“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”
-Terry Tempest Williams
*photo taken by my dad on a recent trip to Israel
I haven’t been sleeping much lately. The shift of seasons, I guess. Winters cryptic whispers of things yet to come. The full moon. The cold wind. It all speaks to me wildly in strange undertones suggesting I rise. So, I do. I bundle up and walk into the canyon behind our house well before dawn. The wind howls and shadows dance. Silver sage glistens, reflecting rays of an unseen Sun. The Sky, even at this early hour, interrupted arrogantly by invasive species; starlink satellites and airplanes, still lends me Her ear. Eventually though, silence is broken by relentless commerce; men heading to coal mines still, even after all we now know. A dog, barking at a bear.
I struggle to find the Holy Connection I once found so easily. Before adulthood convinced me to grow up. Yet perpetual adolescence won’t break the spell. Wildness, yes, but not debauchery, not modernity’s insistence we have certain inalienable “rights”. So many old people. So few elders. A curious conundrum indeed. The Moon shines down on me, like a great obsidian mirror. Yellow fingers trickles down from the mountains surrounding our fertile valley. Summer is dying. How beautiful, the Great Turning.
It is easy to get distracted here. Six months back in Babylon and I’ve already nearly forgotten how things were away from all this. “Civilization”. The daily grind. Law and order. Efficiency. 20 dollar burritos. 8 dollars for a carton of milk. One car per person. Everyone gets a room. Air con, central heating, high speed internet. Freedom. As defined by the “developed” world. Work all day, every day. Hustle. Enable the overlords of the Big Three to get ahead. Enjoy the crumbs. Take care of your back. Maybe Unions are the answer. Stand up strikes might just work. Maybe we can elect someone new? Maybe we can finally get some rest.
But what will we do when that day comes? Will we crack open a beer, lie on our couch’s and scroll through social media, posting to all our “friends” that we finally won? What is the goal anyway? A big car? A big house? A big screen TV? Justice?Retirement? What if equal rights and equal pay lead to the same place we are already heading? What if we spend our whole lives worshiping the wrong god, fighting for the wrong cause, speaking in the wrong tongue? Maya runs behind a juniper tree and laughs…
I heard a bird this morning, as I walked into the bush. My first impulse was to identify “it”. Box it up and name her. Something powerful and awfully constricting within our troubled modern mind makes us rush to conclusions swiftly. The need to capture and understand. The unbearable discomfort of admitting we do not know all that much and are never truly in control. That nothing we do matters in the way we think it does. That everything we love will surely die. Maybe it was the Wind. Maybe it was the Moon. I’m certain it was Everything. I kneeled to the Earth and wept. Not in sadness. But in rapturous Joy.
God forbid we give up. Goddess forbid we lay down our swords and surrender. Ah, for to do nothing now would surely mean defeat! Oh, but what if we did just stop!? What if we truly cared enough to stop pumping the bodies of ancient beings into the bellies of our enslaved automobiles? What if we loved this planet so much that instead of flying to the Big Protest, we instead harvested dandelions, lambs quarter and mallow, made a big salad for all our unknown neighbors, ate slowly together, took a nap and made love in the middle of the day? What if we stopped listening to Spotify and learned how to sing our own songs again? What if the Amazon delivery guy had no reason to come to town? What if we stopped buying what they were selling us? What then? Oh, heavens. What then!?
America, is dying. Modernity is at her wake. Other countries try now to do what we tried too but, eventually, the loneliness becomes too unbearable. The full moon in Autumn makes this much clear. Tenderly hospicing Summer, keeping her memory alive, her death will feed the eventual returning of Spring. What will come of the composting of contemporary views? Can we find the right songs to sing as the crooked dreams of the industrial revolution fade into a long, cold winter? Can we celebrate its efforts and, finally, go to sleep…?
How I long for Silence. A sky not littered with “progress”. A stillness not insulted by semis and freight trains rushing to take. I can still remember the early days of my youth. When my parents would wake me in the middle of the night. We would go to the cornfields and stare into an endlessly starry sky. Nothing there but Everything. A comfortable knowing that we are small. Our time here is short. And all we are asked to do is to celebrate.
*Gökotta is a Swedish concept that involves waking up early to experience the stillness of the morning and appreciate the beauty of nature, particularly birdsong.
*dedicated to the United Auto Workers and all birds that rise at dawn.
For ways in which you can support the United Auto Workers, click here
“The people united will never be defeated!”
#maypeaceprevailonearth
I got up early this morning before the light and during that routine I listened to this. Thanks Greg
'So many old people. So few elders.' Incredible line.