rocks and water
Joe Edwards arrived this morning at 10 for a walk we went on until 1:30. Both of us took a lot of pictures. Most of mine were neither here nor there. I'm a little happy with this one. It felt good to be out under the trees again, the canopy speckled with sunlight everywhere. The sound of splashing water everywhere. Up a steep bank, down a steep bank, up a steep bank and keep on going up until you can't walk another step, but there is still a long ways to go, so you go. It was quite an exercise. I figured the worst could happen would be the zapper going off, the electric mule. Walking in the forest, seeing the familiar places, remembering days spent on particular moss-covered rocks along the sides of the stream, reading, writing, watching birds groom themselves overhead not seeing me, seeing the trout swim, water snakes, the long-legged flies scooting about on the water surface. Sometimes they fight. Sometimes it's sex. Watching them is like watching guppies. It's like they have a really high metabolism looking to get into something all the time. Trout spit them back out, so they have no danger. Today I saw less than half a dozen.
I can't help but walk through the forest mourning that the county officially recommends not drinking water from a spring. The ground water isn't safe any more. When I arrived here 34 years ago the land was lush with growth. Waterfalls Creek still had native trout. It's only been since Air Bellows was taken over by invasive christmas trees that everything in the water has died. Even the snails. I feel like the old Indian in the canoe with a tear running down his cheek. What they've done to the ground itself is even worse. But, it's not my call. I will go on drinking water from the spring to share the fate of my mountain. While my mountain is poisoned, I'll be poisoned. Helicopters carry what I take to be pellet fertilizer and sling it all over in the woods, several acres in the woods. It sounds like a hail storm on the roof of the house. At night they spray from a big blower on the back of a tractor the trees either side of the road from the road. Nine tenths of it blows away in the air over meadows, the trees, the house. Doesn't matter. They're making money. Do I have rights in the face of making money? No. It's like Henry Kissinger told Italian prime minister Aldo Moro shortly before his assassination, "Either you stop your political line or you will pay dearly for it." Lookout-lookout-lookout--squeal of tires--crash. After all the things we been through. I sit and watch as tears go by.
I think of Jesus saying render unto Caesar what is his--taxes. It also means don't provoke the people who have power over. I believe it means, too, to go with the peaceful flow and not get ruffled over something I have no control over. It is the context of the world I live in. It's not mine to change it, because I can't. Wouldn't know what to change it to. I do know the nature of the change I'd like to see, that we the American people and we the people of the World find a liking for one another. I'm afraid that requires first a belief in God in one way or another, preferably one's own way. If my interpretation of prophecy is not too far off the bullseye, I'm counting on the Lord coming again is such a way all on earth will see him. It will happen, perhaps, in the heart of every individual. The spirit of God will present a countenance that will arise from our hearts when we see what God reveals to all of us at the same time, perhaps a kind of vision, and after that we want to please God by looking after one another, being a friend a neighbor can count on.
All the prophecies say we're in a time right now that is perhaps the most major moment to ever happen on earth. The day God reveals self to all humans, fill our hearts to overflowing with love, is the day we will shift our attention to the the moment in time that the heavens opened and God poured out love all over the earth. The machinery of hate would stop in that moment. Hate would be over, at least, perhaps a few hundred years. Though I say I see God revealing self and pouring love into everyone's hearts, I don't know what that means. It has to be something from God to prevent humanity from destroying self and others. Like in the last minute when the herd is headed for the cliff he jumps in front of the stampede and turns the herd away from the cliff. Evidently this is a very important time to live through on earth. Whatever it is, it will be a surprise. There's no way it could be something as simple-minded as I might think up. It will be something that is so right it will blow my mind to smithereens.
Enlightenment, another word for disillusionment, is not necessarily easy to live with, while at the same time keeping one's inner life clear, harmonious, peaceful. Some illusions are hard to let go of, the biggest majority of them, and we have layers of illusion like an onion. Get down to the last little bit of onion, take it away and what's left is nothing, what Buddhists call nothingness. Turns out illusion kept us believing we were separate from one another, God, the works. All the illusions go away and there's oneness with space, air, whatever you want to call it. It's a moment when we'll "get it" whatever it is. I don't want to think about it too specifically, it being too big to talk about or write about or especially conjecture about. It will be something we'll sing about worshipfully from then on. I want to leave it be, concern myself with my own place and time. One day a kid I knew said to me, I want to go into space. I said, You're in space. You're on planet earth. That wasn't what he wanted to hear.
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