Circa 2007,
Vashon Island
Yes, I feel
natural places in a profound way. It is emotional, intuitive, changeable like
the landscape around me. It is a tether from inner to outer, outer to inner.
6 Aug 2010
The silent
butterfly – yellow and black oozing paint stripes – moves quietly, but hugely,
on the landscape before me. Resting on a branch of the ocean spray, now white
fragrant cluster blooms dried into tan clumps that remind me summer’s in its
final stretch, this summer. The
yellow, bright, clear - patterns as if a glass artist cut and fused the fragile
wing bits - stand out in this darkening green of early August. I wonder if this is the short-lived species of butterfly, if this is a two-weeks-of-life as a "flutterby". Is today Day 1 or the 14th
for that Butterfly? Does the flying whimsical creature have any sense of
urgency or compulsion that this is it, that the Great Death which greets us all
– eventually and however it does – is right around the next bush? What is one
day out of two weeks compared to our human day out of an eighty-year lifespan?
Maybe it’s a middle-aged butterfly I saw, halfway through his two weeks and
he’s wondering where the first seven days went and how he will get
everything of his Life’s Work done in the remaining seven? Seven, a lucky
number seven. A cycle of a week:
divinely-inspired or man-made convenience? What about all The Holies who
tell us seven is magical, or the astrologists who tell us life cycles through
again every seven years, or the psychologists who declare that our psyches get
reworked with the same seven lessons, over and over throughout our lives? Am I
to take stock in this, to really take it to heart? So the Butterfly is
doubly-blessed because he has been given “two cycles” in which to fly as a
wind-up being, moving – opening wide those gorgeous and compelling wings? I
never would have seen him at all, had I not opened my eyes mid-meditation. And
in that instant in full glory his form slowly dashed – like a movie reel put
into slow motion – and lit on the branch, filling the landscape large and dark
with his tiny but brilliant light: a
beaming dark, bright yellow that is oxymoronic even in description. This one
small fluttering creature just came by as I wrote this, moving just behind my
head. And he actually had a sound that I noticed because he was within inches
of my ear. It was a sticky sort of sound – wings fluttering and a slight almost-click as the wing beat circled
just behind. I never thought of butterflies as having a sound; I just wrote
seconds ago about how quiet this one was…at a distance, I learned. Yet the
truth of an actual close-encounter disproves and disarms me, putting me in a
state of disbelief and awe: Butterflies
are not silent!
16 Sept 2008, Asea in Alaska
This trip I’ve
spent more time out, enjoying the scenery and activities and taking
photos. Simply taking in what’s around
me in the natural world: this has been the tempo of the excursion for
me. It begs some questions – this
lack of writing I’ve experienced on this trip:
What is it in me
that calls for something from the natural world, from outside of myself?
What, if any,
are the conditions – emotional, physical, spiritual – that lead me to take in
more of what’s occurring outside of myself than to put
out in written form the experience (outer or inner) that’s part of my “right
now”ness?
When do I seek
outer experience – either as diversion or out of necessity (meeting spiritual
needs, for example) – to fill me and when do I hide or only draw from what’s
inside?
Is there
something in me that can determine when I need to be filled with experience
from the outside? Is it like some oil dip
stick that is able to read “1/4 full” so that I am compelled to seek what is
outside of me in order to fill me up?
What is that
balance of inner/outer? At what point does it then become necessary for my
soulful life to have that inner experience pour forth?
I find this a
tricky balance in my life – fully engaging in what’s occurring outside of me
and processing that in order for it to pour forth on the page (or computer
screen).
Today, Long
Beach
When I forget
that I have been engaging the inner/outer landscape for a very long time –
academically, spiritually, physically, emotionally; when I forget that I spent
more of my childhood years outside the house rather than inside it; when I place
a disproportionate emphasis on a narrow view of now – rather than the Big Whole
Now that is the fullness of my life, I am blinded to the pattern that has been
at work for me:
I am of Nature.
I am Nature. Nature is me. We are all One, Interconnected. No matter where I go, this is still true; I take great comfort and joy in this.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
