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Arts & Letters
A List of Some Things Collected—Pennies, String, Sealing Wax, Part II
"I am not yet patient enough to wait very long for some wonder to arrive."
By Erika Milo
Posted on Apr 22, 2003 |
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| "Oak Queen," Northern California, photo by Erika Milo |
Part II
15. Ignorance.
It may seem now to the reader of this list that I see quite a lot, but I hasten to point out that it is not so. It is easy, in catching pennies, to fall prey to the dangers of such spiritual wealth: superiority and giddy elevation.
It’s luck, I remind myself, nothing but, though it’s true that certain actions place you at a better angle to the luck plane than others. And, I remind myself again, I really am ignorant. I see little, understand less. My skills are in their most infantile stages, though I am learning. My impatience and my pride and my irrepressible inner commentator are still very much with me. I am not yet patient enough to wait very long for some wonder to arrive. If I come across it, I will be patient, but then pride halts me; only rare sightings like the heron possess me with such rapture that I would do anything, discard all comfort—like my model, the naturalist Tom Brown, who remains in frozen cramped positions beneath the unfocused gaze of deer for crawling moments, lies in swamps for grimy hours, lurks in trees through lone nights, trails game for endless days through rain and cold. Seldom am I so seized. And even if I am, even then the gabbling of my mind is almost never stilled, eternally describing the scene—as if for posterity, as if for some writing . . . and here I am writing it. Inescapable! And then, when in some rare moments (which I will shortly speak of) all is silent within my skull, I have conquered myself and the modern world . . . even then, finally it all comes down to skill. I find the bird. My pride is stilled by rapture. My mind and heart are silent . . . and I move too fast and off it goes. But the strange thing is that I won. Seized in beauty, how could I help it? How can I deny?
16. Rock-walking.
Wandering aimlessly along the beach, I noticed the jetty finally, and, though sunset was not far off, of course I had to go there. The jetty was crushed stone, huge fractured hunks of cliff-face jumbled and dumped with no visible support or cement, an impudent finger of black rock pushing out into the sea. The wind was strong, blowing in off the wild ocean; the sky was very bright and fey, with cumulus fortresses rising over the water. Light above me, and darkness over the headland far down the beach: shifting, dazzling, dark. I scaled the pile and began my journey to the outer rim: rock-walking.
Rock-walking is an exercise in what I call motion as meditation. Meditation immediately connotes stillness, silence, and thus peace. But there is peace in motion as well; nature is, after all, a liberal mixture of infinite stillness and intense, eternal, violent motion. Rock-walking is both. It is motion, quick smooth motion, but the mind, the eternal babbling commentator, for once is silent. Rock-walking defies analysis, and the mind knows that and shuts up. This is the only way I have ever been able to muzzle my mind, and thus I have some difficulty explaining the matter in words.
Rock-walking is what I do on terrain that is regular only in its irregularity: crushed rock jetties, or those beaches and riverbanks composed entirely of large oval stones of many sizes. You can’t walk between this stuff; you’d break your ankle, or, on the jetty, your leg. You have to walk over it, an eternal over, perceiving this tumult as all one surface. It goes at a very swift pace that often alarms people; they would argue, don’t you stand a much better chance of breaking something at that speed? That’s where the meditation comes in. Rock-walking is a series of leaps strung together, either very large steps or outright bounds, depending on the size of the gap; from surface to surface. Whether or not the surface is horizontal is irrelevant; one of the main objectives is to always come down with your foot flat against the surface you have instinctively chosen, so that that surface immediately becomes your base plane for the moment. Even if you land with the ball of your foot on a knife-edge, that too must become the plane from which you will now make your next move.
The second and most essential objective is to never, never pause—and to never, never think about what you are doing. I am only able to explain this to you now because it’s on paper, and if I tried to work this out while doing it I would break my neck, like the centipede who, when asked how he coordinates all those legs, no longer can. He never thought about it. Neither do I. Thus the empty-mind, blank, intense fascination of rock-walking. Your eyes stay ever cast down; they choose and you follow. Pressing your sight against a surface guides your foot to it; the choosing is faster than thought, and silent. And you must never pause. It is crucial to stop the instant you feel your velocity increasing beyond your means, dead cold flat stop, both feet on an honest-to-God horizontal plane. But never pause, or you will lose balance, momentum, and courage; your brain will kick in again and there you’ll be, a half a mile from land on a rock-pile in the middle of the ocean with the sun going down. It happened to me.
I made it all the way to the end of the jetty with the wind blowing in my face, steadying me, past the iron gate halfway along with its warning sign weathered to blankness. It was the hardest walking I had ever done, and I loved it; I felt swift, agile, and brilliant, my mind a wind-bellied sail. I reached the very point of the jetty and stood with the waves slamming up and spattering in my face, the light low on the water. I stood for some time, then turned to go back . . . and found myself very tired, all of a sudden, and looking back at the headland down an endless black jumble of rock . . . My shoes were wet now, and I was afraid, afraid of slipping, falling, dying. The wind was behind me and threatened to pitch me down. Afraid afraid afraid! I crept along the rocks, trying to maintain a single horizontal plane, which hurt my feet terribly. And finally, away from the point, the rocks grew dry again, my soles began to grip again, and I ran across the rocks once more. Never, ever pause. In uncertainty, do not waver—leap!
17. Strawberries and repetition.
There are many paths to the lake. This one led to a smooth alcove where I had seen two ducks earlier. The water was studded with water lilies and as I watched a wind rose, ruffling them as if something stirred beneath each one. Something, I reflected, undoubtedly did. I retraced this diversionary trail back to the main one, my feet leading me to the place where I had seen the heron. I stalked slowly around the curve, and saw, of course, an empty pond and stiff reeds. How silly of me. I mean, what was I expecting? (Another heron, that’s what.) So greedy I am!
They stopped making pennies out of solid copper-alloy in the middle of 1982. Now they’re thinly-plated zinc. I immediately began collecting pre-’82 pennies, which, I was convinced, would shortly be rare and thus of great value. Later, a friend showed me how to differentiate the ones made in 1982 itself. The copper ones, when you hold one on one forefinger and a zinc one on the other, are palpably heavier. Also, when you toss a copper penny, it makes an echoing ping. Zinc ones go thunk.
But in the world no such analogies can be drawn, as tempting as it is; in the world there are no false pennies, though adult perceptions might see them so. All pennies are true and valuable. Which is why you never get them twice. Did I really expect another chance at the heron? Of course not. No one could be that lucky. You never get them twice, which makes it all the more important that you see them and seize them up while you can. Buddhist parable: a man is walking through the jungle when a tiger leaps from the brush to attack him. He runs through the forest to escape, only to reach a cliff. Carefully, he begins climbing down the cliff, leaving the tiger to snarl above, barely finding holds in the dirt. Glancing down, he sees that a second tiger awaits him at the base of the cliff. Then, to one side, he notices a tiny strawberry plant growing from the cliff-face, bearing a single fruit. Holding to the cliff with one hand, he reaches out with the other, plucks the fruit, and eats it. “How delicious!” he says.
18. Again, God.
I was walking down a narrow path, hedged with sticky salal bushes, and I looked up (the way it always happens) and saw a birch tree, very young, its limbs almost black from the rain. It was perfectly formed—by which I mean neither arrow-straight nor symmetrical, but exquisitely balanced, every delicate branch turning to contrast elegantly with every other, and the leaves—the leaves were pure green slices of pale light, their edges too sharply real, their veins forming perfect dark chevrons on the oval surfaces, each placed with careful poise on the artful branches. I looked at it and thought, This, now, this is God.
19. An Alignment.
In the perfect blue of a recently darkened sky, I look up and find two bright spots, Venus and Jupiter, in perfect alignment with a perfect horizontal crescent moon, the whole array in a perfect column above the earth. The mad barking of coyotes twists in winding ripples through the hills—nothing like dogs at all; wild and fey and bubbling. “Surprise ahead,” say the letters, with flaming arrows written in divine white fire. Moving between tigers, between one fate and the next, still we pause and grasp at strawberries. How delicious!
20. The Path (again).
It is time to follow the unexplored path that leads down along the other end of the lake, southerly. It is a long path, through thick salal bushes that threaten to swallow me up. I go as quietly as I can, but encounter only robins and bushtits for my trouble. Close on my left lies the bank of the lake, which narrows as I approach its end. The lake finishes and beyond it lies a house, the beginning of private lands; I have no desire to trespass. Stop, says my mind suddenly, quietly. Turn. I turn around and begin to retrace my steps. This path parallels the foot of a thick, brushy ridge; periodically I have passed trails that lead up its woolly side. Now I walk back to one I passed just a moment ago, very steep sand beneath the brush, and my mind says here. This is good, my observer remarks into the sudden silence in my mind, you are beginning to shut me up and feel the invisible promptings of instinct. Then it falls quiet again and I ascend the sandy flank on all fours, bending low beneath the brush and propping with my knuckles like an ape. There are no words in my mind at all.
I reach the top of the ridge and peer down its far side through a gap in the trees: below, a road, dunes, then the ocean and the jetty. Children are playing on the road; though hidden, I shrink from the noise. I should be able to walk back along the ridge; I don’t want to retrace my steps beside the lake or go down to the road, so I choose the first trail that leaps to my feet. I see that it dips down steeply into brush and darkness, and for a moment I hesitate, but then . . . Take me! I cry, and plunge down, abandoning stealth, running with joy. I am in a state of pure sensation; I am no longer constrained by modern desires for a specific route or destination; I merely go. It is best, I recall, not to go anywhere in particular at all; that way you end up where you most need to be.
The path leads me along the ridge a little and then fails me in impassable brush. Fair enough. I retrace my steps, take the next brushy trail, again feel a moment’s hesitance—dusk is coming, I have to get back soon—and again give in, diving down. And again the trail stops me with a bank of impassable, lush, coastal undergrowth. Come now! I climb up a slanted, fallen log for a better view, see nothing, jump down and retrace my steps. Going back rankles—I seek a new path! I follow the third alternative. It too brings me to brush, but I see a rabbit trail beneath the salal and follow it grimly on hands and knees, only to emerge . . . at the same fallen log I had just regressed from. My joyful impulse has truly faded. But now, as if crawling through the bushes had been somehow necessary to my awakening, I see that this trail does not end here, but in fact makes a sharp, ascending turn beneath the pines. This I follow.
Now I am moving; I begin to feel cheerful again. The trail leads me at a loping pace along the ridge, a winding and switching path, but going in the right direction. All noises have dropped away save my footfalls and my warm breath. I have crossed from one side of the ridgeline to the other as I move along its length; pausing at a rise, I suddenly see the rest of the coastline, far off where the hills are bright as midday and cast in a yellow lamplight. The mist rises shining from the furrows of the hills; tears come to my eyes, and a feeling I know well, though not yet consciously. When I can no longer bear to watch, I plunge down a steep bank and up again, down, around, walking I know not where, mind silent, lost in it all. It’s happening again, I think laughingly as I pause, my observer speaking at last—and a jolt rocks through me. How could I have been so stupid? It really is happening again! And I turn my head, and then at last I see it.
21. Transposition.
There is something I have been seeking for a long time, though I have long been forgetting it. Now I see it once more before me. I shall be long in forgetting it.
How blind I have been. I have indeed been far removed, that it should take me so very long to realize. I passed into another world, at some unknown point along the way, or through some necessary pattern of steps and regressions. It began at the lake’s end, when I broke from the main trail and my instincts first seized me all unknowing. It began then. It matters not that I am hundreds of miles from where I first saw the King Tree; none of these events takes place on earth; every sacred spot is merely a gateway, where many worship, but few step through. But I have done it—not once, but twice. I look down to the bottom of this fold in the ridge, bristling with reeds and hidden by thick, dark trees, and I see the great one that rises there, two yews grown into one, huge and broad, with a mist of night clinging to its branches and the shock of sheer power shaking all through me, and I wonder: how could I have ever missed it?
I found the way by not seeking, most of all not thinking. Walk without going; walk with your mind empty and forces will fill it up, take you where your feet could never go. Empty mind will guide like nothing else, in silence, in wordless wonder. Does this sound foolish? Too easy? Too hard? It is all of these, and also true. For I know you too well, my friends. I could never deceive you.
I descend now, to stand before my king.
22. Transcognition.
I come down to the tree and press my cheek against it, trembling: rough bark. I am standing in another world, and every gate lies open to me. Wavering, transported, my head full of shivering blue feathers and mist, with the dark descending, with the light poised endlessly across an invisible headland stretching through this world and my own: where all meets and is one, and the clouds stand in endless towers, rising up, and the water meets and the wave breaks upon me and I am swept away. Dizzy, staggering, I feel my eyes rolling up out of my body, up and into new realms of sight.
I . . . thought you were dead. Yes. Yes, I see that now: my own blindness. . . I see now that in growing up one must find a new path toward these mysteries.
But . . . you died.
No . . . I see now. We died, my friend and I, the moment we stepped onto the threshold. We died and were reborn into a new life with new sight. That was the beginning, the first threshold. And now once more I find you . . . What will change in me, this time? What is changing, even now?
I stand there for a long time, as the sky fades, as the headland grows dark and distant from me and speech passes silent between us, shining, all that I have seen in all these years: sight, seeking, ignorance. The crest of the wave has passed me and the light is going. I am filled once more in wonder but it comes to me now that I must go, someday, must move my feet away from the end of the path and from the one who has been lost to me for so long. My fingers clutch the bark and the pain is slow, soft, like rain falling between leaves.
How can I leave you? How can I accept this? I have been so long seeking. And I can never come back. I can never find it twice in the same place; I know that now. How can I leave knowing that I can never reach this place again, that all gates lead to you, but each one only once?
And, clearly, the answer, so that I really do begin to weep, so that at last I can turn away and live this new life and not look back and know that this will always wait for me. The thing about pennies—the thing about pennies is that you never get them twice . . . but they never leave you. And that is all I know. I turn now and a piece of bark breaks off in my hand. They never leave you. That is all I shall ever need to know. And my footsteps lead me away slowly, but I am at peace, and I do look back—just once—but it is all right. I need not linger. It is there. Carry it—there is a soft shirring above as the rain comes down, the change, the washing away—carry it always in your heart.
23. The trouble with a revelation.
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| "Sky Number 1" by Erika Milo |
Getting back was hard. It always is. Stepping into the Otherworld is one thing; getting out is another. You can no more retrace your intricate steps than crawl back into the womb. Instead you must cut across the spiral paths. You are no longer unconscious. And now an urgency lay upon me; rain was coming, dark was thickening, and I had made my farewell and must now turn back quickly into my world. I strode out on a path, only to find it leading me back . . . No, no, I cried, in laughter, in tears. To see him again would break my heart; I would be lost forever; I would never return. No. I turned onto another path, another, could not escape! Such was my desperation—not fear but completion, and the knowledge that this sensation was too glorious to be long sustained without serious damage—that I did something I almost never do. I went straight down the side of the ridge, thrashing and crashing through the prolific brush, down and down and down, skidding in dirt, seizing at branches that ran rude fingers over my face, grabbed me roughly and shoved me by as I tore through. The trouble with a revelation . . . Down I went, panting like a bellows, down to the old path along the lake, walking briskly, hands covered with dirt. The trouble with a revelation is that you have to go on living afterwards, you can’t just slip into the light; and really you’re very small anyway, very stupid, and what do you really know after all, in your colossal ignorance; and yet it’s wonderful, isn’t it? And is my seeking never to be complete, then? No, no, says the sky, the folding darkness: complete, but neverending. Ah, now what will you show me, O forest, I think laughingly, as I imagine running into the incredible animal or encounter that I originally came seeking—now that my senses are saturated and urgent with sight? Oh now what will you show me, now that I cannot see, now that I have been blinded by the glory of the Tree? Laughter. A fool, this one, walking fast in the dark rain, with filthy hands and a piece of bark clutched in her fingers, a piece, just so, no more than a finger’s length, as if it really meant something; smiling, as if she really knew.
* * *
Now I have a pile of pennies and a list, and what this means I cannot say. I gather them in my fingers, clinking and plinking like riverwater over round pebbles; smooth and cool, sliding between my hands, too slick to hold for long. This is all I know, my friends. I carry them in my heart now. My feet move quickly, in the light, in the wind. Spinning, whirling I go, and my hand lets them all go somehow, slipping, down by the lake where the heron waits, where the forest begins, with the wave rising above and the air around me moving, moving: between my fingers, bright, shining, turning in air, and they come down with a plunk, with a splash; the water takes them. Wordless, gone. The smell of metal, strong copper, is bright between my fingers.
Copyright © 2003 by Erika Milo
See Part I
http://www.westbynorthwest.org/artman/publish/article_415.shtml
Eugene native Erika Milo is a writer and artist who loves to explore life's many linkages. Erika writes primarily fantasy. She is inspired by the writings of Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez, Tom Brown, Loren Eiseley, and especially Ursula K. Le Guin. Both of Erika Miloh parents are writers, also.
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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