The Hammock Papers: Rise

11 April 2010

Rise

Jensen, from Walking On Water ...
I've heard it said that within our deathly culture, the most revolutionary thing anyone can do is follow one's heart. I would add that once you've begun to do that–to follow your own heart–the most moral and revolutionary thing you can do is help others find their hearts, to find themselves. It's much easier than it seems.

Time is short. It's short for our planet–the planet that is our home–that is being killed while we stand by. And it is even shorter for all of those students whose lives are slipping away from them with every awful tick of the clock on the classroom wall.

I am beginning to re-read Walking. It's an important book for me. I'm thinking. I'm exploring. I'm asking questions of myself and others and I'm listening.

Jensen admonishes us for being willing accomplices in the death of souls that happens every minute in this world of industrialization that wants us to be nameless, faceless, "employee numbers." He encourages us to "walk on water," to discover our gifts and then USE them to better into only ourselves but others also.

The road he describes is a difficult one. It runs ahead; steep and rutted with no switch-backs. A few steps away are the beginnings of awareness, change, and life-lived ... fulfilled. We need only for the synapses to fire in way that magically stirs us and causes that foot to come up off the ground and move ... forward. It will be like walking on water. It will mean that we look at the world and its "impossibilities" as say to ourselves, "O.K. ... here goes," and then we take a step ...

... and then another ...

... and another.

My friend, Kelly, recently wrote that she was, "sadly informed [by a friend] that my fascination with the moon is a rarity.” She went on to describe how our wonder connects us to the things we love, taking responsibility for preserving them. Her post "Arms Around" is here.

More recently she wondered, "... if it's all predetermined or re-shaped by some thing that some other person far away created in our minds. In our perceptions. In our ways of being in this world."

I believe this is the battle that cummings speaks of in his quote We can't help but walk the the woods of our world and have its briars, leaves, and ticks (I went morel hunting yesterday) stick to us. The point is that when they stick to me, hopefully they become me in the singular way that wouldn't happen if they stuck to you. But also that we take this experience that has been significant enough to notice, and pass the magic of now, this, here on for someone else to interpret ... like jazz.

“Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.” Angela Monet

Today I added to my reminder list ... notice.

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Jefferson

Jakob Dylan's latest, Nothing But The Whole Wide World" ...

Nothing but the whole wide world to gain
nothing, nothing
Got nothing but the whole wide world to gain
nothing, nothing
Got nothing but the whole wide, whole wide world to gain

I'm here on the blacktop
The sun in my eyes
Women and country on my mind
Bolting me out
Over the borderline

Now there's no more love loss and no more shame
No more digging holes or graves
Nothing to lose but rivets and chains
Got nothing but the whole wide world to gain

Nothing but the whole wide world to gain
nothing, nothing
Got nothing but the whole wide world to gain
nothing, nothing
Got nothing but the whole wide, whole wide world to gain

Was born in a stable and built like an ox
Down in the pastures I learned how to walk
Mama, she raised me to sing and just let 'em talk
Said no rich man's worth his weight in dust
Bury him down same as they'll do us
God wants us busy, never giving up
He wants nothing but the whole wide world for us

Nothing but the whole wide world for us
nothing, nothing
Well there's nothing but the whole wide world for us
nothing, nothing
Well there's nothing but the whole wide, whole wide world for us

We ain't got no money, can't get no love
Never was too good at either of 'em
I'm here for adventure whichever way it comes
But what good is an angel that won't catch up
Free falling now and I'm ready enough
I give my tears and I give my blood
I give nothing but the whole wide world for one

Nothing but the whole wide world for one
nothing, nothing
Give nothing but the whole wide world for one
nothing, nothing
Give nothing but the whole wide, whole wide world for one

... and then another.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL