The Link #25 - Between the City and the Forest

I have memories of the city. My city experience still runs in my veins but I’ve been here in the woods so long that I am able to isolate it as pure memory and view it with some detachment, like you do a movie, with a kind of fascination. Frankly, the city still intrigues me in a perverse sort of way. I find myself puzzling over it often. Some of my memories are so clear, so full of a certain buzz: the buzz of downtown, the buzz of crowds of people, and specially, the buzz of having so many friends. I remember feeling as if I was at the center of the universe, at the point where the most wonderful and important things were going on. I remember the gay celebrations, the carnivals, the colour and dazzle of human beings. I remember the music. Oh! The music! I remember the movies, the theatres, and the endless bright lights. I remember the excitement of ideas, the heated discussions in street-side cafés, the nightlife at 2:00 a.m. I loved the fact that the city never slept. I remember I was always busy, always part of a glittering web of humanity.

I never went back there. Funny, it was my whole world. Now I have my memories. Often, I think about other aspects of the city. Like: how does the city come into being and how does it sustain itself? How can so many creatures live together without anyone really caring? Without anyone really relating to another? How do five million people function as a single biological community without any kind of natural coherence, any deeply supportive social structure? How do people manage to live in a perpetual state of havoc, at the edge of imminent collapse? In the city, ruination is not always obvious: it is very well hidden. I now view the kind of overcrowding that happens in a city as bizarre. I also find it highly instructive. The fact that it is as lethal as it is and still so desirable. So many bodies all together in one space must lead to severe stresses. They must go berserk. Then they create elaborate structures to manage this madness, to control and contain all these eruptive, disruptive forces. Have you not felt the malevolence of a city when you visit? It is so artificial, it can only survive with some kind of violent ordering. There’s a strange kind of struggle for existence there brought about by this extreme estrangement, this removal from anything simple, natural, life-loving. In fact the city to me now represents a terrible and desperate struggle for existence. You die as you live. You cannot even breathe, your eyes smart as you enter, and your senses shut down and oh! the unspeakable filth! My stomach turns when I think of those sewers and the obscene amounts of waste! The shops, the malls, the advertisements mesmerize you and, before you know it, you are enslaved: to soulless things, to machines, to despots, to addictions and fears. So much choice, so much suffering, so much injustice. Hurts that never heal, wounds that grow deeper and wider. Then you have laws. How many laws have healed these pains? How many have made life happier, kinder, and easier? And what about the hands that wield the law? Do they not create another order of malevolence? And all that vulgar display of money ... hmm ... I won’t go into that, I have a lot to say! So this is what I also think about the city nowadays.

Of course, after all these years here, my metaphor for a good life comes from the forest. This is where I learn other lessons, other possibilities. You see, the forest is also a city of sorts, also a bustling center of action, also dazzling and colourful. But it functions on entirely different principles. Let me explain ...

The forest is just there. And you are just there, a mere strand in it, intertwined with a zillion others. The forest neither threatens nor promises. No one wishes to hurt you, so you can relax. Your defenses are activated briefly and appropriately, when necessary. Snakes are good teachers, as are elephants and leeches. Most of the time the forest has a mild soothing effect on your system and it does things usually beyond your sway: the work of leaves, the swell of a cloud, things growing old and dying. These are the realities of this domain and when you live here you face them regardless of how you feel about them. And when you live here day after day, year after year, you find that you cannot fend off such realities with words, machetes and contrivances. They will come at you in their own wordless way and then, in a moment between here and there, when you pause between chores to catch a swoop of the black eagle over your sky, then you will understand what is meant by the eternal cycle of birth, growth and death. Understanding this you will be filled with calm. Resting in this calm you may come upon joy.

There is a sort of etiquette amongst all these creatures, one that you learn when you’ve been around them awhile. The first is the principle of awareness, which is really quite simple. Everything is aware, and everything functions as if every other thing is aware. Nobody is stupid in these parts, not even the tiniest slug. There is an acceptance that all things are equal, even if all things are not the same. There is never an indulgence in hate – in fact there is never ever any hate. You may kill, but you do not hate and you will not wantonly destroy. Your life is lived without asking another for anything, and yet you live, give, give. There are no expectations in the woods, no personal demands. You may die any moment anyway. You learn to be direct. Beating around the bush might cost you your life. You find that Truth is not a virtue, it simply is: swift, simple, straight. You learn alertness, whereas before you had an armor of words, fears and attitudes. You become grateful: insouciance becomes you no more. You start to nod at grass stalks on the hill, at snails gliding upon a rock. You start to feel for things, for others, for yourself, without being mawkish.

So you start to align yourself with awareness, not with this project or that, this possession or that, this person or that, this belief or that. Life is not about projects, missions or plans. It is about relationships, awareness and multitudinous beings inhabiting countless worlds. The sure way to folly is to cement your creativity by becoming particular too quickly, by forging specific and narrow alliances too rigidly. The funny thing about awareness is that it brings the necessary partnerships anyway. You might find yourself in partnership with trees for instance, or with frogs and beetles. You may count upon plants as your best allies. You may tread dirt in full knowledge of its capacity. You may take counsel with air, or water or stone, and you may grow a garden, nay a forest, or better still a wilderness all together.

So you see, I now see things a little differently. I guess it is just luck, or destiny that helps with all this. So many strange things have happened along the way. Who would think a street kid would end up in the woods?! This could make one optimistic, don’t you think? I mean, if I could manage to be happy in the forest, anyone could!