Shadow and Truth

Someone might suggest that truth is a representation of things as they are.  Sure, someone else might say, that statement might very well hold some element of truth.  Someone else might ask where then, do shadows begin and end - some trick of light, a play of sight, a toying of thought, ways that we carry our understandings across stretches of our many questions of what is what, wondering if truth is within the holding of so many varieties and flavors of the day's offerings of senses of solidity as we sense our passing upon things of what we like to call a physical sort of reality, even as we feel that whisper of shadow within a breath's moment of being so close as to become part of that breath, but don't let it fool you, don't let it take you too far away if what keeps your mind quiet is the moment, not the shadow?

Snow

It's Christmas morning.  I went out onto my back porch and saw that the wind had blown around about a foot's worth of snow to encircle and embrace all of the stray objects lying around here and there arbitrarily forming their own shapes that were now held within the drifts of whiteness that were more grey than white because the sun had not yet risen.  I knew that there were a few pieces of wood that were underneath all of that snow and wondered if I could remember their shape, but it was not to be - all I remembered was that I had placed a few pieces of wood there with the thought that one day I would get around to carving them to take up the spoons that their shapes had me anticipating.  I watched the snow shrouds emerge within the morning's light as my eyes adjusted, as I felt the cold seeping in around my neck, up the sleeves of my coat, around my boots to take some first tentative toying touches with my toes...  It was a beautiful morning.  I breathed the crisp air, heard the peacefulness of the morning's quietude, smelled a freshness that is only possible with newly fallen snow...  I tasted a tentative wafting hint of spruce from the nearby trees.  I saw crystals in the snow, and some slight hints of the wood within.

So much of what we envision is held within surfaces that encapsulate more beauty than we will ever be able to imagine.  But the present moment is the real beauty - the shape of beauty will always change, but here we are. 

Waking up

I'm trying hard to wake up, and sometimes it's not easy, it's like those days when you slip from your dreams to what you just know is a beautiful sunny day outside but you feel the nip of cold already before you even move the bed sheet and know that there are those moments waiting for you when you finally get the energy and focus and determination mustered to jump out or ease out or "whatever your style" out of bed and take on the reality of a superbly cold day, yes, superb, wonderful, perfect in all of its colditude... and you know you have to do it sometime anyways, I mean it's the way of the world and there you go, but on this day you full well know there are those moments to move along like along a hard edge of  a realization that you have to ease along to place yourself past so much of what you are anticipating as cold that in itself is beautiful, like the hard harshness of a solid line that has such wondrous curves that it becomes fluid and maintains its fluidity as your sight and mind and sense of life itself glides along it; this is the reality of some sorts of beauty, and what seems like a vital aspect of waking up...  And usually it's not as cold as you imagine it, especially if you accept it with open arms and open heart as one of the many privileges of being alive...

Letting go

This isn't about spoons.  It's about holding something, and letting go.

It was a simple thing really. I was gathering wood for my winter solstice bonfire.  It was going to be one humdinger of a showcase of light, a push fire as I called it - the fire in the post-solstice moments pushing the light-tendencies from behind rather than the "pulling" of a pre-solstice fire...  Pretty much equal halves of the longest night and shortest day balance with that exact moment when the sun is at its farthest point from the North Pole, which this year in the area I'm in was a little past 11 am.

At 4pm I got the fire going, and after about an hour of burning I decided to load more wood on - my barn was full of old scraps of wood, rotten beams, old boards, planks full of nails that would be a nightmare to cut through to make proper lengths of bona fide "firewood".  So I started to gather armloads together and carry them to the fire. 

Being that it was about 5pm at that time it was pitch-black and I was using my headlamp to light my way along the snowy path and in the barn.

The light happened upon two poles resting upright in a far corner of the barn.  I walked over to them and let the headlamp's light move upon their surfaces.  They were about six feet in length, fairly round and straight, about a wrist's thickness and both had ends that were cut in somewhat square shapes.  Along the whole length there was faded green cloth that had some sort of thin black leather strips tacked along the cloth. 

They seemed to be handles of an old army stretcher.

I paused before them, wondering all sorts of whys and whens and wheres and whos but then my mind began seeing a world around the poles when the stretcher cloth was intact, hands holding the square-cut ends, bodies upon the cloth being carried endless distances, pain, cries, blood, sleep and death flowing through the wood.  I thought not to burn them - to leave them there to rest, to be part of some lingering reality of something that was long, long ago, but then I thought about the rest of letting go, the respect in the letting go, letting the wood and what it carried get on towards its next iteration of existence, in flames, in ashes towards new soil for seeds and roots of trees and I picked up the sticks and carried them to the fire and laid them gently on the flames and watched the fire lick around them and slowly take them into its embrace, and I let go, thinking of wars that implied the need for things like stretchers, and the war so many years ago on that same date when the Finnish army was steadfastly dismantling the Soviet belief in easy victory, persevering through harsh cold, weighing down stretchers.  It didn't matter when the stretcher was created or where it was used - it had me think once again about the many sacrifices people in this country made for their independence, for good and right and light over darkness, and the fire burned towards our world of more light.

Goofiness

I returned to my cozy home that was nestled within the newly fallen snow.  I shoveled my way in and opened the door and one of the first things I saw was a pile of pieces of wood that I have collected for spoons, and I looked at the pile and tried to see all of the many  lines of shapes of the various handles and bowls as I had seen when first discovering them.  Many were evident.  Some were a bit... obscuse... I mean, where had my eyes been looking when they were wandering through the trees and branches and deadfall way back in those moments?  I understand that most times I make what my kids call "goofy spoons" but for some of those pieces of wood, goofiness is still a far cry of hope for some vague semblance of clarity?  But I understand myself, I think; I think I understand this particular waywardness when it comes to searching out some of those spoons, and I have patience with my sight, I try to let it roam and play and dance, I mean, why not let it have its fun?  And when the time comes when I begin to explore into the shapes that are there and that will emerge I can only hope that my hands call their own playful fun forward and allow their surfaces to dance upon the potential.  And I think of my kids, and hope that I also always allow them a similar leeway of fun and creativity and exploration of so much potential that they might come to recognize as what may not seem as it might typically seem, and I hope that I can share some of the happiness I feel when I'm with them seeing them within what is always, ultimately, their own spaces of exploration.  It's there in the spoons.  Maybe someday they'll notice some sense of this within all the goofiness...

To be held

When walking through the woods, along a path, a trail, along a street, down a shoreline, moving through mist and rain and snow and sleet, sunshine, morning's chill, mid-day's heat, midsummer magical middle night, winter solstice darkness, or just being where I am, always somewhere... many times there is a distinct feeling that the earth is alive and speaking all the time, possibly in ways that I can't comprehend but then again there are times when I get some sense of an understanding of something that is not within the scope of the senses that I have at my disposal but that is there nevertheless.  I look up and feel drawn to something that "catches my eye", or my ear feels a yearning for a sound that is only just off on the peripheries of hearing but that toys with a promise of becoming sound, or I catch something wafting towards a realization of a scent that draws me off the path, through some space, onwards...

I would venture to say that nothing that man has ever created has ever been created in a vacuum.  We create with the understanding we have at our disposal, or that emerge within our innovative leaps as we explore what we might not know but which we intuitively sense is possible.  The spoon?  Who held the first branch to reach something out of reach?  Who stirred a broth that was too hot to touch with the hand? Who measured out something that was unable to be measured with a cupped hand? 

I'm not sure why I got interested in carving spoons.  There is something about the concave surface, that space for containing, holding so many things, the utilitarian value of that shaped element, and there is something about the handle's movement beyond that space, a space in its own right, its own space for its own holding, which is the contemplation of our hand's envelopment of solidity in thousands of variations of moments of movement.  I don't want to try to have any of it remain within any specific moment but want always to encourage the hand to continue its movement, just as we see and hear and smell and taste and touch, we can be attentive to the ways we move, or the ways that movement effects itself around what we tend to call "us" - the physical construct that takes its place and space within the rest of the physically constructed world even as movement holds us within every moment, even as we might tend to believe that it is "we" that move...

We are like spoons, held within our holding...

Walking to a hill

I went walking to a hill with a friend the other day, which basically meant driving down a pot-hole patterned dirt road to a point where the car could go no further then walking down into a small valley and along a path that wound its way through small trees.  As we moved through the trees I looked through the branches, at the curves and bends that made me think of how thought would look if it was made into a solidity of this world, the winding of tendencies of understandings as they brushed against other tendencies and the articulations of moments when a decision is somehow made to branch towards some new direction yet remain there within a sense of togetherness as the weave of searching continues into the spaces that are there free to be explored, with the whole surface of earth moving within every moment of every plant making these same decisions, and us humans moving there within them sometimes for some reason having a sense of freedom as if we are free?  I saw a spoon in a tamarind tree all bold red heartwood and energy of peace, that might be a spoon for holding as nothing of any meaning beyond the holding.  Within the branches of the tamarind trees there was evidence of cutting, not with a saw but maybe with some sort of hatchet or machete, clean slices through wrist-sized branches, someone's evening firelight, and I realized that I was lagging behind a bit and so I caught up with my friend and walked on towards the hill.

A friend

I went up into the woods the other morning, thinking about a friend of mine I had visited a few weeks back.  She had a sugar bowl, somewhat deep, with a "normal" metal spoon that she used to scoop out the sugar for coffee.  I had tried the spoon, felt the dismaying lack of its ability to work within the space of that sugar bowl.  It was not meant to be there.  It was almost crying out in dysfunction.    I began to look at the bowl, the sugar, thought about my friend, her way of moving through her kitchen towards her first morning cup of coffee, and wondered if maybe I could find her a spoon...

I had a backpack with a handsaw.  I walked along, enjoying the quietude, the morning mist, the sense of stillness around me.  I knew the area, recognized rocks, trees, patches of moss.  I ventured into another direction, thinking to watch for my friend's spoon, and then I saw a large limb that had broken off a tree and sensed a bend.  Felt movement.  I walked closer and saw her spoon.

The piece is now in my house.  The spoon within it will wait for me.  It will be there emerging within every moment that I imagine its being there.  It will be nice.

Collecting

I have been collecting pieces of wood.  I have been watching the spaces around wood.  I have been walking, walking, walking through spaces of watching the spaces around the wood that I collect.  Sometimes I have not been watching so closely.  Sometimes it has only been a moment of experience.  The touch upon a surface.  Á wafting roughness of a piece of bark.  A sense of light touching my eyelid when I close my eyes when sunlight filters past a meshwork of leaves when they move ever so slightly when the breeze sifts space around me.  I have been collecting myself within it all.

Metal

I wanted to have two spoons of silver or stainless steel or some metallic substance and have searched for days, feeling to the touch and sense of balance of smoothness and weight and size and shape pleasing to various levels and aspects of what might be defined as perception, but as of today am still looking. I am learning about my own character of searching and envisioning.

Spring melt

Walking in the forest amidst the winter storms' aftermath, a mosaic of wind-tossed trees, chaotic calculations of potential next steps. I look around, saw in hand. I search through snow. The cold feels good on my hands.

A knot

A simple space in time, a point that eyes move towards, I can feel my knfe dwelling upon a moment when it can move past or rest upont a know, to sheer or shift, slide past or flow over, flow around or flow through. I decide to flow through it, as if like a body squeezing itself through an only slightly opened door that is frozen because it has not moved in so long. The body the knife-blade entering a wondrous world beyond that moment.