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An Old Chestnut,
and a New Chestnut
Looks like a Chinese Chestnut, or some hybrid thereof. The American Chestnut is virtually gone, wiped out by a fungal disease in the first half of the twentieth century. Surprising that nobody’s made a horror film: "The Chestnut Blight". Sounds terrifying! Well, at least it could be a movie of the week. I guess drama without psychology is a tough sell. With the disappearance of the trees, even the metaphoric use of the word is fading from the language, but the old roots are still out there, and still sprouting. I’ve seen one in the North Woods; will get a picture when the leaves come out. Eventually it too will acquire the disease and die back. At least that’s been the pattern. The American Chestnut Foundation is trying to restore the tree, by breeding disease resistant forms, but so far we must do with imports.Other trees have their own problems. When Shakespeare mentions hissing crabs, he means crab apples, not crustaceans. We don’t eat them much anymore, but crab apples used to be a treat in the lean season. They’re still popular with birds; the crab apple harvest in the Conservatory Garden is quite an event in the fall. Mixed flocks of Robins and Cedar Waxwings, along with the ubiquitous Starlings, spend a couple of weeks working over the ornamentals, until hardly a fruit remains. So what’s wrong with this young tree on the Great Lawn, barely touched? I guess it just tastes bad.
Groundhog Day
Has anybody seen my shadow? I’m sure I left it somewhere around here...Actually, it’s about being half way through Winter, and if the forecast is correct, we’ve still got another half to go.
What's in a Name?
The atmosphere never appears more transparent than on a bright, dry, winter's day. Saturday was such, and not so cold as has lately been our lot. Aside from fallen twigs, storm damage was not much in evidence. By Sunday night another messy precip mix was straddling the freezing line, but warmer temperatures are in the offing, so the question now is how long will our snow blanket last? An icy crust has developed over the fluffy snow beneath, protecting it from wind driven evaporation, but only shadowed hollows can resist sunny days in the 40s, which may be on the way. January is typically our coldest month, and now it’s over. Of course, conditions at ground level can differ greatly from the officially reported air temperature, and forecasts are notoriously inaccurate, so we’ll wait for the expert’s prediction on the 2nd.Cold or not, the birds keep busy. There was a great deal of avian activity. Spring molts seem to be in progress already. House Sparrows were courting, the male showing a full black bib, not just the winter chin spot. Many were taking the opportunity to bathe; I guess it was warm enough, though they didn't look very comfortable as they fluffed and fidgeted to dry out. A Flicker bathing in the Loch nearby looked as if it had been freshly painted. Most birds have two full-scale molts a year. Some species, particularly migratory ones, completely change their appearance between spring and fall forms. Others, like the Flicker, simply renew their plumage, but the feathers actually do wear down over time, so a newly molted bird can appear much brighter or sharply defined than it will late in the season.
The Flicker (that is, the Northern Flicker, Yellow-shafted race) is one of five woodpeckers commonly seen in the Park. Unlike its relatives, it prefers to eat ants off the ground, but at this time of year, it must resort to more traditional woodpeckering behavior. In the summer, Flickers flock, and are quite numerous, but in the winter the classic woodpeckers predominate. These are the Downy, Hairy, and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, and the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. All are patterned in black and white, with at least one red accent, though only males show red among the Downys and Hairys.
It's the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker I'm interested in at the moment. This has to be one of the most strikingly named birds going. It's a mouthful, and the conjunction of an epithet for cowardice with an alliterative compound of two words with negative connotations invites ridicule. This name, or some preposterous parody, is often used in lampoons of bird watchers and the complex taxonomies they must employ. On this occasion, I was privileged to see an adult male literalizing the name; sucking the sap that ran from a row of holes, (drilled earlier), in a Norway Maple on the edge of the Ramble. The flow was profuse, and likely to summon a side dish of insects to delight his bushy tongue. Yum.
The yellow belly, however, was not in evidence. That's because one rarely sees the underside of this bird. The name, as with most North American birds, goes back to colonial times, and naturalists with a bird in hand, i.e. a dead specimen. They often picked out distinguishing features that are rarely visible to observers in the field. It's the same with the Red-bellied Woodpecker: you'll thrill to it's bright red nape, but search in vain for other ruddy spots.
Accuracy aside, names are a necessity. As such, they are imposed upon us, and we always, to some degree, resent them. The New Age community displays a nostalgia for the Traditional practice of earning one’s true name in the course of life, the birth name being merely provisional, but you may name yourself in vain; none will satisfy.
Names are a requirement of a Fallen Creation. To share the Name of God is our innate desire, and to forget our own. In moments of ecstasy we receive a model of this state, and lose ourselves; to love, to music, drugs, or food...birds, even. Whatever deep involvement it may be, it draws us in, compelling all attention, obliterating time, until we hear again, as it were, a voice that speaks our name, returning us to the World. On the way back, we feel obliged to mark where we have been, leaving behind a trail of names, that winds its way through a maze of namelessness.
That is to say, when first confronted with a scene, like the Park, we find an indiscriminate field of ignorance, which we proceed to parse. Each name applied takes us a step along the trail, and throws what we don’t know into sharper relief. If we could learn the names of everything, would it dispel the mystery of being, or teach us the one Name that would contain them all?
I do not know, but I appreciate all the help I can get, not least from a bird that teaches its own name.
Two Views of Snow
Above is a pretty-as-a-picture picture from the Ramble, above the waterfall where the Gill flows into the Lake. I'm not really looking for post card style effects, but the fresh snow seems to embellish every view, and if "pretty" is your default, why fight it? The Fifth Avenue façade below, seen, through wind blown flakes, from Pilgrim Hill, captures the actual feeling of being in the weather a little better.
The Same, But Different
These pictures of the Gill (the stream that runs through the Ramble) were taken five days apart; the second while the snow fell on 1/20, our first significant accumulation since 1996. Now we have even more. I guess I asked for it. The snow is a good thing. It provides protection and insulation, and when it melts, virtually all of the moisture is absorbed into the ground. The Park is so heavily used that soil compression is a big problem. It's packed so hard that much of the rainwater is shed as run off; eroding rather than nourishing. Snowmelt is much more efficient.
Not so good is the ice that came with the latest storm. Glaze storms (the proper term, forget the movie) do terrible damage to trees. Already brittle in the cold, twigs, limbs, and even trunks, snap under the added weight. The accumulation didn't look too bad in the afternoon, but may have worsened overnight. I'll look for damage this weekend. It should be minimal, since the cold stretch leading up to the storm should have forced the flora into full dormancy by now. If these temperatures were to occur during the Summer, most trees would be killed; like hibernating animals, they slow their metabolic processes to achieve Winter hardiness. In the wild, this would all be business as usual, but in the Park, every bit of damage is a real loss. Natural regeneration just doesn't get a fair chance to play out, and even though the Park is well tended, we lose venerable trees too often. Replacements are planted, but won't achieve the same degree of character for at least a generation (in human terms).
Cold enough for you?
My favorite answer is always “no, I like it about three degrees colder”, but you probably have your own riposte. No denying the cold, though; it’s sharp as any wit. Maybe it’s my asceticism, but I’m sort of enjoying it. I lament the Winter during every other season, the same way one worries about death only while living, (no authority on that one), but once it arrives, I find myself embracing this season of retraction. It’s as engaging as reality always is, or at least has the potential to be. The potential is realized through attention. Through repeated perception, I’ve realized that the cold is a good thing. The ground is hardening. Trees are protecting themselves, and resting. A heavy snow would top things off nicely.I’m convinced that the mild winters of the last couple of years have accelerated deterioration in the Park. The unfrozen ground suffers more damage, and bears less protective vegetation. In my recent walks, I’ve often felt that I was aggravating a sore spot with my tread. Much of the landscape seemed raw and exposed. We’ve bobbed along on the surface of Winter; a day in the twenties, another near sixty. This prolonged stretch is finally allowing cyclical seasonal habits to assert themselves.
I took a walk through low degrees, and it was beautiful. Sunny, without much wind, if you dress right, it’s painless. Well, it was painless until I slipped on a slope, and twisted my knee. That frozen ground is unforgiving. Actually, I got disoriented shifting between binocular, camera and naked eyesight, amid the steeply tilted facets of the Ramble. A binocular makes you step forward, a camera, backwards. It’s easy to lose track of your feet, when you focus your attention through a prosthetic lens. It does bring home how provisional, and non-definitive, our vision is. The binocular reveals so much that it’s well worth the effort. The camera’s utility is less immediate, and it introduces Uncertainty Principle effects into the self documentation equation. By trying to record or communicate the nature of my experience of the Park, I change it, and risk losing sight of what it was that brought me here to begin with. And I keep trying to take pictures with the binocular. Some things just can’t be recorded, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen. I guess that’s my challenge in attempting this page.
Anyway, I just kept going on my sprained knee; typical macho Goddess worshiper. I’ve been limping, but improving daily. Now there are photos to deal with. We should have some relief from all this text around here soon, and with it, more specificity. As I write this, three to five inches of snow is predicted for tomorrow. I fear I won’t be able to check it out until Saturday, but the temperature’s not supposed to get above freezing, so it should stick around. Still, snow is best when fresh. There’s always my lunch hour...
Martin Luther King Day
This is our newest official holiday, the only one I have seen instituted in my lifetime. Though I am an advocate of Tradition, this day provides a chance to focus on the limitations of traditional views, and our abilities to improve them. Today’s emergent spirituality is genuinely conservative, in that it seeks to preserve supra-cultural technologies of transcendence, which go back to prehistory. If these practices have been lost, displaced by cultural devices whose potency is more symbolic than practical, then our effort is one of recovery, not maintenance, and hence is also radical; “of the root”. Even a radical conservative, however, must not suppose that there are not important lessons taught in modern parlance.In honor of the occasion, I give you the dark-eyed junco, a relative of the sparrows, and a ubiquitous presence in Central Park during the Winter. This little bird is notable as an example of folk taxonomy, which is to say Traditional, as opposed to scientific, distinction. Our eastern “slate colored” type looks quite different from its western counterparts, and the various birds were always known by different names. Observers in the field have traditionally recognized them as different species, based on differences in appearance. Formalized observation (and now genetics), has shown, however, that the types interbreed where their ranges overlap, and ornithologists have combined the group into a single species. The regional variants are now considered subspecies, a term which is replacing the heavily freighted word formerly given to groups differentiated by superficial characteristics: the word “race”.
We are all the same, yet we are all different. This is a basic Mystery of Life. We know that, as a species, we are one, with an existence that transcends the individual, but our experience is of separation and individuation. I wrote, in my New Year’s piece, that “identity’s a tragedy, but it’s what we have”. Differentiation is the result of the Fall, which I identify with the Big Bang, and with the Gnostic vision of Creation. Our purpose is to return to unity, to connect every point, all at once, but our route must take us through these differences, which, along the way, we find cause to celebrate. Nevertheless, the separation of black from white is of the same order as the separation between individual and society, or between each of us and God.
Such is the nature of racial identity; it is a mystery, and so, a microcosm of The Mystery. We are a racist society to the degree that we believe that race is a distinction we should make, not to the degree that we find we can’t help but make it.
Finding paths through such a conceptual briar patch is spiritual work. Politicians can only follow after, and those who go first will be most torn by thorns. If others were sacrificed before and after him, Dr. King remains a fitting index of the cause commemorated in his name. The mobilization of social willpower through moral imperative is the closest thing to a political idea that the twentieth century produced. He is the great American exemplar of the form; a worthy student of Gandhi. Their passive resistance marks the development of a politics of asceticism, and a move away from the specificity of issues, to the generality of justice. Dr. King built a coalition not by appealing to desire, but by demonstrating the propriety of his position, compelling agreement, wielding power without force. This passage of politics from the real to the ideational domain is a glimpse of a better future, and well worth a day off for the economy.
The juncos never take a day off. Just how much they distinguish is not clear, but like us, they are largely visual creatures. Still, at their margins, they seem not to discriminate, or rather, they see the commonality beneath their varied plumages. We who maintain their names may take a lesson from the birds: that if we watch, we must be prepared to learn.
Alternative Owl
The Village Voice is featuring the Cedar Hill owl, which I posted on the main page in November. Does A. otus have a press agent? Got to keep up with those celebrity hawks!Welcome to Winter
Winter arrives with the Holiday Season, and remains after the festivities are done. This is square one, from which the pattern must be rebuilt. Dormancy seems an attractive strategy. I certainly haven’t gotten enough rest lately. Holiday stress distracts. Duty and diversion turn us away. It’s amazing how easily I can forget my supposed preoccupation with the Park.Because the pattern is built of repetition, we can take it for granted, even as we move within it.
We move from season to season, year to year. The closer we are to nature, the less we remember. The pattern subsumes the particular, or vice versa. Either way, we lose distinction. Birth, Death, Decay, proceed as ever, without so much as a glance over the shoulder.
I was looking the other way when the new season entered. It’s awkward saying “the Winter of 1999-2000”, but there you have it; we don’t live in accordance with Earth’s pattern, so we misplace our demarcations. Crossing a border is not the same as ignoring one.
Winter will not be ignored. I was in the Midwest when it started, Detroit, anyway. It was truly cold, days struggling through the twenties, darkness bringing single digits. Lots of running from door to car, waiting for the air to warm, unstiffening slowly in the moving room that provides an essential head space for most of America. Driving is an ecstasy of sorts. The mind scrolls with the highway, while an automatic body guides the machine. The radio plays. 2AM, it’s “Michigan Outdoors”; talk of deer, concern over the declining numbers of young hunters. A disturbing statistic is cited: the average American spends only ten minutes a day outside. Michigan has outdoors all over the place, but it’s mostly viewed in passing.
Space is different in New York; attenuated, yet dense. I miss the open road through open spaces, but here, I walk. It’s better for the body, if lacking in velocity. Still, it drives the mind. Walking and driving, like other “mindless” actions, stimulate mentation. This function is not unrelated to various spiritual practices (spiritual technologies, so to speak); the repetition of a mantra, the counting of the rosary, the dancing of the dervish. All are unimportant, except as means of transporting consciousness elsewhere. So I take my body to the Park, and let it walk. After weeks of inattention, I don’t so much need to re-focus, as to un-focus. Who knows what may come into view?
There is both more and less to see in this season. Things are at their minimum, what with the retreat of foliage, the migrants gone, the hibernators hid. Underlying forms, however, are more visible than ever. No screens of green obscure the view. Again, space changes. The shapes, the angles, the way the land lays, now exposed. The limbs of trees reveal what leaves had shadowed. Winter is a great teacher; we learn the absolute requirements, the baseline for survival. There is less now, but there is enough.
There is always enough, and it is always available. That is the Tradition, that is the Promise. None of which means that it’s always easy to find. There is nothing easy about Winter.
January 6, 2000
Epiphany
The sixth day of January, the last of Christmas.The Holiday Season, in practice, ends with the blunt trauma of New Year’s Day, salved, perhaps, with a little football. Winter bleakly awaits. Dull days and slow fluids. Yet the Season extends: Tradition has it that on the twelfth day after the Nativity, wise men from the East arrived, guided by a star, bearing varied gifts. They certified the child’s importance.
Now that’s my kind of story!
I like the idea that the savior needs the endorsement of these exotic intellectuals.
Actually, the Magi serve as initiators, and presage Baptism, which is celebrated as Theophany, on the Sunday following Epiphany. Both words mean “manifestation”, as of the divine. The early churches associated these feast days with the celebration of the Nativity, and marked them, separately or simultaneously, anywhere from December 25th to January 6th. Also in the mix was a celebration of the water-into-wine miracle, and just to confuse matters further, the Julian/Gregorian calendar schism has continued to diverge, so that the Eastern Christians are now celebrating Christmas on January 7th. Thus the Christmastide ends in a welter of overlapping dates and symbols.
But end it does. There is some memory of the occasion left in contemporary practice, if only in the notion that decorations should come down by the 6th. (Capitalism can wring no more from the season, and discards it. Meanwhile, the start of the holiday is being signaled earlier each year, expanding the purchasing window.)
Yes, Christmas is truly over, which is to say, we now have perspective on it.
Looking back we see:
Birth. Baptism. Initiation. Manifestation.
All indicate attainment of a new status, and with it, revelation; the insight of a different viewpoint.
This the perspective of Epiphany, which, as attested by the associated Incarnation, is also the perspective of humanity: that we see a thing differently from within and without, that a change in perspective reveals our error, and that we thereby have the ability to correct ourselves.
Celebration of the holidays teaches us these corrections, and if we learn their lesson, we are changed.
Who among us would stay the same?
For the last time (this Season), Merry Christmas!
And now it is Christmas.
I’ve spiraled down the funnel bigtime.Now in free fall towards the New Year.
The creation of new time. A fresh start. A chance for redemption, or at least benign amnesia. But oh, the force that’s drawn me here. The holiday whirl brings manic joy to some, despair to others. Certainly it is stressful, as even a good experience may be, out of sheer emotional or physical force. The Holiday Season is like a great charge of energy that passes through our culture. We all vibrate to its pitch; whether we find it a pleasure or a pain is not wholly under our control, but recognizing the holiday as an entity, on its own terms, can help us to conduct its power with salutary, rather than deleterious result.
I’m just a little charred, this time around. I haven’t got done half of what I wanted, but I’ve tried to honor the Season in appropriate form.
But is the form appropriate? Let me try once more. I’ve mentioned the Cornucopia, how we are among its fruits. Fruits are to be consumed. If we note the depiction of the Cornucopia, it is shown as radially ribbed, somewhat suggestive of an intestine. Is this the nature of the Funnel, that we are passing through the digestive tract of an entity that supersedes the individual? Are we impelled by peristalsis of the Cosmic Gut? That’s not the metaphor you wanted? Not warm and fuzzy? Well, I have said that we must provide nourishment, as well as take it. At completion, a new cycle is begun. Appreciate your station; passing through many of these circuits, enjoying fruits, while you yourself are eaten by the World. Just so, the object of this celebration is remembered as an infant, and as a food.
Merry Christmas.
A little adumbration of a passing situation, by way of mission statement:
I saw the swollen Solstice Moon, riding wrack,shining bright as any moon I’ve ever seen.
But brighter? I don’t know.
I stood in a moonlit field last Summer, washed white as by some different sun.
I’ve watched Her from the rooftops of Manhattan, where the stars are just a rumor.
I’ve seen more moons than I can count.
We’re not as close as I would want.
If we still used the moon to find our way, you can be sure we’d gauge Her sheen by fine degrees, and know Her variance from day to day.
This is knowledge worth reclaiming, whatever its utility.
This is the knowledge I am seeking.
The late coincidence of solstice, full moon and perigee, against a background of questionable information, provides a good example of our dislocation from nature, as well as our desire for reconciliation. Although we seem to be working our way into an imaginary (or at least non-physical) space, we still inhabit bodies born of this material world, the world underlying all cultural achievement; an oft forgot foundation. Shamanism, the ur-religion of the earth, was our first technology for maintenancing and manipulating the connection between ourselves and our source. It was a practical, adaptive institution, which dealt in a sophisticated understanding of the natural world, as well as a multifaceted, though nominally “Primitive”, spiritual worldview.
The persistence of some kind of spiritual system throughout human history suggests to me necessity. The people who initiated human culture were working from necessity, to enhance survival; they wouldn’t have kept religion around if it didn’t fulfill some fundamental requirement of their existence. Do we exist in a different manner than they?
Which is not to say that they knew a truth that we don’t know today. I certainly don’t believe in magic; I only use it because it works. We require a working link between self and source, and even if we are confused about the nature of these terms, the link pertains, if only in a displaced form.
It follows from the shamanic example, that the close study of matter, and its trump card, life, will lead us into spiritual insight. This same principle was behind the hermetic mineral psychology of alchemy. That misunderstood philosophical nexus of the premodern western mind laid the foundations of modern science, even while it mined a timeless vein of mysticism. Also basic to the Primitive, or, let me say, the Traditional, worldview, is the sacred nature of Home; an insistence on the functional interconnectedness of the people and their land, replete with the understanding that the key to the deepest mysteries is always close at hand.
In this Tradition I initiate my Arboretum.
My practice has come to center upon Central Park, in the center of Manhattan. This is the place where, for many years, I have come to get my requisite dose of Nature, or at least the best hybrid form to be found in this relentlessly cultural city. I have made the Park my spiritual home page, and I’ve found that it rewards ever closer scrutiny by unfolding ever more engaging experiences in the real world, and ever deepening implications in the zone of intimation. What’s in development here is a prototype of the Spiritual Binocular. By focusing on the Park, by charting its seasons, its trees and blossoms, its birds and rocks and streams, by not merely identifying, but by knowing them (as I would I knew the Moon), I hope to share a glimpse of something more than these.
What I promise is that, for at least the next year, I will visit the Park as often as I can, with my eyes as wide as I know how to open them. I will see as much as I can see, and make report of what I find, and to the best of my abilities, try to divine such light as shines behind the fact of a tree.
I make no claim to any sort of expertise, but have been encouraged in this endeavor by good friends whose faith in me is sometimes greater than my own. With the kind assistance of the DMTree support crew, this Arboretum will be planted with images as well as words. If I tend it well, these will flower in every season. So may we all.
December 31, 1999
This is what I have for the present passage. It was written at the Wheel’s behest, for a gathering at the end of last Winter. I think I can still endorse most of what is said, though it isdated, even before the fact.
This piece also serves as a general outline of my particular brand of Gnosticism, which I expect to further articulate, as this page develops. As such, it brings us to the issue of the use of the word “God”. I often avoid the term, as it causes an aversion reaction in many people. My conception is such that I also find it impossible to apply a sexed pronoun, which leads to some perhaps awkward phrasing. Still, every other option is a euphemism. Actually, “God” is a euphemism, but the most honest one we have, hence the sensitivity. I do not presume to explain God to anyone, but I do find it necessary to point in the direction of...of what? A supreme power? A non-relative overview? The source? The destination? The object of all our concern? I could go on, but that’s the point: the names of God are endless, but they all refer to THE End (and The Beginning).
When I was young, I thought that it was my historical fortune to have been born into an age when the existence of God was obviously ridiculous; a relic of the pre-rational past. I thought that the belief of the medieval West, or of Traditional societies, was excused by their ignorance, and that our greater knowledge was both a kind of wisdom, and a kind of alienating curse. I no longer feel that way. I now believe that it has always been obvious that there is no God. What impresses me is that people have always taken the unlikely option, and out of that choice our World has been constructed. Just as it is “obvious” that God does not exist, it is equally obvious that there is no connection between an uttered sound and an understood meaning. Belief, or Agreement, must intercede to provide the connection which allows language to function. Belief in God is of the same order, or rather the reverse is true; such Belief must precede, and provide the model for, the belief that allows us to speak. As soon as we enter into an agreement (a covenant, a promise) that enforces such an improbability (that there is a Creator, or that a sound is attached to a thing), a whole new range of options open up, offering unimagined possibilities for the expansion of reality. In this sense, I have found that there is nothing else but God.
Still, sensitivities remain, not to mention a legacy of historical misuse and abuse. I continue to consider myself a rationalist of a sort, but one who has been forced by rational protocols to step beyond such rules, in the interest of a fair investigation. I will probably veer between various euphemisms as seem most appropriate to me. At least this page will not shrink from these matters, and those who disavow any such discussion will not find comfort here.