Full moon this week enabled me to get the garbage hauled to the curb at 2:30 so I didn't have to rise at dawn to make the pickup. I heard, or think I heard, that this month we'll have a blue moon. Or maybe it's next month. I never hear more than bits and snatches of news lately. Should I say that only once-in-a-blue-moon do I hear a news story in its entirety.
Does anyone use phrases like that anymore? My family did...colorful folk sayings, full of arcane meanings that my kids can't relate to. Hell, my peers can't relate. Every so often one of grandma's sayings slips into my conversation and invariably elicits a quizzical raised eyebrow from whomever I'm addressing. Sometimes I know where it arose, but often when stopped like that I realize I don't know the origins.
We rarely question origins. We believe that we know what's what. We base our actions, and in fact our entire existence, on the blithe presumption that what we accept as truth in fact is. Mom said so. My best friend's cousin's co-worker saw it himself. The newspaper/radio/internet had an article. But do we know what's real? Do we even want to experience the full weight of living, or might that merely interfere with the existences we eke out in our little spheres of self-reinforcing conceits? Anyone or anything that is perceived as foreign to our contrived internal system will be shunned, ridiculed, or outright attacked in order to preserve the small space within which we feel safe but which in truth binds us. In effect we gouge out our own eyes, plug our ears, cut ourselves off from that which might inform us of the wonder that awaits the curious, and the growth and evolution that rewards the courageous.
Earlier this night, in that moon-lit darkness that casts shadows, I walked with a friend; well, with two friends. One human, one canine. We three are usually utterly alone on the backroads and pathways, other than being passed now and again by hurtling metal shapes bearing semi-torporific human passengers home to their chemically-laced food-substitutes and their digital entertainments. We three inhabit a world that few seem inclined to experience. Even in warmer months when the sun doesn't set by 5:00 we rarely pass walkers, and in the fall and winter when we step outside, we might as well be the only humans left on the planet. No one seems to know the sound of the horned owls but for their recordings on Discover Channel. But we walkers are serenaded by one in the oaks beside us, another in the hemlocks across the swamp. The coyotes voice their opinions on the quality of the cottontails in the rhododendrons beyond the rock ledge. Beavers slap their tails in startlement as we pass.
My point, if I originally had one, was that being outdoors, at night, is essential. Being soaked by rain is essential. Feeling my hair ruffled by cool winds, or welcoming the sun’s radiance on my skin is essential. These sensations are real. Life is lived just that simply. Every moment I am given the opportunity to be alive, if I will but grasp it. Other animals always do. I live with dogs, with horses, with cats and rabbits and roosters so that I may remember how that’s done, how I may escape the bondage created by my own capacity to live in the past or long for the future. I choose now. Again, and again.
One thing about this area is that there is nowhere to walk after dark that's safe, because the road shoulders are narrow, unlit, or icy, and we have lots of truck traffic. So I no longer go on midnight rambles like I used to do. I got tired of nearly being run down.
ReplyDeleteBut I have to agree that we do need to be outside and experience the world as it is, not all neat and just so like we aim for with out climate controlled homes and offices. I hate air conditioning for that reason.
I sympathize with you. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't get outdoors at any time of the day that I choose. There are dangers here, too, with no shoulders, no lighting (I'm in the sticks), and we even have a resident cougar that has been known to tail us! But over the years I've found the best routes to take at different hours, so there is always someplace to go where I only expect to encounter a handful of motorized hazards over the course of the mileage. I carry a glow stick that I can switch on when traffic approaches, but I won't carry a flashlight because it blasts my night vision.
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