Planet Earth

Tonight, I watched this special on the Discovery channel, "Planet Earth." I watched half the thing with my mouth hanging open, it was beautifully shot. But I have to say, I'm tired of the constant opinionating on the scenes, a problem not limited to this series, but prevalant on a lot of these sorts of shows, more nature-drama than nature-documentary. I realize they're trying to be poetic in their description, but they aren't doing a good job. It started off saying how conditions on earth are perfect for all the living things. Well, yes, but only because life evolved under those conditions. If the conditions had been different, life would have evolved to be perfectly suited to those conditions. They have it bass ackwards.

Later, at a different scene, in an African delta, they say that "where ever life thrives [shot of an antelope]... trouble follows [shot of an african hunting dog stalking through grass]. Trouble? That's not trouble, that's life itself! Life lives on life; and the antelope eating the living grass is as much a predator as the dog. Same thing.

But as I watched the aerial views of the dogs' hunt, and, even more so, an earlier scene of wolves going after caribou, I was struck by something. Often you hear it put as a struggle or a fight, but it isn't. The chase is just running, and when the wolf caught the calf, it didn't even go for the kill right away. For a moment, it just stood over it, and the calf did not flee, nor did it struggle when the wolf did finally bite down. And even if you want to consider that a struggle, you must agree that it's a very small percentage of an organism's time. Mostly it's eat, sleep, play. Kinda makes you wonder what the fuck we're doing wrong, with all our stress, eh?

On another note, I've decided that this time next year, I'm going to be in Georgia, making my start on the Appalachian Trail. In the meantime, I'm going to work and save up some money, plan some logistics, and get in shape, then I'm off to the mountains. It feels good to have made this decision, even if it is so far in the future. I almost did it this year, but realized I'd be jumping into it unready, which wouldn't bode well for completing the 2000+ mile trail.

Meditation

I’ve started meditating again. I say that not to “toot my own horn” or try and sound spiritual or anything, but, well, this is a blog, and I’m supposed to talk about myself. And, as my last post may show, I’ve been in a bit of a negative place lately, so this splash of Zen is good for me.

So, this afternoon, I sat. Before doing so, I read a bit out of the Tao Te Ching (which I recommend to everyone, it’s paradoxical but genius), the main Taoist text, I guess to get me in the right mindset. I just randomly opened it up, as I usually do, to wherever it takes me, and it took me to #48. After 15 or 20 minutes of sitting, I let my concentration ease and started thinking about this selection. The writer is referring to the concept of wu-wei, or doing non-doing. It’s fundamental in Taoism, the idea of letting things take their course. And I thought of a great metaphor to explain it, finally a way of making sense of a rather abstract concept.

Our lives are like a wooden staff out of balance. We stand, batting it from side to side to keep it from falling over to the floor, and before long become so accustomed to this game that we assume it to be the normal course of things, we think life is a constant fight against gravity, which always drags us down (and eventually will succeed). Some of us swing wildly from side to side, some stay low, others high, but we’re all doing the same thing, we’re all unbalanced.

But some among us discover a different way. Through a long, careful practice, say through meditation, prayer, “spiritual seeking”, or even through focused attention on our work, art, music, hobby, or sport, we may slowly bump and bat that staff towards full uprightness. There, balance is attained, the struggle is over. Life is not a battle against falling when we work WITH nature; now, that gravity which we so cursed before is now the very thing sustaining us. We need do no work, only allow nature to do it’s own, and not disturb it. This is wu-wei, this is non-doing.

Scrubbed Clean

As I drive around through this city, the middle and outer suburbs at least, I can't help but look around me. A famous author once remarked that man would soon turn the world into a garden for his own delight, but he was wrong. I can't help but look around and see a slum, even in the nicer areas. We gave up the forest, the mountain, the open savanna, for this? For a steel and concrete prison, a world of work and worry, war and waste. A place that smells of chemicals, of constant burning, led by the ideal of greed rather than the ideals of beauty or joy. So, I can't help but to look around, and with a long view of time as my lens. I think of how it will be, once man has eventually scrubbed himself off this planet. I think of how the planet will scrub man's works away with him.

I think, a hundred years, and the streets and sidewalks will be broken and sprouting grasses, and trees. The sewers and drains will clog, crack, and cease their draining, and the buried rivers and streams will again flow in the air and sun. Lawns will fill with weeds, and though no one will be around to call them wildflowers, that's what they'll be once more. The mono-crop will be gone, in all its ugly manifestations.

I think, a thousand years, and the buildings will be crumbling, already mostly gone. Fires, floods, rot, and storms will have torn them down. A fallen tree alone may take a house down. Once their shell is broken, nature's work will come easier. Much of the chemicals and waste will have washed away to the sea, diluted and eventually decomposing, or settling with the silt. All our bridges will have rusted away, all our dams long since silted up, or burst. The great forests will again be great. There will be, mercifully, no more fences.

I think, ten thousand years, and at long last the ice will be returning, to scrape away and grind to dust the last remnants of our northern cities. Farther south, they'll be washed away, or buried in the drifting sands of time. I only wish I'd be alive to see it.