I’ve come back to my hometown for Christmas in my 63rd year.
The stereo is playing Bing Crosby; nostalgia is sought for as some kind of assurance that everything will return the past for a short while, if only in the way we feel.
Some would quickly return to the safety of the days evoked by the music, feeling that there must be some refuge from the excruciating pain of the present and the inevitable horror waiting them in the future. Still, death, ‘the king of terrors’, waits patiently. We feel it in our bones, and see it in the faces around us framed with gray hair, wrinkles, pain relying on a timetable to take the daily, ever growing, allotment of pills.
The underlying unspoken thought is of who will be here next year for Christmas and who will be missing. It is a cultural imperative to be filled with angst over this. The thought of death in our culture is couched in language designed to fill us with fear.
As far as I can tell the reasons for fear resides in the way in which we understand ourselves as persons. I have the feeling, in fact I’m fairly convinced, this fear is the result of the misunderstanding of the nature of the human being and that the fear is unnecessary because it is based on a misunderstanding concerning what and who they are.
I’m sitting in PDX with 4 hours to wait, my mother born in 1907 on this date. I’m left to figure out what it means and it is difficult because the explanations handed down to me have not made any sense.
I have begun the 63rd year of my life in a different place than I began my first and subsequent 62 years. Every other year began and ended in the same place; Cayuga County New York. This year I am in Oregon waiting in Portland for flights to Atlanta, Cincinnati, and finally Syracuse. I’m returning to New York for the holidays. I no longer think of it as home.
Teenagers in the nearly empty terminal with time on their hands and energy to release ‘moon walk’ back and forth on the ‘people mover’. I watch from the perimeter wondering what I will find when I get to my destination.
What does it mean to be going home? What does home mean? Who are you? What am I? What does all this living business mean? These are the questions on my mind tonight as I watch people with colored lights in their eyes and in their memories passing me. I have an answer that that satisfies me, or perhaps I have simply found another way to approach the questions. Answers, I have found, continue to change.
Ordinarily people don’t ask these questions, they accept the answers and explanations given them because it provides an entire scenario ready to be believed. They have built a world from it. _______________________________________________________
In Cincinnati two young couples stand in the main aisle directly in front of me. A long haired boy and girl and a boy in camouflage with a crew cut, his face adorned with a forced smile in an attempt to disguise his emotions. His arm is around a young heavyset girl as photographs are taken with cell phone cameras. None of the group appears old enough to buy a beer. The heavyset girl is unable to hide her sorrow and is finally overtaken by tears throwing her arms around the camouflaged boy while the other two continue to take pictures. When it’s time to board three leave together, the fourth, in camouflage, stays behind.
The boy in camouflage boards the same plane I do for Syracuse. As he passes my seat I see four letters on a strip over his pocket. They spell ‘Fink’. It is obvious to me he is going far away from home for Christmas. I can only imagine how he feels. I wonder if he knows he’s being used and that his life has only a very narrowly defined value in the minds and contexts of those who are sending him away from home for Christmas.
A fortyish woman in jeans, pretty but tired, with three teenagers in tow explains to them that they will be able to get on the plane as she hands each a snack and a ticket. They appear weary too, but not as weary as their mother.
In New York my son meets me. He loves me and I see it in his eyes and feel it in my heart. My grandchildren hug me at my other son’s house. I marvel at how well they have been raised and how they are growing.
My sister’s family has partially arrived. Those from Australia on an around the world trip get here first. Her eldest daughter with her boyfriend have been stuck almost a week in Paris due to snow in Philadelphia. They arrive minus three pieces of luggage that are still in Luxembourg.
My brother’s family is continuing to arrive from Florida, Georgia, California, Maryland and New York. It appears that the offspring of my mother and father have produced 50 or so additional offspring and connecting nodes. Some I have never seen before. This is the way it is supposed to be; we expand, multiply and become diverse; strengthening the human race by diversity. In a hundred years we will have expanded even more having spent our strength and become memories to be recalled in conversations over photographs on Christmas Eve.
No one wants to talk about death even though it is in everyone’s thoughts as we look at those around us with wrinkles and pain who have become mere shadows of the images in our minds from years gone by. Most are waiting for Jesus to come and take them home. I suppose I am too if I can be allowed to understand it in my own way.
For better or for worse we are a religious family. Most if not all have broken the restraints of the faith handed to them by their parents in order to forge a belief that makes sense to them. All our lives have changed and are changing. Thank God for that.
A man can only be home when he is at peace with himself. I am finally home despite the distance from the place of my birth.
More and more 'pie in the sky bye and bye' has fewer and fewer charms for me when compared to the way the sun lights the grasses at the end of the day and how the breeze makes the grasses sway. I saw the rich colors out the window and had to stop and look.
Moments like this draw me out of myself to meditate on what is really there and to think of what it means. And while I am thinking, the sun sets, the colors leave and I am in the dark. But I have swallowed the seeds of illumination.
It is odd that I should feel the way I do because everyday I am closer to dying and being 'lost'. These are the 'ultimate' concepts impressed on me as a child and all through my adult life. (They are still being impressed on the minds of children in the care of Christian fundamentalists.)
But, shouldn't I cling to something' in this situation? Is the reaction I was taught appropriate to a situation like mine? I was taught that holding on to something; the future, the past, something other than this slippery mercurial moment that can't be held would make me safe.
Asking questions in the context of time elaborated on by Albert Einstein was the key that allowed the door to remain open for me. When reality resumed I realized I had been taught many 'well meaning' ideas, but that they were fundamentally incorrect in the way they were presented. They were not only incorrect, but harmful to me as a person.
The idea of despising the moment of God's providence was the way I learned to be unfaithful and ungrateful for the day by day sustenance Jesus said his 'Father' provides for all of creation. I learned to trust in another 'Father', one in the 'future' whose throne is on Wall Street. In that context Jesus' words are just foolishness.
"24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?"
Similar thoughts are here in Verse 16 of the Tao. Click on the 'Tao Te Ching'.
"Touch ultimate emptiness, Hold steady and still.
All things work together: I have watched them reverting, And have seen how they flourish And return again, each to his roots.
This, I say, is the stillness: A retreat to one's roots; Or better yet, return To the will of God, Which is, I say, to constancy. The knowledge of constancy I call enlightenment and say That not to know it Is blindness that works evil."
Jesus explained the providence of his 'Father' in the same way Lao Tzu described the providence of the 'mighty Way'. Everything keeps on keeping on. Food keeps growing, rain keeps falling, the sun keeps shining and we keep falling in love to keep the world from being uninhabited. According to Jesus and Lao Tzu that's what keeps things rolling.
The key to all this is to trust that the present moment will bring forth what is needed and that to meddle with it and try to pull more out than it wants to give up is somehow wrong; a denial of the 'Father', a misuse of the 'Way'.
"As for those who would take the whole world To tinker as they see fit, I observe that they never succeed: For the world is a sacred vessel Not made to be altered by man. The tinker will spoil it; Usurpers will lose it."
Everything we try to hold onto to, to keep, to preserve, dies in our grip and becomes a corpse we carry with us. Hauling the past around is an unbearable burden. Hoping for a better day 'bye and bye' is the thief that breaks in and steals the treasure the 'king' bestows every passing moment inasmuch as it makes me want to ignore the providential divinity present in the moment. Holding on to the past or grasping for the future means we have turned our back on the ways and means of the Kingdom of God Jesus spoke of.
We as a society have done it and we've got the culture to prove it.
Below is a video I made involving moving away from my house on 'the hill' in New York to the north coast of Oregon. It will be a multi-part attempt to make sense of everything.
Early this morning there was a thunder storm with high wind gusts and torrential rain. It began abruptly. The winds blew part of the awning of the deck off. It was brief but violent. The amount of rain was incredible given the amount of time it rained.
I unplugged the computer, disconnected the internet cable and decided to write a poem about the squall on battery power. As I began to write I thought illustrating it with a video would be effective. The videos and still photographs below is what I came up with.
The thought inspiring the poem is that one moment leads inexorably to the next. The future and the past are connected by the present which makes the moment take on a great importance.
Also in my thoughts was the transitory nature of experience. It didn't rain all day. It changed from one moment to the next. First one thing was happening, then another thing. Both experiences even though different were organically connected by the preceding moment. This is the process of creating the future and it indicates to me the 'oneness' of experience, reality and time.
The video is below the text of the poem.
Moment by Moment
Thunder comes in a long continuous rumble like the sound of an approaching freight train but richer with a more melodious timbre,
lightning stabs at trees on the hilltop. Rain and wind appear fierce, suddenly suddenly ripping panels from the deck and dropping them on the steps.
The next moment the wind is gone, rain falls quietly having no memory of the moment before.
Later today there was this:
And sunshine. What do these moments say?
Poem and visual elements Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche
A herd of a hundred or more elk came to graze in the pasture next to trailer park. Some left the confines of the pasture and ambled out onto the adjoining lawns. There are said to be three herds of elk in the area. Two of the bulls had racks of at least ten points and maybe twelve. There were several bulls with smaller racks.
It is impressive to see these elegant statuesque creatures. They go where they want to go. I was more impressed with their quiet animal spirit.
They noticed me and were aware of my movements with the camera so they kept an eye on me. I came within twenty to twenty-five feet of them with nothing between us but grass. They seem to be quite well adjusted to the infringement of noisy trouble makers like me and my kind into their primeval world.
I wasn't the only one to come and gaze at them. When the word was out that the herd had come to the pasture, occupants released themselves from their houses, computers and televisions and came to stand on the grass and watch with awestruck fascination.
Why can an event like this wrench us from our domestic routines to gaze in wonder at wild things that we have long parted company with? My personal feeling is that it is like getting a long distance phone call from the home we ran away from and for which there is an unrecognized need to return to.
I hope you enjoy the visuals and the poem.
Photographs, video and poem Copyright 2009 by David H.Roche
I went to sunset beach at sunset. I found the sun just touching the rim of the ocean when I got there (an illusion, beautiful none the less)
I took the video and the photographs and when I came home and looked at them I wondered. Strangely what came to my mind were verses from the creation myth in Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
It made me think; is life a circle or a line that terminates? So I let one track run over into the next to indicate the succession of days. Another thought came to me as well. Day and night light, and darkness are the same thing. They've been separated. Before the separation they were one.
Here's the video:
The Grateful Dead have always encouraged the taping and distribution of their concerts. So I don't think they'll mind me using this track.
Photos and videos mine, the music is by the Grateful Dead 'jammin' at the edge of magic'. the song is Dark Star (crashing).
What follows is a series of photographs taken of a plastic chair. The images in the video are of the same chair, but have been altered by photo imaging software. The still photographs are the product of time exposure. The purpose is not only to show that the ordinary things of life often have immense beauty if we look at them the right way. But more importantly they are not always what they seem to be. The later is something not often understood.
(click on the photographs for greater detail)
Photographs and everything else Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche
Without warning wild winds and black scud replaced serene blue sultry skies violently thrashing the maple by the porch.
Icy rain stung, pelting the dry earth before passing as quickly as it appeared leaving a bouquet of pungent, funky, earthy scents rising from the grassless dust
worn bare by Boo in summer vigils waiting for rabbits to venture from the hedgerow.
Photographs and text Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche
One of the nice things about the beaches on the North Coast of Oregon is that it's difficult to find them crowded. Oh there's times when you'll find more people than you want to be with. But most times there's no trouble finding yourself by yourself and alone with your thoughts.
But you might want to bring someone.
I found this creature heading west. I assumed it is a caterpillar and have no idea what it thinks its doing.
I suppose it could be some sort of creature I have never seen before but it looks like a caterpillar to me. Anyhow I followed it for a long time and it kept right on headed toward the ocean.
It eventually turned back, or else I got tired of watching it. The tide was going out faster than it was moving and if its goal was the ocean I could see I didn't have the time to wait. I left it there with the sea gulls.
I was on the way across the street to the duck pond when I saw this fantastically beautiful creature right in front of the garden gate. The morning sun was shining on him as he was going about his business being a slug. Click the highlighted 'slug' for an Oregon Public Broadcasting video interview with the 'Slug Lady'.
Here he and she is. He and she is the right designation because slugs are hermaphrodites. And he and she is going about his and her business doing slug stuff.
From a parochial human point of view that business involves destroying 'my garden'. Which is a very nearsighted view. This nearsightedness is an all to common human tendency. That concept is explored in the highlighted links above.
The conventional approach that exemplifies the traditional western philosophy of regarding oneself and ones environment is basically that of domination and subduing. Slash, burn, conquer and if deemed necessary destroy.
Enjoy our slug today. The ducks across the street will find him tasty. Which is the way it should be. The coyotes in the hills often come and grab a duck at night. Which is the way it should be. Someday I'll be unable to walk out my gate; which is the way it should be.
You woke me. All night the bench was hard and I had to move to the scrub pines three times when headlights shined down the prom. The sun is warm now and I don’t have to move no matter who comes.
It’s a beautiful day though I did wish I could have the remainder of the coffee you threw in the trashcan next to me while you were speaking into your phone to someone in Portland about being on vacation and how ‘they’ could go fuck themselves.
I didn’t feel bad for you even after a pause when you said: “I’ll be there this afternoon god damn it.” It has nothing to do with the coffee, I can get their cans.
