I have come once again to a breaking point, and in this break between sober reality
and whimsical fantasy I have created a nest for myself. A nest from which I can take
flight, and a nest to which I can return and sleep safely under the stars and clouds of
midnight longing. The nest is not large, it fits in the palm of my hand, but the nest
is home, and any number of friends and family can fit inside. This nest is my heart,
my ears, my muscles and my bones. This nest is where I reach out from to see the world
stand on its head, and I where I huddle low to avoid the passing projectiles: bullets,
insults, hates. The nest has hate-impervious walls, made of flesh and thought, woven in
my spare time between flights fantastic and sobriety real; at the breaking point I sit
and weave my nest. Periodically I include bits of my hair for strength, bits of my
teeth for defense, sometimes a piece of skin to keep it waterproof, and every thread I
weave in a leaf of the greenest grass to keep the nest youthful in its old age. Grass
has that power, though few humans ever realized it. Grass can make the old, not young,
but youthful, again. It was never a watery fountain that Ponce de Leon was searching
for; not a place to drink liquid bubbling out of the ground, but a place to drink of
the ground itself: to drink of the very stuff of creation, that's what makes us live,
and that's what keeps us whole. After all, it's wholeness we are searching for, isn't
it? Not really youth, but that feeling that we remember from our youth of being
connected to the world. We want to be whole again so that running around on the lawn
in our bare feet was thrilling enough, and we didn't need to add any games or
organization to make the afternoon a wonderful romp; we simply reveled in the pure
natural chaos of the moment, even if we didn't know what to call it then. Five year
olds don't run in straight lines, or at constant peak heart rates, or even to anywhere
particular; they just run and run and run until they fall down exhausted or find
something more interesting. And being interrupted in the middle of a run isn't a bad
thing, either, if it's for some new activity, or to stop and look at a butterfly or
a bird. This is all just part of the exploratory natural randomness: when something
new comes along, you give it notice and attention for as long as it keeps you interested,
then you move on to the next new thing, or the old standbys like running around on the
grass in our bare feet. Old people who want to be young again do not want to actually
run around in the grass, but they want the feeling of natural freedom that their memories
associate with running around on the grass, and so for lack of any way to get there,
they grope wildly for something to give them that feeling, and so I make sure to include
my leaves to keep the nest youthful so that it should never feel like it wants something
it can never have. The grass, of course, is not the secret, it does not keep the nest
young like a magic lotion or a fountain, but it keeps the nest from growing old because
the stuff of creation, the matter of life is woven into the most vital structure of the
nest. It is a constant reminder from within to remain, at all costs, free from self-imposed
restrictions, and youthful in all endeavors. Let nature rule in all natural acts. Let
instinct rule in all unnatural acts, for almost no instinctive acts are unnatural. Since
the nest itself is natural (for I created it of natural things, and I myself am natural)
then all that the nest does out of instinct is natural. The nest is my home, but I spend
time there only when I am in between excursions into one strange bordering realm or the
other. Whether it be into the specious decisionworld of abstract logic or the concrete
dragonfly dreamworld of fantasy, the nest remains my anchor. It is the basic circle from
which I draw my tangents and the first note or resting beat of my every song. It is this,
my constant connection to my world, my permanent tie to nature, that allows me to be free
and to roam wherever I want to, run barefoot in any grass I see, scatter dandelion seeds
in the meadows, and it is this connection that allows me to bridge the gap, the breaking
point between logic and fantasy. The nest is my bridge and the nest is my home. Welcome.
|
|