There is nothing we fear more than ourselves.
come in, come in,
come in
This entry started as a long diatribe about why people clear-cut. They do it because they're afraid. Afraid of the wildness. They want to 'break' it, like people break a dog. I had a dog once who wouldn't break. And I'll never have another until he comes along again.
They fear the wildness, and so they clear-cut. Kill. Strip-mine. But really - we all fear it. It is us. Ever walk in the forest alone at night? I went swimming recently, in a little stream in the rain-forest. I was alone, it was dusk. I stood in the river, with the closing darkness all around me, the trees looming overhead in harsh kindness, the icy muddy water swirling about my hips, and I heard wolves - a pack of wolves, in a semi-circle in the woods around me, just beyond my sight. They just made little noises, yips and barks, to let me know they were there. I dove into the muddy water, swam under through a hole in a giant still living tree, got out, dried myself in the rain, and walked further into the forest, wolves, and gathering darkness.
I wanted to know that I belonged to the forest, to go past my own fear. It's not the wildness we fear outside ourselves, it's the wildness within us, the wildness in our hearts.
It's fundamental to being alive. We are all wild (but some more than others (I love those people)).
We fear the wildness in ourselves because we want to stay in whatever comfortable place we're in, in life, where we've shut off our ambition, our passions, our dream, but our wildness wants us to run. And risk.
And the worst thing is; we can't shut it up. We can't kill it, we can't make it go away - it is part of us. All we can do is wall it off, and hope it gets tired of scratching at the door.
And to silence that scratching - we go out and try to silence it in the world. We try to break others who are wild and free and beautiful (at our worst) and even at our best we rarely truly embrace it in ourselves, we rarely just let it run.
Go out in the wildest place you can find, alone - that's one tenth of the courage it takes to truly live your life. But when you really do - this is the flipside - you will (or so I've heard), be blessed, loved, and maybe one day taken, by all living, wild, free, and beautiful things.
Come into yourself, it's wild in here..
The dog - Lobo, King of dogs, he was part wolf. We gave him to our nieghbours when he was little, he was the special one in the litter, neither the runt nor the leader, but just his own.
ReplyDeleteThey thought you had to break a dog, and that tough old hag, when I went to deliver her paper, had little bites all over her hands..
He never broke. At six months they gave him back to us, intractable, they said.
Wild.
(fuck, I loved that dog)
The darkest one - Tragically Hip
Ahhh Lobo.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Brother - you're on to something here...