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Verging Vernal
This is the first day of Spring. A day that I await, and even run to meet. I was ahead of schedule, but I couldn't take today off, so it was on the last day of Winter that I celebrated Spring. The Equinox, really; I hope to celebrate Spring for weeks to come. On the days when light and dark are equal, I arrive in the Park at sunrise, and remain until sunset, observing twelve hours of light, though not of dark. Actually, there is more light than dark. I'd need another ninety minutes to account for first light before dawn, and the lingering glow of sundown. I want them too, but twelve hours is really too long for any one to be out, wandering on foot, without food, in chill weather. It seems I've found a new ascesis, plying the edge between celebration and obligation. I did feel obligated to stay. I could have left with Mike and Linda, whose appearance burnished the afternoon. I could have left at any time, but I had a commitment to honor.This incipient ritual began last year on the Autumnal Equinox. I'd only recently taken up birding, and was pushing myself to get out early, while there were still some migrants about. As it happened, I arrived just at dawn, only realizing the implications over the course of the day, finally deciding to stay throughout. It seemed a wholly appropriate gesture to the occasion; the more so in that it was not planned. When you do just the right thing, without even trying, you're truly on the path.
This time inspiration turned to observation. My conscientiousness compounded the spiritual gravity of the event, creating an etheric stress. Not that I didn't have a good day, but it was a long one, cold in the morning, and tiring by evening. Like many an early rising flower, I might have been nipped in the bud. Happily, there was sustenance to look forward to, and good company, at a festive dinner with DMTree and friends. I was ravenous, which is not the same as eating like a bird. (No ravens in the Park, lots of crows, though.) With wine and good cheer, we ushered out the old season, and welcomed the new.
It was back to work this morning, and I've still got a sleep debt. A sweet one to repay, if I could only find the time. Longer days mean less sleep, but these things will have their own way, with or without me. If this one day is balanced between light and dark, the whole year will find balance over its course. To keep our own, we must maintain perspective at a given point in time.
Well, I just wanted a post with this date. There's more to say, but I can't muster it just now. Spring is here, and that is enough.
Saint Patrick's Day
Saint Patrick’s Day is come, wielding the color green. It’s a significant holiday in the Arboretum. Falling close to the first day of Spring, it provides a focal point for local concerns. It is the Celtic Holiday.Though thoroughly American, I pretend to Scottish heritage (Patrick was born in Scotland). I have always recognized a kinship with the other Gaels. Mostly I learned it through their music, which I’ve listened to since childhood. Even then it evinced in me a deep nostalgia. The definition of nostalgia is “homesickness”; a longing, not so much for the past, as for our point of origin: the source from whence we issue. As such, it is the preeminent Gnostic emotion, and it is articulated by means of Tradition.
Is emotion the right word for what Nostalgia is? You might phrase it a sentiment, though that’s not quite right either. Saint Patrick’s Day abounds in sentiment. Never mind the drunken rout; inebriation only makes us more sentimental. After the fight, anyway. There’s more than one tradition.
The Tradition continues. Celticism is enjoying a vogue of late. I won’t disparage here the commercial excesses, for they reveal the vitality of our desire for reconciliation with our heritage. I’m pleased to see people approach the Western Mysteries from any direction, for Mystery teaches its own wisdom, correcting the initiate’s intent. Let many achieve it, even though they enter at a vulgar gate.
Heritage is History, and central to this particular history is the English language. Diversity aside, it's English that allows us to trace our history back further than the colonial era. The British Isles are the closest America can come to a common Ancestral Home. Identity politics may fairly critique this notion, but all who speak the language are tied to its history in myriad ways, conscious and subliminal. A people cannot do without a History; the arena in which Tradition is deployed.
It is this sense of loss that that lends Nostalgia its characteristic Melancholy. Here we are approaching the sentimental tenor of Saint Patrick's Day: a drunken cheer that cannot fully mask a sweetly melancholic longing. Neither could the Saint's conversion mask his heritage: the famous Breastplate of Patrick is clearly a Christianized reworking of an ancient Celtic prayer (or charm) form.
Another major form of Celtic literature is the Triad. The corpus of their law and wisdom was embodied in these tripartite verses. It’s said that the Celts couldn’t grasp the concept of the Christian Trinity, until Patrick had recourse to the shamrock, showing how a triple thing also could be single. More likely, the legend derives from the Celt’s deep cultural affinity for trinity, which Patrick shared.
To honor then his Holiday, let me employ the form, and so engage Tradition. For I begin to see something worthwhile, and fit to be so rendered. Moreover, I thus structure my regard for the incoming season, and give myself something to expand upon as it develops.
Here then, my Triad:
Three faces of Spring:
Saint Patrick’s for the past time;
Easter for the future;
May Day for the moment.
More on this later, but today, wear, or better yet, do, something green. Sure, and get Home safely, wherever that may be.
In Transition
Maybe I should have taken Lent more seriously. Now I’ve got hardship enforced upon me. After a week of warming weather, Saturday served reminder of Winter’s tenacity, as March honored its reputation with gusts of cold and wet. I’ve extolled this Winter’s adherence to type, in the face of the global warming trend, but now I recall fondly last year’s milder season, and the drought that followed. It took me a while to realize that the lack of rain was a chronic problem, not my good fortune. Week after week of mild, dry weather allowed for a prolonged and lazy Spring, with flowers lingering long on branches that would have been shorn by the normal storms.This year, I missed, maybe by an hour, the best of the flowering of the Red Maple in the Meadow. An early drizzle soaked the blossoms, degrading their spherical exuberance. I took a few feeble pictures, in the damp gray light, but it was clear that the tree, despite its best efforts, would not match last year’s performance. Many bud bearing twigs were lost in the glaze storm, and more were eaten by squirrels. Snow cover means less food on the ground, so the rodents look to the skies for sustenance.
I looked to the skies, and found mostly cold rain. Nevertheless, down the slope from the Maple, where the Willows give a little shelter, there is a spot where Spring is incubating. Not much to see, really, just a bit of stream, backing up in a tangle of briars and decrepit Willow, but feeding early grasses, green even now, with a green that’s spreading. It creeps back into twigs, like warmth into fingers held before the sun’s fire.
Nearby, high atop a Cottonwood, big, coarse, green buds are burgeoning. As in the related Willow, the sap rises early in this big Poplar.
Around the Pool, other Red Maples were picking up the slack, with plenty of blooms. From certain distant angles they coalesced into red clouds, that merged into Willow yellow and Elm-flower green. These colored hazes have begun to blur the vacuous scaffolding of Winter. I still hope to see the sun set them alight, but Sunday was much like Saturday, if a little drier. To top it off, I lost a day’s photos in a downloading glitch. Not that there was much that could be recorded, subtle in the dim light. In despite, these things lead me into hope. Spring is poised to arrive, on a fair day, or a foul one. Either way, I’ll meet you there.
Revelation Through Deprivation
Last weekend was the first that truly smacked of Spring, but I’m withholding, on this Ash Wednesday. It’s still Winter, despite a crocus giving notice. Winter for a little while. But Lent? I’m not so sure.If I’ve vouched for asceticism, it’s probably been to rationalize my own difficulty in managing my humanity. I find it a valuable perspective, notwithstanding. It crops up in just about every culture, and is, in fact, uniquely human: you won’t catch plants or animals fasting, if they don’t have to.
You might say the practice mirrors the seasons; Summer’s indulgence earns Winter’s want. And vice versa. That’s a cycle, but there’s another vector in ascetic practice; away from cultural norms, and into the mystic.
Isolation, abstinence, even self-inflicted damage, can realign consciousness. Today’s wan religions are more concerned with conscience than consciousness, but a look at Shamanism reveals the practical application of asceticism. By resisting the common mode, one gains the perspective of the outsider. A position of extremity, but one from which Mystery may be effectively approached.
So Lent is the Ascetic Holiday, to be observed, rather than celebrated. Or say that its lesson is that observation and celebration are the same, even if we must behold that which we would rather not.
Let me tell you then, (in keeping with the theme, I will resist the temptation to show you), let me tell you how in Central Park I have observed things squalid and disturbing. Things that confound me and appall. Things that break my heart. And all these are like the squirrels and sparrows; anyone can see them with little effort.
The homeless are there. Men and women of who knows what sad circumstance; many of them mad. Some appear cheerful, others wail in lunatic agony. Like birds, they are most evident at dawn and dusk, inhabiting the margins of the dark, as of the public conscience.
There are the party spots, used at night, after the Park is legally closed. I do not resent so much the activities, as the disregard for the landscape that the participants evince. Not just trash, but trash that’s foul in bizarre and perplexing ways. Always some odious, oozing, hog-tied, half burnt mystery bundle, perhaps hanging from a tree. These places have an unwholesome air about them, exacerbated by the fact that they are typically the most inviting spots in the vicinity. From time to time some lurid crime brings one of these sites into the public eye, but only for a moment.
Trysting is another problematic activity, and one you’re more likely to run into in progress, notably (though hardly exclusively) in the Ramble, with its famous cruising scene. Asceticism aside, I’m not out to manage anyone else’s sex life, but I’d rather not have the same thrust on me, so to speak. Used condoms are just a nod and a wink, but the forensics of discarded clothing patterns provide more suggestive details. Powerful passions leave their mark, and it’s not necessarily pretty. And just how did they get home without putting that back on?
Other sorts of wantonness abound as well. Mountain bikers ride off trail, and dog walkers ignore leash rules, accelerating soil loss and plant damage, while destroying animal habitat. Even my own forays off the path, if not technically illegal, are damaging to some degree, no matter how careful I try to be.
There’s plenty more, from banal garbage to evidence of cruelty to animals. There are inexplicable discards, and mere literal shit, but I do not dwell upon it. Ignoring things is also a technique of asceticism. Neither do I write much about the pigeons and the rats, though they are as representative as the flowers and the hawks. To further Lenten humility, let's note that the most successful local species are those best adapted to the human dominated environment. That we disdain them, despite our contiguity, is an index of our own character.
That said, enough of mortification! Soon it will be Spring; just cause for celebration. I will not temper my regard out of some Christian obligation. Confounding the circuit of Earth’s seasons with supernal deity is an attractive temptation, but it may blind us to necessary observations. This year, I’m giving up asceticism for Lent.
If I Can See You, Can You See Me?
Would you say that a hawk has an eagle eye? This Red-tail watched intently as two more flew in tandem over the North Meadow. Whether in consort or in competition, I cannot say, though it is mating season. It's not much of a picture, but close-ups of birds are hard to get. This one was within thirty feet; more often they soar above, ascending out of range of my eyesight, but not theirs. Raptors are known for their powers of vision, spotting prey from great heights. The DMTree digital camera is a remarkable instrument, but it can hardly compete with human eyesight, let alone birds of prey. Some scenes just frustrate the Park photographer. There are sights that can only be seen by being there.
Actually, technology stimulates appreciation of one's own eyesight. While the camera takes what seems an interminable moment to zoom in or out, I can look from here to the horizon in an instant, without consciousness of the enormous shifts of focus involved. The hawks can see even more. Certainly I think they see me. I've followed them through the binocular, soaring in lazy circles that finally center on me, seeming to hang directly overhead, as I crane my neck to look straight up, while the bird looks straight down. What else can it be looking at? Luckily, I'm a little too big to eat. Rats, squirrels, pigeons and songbirds have less security. They also watch for hawks, but to them, it's a matter of life and death.
Lately, the hawks seem to be everywhere. Like gatekeepers, one greets me upon entering at 103rd Street in the morning, while another is waiting at 59th Street when I exit towards evening. They dominate whatever landscape they descend upon. Squirrels bark at them, while songbirds huddle in bushes, or sound alarms from a distance. Crows harry them, but to little avail; the hawks act with impunity. Life is good at the top of the food chain. Many of these Buteos are offspring of the pair that continue to nest atop a cornice on Fifth Avenue, across from the Conservatory Water. Local birders know them as Blue and Pale Male, and dully note their activities in the Bird Log at the Boathouse. They've fledged numerous hatchlings, some of which remain in the Park, enjoying the easy lifestyle.
In Winter, the hawks can see more than ever. Without foliage and underbrush, their prey is exposed to view. You could say that a lack of privacy creates a security risk for the potential victims. Privacy and security are big issues both online and off the beaten path, causing much consternation. These are thorny areas indeed. A thorn bush is a good place to hide, but hard to see through. My natural assumption would be that privacy does in fact reinforce security, but I've also noted the opposite effect in the Park, and on a more personal level.
Like the hawks, I can see further into the barren landscapes of Winter. There's an effect of looking right through the layers of leafage that partition Summer's views; an x-ray of the Goddess, so to speak. An advantage of this situation is that you can see if anyone else is approaching. I'm not paranoid (not much, anyway), and I generally feel safe in the Park, but security is still an issue, as there are definitely some questionable types about. It's a good idea to steer clear of anyone who stimulates your flight-or-fight response. That's much easier in the denuded season; at other times, people seem to pop up out of nowhere, but now I generally see them coming at a distance, which gives me the information necessary to manage my security.
My privacy, however, is reduced under these circumstances. I am also exposed, and cannot easily maintain the personal space necessary for intensive observation. The true engagement experience is essentially private. I enjoy company from time to time, but I always find more points of interest when I am alone. I can get so involved in watching a particularity, that I lose track of the larger scene. Next thing you know, I'm startled by some innocent passer-by. Binocular viewing exaggerates the phenomenon. Consciousness enters a dimension that exists only through a lens: a truly private experience. I forget about my body, let alone its surroundings, leaving me exposed and vulnerable. The more privacy I have, the less security.
Privacy and security are two things that everyone wants. There appears to be a relationship between them, but not a stable one. In trying to develop a dialectic, I find that they do not form a true binary pair, where each quality is expressed as the absence of the other. They may, however, offer a kind of mediation between two such pairs, as each term is part of a binary. Private/public and secure/vulnerable form the pairings. Such polarities require opposed terms in order to define something that is not easily described. They do not represent differences, so much as they reveal something that will not accept a single name. They are "two sides of one coin", and so, in a sense, the same thing.
A thing that will not surrender to a single name is a Mystery. I do not use the word lightly. Indeed, I regard even the most quotidian mysteries as portals into the spiritual domain; they are always well worth contemplating. Confronting Mystery disarms reason. One is left with a different species of understanding. That’s what Gnosticism is.
My Gnosticism holds that all the mysteries are facets of a single Mystery, which goes by the troublesome name of God. It is both our Source, and our Destination. In between, we experience the fragmentation of the Fall; a space defined by indeterminable points, each retreating from every other. The Wonder amid this separation is That which moves in the opposite direction; uniting rather than dividing. The uniting of particles into Life is but a preview of the ultimate congregation of All at Once in the Same place.
If nothing else, this teleology provides a perspective on the privacy/security conundrum. To wit: in God, there is no privacy, but there is total security. This is understood in the popular notion of God as an entity who can read your thoughts, or “see into your heart”, and is therefore in a position to render judgment. The history of this idea makes me leery of its anthropomorphism, but my conception is largely congruent. When everything is united, nothing can be hidden; the private will be revealed. Our secret shame will be defused through collective recognition, and no dissemblence will be possible in the light of full disclosure. Therein lies a security unavailable to us here, but not inconceivable. And by conceiving, we draw nearer.
All this is metaphor, but we are also on a technological vector heading in the same direction, and with increasing velocity. All information, linked and simultaneously accessible, is now a possibility more real than any concept of God, though they may prove indistinguishable. I hope a little movement in that direction is accomplished on this page. Until we get there, watch out for aerial attacks, but do not fear the all seeing eye, for as Meister Eckhart said: “the eye through which I look at God, and the eye through which God looks at me are the same eye.”
Winter Blooms
February 21, 2000
This page is not celebrating Presidents Day. I’m all for honoring persons of great accomplishment, though not leaders as a class, and certainly not if they’re famous for cutting down a tree. That’s not the sort of holiday we keep around here. This page is going to the Park instead.
Valentine’s Day
What will I say? I could speak of Saint Valentine, of whom little is truly known. Or Valentinus, a Gnostic closer to my own heart. Or how folklore correlates this date with the pairing of birds, precursor to spring mating. All in the service of Love. But I cannot presume to speak of Love to lovers more ensconced than I. Not that kind of love. Is mine the perspective of the outsider? I like to say that I am in love, just not with someone. Still I will contend that I am of love, at the least. Just so, we say that God Is Love, and who would argue such a case? We well conflate two of our most important words. Words invested with so much meaning that they cease to mean at all. This is a signal that we are in important territory, an ecstatic stratum of existence where words must fail. Here Tradition has resort to symbols of a different sort. In this spirit, please accept my Valentine Bouquet:A single rose, or what is left: a last red, wrinkled hip, that’s lingered since last summer, among the briars on the northern height of Strawberry Fields.
A fitting gift, if one of recent vintage (February flowers suggest the modern florist industry.) Apt, though: the Rose is the iconic flower of the West, that through its blossom, fruit, and thorn, sums up the promise, the reward, and the pain that lies between. One plant condensing the journey of the Spirit into an image that sends its stems winding through our lives, from time to time unfurling an unexpected bloom of Love, out of the thorny underbrush of being. A flower in the sere season.
Just now, the indigestible Hawthorn holds sway, but we have stores from last year’s harvest. It’s no mistake that our most familiar fruits are of the Rose clan. Cherry, Plum, and hairy Peach form the single genus Prunus. Malus, the Apple, crabbed or full grown, and Pyrus, the Pear, are also cousins. All now so bred that their natural history is inseparable from the history they share with humans. Even in hybrid form, traces of their heritage remain, in fruit and thorn, and most of all in blossom. Long before modern genetics, gardeners, and lovers, recognized Rosaceous commonality, equating sustenance of heart and body.
So do not pity, or resent, my withered gesture; it is made from Love,
and we too will confirm this offering, not soon enough, but soon;
When the Promise of Spring is given, amid a riot of blooms.
The Snow is Melting
With rain, and more warming on the way, it will soon be gone. Three weeks on the ground, not bad by recent standards, but not the Winter of our Imagination. Some nostalgic jingle bell, Currier & Ives (yes, that's the Park) image of winter still pertains across the country, notwithstanding that few of us see such a season. In the face of real weather, I tire of it quickly. I’ve enjoyed the snow, but it’s retreat has me thinking of the path towards Spring, and wondering whether Winter has the strength again to intervene.How Many Stages in the Life of a Tree Can You Count in This Picture?
Sad news from the Conservatory Garden: one of the ornamental Magnolias in the south garden is gone; cut in the last week. I hadn’t noticed a problem with it, though several Magnolias did suffer from a fruit deformation last year. Perhaps there was storm damage, but no gardener was around, so I couldn’t find out what happened. The tree anchored the northeast corner of the garden, and will be missed. Here is a comparable survivor.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.