Most of what follows in this posting is something I wrote last fall so in some ways I suppose it is dated. I refer to what was going on in Falluja and at this point the most intense part of that fighting is over. I'd written this with the intent of posting it to a group I'm a part of but I never did post it because it was so long and I wasn't sure what point I was trying to make, couldn't seem to pull it together into a finished piece.

I read with sporadic intensity about the war in Iraq and last fall with the battle of Falluja, I felt especially caught up in the news of the war. In the preceding year, I'd also read a book by the journalist Chris Hedges, called War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning and had felt very affected by that book. Chris Hedges had voiced what I'd come to suspect about war. It isn't that I think war is a good thing. Quite the contrary. But I have suspected that there is something about war that feeds people, makes it seem as if something important and meaningful is happening. I've read things about veterans talking of the closeness they felt with their buddies, for instance. I think there is something about crisis that does bring people close to their feelings, maybe close to some depths they might not find in every day life. And war represents an ultimate crisis.

One point I'd wanted to make at the end of what I'd written was that I suspect when in the heat of battle, when death seems very close, when one's comrades are dying, I doubt seriously that thoughts of glory or a sense of patriotic duty are much in the minds of a soldier. I suspect it becomes about survival, about pressing one's self up close to death and wrestling with that fear. I often wonder how it is that a soldier can make himself walk into a situation where the odds are not likely to be in his favor. How does one prepare one's self? Sometime in the last couple of years I read several of St. Exupery's books about his life as a pilot during WWII. I recall there was a section in which he addressed this, wrote eloquently about that, though of course I don't recall now off the top of my head what he said.

Anyway, I kept thinking off an on about what I'd written and never posted and then my last issue of Orion magazine arrived. For those who are not familiar with it, it's a magazine devoted to matters about the environment, what might be called deep ecology, and interknit with the articles are beautiful photos, paintings, poems. It's arts and ecology combined. I think it's a beautiful magazine, has no ads to clutter it up. This last issue also had a lengthy article by an anonymous author, a soldier in Iraq, who was sharing bits from his journals about birdwatching while in Iraq. Apparently Iraq is one of the richest places for birdwatching in the world, a place that is along long-established migratory routes.

So pardon the rambling, somewhat non-cohesive points of this post. For some reason it's something I wanted to say even if it isn't entirely clear.

I saw the flock of birds appear in the sky, seeming to burst from theleafy crown of a tree as I drove toward the crossroads of a majorintersection on my way to work. I could see them winging rapidly and realizedas I came to a stop, waiting for the light to change, that they werepigeons. From a distance, I'd thought of the group as something smaller,black birds perhaps. I watched, through the windshield, as the flockcircled over the intersection, changing direction after several passes. I began to count. Four times they flew clockwise, then made a loop thatbulged away from their path and changed direction, flew four times. A living mandala created in the air above an ordinary intersection ofstreets.

In my mind, I flew with them, noticed that the two streets formed thearms of a cross, the birds holding that cross within an energeticairborn circle. I thought of the southeastern Indians, the moundbuilders, andtheir symbol that expressed the reality of the world as they understoodit: a circle containing a cross with arms of equal length. The circlerepresented the earth and the equilateral cross, the four directions,points where invisible ropes that reached to the sky and held the earthin place.

For eight weeks, I've been working very long days on Tuesdays, as staffperson for a course on The Iliad the Museum had offered. A professorfrom the Classics department at Emory was teaching the course and I hadwanted the structure of a class in order to read it. I'd tried on my owna year and a half ago but had bogged down about two thirds of the waythrough it, sickened by the hacking of limbs, the skewering of bladders,the endless spilling of guts and blood. But something about the storyhad also lured me so I was glad to return to reading it in the companyof others.

On Tuesdays I've been taking a longer than average lunch, walking fromthe Museum to Lullwater, the parklike grounds where the president ofEmory University lives. Lullwater is woodland and folds of land coveredby manicured lawn and a large lake edged by a path.Last week, I found at Lullwater, a large pure white bird--a white heronas it turned out-- feeding at one edge of the lake in the shallowshaded waters. Several days in a row I returned to the white heron and onthe third day, after a dear friend had suggested taking binoculars, I satand watched, studied the heron as it searched the water, waited for itsprey. I'd read in my bird guide that herons wait for their prey to comewithin range of them. With my binoculars, I saw the heron do just that,holding perfectly still, mobilizing its body the way a cat will whenstalking some unsuspecting live morsel. The heron's neck, folding intograceful curves, reminded me of the muscular loops of a constrictor as itslithers across branches, waiting to drop silently on some innocent.Intensity and focus and patience defined the heron's search for food.When it struck, it did so with the suddenness, the precision of arattlesnake.

I sometimes imagine that my interest in ancient cultures seems odd oreven a waste of time to others. It is hard, in some ways, hard toexplain the fascination it holds. I think a part of it is that those eventsare complete now and time has sorted and sifted the minutiae from them,sometimes arbitrarily, so that it seems as if it possible to gain abetter picture of the larger themes of those times, without getting lostin all of the daily details. I'm often struck that though the technologyhas improved and life is in many ways more comfortable for many peoplenow, the internal struggles of individuals and the external strugglesof whole cultures has not changed appreciably in thousands of years. Ifeel both comforted and a bit depressed by that sometimes. I searchancient art, ancient writings, for whatever bits of wisdom they maycontain, search for ways they may help me better understand myself and theworld in which I live.I also like the challenge of trying to put myself in someone else'smind even if that someone lived thousands of years ago.

Over these many weeks of reading the Iliad, the war in Iraq hascontinued, paralleling the Trojan War. War seems to be present somewhere inthe world most of the time. I've read the headlines, skimmed articlesabout battles and car bombs and beheadings in Iraq, have felt sickened. Acouple of weeks ago, after I'd been visiting Lullwater, watching theheron, I began reading an article in the New York Times about Falluja.Several paragraphs into the story, I came across a line in which thejournalist had compared a marine as he moved to a heron as it pursues itsprey. I was startled to see that comparison which meant so much more tome than it would have because of my recent bird-watching at Lullwater.That small reference to something connected with the world I do havecontact with had sparked enough interest that I read the entire article.I made a mental note of the author of that article, Dexter Filkins.A few days later, I noticed another article by Dexter Filkins and beganreading it.

“The geese came in from the north, flying in a slightly broken V. Whenthey flew above the booms and crashes of southern Falluja, it was as ifthey had hit a force field—the V dissolved into a tangle of confusedcircles, the migration stopped, the birds veered past each other in thesky, seemingly trapped above a sliver of apocalypse.”

Again I felt startled by this interplay of writing about warfare andthe presence of something as ordinary as a flock of migrating geese. Icontinued to read, drawn in once more by this reference to birds. ThoughI’ve never been in a war, I have watched the migrations of geese andsand hill cranes as they’ve flown over my own front yard. I’ve admiredtheir formations, the ways in which they keep their flock together, themystery of migration. I continued to read the article, noted the way inwhich the journalist described the course of battle, the effect on thesoldiers of the blasts, the confusion in some of the captured men whoseemed mostly to want to get out, to find a way out of the chaos. Thearticle ended with the same flock of geese who had become disoriented bythe concussion from the blasts. They’d reformed their V and continuedon their way. Not only did the writing from this journalist seemdifferent from usual reports of war but again I was reminded of the Iliad. Irecalled that birds and bird-omens figure into the story, that therewere even people whose expertise was the ability to read the bird-omens.

From the Iliad, book one:

“…and among them stood up Kalchas, Thestor’s son, far the best of thebird interpreters, who knew all things that were, the things to come andthe things past, who guided into the land of Ilion the ships of theAchaian through the seercraft of his own that Phoibos Apollo gave him.”

Sunday there was another article on the front page of the Times byDexter Filkins. He wrote:

“The bullets hit the first marine in the face, his blood spattering themarine behind him. Lance Cpl. William Miller, age 22, lay I silencehalf way up, mortally wounded.”

And…the marines’ near mystical commandment against leaving a comradebehind seized the group.”

I read:

“Cpl. Jake Knospler, lost part of his jaw to a hand grenade.“No, no, no!” the marines shouted as they dragged Corporal Knosplerfrom the darkened house where the bomb went off. It was 2 AM, the sky darkwithout a moon.

“No, no, no!”

I continued reading, came to this:

“A man dressed in a white dishdasha crawled across a desolate field,reaching behind a gnarled plant to hide…”

and then this:

“The marines rushed out to get them, as they would days later in theminaret, but it was too late for Sgt. Lonny Wells, who bled to death onthe side of the road. One of the men who braved gunfire to pull inSergeant Wells was Cpl. Nathan Anderson, who died three days later in anambush.Sergeant Wells's death dealt the Third Platoon a heavy blow; as aleader of one of its squads, he had written letters to the parents of itsyounger members, assuring them he would look over them during the tour inIraq.


"He loved playing cards," Cpl. Gentian Marku recalled. "He knew all theprobabilities."

More than once, death crept up and snatched a member of Bravo Companyand quietly slipped away. Cpl. Nick Ziolkowski, nicknamed Ski, was aBravo Company sniper. For hours at a stretch, Corporal Ziolkowski wouldsit on a rooftop, looking through the scope on his bolt-action M-40rifle, waiting for guerrillas to step into his sights. The scope was big andwide, and Corporal Ziolkowski often took off his helmet to get a betterlook.

Tall, good-looking and gregarious, Corporal Ziolkowski was one of BravoCompany's most popular soldiers. Unlike most snipers, who learned toshoot growing up in the countryside, Corporal Ziolkowski grew up nearBaltimore, unfamiliar with guns. Though Baltimore boasts no beach front,Corporal Ziolkowski's passion was surfing; at Camp Lejeune, N.C., BravoCompany's base, he would often organize his entire day around thetides.

"All I need now is a beach with some waves," Corporal Ziolkowski said,during a break from his sniper duties at Falluja's Grand Mosque, wherehe killed three men in a single day.

During that same break, Corporal Ziolkowski foretold his own death. Thesnipers, he said, were now among the most hunted of American soldiers.In the first battle for Falluja, in April, American snipers had beenespecially lethal, Corporal Ziolkowski said, and intelligence officershad warned him that this time, the snipers would be targets.

"They are trying to take us out," Corporal Ziolkowski said.

The bullet knocked Corporal Ziolkowski backward and onto the roof. Hehad been sitting there on the outskirts of the Shuhada neighborhood, anarea controlled by insurgents, peering through his wide scope. He hadtaken his helmet off to get a better view. The bullet hit him in thehead.”

I’ve quoted this section above at more length because it and theseveral other quoted pieces, all of them were things that have their parallelin the Iliad. When I’d tried to read it the first time, as I mentionedI couldn’t seem to get past all of the vivid and individualdescriptions of death. Reading it this time, I felt different about thosedescriptions. I realized there was a point to it all and the point seemed to bethat each death was particular, no two deaths alike, that each deathtook away some particular person and was not simply a statistic. When I’dread all of Homer’s descriptions of the many deaths, the names of eachwho died, I felt reminded of the Vietnam Memorial and the listing ofnames, the power that has, the ways in which people have personalized itwith photos and other momentos so that each death in that war has takenon a particularness that is different from the way in which soldiersfrom other wars have been memorialized. Even Filkins way of referring todeath and how it crept up reminded me of the Iliad, the way death seemsto be this companion that stands closer and closer, steals the lightfrom one soldier after another.

The efforts of the marines to retrieve the body of their dead comradereminded me of two different parts of the Iliad, one in which Patroklos,Achilles friend, is killed. And the other when Hektor is slain byAchilles. In the instance of the former, it is the death of Patroklos thatfuels Achilles rage and spurs him into battle. His comrades strive toget Patroklos' body, as the Trojans and finally Hektor's father attemptto retrieve the body of Hektor.

Toward the end of the article, I read the following:

“Time and again through the week, Captain Omohundro kept his men fromfolding, if not by his resolute manner then by his calmness under fire.

In the first 16 hours of battle, when the combat was continuous and thethreat of death ever present, Captain Omohundro never flinched, movinghis men through the warrens and back alleys of Falluja with an uncannysense of space and time, sensing the enemy, sensing the location of hismen, even in the darkness, entirely self-possessed.

"Damn it, get moving," Captain Omohundro said, and his men, lookingrelieved that they had been given direction amid the anarchy, were onlytoo happy to oblige.

A little later, Captain Omohundro, a 34-year-old Texan, allowed thatthe strain of the battle had weighed on him, but he said that he had longago trained himself to keep any self-doubt hidden from view.

"It's not like I don't feel it," Captain Omohundro said. "But if I wereto show it, the whole thing would come apart."”

I thought again about the flock of geese mentioned in the previousarticle, of Captain Omohundro somewhat like the lead goose with that flockthat had fallen apart, then regrouped to continue their migration. Ifeel an admiration for the kind of outward calm that apparently CaptainOmohundro manages. In that, I feel I hear a person who cares about thoseunder his command. I can not help but notice, too, that he does feelthe strain, but somehow manages. How one does that under thosecircumstances I don’t quite know.

Also in the Sunday paper was Thomas Friedman’s column. Among otherthings, he spoke of the belief that most of the soldiers currently in Iraqbelieve they are there fighting for a just cause and that until theyindicate they thing it is a lost cause or a cause not worth the price, hebelieves we are doing what we should be doing by being there, that thecause is a noble one, if perilous.

Saturday night, I worked. PushPush Theater, a small alternative theaterhere in Atlanta, was in its second night of Aristophanes’ The Birds andI needed to be on hand as a representative of the Museum. I also wantedto see the play. It was a modern translation, retaining the spirit ofpuns and innuendo of the ancient original, coarse and crude and corny.Birds squawked and fluttered, stomped their wings, made light of thegods, squabbled with humans, strutted in their underwear, and workedtoward creating a utopia in the sky as the bumbling gods grew angry--andhungry--for offerings from the humans below.

Last night I went to see a movie with a friend. I'd arrived before shedid and was sitting in my car listening to a report from Falluja. Thereporter was talking to one of the marines about their efforts. Ilistened to the marine talk about the fact that the reality of war wasdifferent from what he'd thought, that under fire, the soldiers were nolonger thinking about whether or not this was a just cause, all they werethinking about was keeping themselves and their buddies from beingkilled. And this also was something that dawned on me as I read the Iliad,that though the apparent reason for that war was to try to get Helenback, that reason was quite forgotten in the middle of battle. War seems tofeed itself.

I've been trying to catch up on weeding my garden this past week. I find it a surprisingly soothing thing to do once I get to it. Sometimes, the hard part is just motivating myself to go out and tackle that particular chore. But I've spent more time than I'm accustomed to inside buildings, out of touch with Outside, during the last few weeks. I find myself craving Outside, so I have found it easy to want to set about this chore. The fact that it hasn't gotten too hot and humid the way it usually does this time of year, that helps too. And considering the amounts of blessed rain we've been getting, and my usual attractiveness to mosquitoes, I haven't been too harrassed by those little blood-suckers.

Today I wanted to work on a section of my garden that had become quite choked with violets. I love violets but they bloom early in the season and then grow recklessly the rest of the summer, knotting themselves into clumps here and there until soon there are edge to edge knuckles with leaves attached. Room for very little else.

As I weed, my thinking mind begins to quiet down. Or a certain kind of thinking ceases. I become a little like a machine, pressing hand trowel deep into the earth at the base of a clump of violets and then lifting it up. A toss onto the driveway. My hands and arms get tired. I know that tomorrow my shoulders will be a little sore and my hands always feel vaguely swollen after weeding.

All I see are the many clumps of violets there are to remove.

Gradually another kind of thinking returns. This doesn't always happen. Sometimes I never seem to get to the point of having conscious thought disappear. I find instead that my activity has, for companion, my own mind thinking of what I need to do, or what I have already done, replaying activities from the preceeding week or worrying about some problem. But today I was free of that chatter. I found I could focus on my task and on the many things there were to see---a tiny birdcage which was the remnant of a seed pod from a poppy. All the of 'skin' of the seed pod had rotted away and left the structure behind, a series of slender bars from stem to crown, open and waiting for a tiny bird.

There were the knuckles, more accurately, the rhizomes of the violets with their white threads that anchor them deeper into the earth.

A scarab sat on one leaf, coppery and green, beautiful, though not always welcome in one's garden. A Japanese beetle we would call it here, though it is a member of the family of bugs that include scarabs. It sat with two of its legs lifted up.

Several pine tree seedlings were also among the violets. The seedlings were only a couple of inches tall. I discovered some years ago that if I pulled up a pine seedling, no matter how tiny, and brought the tiny tap root to my nose, I could detect the fragrance of pine. Ever since making this discovery, I always take the time to enjoy that pine essence. I find myself thinking that if that pine aroma is present in a tiny seedling, part of the essentialness of pine-ness, then perhaps there is something similarly essential in each of us. And whatever our unique quality may be, like the pine, it is there, detectable from the very beginning.

Each time I removed a violet, I thought of adding space and the importance of space. Each violet takes up not only room, but water and nutrients. Removing them would make water and nutrients more available to other plants.

Words came to me from some years ago. I have tried to find the written copy but the weeds within my house seem to have obscured its resting space. So words repeated themselves in my mind as I recall them, though perhaps not exactly as they were written: Cut brambles one by one, and you will reveal the lotus blossom within, the lotus which is and has always been there. I recall this fragment from a teacher who'd given it to me some years ago. It was translated from the writings of a woman sage who lived centuries ago in China as I recall. My recollection is that she had had an earnest desire to live the life of a monk, to learn what those who seek a monastic life have the opportunity to learn. Maybe because she was a woman, she was turned away. Or perhaps there was some other reason. Instead, she raised a family. And when she was in her mid-fifties, and her family was grown and gone, she sought again a life that allowed more time for reflection. She became a very great and respected sage.

Cut brambles, one by one...This thought resurfaces in my mind periodically. I like the practicalness of it. Brambles will grow repeatedly. There is, perhaps, little hope of eradicating them entirely. Instead, there is the understanding that all I can do is work methodically to eliminate them. The brambles become a symbol of those things that threaten to choke out deeper understanding--the lotus--that is already present but hidden. Cut brambles, one by one. Dig violets, clump by clump. Pull weeds one at time. Again. And again. And again.

As I continue working, adding space, another thought appears. I think of an art history term, horror vacuui. This term is used to describe a way of working with a surface. It has to do with filling up all of the empty spaces, leaving as little white or open space as possible. I believe the term means, literally, horror of vacant space. Those of you with a background in Latin may be more precise than I can be.

This way of working with a surface has been used by various peoples as long as there have been image makers. Some familiar examples would be works from Egypt, interiors of tombs and pyramids that are covered with images and hieroglyphics. A similar method was used in some of the existing codices from the Aztecs. I think a case could be made that the outer surfaces of late Gothic cathedrals also show this horror vacuui, so encrusted with statuary and decoration they are.

As I thought of this horror vacuui that appears in visual arts, I thought of my garden and that nature does the same thing. Create a space and something will come to fill it. It may be another weed. But with thought and effort, it may be a plant I've chosen for that space. Space doesn't remain open for long.

The same horror vacuui seems to exist in the lives of people, too. We fill up the empty spaces in our days, often not at ease, not content to allow the empty spaces to exist. Something rushes in to fill that time---laundry that must be done, children here or there, soccer games to attend,watch TV, reading the backs of cereal boxes while we eat and so forth. It isn't that any of these things are inherently bad things to do. But in my opinion they can become like the violets in my garden. I intentionally placed those violets in my garden and they happily filled the space. But only be attending to them purposefully can I be assured of having space for both the violets and any other plants I may wish to grow.

Could the urge to fill spaces, this horror vacuui, be something deeply ingrained within all of us, I wonder? Did people who created images with the intention of filling all of the space somehow counteract that urge? I believe that art can serve this kind of function, can provide us with a way to understand and appropriately manifest these instinctive responses to existence. Perhaps a horror of the empty spaces as expressed in art, perhaps that served a function, made concious this unease with emptiness. Without the spaces, it can be hard to see the lotus that is already present.

Cut brambles, one by one...

Yesterday morning I got up and took my dog for his usual early morning walk. I noticed right away a profusion of small pink petals along either side of my street. This seemed a little surprising. I was pretty certain that what I was seeing had come from a flowering cherry-almond tree. The nearest one is at the top of the street, not close to my house. They are just beginning to bloom so it seemed unlikely that the blossoms would have shattered and been carried in the rain wash down the street. As I continued walking, the petals grew thicker and their were occasional full blossoms as if snatched from the tree and cast down, though I was nowhere near the tree. By the time I reached the summit of the hill, I could see the cherry-almond and a significant mass of whole blossoms as well as a carpet of pink petals on the street underneath. Cars drove through the flowers and petals, drawing them along in their invisible wake of air currents. I found myself thinking of Palm Sunday. Only it was Wednesday and these weren't palm leaves. These were frilly blossoms and petals. An image overlaid itself with the actual one in front of me. Dusty dry hot roads in ancient times covered by exotic palm leaves. And an ordinary asphalt street in a suburban neighborhood littered with flowers. The contrasts were mentally satisfying.
Late in the afternoon, as I sat at my computer working, the power went out. I lost what I'd been working on. The power surged back on and sputtered off again. On and off and on and finally...off. Though our neighborhood is pretty quiet and suburban, much of this area is surrounded by fairly busy roads. I assumed that someone had wrecked into a phone pole and that that probably accounted for our power outage.
My oldest daughter had decided we ought to have sub sandwiches for dinner. We've discovered that Publix (a grocery chain here, maybe nationwide) makes the sub sandwiches we like best. So she and I got in the car to fetch home our dinner.
Near my home, there is an area I think of as a kind of swamp. I always like arriving at this open area of sky and water. There is a traffic light that is slow to change right where this wetland is. I have quite awhile to look. The swamp, such as it is, lies alongside railroad tracks. I have walked the tracks a number of times and know that the swamp is actually the result of beavers who've gnawed down many trees and dammed up a little creek. The result is an extensively flooded area that the beavers live in comfortably. From my car, I can see a large pile of logs, home to the beavers. My walks in this area have allowed me also to see the occasional muskrat. And from my car, I sometimes see a kingfisher peering intently into the water below, from its perch on the wires that tether phone poles together. In fact, not only do phone poles cross this flooded area, but also the high power lines. The sort that carry very high voltage long distances and that crackle and hum when you are close enough to hear.
So that is the general scene I was approaching on my way to Publix. And I looked forward to it as always. But as we approached, we were looking at something quite unexpected. Straight ahead in the middle of the flooded area, one of the phone poles was on fire. Not little flames. A great, blazing fire, right at the top. The current top, that is. For I could see the rest of the top of the phone pole down in the water. A fire truck was parked on the street as were two Georgia Power trucks. Firemen and linemen (or should it be firepeople and linepeople? I like these words better. They make more interesting images to my mind's eye) were standing at a respectful distance, heads back, looking at the blaze and smoke. I suppose this was the source of our power loss. But what, I have wondered, caused this? No lightning. No small planes or helicopters seemed to have tangled with power lines or phone poles. These images remain--a fire atop a pole and men keeping their distance-- calm water and the horizontal cross-piece half-submerged. My mind switches back and forth between my asphalt street prepared for Cherry-Almond Wednesday and of this suburban phone pole cross, apparently burned in two.
Here in Atlanta, we are nearing the crest of the communion of flowers this city offers during the spring. The dogwoods are now almost fully opened, lacy, with the feel of a Japanese landscape. With many of the larger trees still on the leafless side, the dogwoods in bloom always make me aware of visual depths. I can look through the denseness of trees and see whiteness of dogwoods. Once trees leaf out completely, all of that will be lost and will become a seemingly impenetrable mass. Banks of azaleas are in bloom as well, so brilliant in their concentration of color, lacking in any subtlety. And wisteria vines grope their way around and up trees, across whatever happens to be in their path, winding lavender bundles of flowers. The air is filled with the earthy aroma of the entirely unremarkable (to look at) flowers of holly bushes in bloom. And here in my own yard, my Don Juan climbing rose bush makes his lusty and robust way across the front of my house, heavy with a bevy of maiden buds ripe for his plucking.

I bundled myself appropriately for the cold and more importantly against the wind and went walking this morning. The sunlight seemed especially strong, though not able to coax warmth enough to counter the icy air. The water in the creek was clear and bubbled over the small pebbles where the bridge crosses. When I'd crossed the creek and emerged into the openess under the power lines, I decided to walk across that land to another place where the creek wanders through and visit. Once spring begins, and plants are growing that area becomes choked with tall plants but right now, all of that has died back, the brittle canes broken and split and scattered on the edge of the creek. I could see the water easily. The surface of the creek bed was ridged from unseen currents and the ridges were interrupted by stones that barely protruded through the sand. Water flowed from my left to the right, as it always does there. But the wind was strong and created the illusion of reversing the direction of the creek. Wind moved invisibly, pushing the surface of the water from right to left. Though the ripples that created were barely visible, in the strong sunlight, the subtle changes were enough to effect the reflected light. Waves of light lines, like the pattern of the scales on the skin of a snake, slithered against the current and faded until the next wind current brushed the water and stirred the snake. I could see an area, shallower and more filled with mud, where a thin skin of ice had formed over night and now looked rough, like the sloughed skin of a snake.

As I walked this morning, I thought of this on-going mention of
pokeweed, garden scourge and food source, both. This had me thinking
of other unsavory plants. And as a person living in the South
virtually all of my life, I thought of kudzu. I suppose anyone who
has spent even a small amount of time in the South will know what
kudzu is. A vine-y, leafy, interloper, of sorts, brought to the South
sometime in the early 1900s. Kudzu is a native of China where I
believe it behaves itself fairly well. The thinking was that by
establishing it here, kudzu would check erosion of our clay soil and
it would provide food for grazing cattle. Nice theory. As it turned
out, cattle had no interest in kudzu as a food source. Nothing else
wanted to eat kudzu either, though kudzu likes eating all sorts of
things like roads, houses and trees. Drive through less suburban
parts of this region and you will find vast fields of kudzu taking
over entire stands of pine. Though I know it is a terribly
destructive plant, highly invasive, I've always loved the spontaneous
sculptures it creates when over-taking trees. Giant dinosaurs and
dragons and whatever else the imaginative eye can see appear, like
spontaneous topiary. I've heard that its roots grow to a depth of 12
feet which means it never really dies off during the winter. These
deep roots also make it nearly impossible to eradicate, at least
mechanically. You can't really dig it up unless you have something
heavy duty. Something like heavy yellow equipment—bulldozers or back
hoes. Be still my heart. Another kind of fantasy altogether that is,
operating heavy yellow equipment.

But what does any of this have to do with temple mounds, you quite
reasonably wonder? Thinking about kudzu (among other things), I
arrived home from my walk and noticed the temple mounds in my
driveway. There is an irregular crack in my driveway, perhaps a dozen
feet long. And all along it are tiny temple mounds. I suppose they
could also be described as tiny volcanoes, but each and every one was
animated with the activity of tiny ants. I don't think of volcanoes
as being a source of activity of anything other than the geological
sort. I decided these were worth spending some time looking at more
closely, with a sense of leisure. So I went inside and brewed one of
my favorite aromas, poured it into the League of Silent Flight cup
and parked myself alongside the series of temple mounds.

There are at least fifteen of these mounds. And for some reason known
so far only to the ants and not to myself, there is an order to their
arrangement. At the farthest ends of the crack, the mounds are almost
flat, barely any dome at all. As the mounds come to the mid-point on
the line, the mounds are tallest.

None of these mounds were here at all two days ago. The rain had
beaten them down. But ants are undaunted by such things and had
simply set to work re-building. The mound with the most activity was
different from all the rest. It had been built with a ramp, a shallow
roadway that went to the top. A constant stream of ants came and went
by way of this ramp. Ants disappeared into the hole in the center,
empty-handed (more accurately, empty-mandibled). And ants emerged
carrying single grains of red dirt which they carried and placed. I
suppose there was some thought as to where they placed each piece as
it didn't appear to be random. Since concrete driveways are usually
poured to a thickness of several inches, I imagine that the ants have
(relative to an ant size) quite a little trek to make down to the red
earth below. Red clay isn't at all granular so I found myself also
imagining that the ants somehow process earth because the visible
mounds are made of tiny grains that appear uniform in size and
texture—not at all clay-like anymore.

All of this work had me thinking, too, of the human equivalent. Of
temple mounds created by the native people original to this area.
Throughout the South, there are the remains of mound-building
cultures that once lived and flourished here. My father first
introduced me to some of these mounds when I was a child. He took us
to Etowah, remains of a mound-building culture outside of Atlanta.
His affection for these earthworks grew out of both his Cherokee
origins and the Spiro mound near where he grew up in Oklahoma. Since
being introduced to mounds as a child, I've visited as many mound
complexes as I've been able to in my wanderings through the
Southeast. Kolomoki, Ocmulgee, and Poverty Point in addition to
Etowah.

These mounds were the work of a culture that was remarkably well
established until the arrival of Europeans. Hmmm...European kudzu
which eventually took over and swallowed these cultures. The remnants
are there, preserved in some of the mounds themselves and in the
names of physical features, rivers and lakes. I like the sounds those
remnants make in my own mind—Conasauga, Chattahoochee, Ocmulgee,
Chatuga—to mention but a few.

And what of the mounds themselves? What makes these piles of earth so
special to me? Part of my affection grows from my father's desire to
pass along the appreciation of these earthworks. There is some
knowledge about how these mounds were constructed which I also
appreciate—one basket full of earth at a time. Carried by hand,
placed and trampled into place. Even the baskets used for this work
represent significant work, of reeds and grasses harvested and bent
and woven. Basketful by basketful, earthen mounds grew. A little
like the temple mounds in my driveway being created by the ants.

These earthworks were created for a variety of reasons: for burial,
for ceremony and, in the case of the low mounds at Poverty Point,
they were the basis of housing. There is also, at Poverty Point, a
mound shaped like a bird. It is now covered with trees but at one
time, that bird mound was without trees, standing on part of the
flood plain of the Mississippi River, marking a point along bird
migratory routes.

What appeals to me most about the mounds, though, is the sense of
connection I feel to something unnamed and ancient. I've visited
mounds in the oppressive heat of summer. I've been to them on colder
days, too. I've been to some at sunset and others on days when the
only breeze you could feel, the only stirring of air there was, was
atop the tallest of the mounds. This last experience was at the
tallest of the mound complex at Ocmulgee. Standing on top as I was, I
realized I was above the tree line. Horizon in all directions. This
view of the horizon meant that I was on top of an open, living
observatory. No doubt there were many reasons for such structures to
have been built long ago. And among those reasons, I feel certain,
was the capacity to chart and observe celestial events.

As I have been writing this, the Thunder Boys have been at work
tearing open the sky, spilling its contents on earth. Invisible
spirits move the trees which whisper in response and light has gone
into temporary hiding. Shadow begins to rule, and forms itself
mysteriously beneath and among the leafy canopy. I am reminded of my
visit to the Kolomoki mounds—torrential down pour, fox squirrels (so
large and with black faces, that I believed at first they were small
wild monkeys) clambering up and down the trunks of trees decorated
with Spanish moss. I felt ancient that day, in the rain. I felt
grounded and timeless. Connected to these unknown others, creators of
earthworks.

The line of temple mounds in my driveway have all been washed away
now, another ant epoch come and gone. It didn't take long in so much
rain. Diligent little beings that they are, they will, no doubt, have
rebuilt their complex in another couple of days. I think of ants all
over the world, busy with their work, with the materials at hand. And
I think of ancient people, wonder if they too watched ants building
temple mounds and became inspired to move the earth themselves,
creating their own complex on what must have seemed at that time to
be a vast earth pinned at the edges to an ever-changing expanse of
sky.

About seventeen years ago, a first mandala came
to me while meditating. In saying that it came to
me, what I mean is that while my eyes were
closed, an image presented itself so that I could
see it in my mind. I did not know an image would
come to my mind as I was fairly new to yoga and
meditation. The image I could see was of an
equilateral cross with pine cones at the center,
the cones open as they would be after their seeds
have been released.

By the time several years of yoga practice had
passed, other images, mandalas, had come to me
from time to time. Always there was a circle and
often the circle was contained within a square.
One that especially asserted itself was the image
within a square of a circle transected by an
equilateral cross, the arms of the cross being
blue. A green vine twined and grew its way within
the circle.

On Tuesday of this past week, a group of Tibetan
monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery arrived
at the Museum to begin creating a sand mandala
painting. This was part of Tibet week, which
takes place every year at Emory. I recall first
seeing a group of these monks working on a sand
mandala many years ago, at the Carlos Museum,
long before I began to work there, long before I
even had any idea I would one day work there. The
mandala is created out of vividly colored sand
that is deposited by way of special long, narrow,
silver funnels. The funnels are ridged along part
of their length. The opening of the funnel is
quite narrow and the monks coax the sand from the
funnel by rubbing a stick along the ridged part.
I suppose the vibrations excite the sand, making
it flow because as soon as they cease the
rubbing, the sand stops. Colors are placed almost
grain by grain. Creation of the mandala is an act
of meditation, among other things.

Construction of the mandala began with opening
ceremonies. Eight monks in burgundy robes and
draped with saffron colored cloths assembled a
large square table with a black top, then
arranged themselves in a semi-circle along one
side. Two of the monks set metal cones to the
floor and began extracting sections, telescoping
one part out of another until they had two horns
that were probably about 15 to 18 feet long. Two
other monks, on the other end, had smaller horns,
more like trumpets. A monk near the center of the
line had a large drum, held so the drum head was
vertical, the drum head decorated by a
three-armed and very colorful whirling disk.
Another of the monks had cymbals. First (I think)
was a flourish with the cymbals and then they
began chanting, something very deep, reminding me
of bull frogs, the deepness of the tone, anyway.
As they continued, I realized some of the monks
were making two tones. I think that’s done by a
method of circular breathing. Drum beats and
horns and cymbal flourishes continued and I felt
reminded of some piece of jazz music I have,
something by McCoy Tyner, either Atlantis or Fly
with the Wind. I thought, as I listened to the
sounds, that it didn’t seem like too much of a
stretch to think that jazz musicians might well
have heard those sounds and borrowed them. At
today’s closing ceremony, the monks at one point
had moved from that very deep guttaral thrumming
and rhythmic throat chanting to sounds that
seemed to sore and I was again reminded of music
from my past, this time thinking that that part
reminded me of something by Pink Floyd, from the
album Meddle, a song called Fearless. I think
right at the end of that, there are voices that
break away from the song and sore, a capella, in
a similar way.

The monks worked about 8 hours or more a day,
creating their sand painting, in teams of two and
teams of four, laying out colors and shapes and
patterns. The sound of the rubbing on the silver
funnels was also beautiful, in its own way, to
listen to. Sound overlapping sound overlapping
sound ceasing resuming. Color flowed. Greens and
blues and vivid pinks. Yellows and oranges and
reds. Shading appeared. Patterns were dragged
into the sand with special tools, a way of
marking what was to be deposited next. A large
circle began to fill in with more and more
divisions, a large circle within the square of
the tabletop and the circle containing a square
which contained a circle. A kind of equilateral
cross formed with many divisions and colors
shapes and and textures. As the painting grew
from the center outward, I was surprised at how
textural it was. In places sand was deliberately
piled up sometimes to a depth of maybe as much as
3/8 of an inch and in other places it was the
thinnest layer, just enough to completely cover
the black table top. Monks moved back and forth
from the mandala to the table where the many
small silver bowls contained colorful sand.
On Thursday, the road manager/driver for the
monks came to my office. The van he has been
driving the monks in had broken down and while it
was being repaired, he needed to secure a rental
van and had come to ask if we could recommend a
rental company. He sat by my desk for awhile and
we chatted. I asked how long he’d been driving
the monks. Since April, he’d said. He told me he
had driven 10,000 miles just since January. I
asked what it was like to spend this time driving
monks, it seemed such an unusual occupation one
that I imagined would have an impact. He said it
has been an amazing time, that he felt like he’d
learned from them, keeps learning about what’s
important and what isn’t, like he has to because
he’s in their presence and suddenly the person
who cuts him off in traffic isn’t something worth
being angry about. He said he’s driving the
dharma around, literally.

The mandala the monks created is the Compassion
mandala. It is one of many designs, I gather, all
of which have been around for 2000 or more years,
passed down through the ages. At the end of the
week, I knew the ultimate end to its creation
would be to sweep it up and ceremonially return
the sands to some body of water.

Prior to the closing ceremony, there was a talk
to a standing room only crowd about the meaning
of the mandala. I could not hear the talk because
the room was too packed and I was too far away
but I could see a screen onto which was projected
the image of a finished mandala. Words came up
indicating it was an animated explanation of the
mandala and with that, written words ceased to
appear on the screen and were replaced with
animated images. The mandala moved to horizontal
and something grew up out of its center. Then
other things emerged, small shapes became 3 D and
stood up. Periodically the view would shift so
that it was as if you were seeing it from the
side as sections rose, then the view would change
again to something more like an isometric view. I
kept trying to figure out what it was I was
seeing and suddenly it dawned on me that it was a
building that seemed to be growing out of the
mandala. I realized that the mandala is like a
symbolic map of a sacred temple. To say I was
amazed by this understanding would be an
understatement. Suddenly I understood not only
the building within a building but that perhaps
some of the shapes were meant to be clouds in the
air, and the whole building rested on a giant
lotus in full bloom. My mind flashed back to my
earliest recollections of the mandalas that came
to me beginning years ago. As years had gone by,
as circles within squares became images I saw in
meditation and in the real world, it had suddenly
dawned on me one day that the church I had grown
up in, the UU church here in Atlanta on Cliff
Valley is itself a circular sanctuary within a
square building. As I grew up, I often walked the
perimeter of that circle, walked a mandala. Those
shapes had been there as part of my spiritual
center, contained within my religious community.
A circle, symbol of wholeness. The square, the
solid walls that contained that.

That closing ceremony took place this afternoon,
a sunny, cool, and very windy day here in
Atlanta. The monks once more arranged themselves
in a semi-circle, though I noticed that the order
of the men was reversed from what it had been for
the opening ceremonies. Chanting and drumming and
horns played, for about a half hour. The eldest
member of the group picked up small amounts of
sand from each of the arms of the cross as he
circled the table. And finally he took a large
brush and swept the entire mandala into a pile of
sand in the center of the table. All of the
colors had blurred into a state of grayness, no
longer individual colors aglow against the black.
Sand was placed in small bags and given away
until there was no more, save for that which the
monks would take to the creek. The destruction of
the mandala was meant to represent the idea of
impermanence and returning the sand to flowing
water was meant to represent the giving to the
world all of the compassion contained within the
days of drawing meditation, the creek flowing to
a river, the river to an ocean, the ocean taking
the sands around the world, a circle within the
dark vastness of space. After the sand had been
swept up, one of the monks went to the altar that
had been along one wall throughout the week. It
had a number of ritual objects as well as a
picture of the Dalai Lama, and vases of flowers.
The monk picked up a vase of flowers and returned
to the table where the mandala had been. He
placed the vase of flowers at the center of the
table, at the center of the mandala. And I
thought of the mandala that had come to me years
ago, the cross with the pine cones that had
released their seeds. It was like a new level of
understanding to all of these mandalas, to
symbols that have been with me for 18 years now.
One of the Asian studies students asked if I
would hold the door as the monks processed
through, followed by people who’d come to see the
closing ceremonies. I was glad to oblige. First
came the monks with the very long horns, followed
by other monks. I watched as they descended the
stairs, saffron robes aglow in the light. I
thought of that same saffron color which the
artist Christo had used for his recent and
impermanent work of art, Gates, in New York City.
A work that had taken more than 25 years to see
to completion, was on view for two weeks, and
then gone. I held the door and looked at the
faces of people as they passed by, was surprised
when woman stroked my arm, thanked me for
holding the door. And as more and more people
passed, several more thanked me for holding the
door. There was something intimate and personal
in this ordinary act of holding the door, as if
each of us were bound by something. When everyone
was out of the building, I followed. As I rounded
the corner of the building, a mother of a child
who was in a recent workshop walked up to me and
told me that the Pope had just died.
Impermanence. We all assembled on the Mizzel St.
Bridge, overlooking the creek that runs through
Baker Woodlands. A work of art lies there,
through the woods, a work called Source Route.
Two paths that lead down the sloping earth end at
the creek that runs through the woodlands. Two
nights ago, a large tree had uprooted during
heavy rains and fallen across one of the paths of
Source Route. A number of us like the symbolism
of this tree across Source Route and think the
artist would have liked this, too. More chanting
and music and the sand was cast into the air to
settle in the water and on surrounding ground,the ceremony at an end. Impermanence.

Written April 2 2005