Aimless Wanderings
Meditations Upon Laudholm Farm

By Owen Grumbling

 

  We set out to find the center, where meaning lies, perhaps tangled on stems and trunks, obscure, but burnished, we know, by glint of light. We know already that the secret lies in light and dark, that the whole tangle is important. It may lean, we surmise, the center that we seek may be slanted, a thick fissured wooden trunk, and we recall that how we look, not where, may be the key. We stand aslant to look aslant and wonder if looking is not enough. To arrive at what we seek needs correction, translation.

  If we could find a formula, or make one, we could upright the meaning that we need.

  But the angle is not right, there is no right angle, the thing we need flows along the graceful curve of a frost-bent birch. We are drawn to the glorious white curve. We try to curve our vision, to flow along, how simple, how easy to glide along to the very end twig and swing back down to earth.

  But just as we begin there needs a calculation, a conscious adjustment, and as we plot the curve we see beyond it a thing not to be ignored: a face. Eyes sunk deep in some living bark, peering out.

  We turn to ward to peer in, hoping for a peer, a kindred mind, and distinguish eyes, nose, an oaken bucket head long and full of thought we think we need: the green man, a spirit in our likeness.

  Could it be great Pan who peers into and behind our eyes?

  For the chance to hear the voice of All we step toward those almost human eyes lodged in the great strong pithy oak and as we take only a single step, the spirit face fades into everything. The visage has receded, faded, dissolved, we wonder was it even there. Thus we lose chance to meet the lord that lies out there.

  Or lies . . .

  But if the latter, then just what is it that lies within?

  Startled, we seek shelter from our quest, someplace to comfort and restore. Upright posts make safe walls while slanted branches insulate from heaven. We must return to something like a human place, just for a moment, to settle who we are and what is next and last. The trunks and pitchy branches will shut out our confusion, we think, so we retreat to what appears familiar.

  But find no structure, no artifice, just more life, more forms and functions all their own, no purpose but their growth, un use to us. Looking back at no construction but our mind’s our mind’s construction fades leaving only growth, different, strange and dangerous (a shortness of breath), but its strange tangle, its incalculable meaning, tangles us in beauty, and we bless it unawares.

  Heartened without reason we move our gaze along growth and more growth, tangled, curving, slanted, what grows darker than the light that feeds it. Suddenly we see in negative, the dark the light, the light real substance, alive in blots and patches, peering through branch and stem, bathing every slant and post and tangle. We find so many centers, beyond count, too many windows to the light.

  Astounded we retreat from unruly enlightenment, too much, too many, the ten thousand things all clamoring, wanting to shine upon us, inform us, far beyond our ken or strength. We can only turn our backs upon the light, and sigh relief - but for the light behind us now shining ahead.

  By accident then we find the light we need: the sun behind us shines before us on grass and needles and illuminates, yes, the path. Is it our path, we need to ask, and should we take it? The silver path is scraped by shadow, a crevasse like a painted stripe insubstantial, yet as we gaze becomes the only substance. All around it the golden ground, the needles, the leaves become illusion. Could we but fall into that crevasse, crawl into darkness, seeking the very center of the earth, of who we are, and find a kind of home, a snug emptiness with no bottom, no top, no need to measure, to look right. We ease into that lovely dark cool hole, ready to sink down from all quest, yet cannot help but see above, bristling and swaying, humming in the wind, pitchy pine limbs rambling like a mongrel dog, ears cocked, back arched, paws gesturing: the tree against the light reaches out. We are touched.

  Penetrated, we rise from cool, dark emptiness; pulled closer and closer we rejoin light and life, without thinking or calculating or planning. Finally, we see one thing.

  A twig: a single form, darkness against light, growth within nourishment, being surrounded by everything.

  And this moment is all that matters.

 

 

 

 

Copyright: Owen Grumbling 2006