Cobalt Skink

Talking Fish

2007-08-19T18:03:00.001-04:00

As much as anything, I'm experimenting, trying to see what it is like to post an image. This is one of my line drawings. I'd mentioned to Idyllopus that I sometimes think my line drawings amount to having created a coloring book. I generally imagine colors but lack the time, so there are many line drawings and no color. Last weekend, when I was with my family on vacation, my children were casting about for something to do in the evening. Though our place had a Very Large TV, there didn't seem to be cable, or at least not very interesting cable, and we hadn't thought to bring movies with us. So I began to draw my children while they were doing other things, like reading. And then I offered my drawings to them, told them if they were bored they could color them. Perhaps I'll scan those and post them.

Sand Idles

2007-08-19T17:12:00.000-04:00

Last weekend my family and I went to
Tybee Island. Tybee is a small island
along the small coast of Georgia. I've known
of Tybee Island for many years but had never
been there. I'd heard that it was less built up,
less trendy than many beaches.

It was good to go with our children, who'd
asked for us to go to the beach. At 17 and
19 years old, I think the occasions when
our children will want to accompany us on
vacations are dwindling and since we had
not been able to take our customary week
at SUUSI (Southeastern Unitarian Universalist
Institute) this year, in Blacksburg Virginia,
going to the beach, just the four of us, seemed
like a good occasion to be with each other for a few days.

We rented a small cottage, only a block
from the beach. It was hot as blue blazes
at Tybee last weekend, as I suppose it was
over much of the country. But our little
cottage was just right, nicely appointed
with all the necessary comforts, including
a lovely screened porch with rocking chairs
and a picnic table, as well as overhead fans.
The owners of the cottage had even thought
to supply their guests with beach chairs and
sand toys and umbrella and cart to haul
those necessities to the beach.

We spent as much time there as we could
manage and Roxanne got a surfboard sort of thing
and was able to manage to ride the waves in,
if not standing on the board then apparently
joyfully skimming the water with her body and
her board, in her own way.

Tybee Island is a rather ordinary place, only
modestly built up, with junky little shops in
its junky little downtown, the shabbiness
and ordinariness of it appealing to me. It is
not a place trying to put on airs, as it were.

Last Sunday, I awakened fairly early and
decided to take a walk along the beach
alone. I knew we'd be heading home in a
few hours and the solitude of an early
walk beckoned. The sun was up, the surf
skidding in, dolphins feeding not far from
shore and very few people, though the sun was up.

As I walked down the beach, I could see a
woman sitting on the sand, working on a
sand construction. Her clothing, even at a
distance, was distinctive compared to usual beach attire.
She appeared to be wearing a black sari. I could see a length
of fabric blowing in the wind. And I assumed
she was probably an Indian woman. As I got closer,
I could see that she was working on a sand creation
but that it was not a sand castle as seems to be
customary for people at the beach to build. She
was making what I recognized to be a Hindu temple. So
there she sat, in what I thought was a sari,
stitched with golden colored threads in a vine pattern,
working and smiling. Her buildings seemed familiar,
as if I'd seen them in books before and when I got
home, I looked up Hindu temples on the internet. The
one that seemed closest to what she was constructing
is known as the Lingaraja Temple. I walked past several
times over the next hour or two, to see her
progress. The final temple complex had three
buildings inside a sand wall she'd constructed. One
of the buildings was tall, flanked by two smaller
versions of that. Each was conical, but rounded at
the tip, which was topped by a shape that might be
thought of to look a little like a hat. There was an
arched entrance to the temple complex and within
the courtyard she'd fashioned three egg-like shapes
that were put together in such a way that it looked a
little like a cluster of leaves, with a round ball of sand
where the three shapes joined. She actually made
two of these objects, one in front of either of the
shorter conical buildings. The main building itself
had a rectangular opening one would be able to
walk through, if it were a full-scale building. Outside
the walls of the complex she created there was
another dome-like shape surrounded by a line
she'd drawn in the sand, in a form I recognized. I
could see that what she'd created in the sand was a
yoni-lingam. That's what would normally be inside
the main building of the temple and would be
adorned with flower petals or perhaps colorful spices.

Later, after the temple was complete, I saw the
same woman, in her sari-like clothing, in the
incoming waves, that length of fabric waving
in the strong breeze.

I was so fascinated by her Hindu temple in the
sand. I think all I've ever seen at the beach were
sand castles or maybe some other sand construction.
I wondered if it is usual, in India, to make temples
at the beach, or just something that particular
woman does when she plays in the sand. And I
thought about the fact that here it is usually castles.
It seemed a funny contrast, too. Castles were or still are,
I suppose, symbols of political power and wealth. And
I suppose to some extent castles have a kind of
romantic appeal, perhaps conjuring ideas about
chivalry and knights and such. Seemed a funny contrast
to the woman's creation of a place of worship.

The rest of our trip home was done at a leisurely pace.
We drove into Savannah, with no particular place in mind
and no map of the city, looking for some suitable place
to each. We happened across a place called Firefly Cafe,
at Troup Square, I think, that had outdoor cafe
tables and was serving brunch. We stopped there
because it looked so inviting and dined at one
of the outdoor tables. The food was marvelous and
as it turned out, apparently it is one of the best
places for brunch in Savannah, at least according to
a local magazine article that was posted on their
wall inside. Ellen pointed out the bag of ice tethered
underneath the umbrella that shaded out table. She'd
heard it was supposed to help keep away flies, which it
did not, but even the flies did not dampen our
enthusiasm for the pleasant location and the good
food, though it did make me wonder if Fly Cafe
might have been a better name for the place.

Nina

No, YOU don't understand

2007-08-07T19:22:00.000-04:00

It is not often that I find myself suddenly feeling intensely angry. Most things in my daily life are not of such importance that it matters if they are done this way or that. Most problems are correctable and I tend not to get overly overwrought about much. But I just answered the phone and it was one of those phone calls that leaves me angry and shaking. It was a call for my daughter. At first I thought it was just a friend of hers and I replied that she wasn't at home, and asked if I could take a message. As it turned out it was a recruiter, a Marine recruiter. Ever since the summer before her senior year of high school, they've called. It isn't just the Marines. It's the Army, and the Navy as well. I remember my daughter saying she had taken a test, had basically been required to take it while still in high school. I gather she didn't even really understand what the test was for but it seems it was to uncover aptitudes that might be useful to any and all branches of the military. So they keep calling her. I thought there would be an end to it after she became a full-time college student but no, she is still getting these calls. I informed the recruiter, through my clenched teeth and my sudden fury, that she is a full-time college student and to remove her name from their list. "But Ma'am, you don't understand, she asked for some information..." I am furious. She did no such thing. I'm not the least bit surprised to have him lying to me but I am still furious. Three times I snarled at him to remove her name from his list, that she is a college student. He was persisting in talking when I hung up on him in mid-sentence. I am furious. I want these recruiters, I want the president of this country to keep his damn war off of my children.

vesper

2007-07-22T15:22:00.000-04:00

Call to Worship
"Seek to dwell in love and peace and truth with one another, and the gifts of the spirit shall enrich all and make no one poor; for in fellowship is strength, and immeasurable is the help that one can yield to another." --Rev. Frances West

Several times in the last week I've heard a bird's song I've not been aware of before. I've seen the bird perched on a telephone line as the daylight was waning but could only see it in silhouette. I could see that it was small, something like a sparrow. In searching through recorded bird songs, I thought perhaps it was a song sparrow but the song of that bird did not seem quite like what I had heard, which was distinctive and melodious. I noticed among the sparrows I could listen to there was one called a vesper sparrow and having listened to its singing on a recording, I think it's quite likely that's what I heard. How appropriate to be hearing it and seeing it as the daylight gave way to the first traces of evening.

Many years ago, my mother had decided she wanted to offer vesper services at the Unitarian Universalist church she was serving as minister at the time. She did so as a limited experiment, offering those services on a half-dozen Sunday evenings, around 7 pm, as I recall. None of these were ever well-attended and knowing my mother, that may have been discouraging to her but she did them all the same, attentive to the quality of worship without regard to numbers of people.

I went to all of those vesper services not because I had to but because I wanted to have that time of quiet worship. The idea appealed to me as a way of ending a weekend before turning myself back toward the rhythms and tasks of the work week. It was like a pause before resuming breathing, a quiet moment.

I remember one of those Sundays in particular. We'd arrived early at the church to set things up. My mother and I were the only ones in the building. The church is housed in what is called a Butler building, an aluminum sided building more commonly seen as inexpensive warehouses in industrial areas here. The sanctuary of that church is a large simple room--with windows arranged at regular intervals on either side, 3 to a side--and open to the pitched roof at the top, 20 feet up. The wall behind the cherrywood pulpit, which was made by a church member who had many years of experience in handbuilding boats, was plain, simple, white, adornment coming later in the form of a stained glass chalice another church member had made.

My mother had a large ceramic bowl, shallow and wide, perhaps two and a half feet across, glazed in earthy tones. She'd set it in front of the pulpit that Sunday and had asked me to fill it with water in order to float votive candles. There were other things she busied herself with in preparation for the service and our paths crossed as I made my way back and forth from the kitchen with water. I fetched the water in the container it was easiest to find, an ordinary plastic coffee pitcher, the kind you see in places like IHOP, coppery brown colored over most of its body, with the pouring lip and the flip lid colored black. I filled that coffee pot with water from the stainless steel sink in the kitchen and walked back and forth to the bowl, poured the water, out of one vessel and into another. There was something that particular evening, the dwindling light of a day that had been sunny, the quietness of the church, my mother and me at our tasks, the sound of water splashing into the wide bowl, all of those moments woven together into something lasting, at least in my memory, significant in those moments and significant in the echo of memory. As I fetched and poured water, I felt connected to all women, worldwide and through time, whose job it has been to fetch water. I felt the sacredness of this small, ordinary, and human act. I felt myself to be in sanctuary, as I do from time to time, unexpectedly, and blessedly.

I was curious about the word sanctuary, having thought of it in relation to that church, that moment. I've certainly had the feeling of being in sanctuary at other times in my life, have felt it so deeply, so sharply, so suddenly, that I've felt instantly full of tears not of sorrow but of gratitude, of safety, of beauty. I thought of the many forms of sanctuary, not just the space of a church, but of the way that word is applied to nature--a wildlife sanctuary, a bird sanctuary. Or of the safety, the sanctuary, offered to people who are seeking political asylum. In ancient Greek myth, Cassandra, who'd been given the gift of prophesy and cursed with never being believed, sought sanctuary in the temple of Athena after predicting many of the calamities that would befall her fellow Trojans. Even children incorporate this idea of sanctuary, of a safe place, into their play, running for "home" in order to escape being tagged "It" in chase games, touching "home" and making one presumably safe.

I'd looked up the word "sanctuary" which had me touching on other words, sacred, sanctify, and consecrate and leading me to an Indo-European root word "kailo", meaning "whole, uninjured, a good omen."

A few weeks ago, the Museum where I work held an event in connection with our current exhibition, Cradle of Christianity: Jewish and Christian Treasures from the Holy Land. The objects in this exhibition come from the Israel Museum in Jersualem and are about the shared early history of those two religions, their early similarities and connections. We'd arranged to have Bruce Feiler speak about the times and origins of early Christianity and its relationship to Judaism. Bruce Feiler wrote a book, and hosted a PBS series called Walking the Bible. He is a fifth generation Jew, from Savannah, Georgia, and member of the third oldest synagogue in the country, located in Savannah. He'd come to Trinity Presbyterian Church, our host for this event, to talk about this relationship.

I'd arrived early at Trinity Presbyterian, to get set up, to assist in whatever way was necessary. The church is located on a wooded lot and the summer afternoon was hot, the cicadas droning their late afternoon song among the golden light that filtered through the trees, pooling on the lawn. I'd needed to go inside and walked into the sanctuary, alone for a few moments, in the hush, that simple space, the late afternoon light, and felt awash with tears, thought of that vesper service with my mother so many years before.

Meditation
"In this quiet space, let each of us be aware of our separateness. Let us acknowledge our importance to ourselves, let us bless our uniqueness. Let us also be aware of the presence of others here in this quiet time with us. Of those whom we love, how can we show our love more simply and genuinely. Of those whom we like, how can our friendship bridge the space between us. Of those whom we dislike, how can we understand them better. Of those whom we fear, how can we find courage to face them constructively. Let us also consider the larger space beyond this room. How may we help create harmony in a disharmonious world. Amen."--Rev. Frances West

Benediction
"May faith in Goodness give you joy, and sustain your every moment. Amen"--Rev. Frances West

father, son, daughter

2006-04-18T22:25:00.000-04:00

I woke up early this morning, around 4:30, and got up. I worked about the house, made breakfast for myself, read a little more of Numbers. I've been reading the bible from the beginning, a little at a time, this in part because of a new audio-guide the Museum where I work is about to release for public use. The guide is a series of brief commentaries by various members of Emory's faculty from the departments of religion, theology, and middle eastern studies. Their comments draw links between biblical passages and biblical history and objects we have in the permanent collection. I've found it fascinating and had been led further, reading for myself, thinking, seeing connections between ancient Egypt and the beginnings of other religions. While it was still dark this morning, I decided to take water to the yarrow and the lamb's ear my father and I planted on Saturday in my garden. I filled the plastic pitcher with water from the kitchen faucet and walked out into the early morning night. The moon was bright, a few days past full, and the air was not quite warm, a breeze moved here and there and I walked barefoot, felt the coolness of the dew in the grass and found first one yarrow and then another, and the lamb's ear, carried several pitchers of water to them all. As I tended to them, I thought of Saturday and planting them with my father.

Last fall, when a second crisis forced many issues with my parents, I had pretty well had to abandon my garden. There just wasn't time to tend to it. My father had had to give his garden up when he and my mother sold their house. So both of us had lost something that mattered to us. Winter came. I told my father that when the weather got warmer, if he felt like it I'd be very glad to have him come to my house and help me work in my garden, that I could use the help. Saturday everything aligned perfectly--weather, time, and my father was ready and willing. I picked him, since he no longer drives, and brought him home with me. He asked about tools, so I showed him the two shovels I have. He selected the rounded one with the long handle and noted that the shovel's blade was bent. He said it needed sharpening. I hadn't ever realized that shovels require sharpening. I fetched a file and he sharpened the blade. He asked where I'd like first one and then another of the plants. And he prepared the soil, loosened it, considered depth and width. While he worked, I pulled weeds, rapidly, with a new tool I'd gotten.

My father has lost a lot of weight over the last couple of years. He's lost muscle mass, too. He's not as tall as he once was and he can't hear well. He's also losing memory and knows it. But on Saturday he taught me things I hadn't known and to me, he felt whole and it felt good to work alongside him. We sat together so he could rest a couple of times. He doesn't have the stamina he once did. I told him I'd learned things from him that I hadn't known before. He said he hadn't known them either, until his father taught him. That meant a lot to me. It was like having his father there with the two of us. His father died, was murdered, when my father was 19 so I never had the chance to know his father. Learning from my father some of the things he'd learned from his, it felt like he was there with us, too.

On Sunday morning, I went to church. I wasn't at all sure I wanted to be there but I'd needed to take my daughter, Roxanne, because she had agreed to help with the Easter Egg hunt and I stayed for the service. I'd hoped for a flower communion service. I've grown accustomed to that service over the last 20 years or so, and love it for the beauty that each person brings in the form of flowers, love the symbol of beginnings a flower represents, love that each person takes away a flower brought by someone unknown other. But the new interim minister didn't include a flower communion this year. Instead he talked about the story of Jesus' resurrection, from the book of John. He spoke of the part where Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and discovers that Jesus' body is gone. And then Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene only she doesn't recognize him, mistakes him for the gardener. The whole sermon was about this idea of Jesus as a gardener, and of the paradise that is here and now.

I often feel as if my life has little variation, little that is likely to be of interest to others, taken up as it is with the concerns of aging parents and raising my children, working. Yesterday I'd had to run errands after work. Drop off film to be developed for Roxanne so she'd have negatives to print from at her photography class later this week. Pick up baby wipes for my mother, write a check to pay the caregiver, visit with my parents. I was hungry and it had not been a good day at work. I bought what is, for me, comfort food--a sandwich from Chik-fil-A, and drove to the parking lot at Target to sit in the quiet of my car and eat, enjoy the brief respite before completing my errands. And as I sat there among the parked cars, the expanse of asphalt, looking at the beautiful blue sky, I noticed a hawk, seemingly suspended in the air, facing my direction, somehow magically stationary. I watched with wonder for maybe ten minutes as that hawk held itself in the sky, facing into the wind, the sun.

Perception

2006-03-20T20:40:00.000-04:00

I clocked out from work earlier today, to walk
to the Emory post office and get a book of stamps
so I could mail some bills. As I passed by one of the
buildings on the quad a woman emerged, descend-
ing the steps, cell phone glued to her ear. I heard
her say, with fierceness, "choke the SHIT out of
him...". I wandered on, Doppler shift in effect,
whatever she said after that trailing away into
nothingness relative to me.

At the post office I bought the stamps with a
$20 bill. The woman behind the counter
handed me my change, which included a
new $10 bill, and commented cheerfully,
that I was getting one of the new
ten dollar bills. I remarked that I thought it was pretty.
I don't know why our exchange seemed so
pleasant but her smile and our few words
added to my already good mood.

I walked on to the food court, bought some
greens to bring back to work to eat, but took a
longer way back to the Museum, trying to get
in a 15 minute walk before being chained
to my desk for the next few hours. My last
stop was the Old Admin building, to buy
a can of diet decaffeinated coke. I call it
denatured soda, because it is stripped of
all the stuff people usually want--sugar
and caffeine. Two women were eating
their lunches as I walked in. They were
talking. One said, "so how do they
get from [and here she described
briefly some sort of problem] to talking
about breathing?" To which the other
woman replied, "yes, how do they get
from that to breathing? It's all in the
perception."

July 10 benefit for those in the Atlanta area who like trees

2005-06-23T20:45:00.000-04:00

I'm posting this link to Meanwhile Back at the Ranch, to an article about efforts to save a beautiful tree in Atlanta. Here's the link

http://www.idyllopuspress.com/meanwhile/?p=257

long ago now

2005-06-21T12:39:00.000-04:00

Once, long ago, on Sunday afternoon I had time to work in my garden under blue skies, in golden light, with a breeze for company. In my garden I made a home for two lilies of the tiger sort and one named Atlanta Moonlight. There were rooms enough in my garden for globe amaranth and the irresistable-to-butterflies pentas; for elegant yarrow and three artemesias which took up lodgings among my canna lilies. I looked for a good place for the brown eyed susans and when I found it, I pushed my shovel into the mulch, turned it aside, discovered a cache of small, white eggs, maybe as many as fifteen of them.

The eggs were small, no more than a half inch each. I reached for one and expected its shell to be hard the way a bird's egg would be. Instead I was surprised to find it felt soft and cool and tender. I worked quickly to move the scattered eggs back together and covered them once more with mulch, though not as well, no doubt, as their momma had. Having discovered the hidden nest, I looked for a new home for the brown eyed susans, one that wouldn't disrupt the nursery---of what, I wondered? Snake? I'd seen one the day before. It knotted up when I pulled a clump of weeds away, looked disgruntled before untying itself and slithering away. So I looked for a new home for the susans, pressed the the blade of the shovel in, turned the mulch and found a second clutch of eggs, this one comprised of only five or six. I was marveling at this second find when a skink emerged from the mulch and scurried away. They were skink eggs.

I did eventually find a suitable home for the susans, not far from the skink nest.

I turned to look at my garden beginning to take shape just in time to notice the moon, large but not full against a late-afternoon blue sky. The Atlanta moonlight lily was facing it, as if it had beamed the moon into the sky or maybe it was that the lily was gathering moonlight for the approaching night.

A few days ago I started thinking about silkworms and their strict diet of nothing but mulberry leaves, white mulberry, I believe. I thought of the silk threads that are formed by the creatures, the cocoon that becomes the source of silky cloth and I wondered if mulberry leaves have something of that shimmer before they are transformed by the silkworms. I know the whereabouts of a mulberry tree that had recently been littering the walkway with an abundance of fruit. I don't think it's the type of mulberry that becomes silk in the mouths of the silkworm but I was curious and on my way home, took a leaf from a low branch. The green surface did have that sheen that catches the light as well as ridges and rows and undulations different from other leaves.

And then, just a short while ago that could have been some long past evening of a journey, I saw the moon again, in a gauze-y cocoon and sandwiched between layers of clouds, top and bottom. I arrived home from my travels just in time for the barred owl to fly darkly, mysteriously, and land on the wires of the phone lines at the edge of my yard. I wasn't even certain I'd seen it, thought maybe it was only some impression of movement conjured by my own mind. I scrambled up the driveway to watch it from the darkness and through the darkness, could see it silhouetted against a background of gray sky, surrounded by the shaggy outlines of tree shapes that twinkled with the light of fireflies as the mist rose and the fog settled.

Birdwatching in Falluja

2005-04-23T15:50:00.000-04:00

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.

cut brambles

2005-04-09T21:43:00.000-04:00

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...

Burning Phone Polls and Other Signs of Wonder

2005-04-09T21:35:00.000-04:00

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.

creek Indian

2005-04-09T21:29:00.000-04:00

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.

temple mounds in my driveway

2005-04-09T21:24:00.000-04:00

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.

Impermanence

2005-04-09T03:08:00.000-04:00

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