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Blowing, and Blown Away
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
The birds are here!After a damp and chilly April, migratory songbirds have arrived in force, along with warmer weather from the south. The weekend bathed in an almost tropical ambiance. The humidity was high, the temperature over ninety, but rather than the torpor of Summer, the very air seemed alive, animated by bioprocesses. Consumed and then expelled by animals and plants alike. Heated by the sun from above, and from below by last year's leaf litter, finally making way; decaying in the face of the new season's hunger for organic sustenance. You could all but see growth and dispersion occurring before your eyes.
Through this density of Spring flew countless birds, while near as many bird watchers followed them on foot. Actually, the term "bird watcher" has fallen into disrepute; another example of the Name problem that I've mentioned here, previously. We tend to chafe at any name imposed upon us, finding there a focus for the worst of our identity. "Bird watcher" seems to conjure up the image of a socially inept nerd, bereft of masculine values. The new word is "birder". Vigor has been added through concision. We eliminate the modifier, and simply turn the word bird into a verb: I bird the Park, and so I am a birder. Such changes seem to help at first, but soon they wane, for the identity itself has not altered. Perhaps we will be "birdists" next, but when people ask if I'm a bird watcher, I say "no, I'm just looking".
Whatever you want to call it, looking at birds is good clean fun. It seems to fall somewhere between sport, hobby, and vocation. Certainly there is score keeping, for those so inclined. I'm up to twenty-four Warblers for this Spring, seventeen in one day. No great feat, compared to the experts, who will see closer to forty by the end of the month. To me, it's more about actually getting to know the bird, rather than checking it off on a list. There is a genuinely ecstatic thrill to a good sighting. Encompassed in the circle of the binocular field, the bird is yours; a transitory possession (birders don't say "I saw a Prothonotary Warbler", but rather, "I had one"). Having located a bird of interest, one tries to keep it in view. In and out of the foliage, following obscure suggestions of movement, (not the wind, no, not that sparrow,) as long as this bird is before my eyes, just so long am I truly alive. One's own existence is verified by another's. There is a certain reassurance in that the birds are known quantities, cataloged and named, with names they never do complain of. Not that we haven't changed their names from time to time, to fit the currencies of Science.
The birds are more reliable, if less exact, than Science. Weather influences their progress, but each year they follow much the same sequence of arrival. The Park lies at the confluence of two major migration routes. A green landmark in an urbanized area, it is an attractive resting point on a journey that may span two continents. Upwards of two hundred species are seen in the Park over the course of a year, mostly during the Spring and Fall migration periods. A few will nest here, but most are just in transit, without consideration for the pleasure they afford their observers. Most highly prized are the Warblers: small, colorful birds, with over fifty different species, and a wide variety of plumages. Some are plentiful, others not so. With a little effort, one may be assured of seeing many beauties, but also there are rarities to keep your interest, and drive the future. Birding maintains a fine balance between reward and effort; the hope of the unusual fuels a deepening familiarity with what is common.
So I've seen a lot of birds. I've seen Wilson's Warbler, commemorating Alexander Wilson, the famed naturalist and artist, who named many birds, and whose name is the same as mine, though I was not named after him. Two names the same, or one we share? I've gotten a bit confused trying to put names on blurs, or separate those Thrushes that "cannot be distinguished in the field". And I have hardly even begun to address the issue of song. Bird song is a delight, and there is no music more Traditional. As far as I know, the birds have been singing the same songs as long as they have sung. Except, of course, for those finches on the other islands...
Anyway, among the birds I saw last Saturday was the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, which brings me to the point I meant to get at to begin with. The Cuckoo, and its song, are central to the oldest secular song preserved in the English language, which, fittingly, is an ode to Spring. The song is Sumer is Icumen in, and the bird is actually a European Cuckoo, but it's Traditional to identify traces of one's home in far off places, and the family is the same, so I'll take a cue from our colonial Cuckoo any day, even if its vocalization does differ from its clock-inhabiting counterpart. At least ours is not a parasite.
The song, (the human song), is an early artifact of Middle English, the language that resulted from the imposition of Norman French onto Anglo Saxon, after the conquest of 1066. It's a language at once familiar and obscure. We seem to get the general sense of it, but keep running into indecipherable passages that collapse the whole edifice. One naturally assumes that sumer corresponds to summer, but the sense has changed. I prefer the translation that renders the line as "Spring has come in" , which agrees better with the imagery of the lyric.
I won't get into the controversy over "verteth", which some have been reluctant to translate as "fart". Apparently the old manuscript did not have a lyric advisory label. Let me note instead that "bloweth med" does not refer to wind, or honey wine (or vomiting the same), but means "the meadow blooms". To blow is an old term for blossoming, which we don't hear much any more, but we often refer to things blowing up, with reference to explosions. We would do well to meditate on how the descriptive aptness of the term issues not from windy force, but from the slower power of a flower, and how that may be stronger, in the end.
A May Day Carol
Now the Springtide is at the full. Time for flowers and for courting. The whole world seems to turn to sex. Bees spreading pollen. Birds in breeding plumage. Blossoms loud as signals, sounding "Love me, love me, love me only. Me alone, for this moment, and forever."The Carol has it clearly; the conventionalized pieties are but frames for mysteries more fleshly. The budding branch inserted like a key into the languor of the dream, summoning the eternal She into the Underworld (or dairy) deep, there to tap the Source of Cream.
Or, failing that, let's have a drink.
Such is Spring's philosophy.
I have said Spring has three faces:
Saint Patrick's for the Past Time;
Easter for the Future;
May Day for the Moment.
The first two faces wear human features: our concern with Time that's absent. But this year's round of birth and death knows no other moment. Busy forgetting Winter, Spring cannot foresee the Future. Now is the time for Games of May, for dancing in a dizzy circle, 'round the May Pole, holding tight to a ribbon fastened somehow to some center which propels us through the circuit.
All this runs on Ecstasy.
A little ecstasy of dizziness,
a larger ecstasy of Love.
Life is the Ecstasy of Matter,
Spring is the Climax of the Year.
Ecstasy is a spark of the divine, that prompts us to do what we must. The ecstasy of taste drives us to eat; the ecstasy of love, to procreate. Time is obliterated in its face. For a moment we are bound in an embrace of satisfaction without surcease. Yet cease it does, it always does, here amid the Fallen World. The memory will not suffice; having done, we must do it once again.
To do again is to form a Tradition.
That is the pattern Ecstasy teaches.
Tradition sends us into the woods this day.
Our task is to return with a fragment of the Ecstasy that is Spring.
A Branch of May betokens Love. Here is mine to you.
Forget the Past, forget the Future.
Spend a Moment in the way you would wish to spend Forever.
For this Moment, we have May Day.
Arbor Day
Today is Arbor Day, another worthy holiday, but not a Traditional one. The idea is to plant trees. That such a day is necessary is indicative of our alienation from the landscape, as well as our desire to control it. Today the Parks Department is planting new American Chestnut trees in Central Park. The strain is said to be blight resistant; the result of decades of horticultural effort. If they do indeed survive to reach maturity, they will be simultaneously nostalgic and exotic. Few of us have encountered a full grown Chestnut, though they were a familiar presence at the beginning of the last century. Their reintroduction bespeaks a desire to return the land to its "natural" state, but it will create an unknown grove, strange to those who have grown up absent the species.There is a magic to the trees, that they are such a nexus; looking both forward and behind. Always they remind us of a past we cannot revisit. But to plant a tree is a gesture towards the future, and one meant to outlive us. They put us in perspective.
Here are a few of mine.
Three Faces of Spring:
Saint Patrick's for the Past Time;
Easter for the Future;
Mayday for the Moment
Easter looks forward.Whatever really happened, the Resurrection remains a promise, and promises imply a future in which to be kept.
Its association with Spring is pure poetry; rebirth a winning metaphor. But when the promise of Easter is fulfilled, Time is superseded, the seasons rendered irrelevant. That's something to look forward to.
How will we get there?
Yesterday I wrote of the Christian reconfiguration of the Mysteries. Where once people imitated the gods, now deity affects humanity.
We need another such reversal.
Time now for us to take responsibility, initiate anew the cycle, and move to model God again within ourselves. And this time, not in ceremony, but actuality.
No small task, but we have a new millennium to fill up with our efforts. Who knows how much Future it will take to reach the end of Time?
We can't afford to be embarrassed by this ambition, for it's incumbent upon us to make of the Future something more than the name of the place where we shall die.
When we reach whatever end we reach, Time must give way, and something like a moment (but less confined) obtains, never to pass away.
In hope of this, we keep the Future open, or seek to open ourselves to it, even as we cannot staunch the flow of Time. The seasons still must change, though in familiar ways. We must change, into something we cannot yet imagine.
Easter's promise of rebirth opens up our Future; the rebirth of Spring fills our Present. Embrace what is, but don't disdain a promise.
This day dawns dim and damp, not good for bonnets or for bunnies, but good for hope, and holding promise of improvement. I will seek for trees and birds, and try a little harder. And though it rain for forty days and forty nights, I trust the Future holds a sunbeam yet.
Is Today a Holiday?
Today is Earth Day, and also Holy Saturday.I sympathize with the idea of Earth Day, but my practice has led me towards what I see as more Traditional modes of planetary appreciation. On Saint Patrick's Day, I outlined my notion of the Spring Holidays, and I intend to continue working through that system (actually, it's a poem, not a system; so much the better.) Earth Day seems to contain a political motivation, and seeks to update the Tradition with respect to contemporary concerns. I would like to think that I am participating in that effort, but I have no wish to descend into the sort of squabbling found here.
Tradition provides linkage; a timeless thread that guides us through Time's labyrinth. It's about continuity and connection; not putting new names on what we already have. Everything required to honor this occasion is close at hand. In fact, the tools are so familiar as to be easily overlooked. If adopting novel ways helps to convince some people that they are actually doing something, then they have my blessing. For my part, the established Holidays are the tools. Celebration and observance amount to the same thing: looking deeply into the meaning of the occasion, its original impulse, and all that has accrued to it through time. Meditation as celebration. When the Holiday disarms the ego, then you are in the Tradition.
To this end, I think that Holy Saturday is of the greatest interest here. It's often the forgotten day between Good Friday and Easter, but it's most relevant to contemporary consciousness. Agnosticism (a word coined by T. H. Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog", and grandfather of Aldous) defines the modern relationship to God: we just don't know. Atheism demands more certainty than is available to most of us, even as doctrinal religions do. Belief of any kind is suspect. Our lives are spent much as the followers of Jesus spent that Saturday; we wonder, and we wait. They knew only that the object of their cause was dead, and they had not the means to believe that he could live again. In such a pass are we. A certain kind of reason mitigates against belief, and even faith must at some point be fulfilled, as on that Easter Sunday. Those who have not glimpsed the Resurrection are waiting still. And we can ill afford to wait.
This is where Tradition can assist us. Tradition encodes knowledge, not scientific knowledge, but true Gnosis; the opposite of our uncertainty. Tradition tells us what even the gospels do not; the tale of Jesus' doings on this day: the Harrowing of Hell.
Jesus' descent to the Underworld is not described in the biblical narrative, but it is found in early apocrypha, and was embraced by the Church. Some will say that this was just a way of reconciling the new faith with its Jewish origins. Jesus redeems the worthy denizens of the Underworld, (which up until then was not a true Hell,) and allows them into Heaven, thus appropriating, without fully accepting, the history of the Hebrews. Henceforward, all access must be through Him.
There is something to this view, but the accommodation goes much deeper. In fact, the Underworld journey is a widespread type of the initiatory experience common to virtually all Traditional cultures. It is the very soul of Shamanism, that practical spirituality upon which all others have been built (even if the edifice obscures the foundation). The pagan converts who displaced Jews as the main constituency of Christianity certainly recognized the pattern. They probably demanded it. Their heritage was in the cosmopolitan mystery cults of the Mediterranean world, which were essentially a sophisticated elaboration of time-honored Shamanic practice. The mysteries typically put the initiate through a ritual reenactment of the patron deity's mythos. The most famous were the Eleusinian Mysteries, devoted to the Underworld sojourn and return of Persephone, the daughter of the Earth. These rites are now thought to have employed a psychoactive brew, a fact which emphasizes their connection to "primitive" ceremonies, which routinely employ hallucinogenic plants in this context. Jesus might be accepted as the new god, but he had to fulfill the old expectations. Christianity could not survive, except by engaging the deeper Tradition.
Rebirth remains the best metaphor we have for spiritual awakening. It is not won without a price. Death must separate the old life from the new, suspended in between, as is this Saturday. That the deity should suffer the same death marks a watershed in our spiritual evolution; a closer identification between the human and the divine. If God is more like us, then our own divinity becomes the more apparent. Jesus does not suffer for us, but as us. When we know this, we will know Him. And knowing Him will separate us from our Selves. The perspective thereby afforded will not diffuse the Mystery, but does teach us the proper stance to take in Mystery's presence. That stance will be required of us on the morrow.
Colors of Spring
Bird Bites Dog
A tangential celebrity angle put this story in the gossip column of the NY Post. I don't have anything against dogs per se, and I'd like to say that most dog owners are conscientious, but the fact is that leash laws are widely ignored. Dogs are allowed to run free before 9:00 AM in most of the Park, but never in the delicate areas of the North Woods, or the Ramble, where this incident occurred. The eastern shore of the Lake is a popular (illegal) spot for running dogs. It's been reduced to a barren slope of exposed roots, thanks largely to this canine traffic. As the follow-up item (half way down the page) points out, the Mute Swans' nest is well marked. These birds have been here for years. Like the hawks on Fifth Avenue, the success or failure of their yearly nesting is a little drama which brings many city dwellers closer to nature. Last year two cygnets grew from ugly ducklings to the size of the adults, but were still a grayish brown color when they left the Lake in mid-winter. Like all children, they needed their own territory.Territory must be protected, and this swan does have a belligerent reputation. Graceful form, and the purity of white plumage, belie the strength and aggressiveness of these large birds. And, after all, this one is a New Yorker.
Two April Intros
April cruel? The unrelenting life force that surfaces in Spring may have seemed an irony amid the wasteland of the Great War's wake. Most of a century later, that impression is no longer novel, and our need is to learn to side once more with Chaucer. Perhaps we'll need binoculars to find the way.April can certainly be unpredictable. Last weekend saw a wild swing in the weather. Saturday was 70 degrees, and as fine a day in early Spring as one could want, but evening brought escalating winds, which presaged an unusual cold front from the south. By Sunday noon, an inch or more of snow had descended on the Park. The strange tableau of green and white did not last long. An hour before dusk, the sharp edge of the front and the lowering sun passed in opposite directions. The sky was clear, and Spring returned, unperturbed, it seemed. As the light faded, few traces of the snow remained.
Less cruelty than a passing jest, I think. The season won't be stopped. The first flush of Spring has been, and all the rest must now unfold. It happens every year. That, I think is what Eliot was getting at: the necessary consistency of nature's pattern, in despite of our human circumstances. His formalism refigured the Romantic linkage between outer world and inner mental state.
Wordsworth, in English poetry at least, best represents that Romanticism. Chaucer is another story. An innovator with a young language, he nevertheless engaged a long tradition when he took April as a conventionalized entry point for his Tales. Prior to Christianity, Spring was the New Year season (thereafter, Easter assumed the position of rebirth). Accommodation with paganism allowed the Spring tradition to persist, and its phenomena were close at hand, in a world less urban, less industrialized, than ours.
Today we view Spring with mixed feelings. People often express disappointment; the season is abrupt; short or indistinct. From too cold to too hot, with no between. So goes the plaint. I've voiced it myself, at times; even now, I'm finding this year perhaps less spectacular than last. Storms have shorn the first flowers, erratic weather distorts the patterns, but everything still happens. Barring the truly abnormal, (an extended cold snap, some genuine blight), the same trees will put forth their flowers and their leaves, the usual birds return. The grass again grows green.
From year to year the Spring will show some variation, but often the impression, I suspect, reflects our inner world more than the outer. A windfall of love or luck buoys us through one greening season, while another year is dimmed by some vicissitude. Impassively, the body of the Earth rehearses yet again its moves, whether we view them through joy or in a gloom.
My goal then, is not to project my psychology upon the season, but to imprint the Spring upon my Self. Let verdant patterns program mine! Through incremental will, induced by my desire, I have found that I can make changes in my life. Not the willful changes of the ego-driven Self, but little changes, in eating and in sleeping times, in ingrained habits that deflect me from my purpose. That is to say, the purpose of the Spring. Which is, of course, to burst forth, in an orgy of existential ecstasy.
Such ecstasy drives every purpose of our World. Let me be frank; it is the product every economy aspires to produce. Still the Source remains unique. It's available virtually for free. The only price is life. All that grows and dies, in but a year, then grows and dies again. And looking on, we all the while comprise the same such rhythm on another scale.
Others may find their ecstasy elsewhere, but I say none is better. At least I'm sure that I'm a better man for taking cues from seasons, and happier, too. All ecstasy is rooted in the same thing, and that is God. Little portions are served up to motivate the World. When the culturally sanctioned modes of ecstasy fail, alienation results. We will seek in strange places. There is little choice; the World about me seems more and more a strange place all the time. Tradition is our guide in unfamiliar places. Not to be followed like a rule, but as a star that fixes our position, indicating direction, so that, even though we choose to turn, we know which way we came. There's ample opportunity for ecstasy upon this path, if you look closely enough.
Chaucer's Spring and Spring in the year 2000 are much the same, minus the six hundred years of cultural accrual. That fact may alleviate, or aggravate, the alienation which Eliot diagnosed. The difference lies in whether we prove an imposition, or can comply with the contours of Spring's landscape, finding therein the place where its Tradition is honored. Even in that sanctuary, the World must prove both cruel and sweet, but I have learned enough to choose a day like that strange Sunday, which saved the sweetest for the last.
It should be noted that the aforementioned owl sighting represents a reward for my advocating of the Goddess a bit further down the page. The sapient avian is sacred to Pallas Athena, and Sophia Herself; the Queen of Wisdom. I don't want to belabor the point, so I'll just assume this is understood. She is humble, and doesn't require anyone to spend eternity telling Her how great She is. Not unless you want to, of course.
Some might say that there is no such entity. The whole thing is no big deal; there are plenty of owls out there, and enough goes on in the Park that one can't help but stumble onto little wonders all the time. I say, that is the Goddess, in a nutshell (or a pine tree).
Te Whit, Te Whow
Here I am again, working on another overwritten post. I can't really deliver the Park; I have to turn it into something. I've got an idea, well, maybe a notion...an angle, as they say in journalism. Given enough time, and concentration, I'll get it down, but right now, I've little of either to spare.The Park demands them. Spring is going on. While I'm at work, while I'm asleep, while I'm distracted. Spring is happening right now. Had to fit in a quick trip this evening. Lengthening days, and the switch to Daylight Savings Time now make it possible to run up after work. A cold wind blew, but green was everywhere, and studded with flowers.
I almost didn't go; the time and effort, (I've got writing to do), the weather not inviting, but every time I get there, the Park delivers. I was happy enough with the vista of the Lake at sundown, Willows glowing like a black-light poster, the skyline looming beyond. The Sugar Maple at Strawberry Fields, dangling its ectoplasmic blossoms. Fox Sparrows along the Gill. All going on, with or without me.
Just across Bow Bridge, heading towards an exit, I was alerted by some local birders to one of the Park's passing wonders; a Saw-whet Owl, roosting in a little pine at the foot of Cherry Hill. This owl is about the size of a grapefruit, and was well hidden, but it's relatively tame, and allowed a good view at close range. All I had to do was lie on the ground, in my coat and tie.
This is the sort of thing I'd never see on my own. I'm told it was found by Tom Fiore, one of the Park's more skillful birders. He's also a notable documentarian, consolidating sightings from many birders into terse but detailed accounts which appear in the invaluable Bird Log, at the Boat House. Apparently, the little owl was revealed by harassing sparrows, who objected to the predator's presence. I felt the opposite, but did appreciate the information.
When you've got an owl under observation, the obvious thing to do is wait for dusk, when the bird is expected to take wing, as in this 17th century British drinking song, which celebrates the nocturnal life:
Of all the birds that ever I see,
The owl is the fairest in her degree.
For all the day long she sits in a tree,
And when the night comes away flies she.
This owl did not disappoint. It roused itself just as the light was failing. It took flight in an instant, but posed for a moment on a nearby fence, then flitted back to the tree, where it paused again, turning its back and its face to me at the same time, in that particular way that owls have. Then it was gone, into the dimness, as the green disappeared into gray. Rodents, beware.
That's about all there is. I've got to get back to that post, you know; make something out of all this. I'm sure I should be able to provide some profundity, but at the moment, all I know is that I really like seeing an owl. A bird in the bush is priceless.