Nova Scotia pine

I was walking along a beach on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, the wind blowing so strongly that I needed to lean into it and push myself forward as if stepping upwards even as I was moving along very level terrain.  It's the way I felt about the piece of wood I found - driftwood pine, leaning itself into a huge pile of snow-encrusted seaweed at the high tide line.  There was a bend at its point of most leaning, as if it had been there for a hundred years slowly forming into that seaweed mound, perfectly placed there upon its bend.  There seemed to be such a bend as to effect a circularity within, possibly deep within the grain, and I picked up the piece of driftwood and attached it to my backpack, and when I placed the backpack on my back, I felt its own leaning, forming and we all leaned into the wind together.

it-ness

As I have worked into this latest piece of wood, from bark-strewn surface to an innerness of patterning of grain, I have been wondering about the different woods that various spoons have emerged from, and the role I have taken within that emergence.  

I hold a knife, a chisel, a piece of sandpaper, the wood itself as I eventually will hold a spoon.  All of these can seem as extensions of my senses that have me, allow me, invite me to move into the wood in ways that fingers themselves are not capable of.  Tools.  Implements.  A being-ness of something that creates a space for a journey that takes our senses beyond what we as human bodies are not capable of creating except possibly within imagination.  

Just as mountains and streams and glaciers and endlessnesses of deserts and other “objects of nature” have for centuries served to allow imaginative compost to settle within their "it-ness" and bubble into ideas, sometimes into for instance metaphors that conveniently house content, a spoon, spoons, the way of spoons, also have their own it-ness...

A spoon, as an essence of concaveness, containment, nurturing, caring, holding, housing, serves to allow a similar settling of my own imaginative compost, taking me on journeys through a thousand landscapes of potential - even as the "it-ness" of  what will become an actual, physical spoon allows me a maintain my exploration within a framework of focus that holds me nurturingly, caringly…

Exploration

Someone once told me that a forester they knew had once claimed to be able to identify over 70 different characteristics that indicate the quality of resonance within a tree.

I was heading up a trail, a logging road that has been turned into mincemeat by the Forest Service because, it seems, as I've been told, they no longer want to maintain those roads that lead into the depths of spaces where they once claimed wood, and do not want to have liability for those trails, those explorations, so they're returning them back as if they are able to return.  Moving through trees crashed down, interlocking with brush, wood doing its own reclaiming and returning, sometimes branches, sometimes roots, and always as I would climb in and out, the flow of grains and textures, swirls, ingrown bark, growth-ring stripes, flakes, burl waves, streaks, pocks, pitch pockets, bird pecks, checks and splits, we explore wood as wood is there around us.

I stopped to rest and there between my rifle and a pile of bear scat was a piece of wood, where I wondered at solidity, intrigued with the potentials of interiority and and the whats and hows of exploring it even as I hope to explore my own sense of wonder of potentials.  I wonder what is there within, as solidity, as flow, as resonance.

a fish, a sunrise, a step

You stood by the edge of that endless river.

it was that moment just before dawn.

Some say it is the coldest moment;

Some say the most beautiful;

Some say the softness of the hand that motions to wait

in that moment is as soft as the breath of things unnecessary to say…

You cast your line out.

The line went tight to the current’s pull.

And you waited.

You had taken a lifetime to get there, to the edge of that river.

You saw what looked like a star,

as if right there at the end of your line,

out there upon the water, shimmering upon the water’s surface.

Why were you there?

Maybe trying to catch a little bit of daylight ?

Only one brief moment maybe?

Thinking for instance that the first moment of a new day like a soft hand touching time?…

Waiting, to be timeless…

Then there was a tug…

what felt like large fish lunging at your line

and you began reeling in, quickly,

reeling, reeling, getting tired quickly,

getting excited, fearing,

in your excitement, in your tiredness,

that you might lose that fish.

“Keep the line tight,” you heard a voice say next to you,

somehow insistent, yet as softly as

the calmest of sighs, the softest of hands telling you to wait,

to hold on, to be steady

within a steadiness of trying to maintain that tightness,

that hold upon such vibrant life,

and then the surface broke, the star there shattered,

and suddenly, the day - it dawned…

and the night - it took that star

and just disappeared with it

and as if wanting also to go

just then, the fish broke free, and the line went slack…

A glint, a flash of beauty.  A splash of light,

a simple, beautiful moment, the simplicity, the beauty

of that moment

and then, the fish – it disappeared…

And then there was nothing there but the endlessness of that river… 

And you took a step, forward, didn’t you,

looking, maybe not thinking, maybe only leaning, forward,

maybe feeling so alone, maybe lost, maybe bewildered, leaning,

as if maybe only wanting to be close to all of that beautiful disappearance…

And there you waited.  

And there was silence.  And peace.  And calm.

“It’s the way it is with the dawn,” you heard a voice say - not so much

a voice as the feeling of a soft hand upon your breast

in that moment.

“There and then gone,” it said.

 “Like that star,” it said.

“Like that fish,” it said.

 “Like that moment,” it said.

“Sometimes it’s the ones you love,” it said.

“Always only that one step – maybe only a leaning forward,

looking, waiting,

like that one step in your whole life where you might think

you are so alone,

like there is only disappearance before you…

like there is absolutely no one to guide you, to hold you,

to hold you tight…

A step, there and then gone…”

We will all take that step, we will maybe wait, maybe listen…

But is it our step to take, ours to have - to call our own?

A step to take alone and then to be gone?

No.

It is not ours to take.

Because we are not alone in that moment.

(In this moment.)

Because there are always the infinite spaces

of light, and love..,

And that one step, that needs no guiding…

that one true step through the dark night to dawn…

that one step upon all of this assumed solidity…

That’s the fish – that’s the star…

there in the depths, there upon the surfaces,

at daybreak, at dawn and light and love

are not at all like the disappearance

of that star, of that fish, of that moment,

of that step,

but are the emergence

of a calm beauty

of the endlessness of river

whose edge takes us a lifetime to get to.

Peacefully, calmly, bravely, serenely, faithfully, trustfully, simply, beautifully.

Like your whole life, solid, good and true.

The magic that will be

It was, for all practical purposes, an arbitrary glance in an arbitrary direction.  It was, for all practical purposes, a view that lasted no more than an instant.

It was a moment of a memory of a time when we were sitting around a blazing fire.  Someone threw on wood, and kept throwing on more wood.  No one spoke.  We all sat around in a broken circle, staring.  Every once in a while someone would get up and throw on some more wood.  Everyone threw on some wood, even the smallest child, a six year old girl, I remember she got up and looked around as if expecting someone to tell her no; that it was too dangerous, that there didn't need to be any more, that only grown-ups could put on wood, that maybe she should ask first, who knows why she looked around, she looked at everyone but no one said anything, indicated anything, just watched her pick up a piece of that rotten timber from the torn down barn and throw it on the blaze.

Does wood hold fire even before it ever is touched upon by flame?
Does fire hold us in its sway even before it is touched upon by wood?
Does our sight hold vision even before it happens upon arbitrary glances?
Does vision hold memories even before it happens upon itself?

Thought and thinking

Well, it's done; after many weeks of (on and off) tending towards realization, my "thinking spoon" is finished.  I hold it and its sense of presence melts like butter within the contours of my hand.  The surfaces of wood and skin intermix and meld...

I haven't decided whether to call it a thought spoon or a thinking spoon...  Its reason for being, or reason for having come into being, or the tendency of thought that has been there within its becoming, has been...  thought and thinking...

But, thinking about it... "thought" is an abstract sort of conceptual sense of the "thing" the "it", whereas "thinking" evokes a sense of action...  But what does that imply when the sole object of the process of holding my thought/thinking spoon is to reach a state of calmness that allows for all thought/thinking to disappear?

Maybe it should be called my not thinking spoon.

European weeping beech