April 26, 2022
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo…I came from the wilderness.
~ Carl Sandburg, Wilderness
I’ve come to associate peace with the absence of things that bother me.
I’m a bit dissatisfied with this definition. Something tells me it isn’t the way the natural world works. My cats, those domesticated pets that have retained their ancestral wilderness knowledge, appear to be peaceful most of the time. They may be in midst of activity, but generally, they’re at ease with themselves and their surroundings.
I’m pretty sure animals in the wild, and trees and insects and the natural world in general, don’t have a list of criteria for being at peace. There’s no requirement that things must be just so in order to experience balance, equanimity…peace.
Right this moment, there’s nothing wrong with anything in my immediate surroundings, in my body, mind, or emotions. Therefore, I can allow peace. And yet, it feels cheapened because I’ve required peace to jump through certain hoops before I’ll acknowledge it.
Perhaps I’m expecting too much to hold myself to the same standards as occur in the wisdom of the wild. The animals and elemental beings of Gaia are not burdened with this fretful mind.
Somewhere a yogi is whispering, well, you silly thing, if you would just meditate, you would get it.
I wonder if for some of us, refraining from the peacefulness of meditation is its own practice. While the world, and we, are still in this process of upheaval, perhaps a restless mind is required. At least for some of us, at least some of the time.
I like that idea much better than thinking I’m just too undisciplined or lazy to stick with a meditation practice.
*****
I think in my own way, I have meditative moments throughout a typical day. They often occur in midst of activity, like the periodic culling of possessions I’m prone to. I spent a great deal of time the other day thoroughly reorganizing and cleaning one room, and that time felt both purposeful and tranquil, as if my brain were on hold and the Spirit part of me observed but did not intrude.
I opened the window and glanced at the piles of stuff cluttering the surfaces, waiting to be processed into order. Unbidden, the thought slipped through, a phantasm of truth: Thank goodness this is all here! I still have something to do.
Good grief. Did I just think that? I’m afraid to get rid of stuff because then I’d have nothing to do?
I hate to extrapolate that to other areas of my life and self, but there it is. Am I still hanging on to various pains and turmoils, physical or emotional, because the perceived need to clear them gives me purpose?
*****
After a lengthy shopping expedition to Trader Joe’s, I realized there’s another “thing-that’s-not” involved in my peacefulness: not wearing the smothering mask and being subtly on alert the entire time I’m compelled to wear it. It hadn’t occurred to me that the enforced mask-wearing engendered an almost primal wariness in me that has only now begun to fade.
That mandate was rescinded in California several months ago (other than in medical settings). I’ve been waiting for them to reinstate it, based on whatever spurious reasoning the authorities land on when they play spin the wheel of “science” and “public health.” They might try again in the fall, but for now, I believe public opinion would be massively against it.
For the first time in over two years, I felt truly okay, accepting, and noninvolved with anyone who appeared to have a different perspective on the mask issue. There’s zero reason for anyone to wear a mask outside, yet they still do. I’m finally at the place where I notice the outdoor maskers, but feel no charge about it.
There was one mask-wearing customer outside the store who pulled disinfectant wipes from the dispenser to clean the handle of her cart. “Want some?” she asked.
“No, thanks, I actually don’t think there’s germs to worry about,” I replied with a smile.
“Well, that’s sane,” she remarked, and I wondered if she realized how she labeled herself by scrubbing down her cart handle.
*****
While we’re in human form, how can we be anything but somewhat wild, and somewhat domestic?
Sometimes I see, in the far-off blue of old men’s eyes, an arctic wolf dormant, waiting to be called. In my own heart perhaps dwells a panther, midnight-colored, sleek, silent, prowling.
It’s said we are multidimensional beings, truncated by our own lack of awareness or belief, and fettered by anvils of gravity and other third-dimensional properties. I, for one, cleave to the notion that I could be that panther, or dragon or wolf, in those dimensions I’m unable to touch with human, earthbound fingers, no matter how plaintively I stretch my hand high.
Perhaps in dreams. Perhaps in dreams. I will ask to dream of panthers and wolves, dragons and shapeshifting. A silvery dragon gleaming with its own inner light, flinging itself into the sky with wild joy.
