NIGHT WORLDS

The bushes rustle against the windows there and there is a sort of click-click-click on the panes. There is something about white panes, new or old, some soul infused aura. The moon, maybe a new moon, is not to be seen. The sky is opaque for the cloud cover. If there are spirits, they are not known, for all that can really be heard is the wind and therefore the wind is equated with, is, in fact the night. We could call it the ‘wind’ world. And the world spins, and there is not really a centre point. The old tree, the small one, what was it called? It had the most beautiful flowers, red and little spots of yellow inside. It’s unbelievable that its name is forgotten. Its heyday is over,- and maybe some nice eyes laid themselves upon it under the summer sun, the clear and deep and forever blue sky, the strange birds and the prosaic birds that flew about the place. Maybe. One can only hope. Now its leaves are frayed, and there are no flowers. The terra cotta container doesn’t look half as well as it did surrounded by impatience flowers red, white, purple, and so forth,- their stems proud and as if full of green water,- there tops bragging themselves up so wisely and adroitly and somehow succinctly and succulent to reach the morning star. Ah well, it all comes to pass as is said. Maybe that is in the Bible, - This too shall pass, - or maybe it is somewhere else. Does it really matter? Unfortunately the tree looks as if it has passed, or rather is about to buy the farm, give up the ghost. Maybe it will arrive in the astral realm and be a tree there. Nobody things about that. Their only thought about those things, if it comes, regards people. Well the branches…they make odd shapes on the pavement, - moving things from a peculiar and slightly disturbing play or song. They could be anything and anywhere, in any city or place in the world. Distinct under the light of streets, leaves playing in front of the lamplight,- to be interest at first, and then also indistinct enough to be unable to formulate a picture of anything in the mind’s eye. And the mind is uncomfortable with that. Not mine, - mine loves and adores the play of light in the night. This is poetry, this is music, and this is a certain art. This and the tap tap tap of old branches under the moon that ever so quickly peaked out is what the night worlds are made of and made for.

 

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A SOFT KARMA OR OF ASCENTS AND DESCENTS (OWL, YELLOW LEAVES, CHIPMUNK, AND OTHER)

An owl sat again watching the highway. Where had he or she been all this time? You never know, as they say, what you ‘got’ until they take it away. Such gracefulness to wait there in the tree that reached so far, a tree like a spiritual aspirant, up and up until it disappeared in the clouds, in another realm, in God. And what of the owl? Surely the owl was the guru, the Buddha, the Krishna, the Christ, watching it all, helping, but also remaining still, centred in Being and as Being itself. Try and tell it to the transport truck driver, though, against odds, I can if given the chance. So the owl was there, and in the distance some guard dog waited in verdant fields of I don’t know what. As for us, - we were on the move, and kept at it.

 

In the larger forests and fields the colors were yellow for the most part. This was due to the leaves, some affixed to branches, others and most others, fallen. We go up a series of hills. Sometimes the wind comes through there, the wind like a spirit, and we stop and listen and feel as the leaves fall from branches like rain or a weird piece of installation art. I once briefly met an installation artist, and she was tall with short hair, older, calm, - but I was busy and had to keep on. She asked a question about Alan Watts, but I had to go I think, and so I went, moving with some internal spiritual or instinctual prompting. She did manage to explain the term, Installation Art, but its all, to use a cliché, Greek to me, as I don’t go around artists or the like. So the hue, mostly yellow, - brought a nice vitality somehow and seemed to vibrate at a good if not high level. We moved along…

That little chipmunk, oh, I felt bad for him. One could see right away that he had been unbothered and free for so long, playing there. Leave it to us, who go the extra mile or half mile quite literally into unknown territory and off the paths, - to upset him in his land of innocence and joy. I think when he saw us it was quite a startle that was given. Running up a tree, so nonplussed was he that a movement was made that could have been a fatal error in judgement, as he ran back down the tree to exchange it for another one, which meant he was on the ground for a few feet. I wished him the best, and he made it. Up the next tree. I could see he was small, inexperienced, working purely from fear. We left him there, alive and watching us who surely were monsters from a waking nightmare.

Down some more, there was a large tree that had fallen, and I realized that it was not that the root systems were so grand, but that it was in fact three or four trees that had fallen together. Moss, logs, little insects and other things were around there. It all made for a great painting or picture or poem if someone was so inclined. However, there is hardly anybody around there. Slowly, slowly, we went past, playfully, joyously if even sometimes with a wet shoe and sock, - and began to make our way out. The world, with its distinctly lower vibrations, ways, people and plans, waited. But we had to re-enter it. We had to. That was for then our karma. It was not a hard karma, but what I would call a soft or light one, but it was a karma nevertheless. Over the outside summit we went and then down to the regular path and then lot mixed with gravel and dirt. Into the vehicle and off to join the fray, just like everyone else, trying to continue our day, hoping to make our way.

Maybe the owl is helping us also. 

Surely it is.

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THE SILENT VALLEY OR CLOUD AND PATH (NO PHOTOS DUE TO YET CONTINUING GOD-DAMNED TECHINCAL DIFFICULTIES).

The trucks whizzed along, eighteen wheels and sometimes cabs w/sleeping quarters. You can see the lights and the metal and the logos and the rest. What a force they are. We slip into the off-way, and down to where the dog walkers park. There aren’t too many vehicles then, and its middle morning. The sky is not bright and clear on one hand, which is fine, but it also lacks ominous foreboding clouds and textures on the other. It’s just covered in a gray. It’s not pollution, not there. It’s just that the clouds have dispersed themselves out everywhere, shapes that have gotten too large and lost all contour or hold, - and there is nothing but gray and gray and gray. Give me the blue, or give me the black. Sometimes the gray is hard. Nevertheless, we continue on.

 

It would be easy to lie, but lie I won’t. Whatever coyotes and deer were there, well they have migrated for the time being to somewhere else. I went deep, - the long way. Remember, - I am going the odd way, - towards the left, to begin with. The ones that even go there take the first path in. Some, more adventurous souls, well they go to the second. I took the third. It was as if the spirit said the way was safe. And it was, - and it was almost too safe. It’s where the two coyotes came and watched us before. But there is nothing there now. If you go past the abandoned car, you are quite far. The ground looks stable but it is not. Someone was there, and left a birch branch walking stick. I picked it up and used it, - feeling the ground. It was wet under the leaves, and sunk quickly, almost like quicksand in a movie. We continued on.

Soon we were at the bottom of the valley. Often I stopped and stood in utmost silence. There is silence that we think is silence but that is only relative silence. There are still sounds. This was actual silence and it was weird. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The trees covered the sky then, and I looked at the impossibly large root system of one that had fallen over a long time ago, laying on its side like a monster or like a soldier or like something, some kind of sight as it were. We went upwards, and the walking was slow. The leaves, mostly yellow, made of themselves a carpet on the forest floor. The spirit had said to look up, before, and so I did, - and when I did I saw a small fairy flying but perhaps it was not a fairy but a flying ant or some other type of insect. The grapes, the berries, the raspberries, the buttercups and the various wildflowers, - even those that survived during the Indian summer, - had all disappeared. Just trees and trees and trees. We continued on the top of the valley and up to where I know the deer cross sometimes. 

Soon enough we were out in the open fields. No counterpoint or juxtaposition or foil. No ‘other,’ really, but that was okay. We took it for what it was, and encountered it all on its own terms. The dogs ran back and forth, played, jumped, turned ‘round and ‘round, sniffed, seemed all in all to be content and even happy. At least, I thought, we did not run into any others and have to worry about leashes or talk or such. But the sky, - opaque, no sky at all really, - does not make for inspiration one way or the other. That is okay. We are in it for a ‘slow penny not a fast buck as it were. We are die hards. We go rain or shine or snow or whatever wants to present itself. 

On the way back, there was more of the same. Many wild mushrooms announced themselves on logs and trees. The sand and the pebbles, the leaves, shrubs, - the same pathways, some plain and open, others a bit more labyrinthine and darkened, - presented themselves. We stuck close to the earth, our noses to the earth, our faith in the earth, our spirit to the earth. The earth is not bad, and besides, as aforementioned, the sky was not to really be found. Soon enough, with so very many steps behind, - as we began the way out of the valley and the open spaces and the forest too, the sounds of the trucks could be heard again. Sounds that stretched out from machinery and searched for a place to make and echo or resonate, but instead seemed to just keep on going and going and going across the world like that ubiquitous cloud cover itself.

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AS THE SUN MELTS THE EARLY FLASH SNOW (NO PICTURES DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES)

The sudden snowfall of one day made for a curious sight in the forest the following day. What had happened was that the shaded areas kept the snow and the open parts had the snow melted. The leaves of the trees had not fallen yet, and so one second you appeared as if in a winter wonderland and would swear it was December, and the next, in a matter of feet, you could find yourself in the autumn parts with leaves yellow and orange hued, even green!- and have no idea of feeling for the snow. So, it can be a curious place. 

The dogs ran around both parts, and they are also as the sutra says, ‘…on their enlightenment path.’ And quite literally they are on the path! - Then they crisscross it and run diagonally about it. I can see that the one is feeling a bit better (I think he had a cold), and the other, though she would tell you she prefers to stay in, needed the air and enjoyed the run and play and exercise in general. They just celebrated their third birthday a little while back,- October 5^th (one’s actual birthday and the other, well we adopted that birthday as it was apparently close to that day)- so the siblings can celebrate together.

There was nobody there as it was early and the sun going up and becoming more endued somehow with its own prowess and charisma, it melted the snow from the leaves that were hovering in the forest. This made for it to feel like it was raining though raining it was not. The sky, then blue beyond, and some jet streams here or there. The world waking up. As we drive afterwards, one can see silos, - silos in the sun as I say sometimes, and the fields, some verdant, some flaxen. What else? - The whole thing, - sometimes cows, sometimes a large dog or coyote waiting for something in a field. Trains. Sky. Clouds. And soon enough the snow had been melted and all that is left is the story of when it was present. 

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THE FOREST QUIET AND THE VALLEY PATH

It was wet but not as rain-soaked as previous days. How quickly the weather and therefore the entire atmosphere can change. The wildflowers for the most part had gone but there were some beans that once opened (and I have no idea how this happens), some cottony-billowy-feather-like material comes out of the old shell and waves in the wind under the late October sun. I took some photographs of these peculiarly interesting plant/flowers. If there are feral animals around there currently, they are next to silent or masked, because I saw and heard none. How I wished to see a deer, a fox, a coyote…a hawk or even a rabbit. It was like in the movies of science fiction or the paranormal where an area becomes extra-quiet before some big event. Bu the big event was not to occur. Instead, we walked and wandered through the regular beautiful if a bit darkened summits and labyrinthine pathways, by the regular set of tractors and sandpit. Staying a long time out there, possibly two hours, the dogs got more than enough fresh air, sights, exercise. 

The long and narrow path that stories itself along the top of the ridge is of some import. I looked and looked down the valley to the floor, and didn’t see anything. How many times I had heard the rustles of animals and kept walking, taking them for granted. I should have gone and looked then, and seen the animals, seen what was there. But what was there then were many autumn leaves, - yellow, orange, brown, dark green. And the wind came through and fell shook the leaves from the branches, many of them in any event, and they fell and fell but softly, like a quiet song. In the distance, quite far away, could be heard the reports from the gun ranges. But we are used to this. We kept on, and sometimes saw odd wild mushrooms, fallen birch bark, and mossy rocks and logs. Eventually we made our way out and called it a day as it were.

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