end-of-winter thoughts.

Dynamics between beauty and danger in winter landscapes.

Shimmering wonderlands contain low temperatures often not conducive to human life.

This sublimity is also seen in fog; within expansive whiteness, I am able to hide, but I may also be hopelessly lost. (Reminds me of Ken Kesey's Chief Bromden.)

Humans, weather, nature, metaphor, subjectivity. The way a human responds to nature reveals the nature of the human. Landscapes can be translated through the lens of the self.

Nature and humans are not two disparate things.

swans.

One winter month is left.

I am here to dust off this blog a bit, and will update more regularly as I begin to thaw.

This week I will plant seeds in the garden. I hope my world will bloom in parallel. This year feels very important, but also precarious. Transformation will not come easily.

“Gardens are not made by singing “Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade.”

— Rudyard Kipling

long shadows.

The best is cool wind in ambient heat – a signifier of autumn.

Seasonal shifts affect the mind in dramatic ways; I am a different person in September than I am in June. This month I will write more, and think more, and fixate. I will become the forest floor.

Exploration of both land and self will define and punctuate this time, for me. These events will likely happen simultaneously, and involve wooden instruments like pencils and guitars.

The video at the end of this post is my new favorite thing – one of the most beautiful captured moments I have seen and heard in a long time. Let us too go sit by a lake, singing and strumming in the low and golden sunlight, as green becomes red.

the wolf.

I never intended to wait so long to write this entry, but sometimes words are hard to come by when there is more action than there is time for introspection. July has been filled. July is overflowing. Now, on the eve of its final day, I have a moment to back away from the canvas. A moment, in the twilight of the month: the blue hour.

Back in April, I saw a lecture by inspiring writer Rebecca Solnit, who said that the twilight is the hour when the dog becomes the wolf. This idea has lingered within me ever since. In the blue hour—a time of alchemy and metamorphosis—I become feral. Wild. What will August bring, I wonder?

This year has been transformative for me, so far. I have been trying to improve my awareness of the energy I feel, project, and absorb. I have tried to be less afraid, less avoidant, and more open to the possibility of genuine connection and sincere personal experience. Perhaps, one day, the trying will dissipate into being.

(my sister and I three days ago at the transformational festival Faerieworlds -- photo by Roger Rix) 

Outermost.

I like to watch glacier calving videos. I find glaciers to be supremely beautiful, and I often imagine exploring the distant places where these giants live. Ultima Thule, a Latin term for “the farthest place,” refers to the northernmost habitable regions of the earth, but also to a concept of desire to reach beyond what is known, and to achieve distant or remote goals and ideals. Ancient Scandinavia and far nothern islands were known as Thule by Greeks and Britains—distant, mysterious lands, nearly unreachable—and thereafter, inspired poets adopted the term Ultima Thule, referencing their emotional responses to the concept of the farthest reaches of the earth. This connection between physical and conceptual landscapes reveals the desire to explore the unknown, and expresses a need for the romance of mystery and hidden potential. Through the metaphor of land and the Ultima Thule, the nature of oneself can be expressed and communicated in a unique, rich and effective way.

abstract humans.

On Thursday evening, I went to a mummy exhibit at the local science museum. There were Egyptian mummified cats, birds and fish, and people of many different ages, in various stages of wholeness. In one small glass box sat a Peruvian baby body, with perfect little toes, that is 6,500 years old. In another box, the delicately woven linen wrappings were removed from half of the head of an Egyptian man, revealing dark grey skin, dried taught over a delicate zygomatic arch and under dark golden crescents of hair.

I often think about how we view sentient humans versus human specimens, and how easily objectified the latter can be. The more dissected, the more abstract a body becomes, and the more comfortable it may be to approach or confront. One might feel more at ease holding a human bone than placing a hand on an intact dead body, but these things are the same. I wonder if there is a word for this sort of abstraction relative to (previously) living beings; I tend to look away from a whole fish at the grocery store -- one with eyes like marbles and a lazily open mouth -- but feel less perturbed upon seeing the grilled rectangular shape on a dinner plate.

Below is a quick sketch that I made while in a cadaver lab last year. Like the mummies, these bodies (about ten in all) were in different states of wholeness -- of beingness -- which I believe lead me to see these things differently.  I insist on remaining aware that each had a life: relationships with others, a range of likes and dislikes, a certain temperament. These ribs may have lived in the chest of a woman who loved the ocean and had three sisters. That heart in a glass case may be yours, one day.

walks.

One of my favorite things in the world is woodland walking. I feel fortunate to live near a large park, where my bear cub and I can spend hours wandering down narrow dirt trails between rows of Douglas Firs. Sometimes we will feel entirely isolated, like I often do in the true wilderness of the Cascades or the Rocky Mountains, and other times there is human evidence in the form of altered nature or detritus: a few dandelions tied together, a footprint, a bottle cap. Yesterday we found a beautiful small bouquet laying in the grass; there was a wedding two days prior in that very spot, but it looked too fresh to have rested there since then. I picked it up and placed it in my companion's collar, and when I got home, redistributed it across three bud vases that I made on the potter's wheel one afternoon in April.

We are the landscape.

Humans and the landscapes we encounter are inextricably linked; it is logical to view the natural world as a reflection of oneself. “Be humble, for you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars.” This popular Serbian proverb directs the reader’s attention to the relationship between living things and the environments that they emerge from. After all, human bodies and natural landscapes are composed of the same elements—nature and humans are not disparate manifestations of existence; we are, in fact, one singular entity, emerging from the same materials, and upon death, we become indistinguishable once again. Consequently, it is no surprise that natural elements are frequently used as metaphors for human experience, consciousness, and emotional states.

Oregon is a very green place.