These ideas are ever-evolving, like so much else in our lives. I want to offer here, then, some more comments that come from the thinking and writing I have been doing in recent days in regard to inner/outer landscapes.
Adding to the explanation I offered in the first post (outer landscapes are “those things which we feel, see, hear, taste, and smell around us”), outer landscapes also include our physical and situational circumstances. A physical circumstance could be the location in which we find ourselves (office, forest, moving to a new home); it can also include the people around us. Situational circumstances are any of the blessings, issues, or tangible “facts” of our daily existence.
Inner landscapes are the place where things from outside of us “attach” (emotions, responses).
Something from the outer world lodges itself (in a negative sense, like a burrowing tick or bur in the skin), or makes a cozy niche (the nice scent of sniffing a rose). And in the moment outer meets inner, I become inextricably connected; the time and space between the sniff of the flower and the pleasant sensation is miniscule. With undesirable outer circumstances (such as a ruined natural landscape), there is also an “attachment” I sense on my inner landscape (emotions such as anger or sadness; an urgency to do something to help heal the land; a lingering feeling of disorientation or confusion).
I offer some examples of the intersection of inner/outer landscapes:
· navigating the intensity of a loved one’s impending death (inner emotional/spiritual journey as well as the physical and relationship circumstances associated with the person dying)
· listening to the bamboo chimes outside my window (I am calmed by the beauty of their sound)
· reading a meaningful word or phrase from a book
· seeing the “green flash” of a sunrise or sunset
· watching a pair of dark eyed juncos build a nest and lay four eggs over several weeks
· seeing the smattered yolk, broken shells, and frayed twigs of the nest after they got accidentally diced up by a weed whacker
· having a conversation with a friend or loved one in which we are changed, internally, by the exchange (sharing a personal vulnerability, a great moment of success, a confession, an achievement)
· watching the cycles of nature over the seasons and years in a particular location
· feeling the warm summer breeze on my bare shoulders
· smelling the scent of the sakura (cherry blossom) before I ever see the tree in the distance
· watching the flitting bird with bright colors outside the window near my desk and learning from the birding field guide that it is a cedar waxwing
Really, I could go on and on with the examples.
Finally, I am including a photo that shows a cropped image of my niece on a beach during a recent sunset. To me, this is really symbolic of the inner/outer landscape; the glowing horizon shows in her sunglasses, in the very place where her “windows to the soul” reside.
(Image photographed by my sister, M. Tran.)
