I'm standing in the creek, watching the ripples move past me downstream. Raising my eyes above the surface, I see overhanging tree limbs swaying in the breeze. Reflected in the water, those same tree limbs turn into serpents, their curving bodies undulating rapidly side to side. Leaves outlined against blue sky turn into fantastic pulsating images in the water, moving both upstream and downstream at once, appearing and disappearing with each passing ripple. I am relaxed, and not anxious to fit what I am experiencing into any kind of preconceived box. I could identify those trees by genus and species, as well as the birds occasionally flitting in and out of them, but for now, I don't want to. Instead, I find myself wondering which is more "real": the concrete reality I see above the water, or the endlessly pulsing, equally beautiful web of vibrant patterns I see reflected on its surface? If the reflection is equally real, and if it's actually just one perception of a reality that is open to many other ways of perceiving and experiencing it as well, the whole idea of a separate me observing an objective external reality is an illusion.
I've never taken what our society considers to be mind-altering drugs, but in moments like this one, it seems to me that nothing could be more fantastic or psychedelic than what I am perceiving right now. Within those tree branches, leaves, and water molecules--and within my own sensory organs and blood cells--similar hard-to-pin-down, pulsating, fluid realities predominate. I'm part of a set of patterns--everything is--and much more than our individual forms and separate bodies, that vital embodiment of pattern and of relationship is what we always are. That individual tree branch will not endure--nor will the bird perched upon it--but the dance of life to which it is giving perfect expression will endure for as long as life does.
And what, I wonder, is not life? Later that evening, gazing through binoculars at the seemingly millions of stars, galaxies, and planets now visible in the night sky, I see those same patterns, and find that same sense of wonderment at the awesome complexity and mystery of reality. I was not yet alive when most of the starlight I am perceiving was emitted, and most of what I am now perceiving is no longer an accurate representation of what was emitting it--some of which no longer even exists. Most of what is there, I know, is empty space, and even those dense clusters of energy sending light my way (like everything else we see as solid) are also mostly empty space. But both of these statements presuppose certain assumptions about time and space: that they're linear and quantifiable. What if they aren't?
All of this, I am certain, is more than our minds and our senses can encompass. Even our minds and our senses themselves are beyond our fathoming. In relation to the vastness of space, each one of us humans seems like an insignificant speck, but considered from the level of bacteria, or from the level of the deoxyribonucleic acid which has brought the fine art of patterning to a pinnacle, we each are almost unimaginably huge. These patterns, operating at the smallest submicroscopic level, have found a way to self-replicate and to manifest us, and their drive for survival is often stronger than we can understand.
It seems a miracle to me that the riot of cooperative biological coexistence that is the human body exists in the first place, let alone that each of us engages in the dance of life with other equally miraculous assemblages (people, plants, animals, soils, and every other part of this reality we perceive). We understand the nature of this pattern of relationship at the deepest level--we have to, in order to take part--but we can never explain it. It has many names: love is one of them.
I start writing the beginning of this essay on an excursion organized around three compelling elements in my life: gardening, music, and friendship. I follow the Willamette River north to visit a gardener and plant breeder who selects and crosses open-pollinated and heirloom vegetables to create new, regionally-appropriate, delicious, nutritious varieties. With no artificial genetic engineering or high technology involved, but through careful observation, intelligent planning, selection for desirable characteristics, occasional hand-pollination, and a welcoming of spontaneous surprises, he creates space in his abundantly diverse garden for DNA to find new modes of expression in our food plants. Those food plants become us--and they become the bees and other pollinators, the soil, and the rest of the whole web of organisms with whom they interact. Through his subtle actions as a gardener, as he aligns himself with the patterns within his plants' storehouse of genetic material, he sets off ripples in the world like the ones which pass me in the creek. They help shape my perception of reality--and perhaps yours, and perhaps everyone's. There is no telling what effects a ripple will have as its energy is gradually transmuted into other forms we may no longer recognize as that particular ripple.
After stopping by the garden to tour, talk, taste, and pull a few weeds, I proceed to the house of some other friends. In between walks to the river and a hike in an old growth forest, we play music together, exploring new chords in odd tunings on our guitars. We attend an evening concert by two other musician friends, losing ourselves in the music and also trying to figure out their chord progressions. Something about music is as compelling as the force that holds the planets, stars, and galaxies within their relationships to one another. I remember that scientists have analyzed the universe using musical models and discovered that "the music of the spheres" and "celestial harmonies" are no abstract expressions, but instead literal representations of reality. All heavenly bodies vibrate and establish their orbits and relationships at musical harmonics. In fact, every level of physical existence, from the super-galactic to the sub-atomic, could be described in musical notation--although this would be a rather monumental task, and I wouldn't suggest anyone try it, since we would consume all remaining trees and rivers on the planet in the process of producing even a single copy of the score.
On the second afternoon of my visit, I borrow my friend's laptop computer and write the beginnings of the essay. I start with the intention of describing "a day in the life" at Lost Valley, but this exercise seems suddenly unnecessary, an indulgence in the illusion of surface reality that I already know to be false. I planned to follow one summer day's activities: waking up, exploring a path through the woods, turning off the irrigation water, harvesting some vegetables, meeting friends and new volunteers to work in our organic vegetable gardens, soaking ourselves under a hose repeatedly to stay comfortable in the heat, coming in to eat lunch with the rest of the community, making phone calls to arrange for printing new t-shirts, answering mail and email, editing a few articles for Talking Leaves, doing more garden work, cleaning the main kitchen after dinner, meeting with the rest of the community in a "purpose circle," playing my guitar--first with others, then alone as I prepare to go to sleep. I intended to describe various birds, plants, animals, weather changes, and people--and their attendant personal and interpersonal energies--encountered throughout the day, as well as my own feelings--of longing, contentment, discomfort, peace, separateness, connection, and wholeness.
But I already wrote a similar article, about an early spring day at Lost Valley, for the Summer 2004 Communities magazine (check the TL and Lost Valley websites for links to it, if details are what you're after). What interest me now are the patterns within and beyond the details.
A few nights later, as candles flicker on an altar in the middle of the yurt in which we are meeting, I describe my amorphous mini-essay to several fellow community-members in our well-being circle. I am holding an abalone shell just as riddled with holes and just as full of magic as the rest of reality seems to be. They like what I have to say. I realize that there is no turning back. These "moments in the life"--and the meanderings they have made through my body, mind, and spirit--are what I was meant to share this time.
TL editor and Lost Valley vegetable gardener Chris Roth keeps one foot in the world of detail-oriented practicality and one foot in the world of contemplation and pattern--which explains a lot of what comes out of his mouth (when his foot's not in it).
©2004 Talking Leaves
Late Summer/Fall 2004
Volume 14, Number 3
A Day in the Life: The Many Faces of Eco-Community