Driving out
there it was noticed that there weren’t many cars or trucks. And the closer we
got to the forest, the taller the trees became, the wider the fields, the longer
the loams. Parking near some shade, I had made sure to bring some water and I
also remembered a hat this time. The mosquitoes are acting up and there are
some horse flies and black flies also. A bit cautious for the walk, because it
was quite hot, I had already decided that we would go slow, stay for the most
part in the thick shaded areas, and just take extra easy. I am a slow walker to
begin with, and don’t make a very good walking partner. I am more solitary, and
meant to go at my own pace. It was pleasant to see that a breeze, if a soft
one, had come in. I thought for some reason as we began of Joseph Conrad, and a
paragraph I had read earlier. It was about a ship in the morning, and there was
much trouble as of late on that ship. In fact, the people were almost declaring
mutiny. But the paragraph described the ship in the morning, the clean deck,
the sun rising and hitting the railings, the solitary certain beauty and
pureness of that moment of the ship going along there. But, the way he did,
described it, seemingly effortlessly, had me amazed. I am not a Conrad scholar
by any means, I just know what I like, and I have thought in my own way since I
was a teenager that Joseph Conrad was the best writer that has ever lived.
Sometimes I just open him up and read him, and then after a passage like that,
close the book and reflect on it. In any event, as I walked along, the breeze
picked up and the surrounding area seemed to contain that sound that imitated
the sea. Though we were away, far away from any body of water, I thought,-
somewhere there is a body of water, a Caribbean, a Red Sea, a Black Sea, and
Atlantic coastline, an archipelago, and much more. That thought was enough to assuage
a restless, allergy and summer cold ridden spirit.
Some squirrels
made sounds rustling and running up trees, and some chipmunks jumped over logs.
The dogs chased both but to no avail. I didn’t worry. They simply can’t catch
them. It’s a nice mixture in there of forest and valley, leaves and flowers,
Pines, Oaks, chaparral, shrubs, wildflower, labyrinthine and secreted paths,
other. I saw an old toad, quite plump, and he jumped atop a moss laden log, I
snapped a few pictures. I also was surprised to see how overgrown the open
field was, - perhaps for the rains and humidity there as of late. We went so
slowly, so very slowly, thinking of Joseph Conrad and the sea, of the little
clouds dispersing. If someone could write just one paragraph like that, just
close to that, to that ship making its way in the morning sun…then wow…then
everything would be worth it. Immortal. I saw the ferns, and some plants that
look exotic, southern, and grow fast and tall towards the blue sky in these
months. I shall have to purchase a field guide to Southern Ontario flowers and
trees and plants. I keep forgetting to do so. I took a bit of a different way
once out in the open, and saw that the wild grasses where sprinkled and then
saturated with white flowers and others that had red, pink, white, and perhaps
purple all at once. I looked and looked upon them and stopped. What was it? I
smelt them there in the air, the hundreds of them,- and it was them or something
else- a sweet fragrant and exotic smell, an aroma both enchanting and
engrossing, entertaining and even enthralling. Suddenly I was as if brought back
to myself. I had the idea to write. I felt in stride. I knew things were well
and even swell and better. I had found the mark, had hit, quite literally
again, my stride. So I waited. I was in the middle of all things. I was the
middle of all things. Sometimes there is a type of secret knowledge, not about
something but just a Gnostic knowing, a type of knowing beyond mind, duality, and
description.
And then, the
thing, the muse, the good way being gotten, through providence, grace, karma,
and maybe even a sprinkling of chance, we went out and back from there and headed away,- into the shaded and secreted
parts of the forest again.
--------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment