It was a beautiful view. It's interesting how when all your senses are working together, you create one scene. But if I were to close my eyes, I would hear traffic and a phone ringing. If I were to close my ears, I'd see a wide, meandering river, hills and hills of changing trees. If I were to close my eyes and ears, I'd smell the herbs I was unable to identify. At first it smelled like peppermint, but I know what peppermint looks like. Jeremy found the source of the smell and I pulled several from their roots. Over breakfast the next morning, he hung them upside down in my kitchen to dry.
I entered the cave/mineshaft first. This was my second time and I was a little bit nervous. I was very relieved that Jeremy, after seeing the not-so-welcoming entrance, was as giddy to enter the cave as I was. We entered like a backwards birth, into the cave. We located stalagmites and calcium deposits that were about a decade old. We came across raccoon tracks and their scat. On some of the scat, there was a strange mold that grew. It appeared like white hair and when I touched it with a stone, the white hair melted away from the rock towards the cave floor and turned black. Amazing! We were so excited. We were so excited, yet another underground excursion for us. We are growing used to being the warmest things.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Beyond Desert Walls: Essays from Prison by Ken Lamberton
For three days, there was a dead mouse on the sidewalk near my garage. On that third day, yesterday, I came home in the middle of the afternoon. I went out and scooped the stiffened mouse onto a paper plate and took it inside. It sat on the counter as I did my come-home routines. Fed/watered the dog. Closed the blinds. Went to the bathroom. Turned on some music. The whole time, I thought about the mouse, dead on a plate on the counter. I thought about how a dead thing can't really harm anything. But we act like it does. We don't want to touch it or witness it or be around it. We don't want to bring it into the house and know that it's sitting there as plain as a mouse as we go about our routines of living.
I eventually sat down at the kitchen table with my rotting friend. I brought my nose up close and you can imagine the smell, I'm sure, if you ever smelled rotten potatoes or rancid roadkill. I examined the fur, trying to find lacerations, a reason for death. I thought about the setting of its death. Near the garage. A bird, I'm sure, had the mouse in its talons or beak. Dropped it to its internal bleeding death. I stroked the soft fur that was contaminated with still, white worms. They did not move or seem alive. Dead larvae? I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure. My favorite thing, though, was the mouse's belly. How it moved at every jab and poke of my index finger. How soft it felt. I felt it was full of blood. I stroked its small, almost non-existent ears. Its teeth, kind of buck-toothed, seemed like a metallic grey. I couldn't open its mouth. I didn't really try. Its tail was curved towards its body, coward-like. The eyes were closed, coward-like.
I did this yesterday, before I even began reading Lamberton's book Beyond Desert Walls. When I read the first chapter or essay, I was astounded at the coincidence. I read about roadkill and taxidermy and dead animals. And hours before, I was poking at a dead mouse, bringing it close to my nose. It might as well be my lips. Lamberton wrote,
Killing was my way of dealing with an environment I didn't understand, a brutal, arrogant reaction to its incomprehensible and awful strangeness. And because everything was strange, I killed over and over again. It was my first religion.
This made me think of Gessner's "gross contact". Experiencing nature through the unconventional. Experiencing nature through all the senses. Through rule-breaking. Through solitude. All of these elements, ironically, got him in trouble in his personal life. When I realized that these essays were from prison, I had expectations. From the selection of essays that I read, those expectations were not met. Although the essays we had to read for class were interesting, I didn't feel that prison played a major role in the writing.
I did like Lamberton's constant struggle with obtaining a parallel between his personal and professional life. By the end of the book, he proposes that his professional life is his personal life--that teaching isn't just a profession, but something that his life naturally insists upon. This is a feeling that I can relate to. How I would love for all my passions to turn out to be exactly what I can make a living from. It is important for the professional life and the personal life to become intimate. Lamberton craved intimacy with nature, in his own way. He writes,
I desired romance. Even more, I wanted the kind of relationship where reomantic chance encounters would be the interlocking strands of some new and profound ecological vision, where I wasn't a mere observer but a participant, where I was connected and my place made sense.
Not only did he want his placement as a teacher to make sense, but his placement as a naturalist or wildlife "interactor". There is that awful wall between humans and nature when human immerses their body into the natural landscape. It seems that whenever I walk into the forest, I must be very quiet and pause at every sound. Of course, I naturally do it so that I can pay closer attention to whatever I disturbed, but I also do it because I feel like the intruder. When people walk into the forest, they do it to be alone sometimes. Any sight or proof of civilization turns out to be a disappointment: a soda can, candy wrapper, a blazed or marked tree, footprints, etc. This leads to another interesting, but longer, excerpt that I really liked from this book.
Joseph Wood Krutch was right when he wrote: "When all the 'collecting,' photographing, and experimentation is taken into consideration--the best friend of the birds is often the one who pays no attention to them." First we cut down their trees. Then poison them with DDT and shoot them as pests and for sport. Today, more wise for the experience, we love them to death. Why is it that even the footprints we leave behind cause harm? Why must human culture always have an impact? And here I am, just as guilty as the developers and tourists. Checking birds off as if they were items on a shopping list. Teacher, bird watcher, writer--but still a consumer in the end. Seems I can't escape my own greedy human nature.
As amateur naturalists or nature enthusiasts, it is difficult to find our placement in nature. The things we love are the things we scare away. When you are observing a bird and the bird knows you are there, you are not observing the bird, per se, as a bird being a bird as if you are not there. You have changed the equation by adding yourself. The outcome will be different. The bird is going to be a bit more careful and wary with its actions since you are there. You're observing it be wary of you. Depending on the animal...you can also watch it want to destroy you.
Seems like a huge metaphor for love.
I eventually sat down at the kitchen table with my rotting friend. I brought my nose up close and you can imagine the smell, I'm sure, if you ever smelled rotten potatoes or rancid roadkill. I examined the fur, trying to find lacerations, a reason for death. I thought about the setting of its death. Near the garage. A bird, I'm sure, had the mouse in its talons or beak. Dropped it to its internal bleeding death. I stroked the soft fur that was contaminated with still, white worms. They did not move or seem alive. Dead larvae? I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure. My favorite thing, though, was the mouse's belly. How it moved at every jab and poke of my index finger. How soft it felt. I felt it was full of blood. I stroked its small, almost non-existent ears. Its teeth, kind of buck-toothed, seemed like a metallic grey. I couldn't open its mouth. I didn't really try. Its tail was curved towards its body, coward-like. The eyes were closed, coward-like.
I did this yesterday, before I even began reading Lamberton's book Beyond Desert Walls. When I read the first chapter or essay, I was astounded at the coincidence. I read about roadkill and taxidermy and dead animals. And hours before, I was poking at a dead mouse, bringing it close to my nose. It might as well be my lips. Lamberton wrote,
Killing was my way of dealing with an environment I didn't understand, a brutal, arrogant reaction to its incomprehensible and awful strangeness. And because everything was strange, I killed over and over again. It was my first religion.
This made me think of Gessner's "gross contact". Experiencing nature through the unconventional. Experiencing nature through all the senses. Through rule-breaking. Through solitude. All of these elements, ironically, got him in trouble in his personal life. When I realized that these essays were from prison, I had expectations. From the selection of essays that I read, those expectations were not met. Although the essays we had to read for class were interesting, I didn't feel that prison played a major role in the writing.
I did like Lamberton's constant struggle with obtaining a parallel between his personal and professional life. By the end of the book, he proposes that his professional life is his personal life--that teaching isn't just a profession, but something that his life naturally insists upon. This is a feeling that I can relate to. How I would love for all my passions to turn out to be exactly what I can make a living from. It is important for the professional life and the personal life to become intimate. Lamberton craved intimacy with nature, in his own way. He writes,
I desired romance. Even more, I wanted the kind of relationship where reomantic chance encounters would be the interlocking strands of some new and profound ecological vision, where I wasn't a mere observer but a participant, where I was connected and my place made sense.
Not only did he want his placement as a teacher to make sense, but his placement as a naturalist or wildlife "interactor". There is that awful wall between humans and nature when human immerses their body into the natural landscape. It seems that whenever I walk into the forest, I must be very quiet and pause at every sound. Of course, I naturally do it so that I can pay closer attention to whatever I disturbed, but I also do it because I feel like the intruder. When people walk into the forest, they do it to be alone sometimes. Any sight or proof of civilization turns out to be a disappointment: a soda can, candy wrapper, a blazed or marked tree, footprints, etc. This leads to another interesting, but longer, excerpt that I really liked from this book.
Joseph Wood Krutch was right when he wrote: "When all the 'collecting,' photographing, and experimentation is taken into consideration--the best friend of the birds is often the one who pays no attention to them." First we cut down their trees. Then poison them with DDT and shoot them as pests and for sport. Today, more wise for the experience, we love them to death. Why is it that even the footprints we leave behind cause harm? Why must human culture always have an impact? And here I am, just as guilty as the developers and tourists. Checking birds off as if they were items on a shopping list. Teacher, bird watcher, writer--but still a consumer in the end. Seems I can't escape my own greedy human nature.
As amateur naturalists or nature enthusiasts, it is difficult to find our placement in nature. The things we love are the things we scare away. When you are observing a bird and the bird knows you are there, you are not observing the bird, per se, as a bird being a bird as if you are not there. You have changed the equation by adding yourself. The outcome will be different. The bird is going to be a bit more careful and wary with its actions since you are there. You're observing it be wary of you. Depending on the animal...you can also watch it want to destroy you.
Seems like a huge metaphor for love.
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