“What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.Thich Nhat Hanh
When I started this whole writing thing, all I wanted to do was share what happened to be going on in my head at the time. Once I finished recounting all my stories from my past and squeezed them into a book, I freed myself, going forward with no particular direction. After I wrote my last story, I was thinking I should take a break from my harangues on our climate debacle.
I think when I started seeing my second shrink, somewhere in my late thirties, other worlds began to make themselves felt. I beat his couch with a tennis racquet and crawled through his legs, giving birth to myself. I imagined I was a poet shepherd in ancient times, standing tall as a I overlooked the valley below.
On a business trip to Phila., I ran up the steps of the Museum of Art, made famous by Rocky. I found a small marble figure, sitting on the rebar, exposed pedestal where his statue lived in the movie. I believed it was left there for me, a real leap of faith for some unimaginative, Jewish kid from Queens. Thinking back, that incident was a kind of affirmation that other worlds lived within and without me.
Some time after that, I left everything in my life that was familiar and dear to me to start an adventure in Santa Fe, NM. It was a crazy move by any measure of human sanity. I, ever so slowly, began to have faith in the invisible, something that has grown within, over the decades since my departure from The City. Hell, I have no idea why life taps some people on the shoulder and sends them off on journeys of discovery.
After about a week on the road, I ended up at my tiny adobe home in the Cerrillos Flats, just south of Santa Fe. Living in the Southwest for fifteen years, peeled away the concrete layers of city life and stripped me bare. Shit, at one point, I had three dogs and we’d get in my truck, an actual truck and go camping in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was a kind of magic for which there are no words, only a muted sweetness of being embraced by God.
I never started wearing feathers or other Native American garb. I did not change my name to Eagle Feather either. What I did, is develop an enduring respect for indigenous people and how they have been continually screwed by the system, prisoners of war in a war with no end. I have no idea why this has touched me the way it has, but I got it. I never thought to glorify their existence either.
As an observer, I saw how these Pueblo Indians of varying tribes, regarded the natural world. I witnessed ceremonies they chose to share with gawkers like me and somehow got touched by it all. I even got to go up to Third Mesa, where the Hopi live. I guess I am kind of a permanent tourist, secretly ingesting the air around me. I knew I was supposed to go to New Mexico when I did and how I did, with some painful consequences as well.
When I ran up those steps at the museum and found my constant companion, a 12 inch, marble statue, who has never left my side since, I knew the rest of my life would be an internal journey. My Rocky was Buddha’s calling card and we have been pals ever since. My growing interest in Zen perfectly dovetailed with my exposure to the ways of Native Americans.
I brought all of this spiritual baggage with me to Kauai. I feel this place the way I have no right to and I know that. I wouldn’t dare to write about it, any more than those who live it would think about sharing their secrets. I can’t explain why I love this place the way I do, but I do.
A couple of days ago, I had one of those moments, few and far between, where a message came to me, one I can’t believe I haven’t heard until now. I would never claim I straddle the worlds of the earthbound and the indigenous. I am just another jerk, lamely trying to make sense of what he can’t.
I read the quote from Thich Nhat Hanh and I instantly became part of that world I have this weird affinity for and I don’t know why.
We are focused on the science and accompanying metrics of climate change, one study after another confirming the looming debacle. I am guilty as charged, writing blogs and recording podcasts about the facts. Everything has been focused on the acrobatics of our minds, a linear approach to something far more subtle than the formulaic justification of one number over another.
I can’t believe I have deafened my words to the Earth’s crying. We are not mathematically losing species, because every single, sentient being that is lost from fire or starvation has suffered a kind of pain beyond our comprehension. When a thousand year old tree is charred, collapsing on its ashes, it dies a horrible death. There are children starving to death everyday and they are not statistics, they are extinguished little beings, who haven’t even had a chance to dream about possibility.
This planet we all inhabit, bears silent witness to how we punish her, because we are too busy with statistics, science and selfish expedience. There are people, who hear her voice and we are deaf to them. I have been wrong to be so preoccupied with my voice to not hear the cries of Mother Nature. I am so sorry.
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