Reflections in melting snow...

I am the person I am becoming, because I am a process of becoming, I am a state of flux, I am always sufficient in the moment and also always growing.

I am an animal intent on survival. I don't need much: a sick deer or two will do.

Cougar's journal: watching the snow melt, brings mixed results. Warmer rocks to sun on, faster deer to chase. So, the days lengthen. My limbs rest today, after a long lope yesterday across the mountainside. Today I shrink, licking fur pensively. There is an eye in the sky, I sense, looking over all. There is meat in my belly. All is well, for now. I contemplate the gray-white sky, the temperature hovering around freezing. What is life, but a state of contemplation like this, a sitting with my digestive and mental processes, a participation in the world around, maybe passive as now, maybe active in a while to stretch my muscles for the day. Sniff a little, paw a bit, make the long track home.

If there is no joy, no excitement in this day, there is still an underlying wonder. An awe at the immensity I am part of. And after all, this one I who I seem to be, is not really meaningful compared to the larger picture, the rocks I lay on, the trees around me stretching around the world, the oceans and stars...and we all have our own meanings good enough. I lick my fur, blinking at the white sky. Deer tracks everywhere...there is no cause for concern.

Life is full, if only of this I see and think about. Isn't that enough? A nagging tells me there is more I need to feel, more I ought to be. I lick my fur again. That feels good, is natural.

I am the person I want to become.

Yet, I am in the process of becoming.

The thing is--the really important thing--is to keep moving. The Cougar must be mobile.

I cannot stay any longer in my cave. The time has come to move out into the world.

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It all accretes and the coral that's built up in the end is more than rock, it's alive.

Poetry shows how synchronicity works in the world. Poetry is synchronicity in action, modeling its presence in our life, the way that life is an art, if properly appreciated as such. The function of art is to educate us in our awareness and appreciation of life's patterning, its unity, the interconnectedness and hidden and sometimes revealed mysteries of its parts. We are joined in the whole. There is, in the editorial process, an act akin to the manifestation of reality and events later perceived as meaningful. Selection of those things that belong. Discarding of the rest. It's all there, but elements coalesce not in random distribution: rather in centers of gravity: stars, organisms, constellations of symbol and meaning. Not random uniformity, but sensible or otherwise interesting or appealing--resonating--aggregations of elements, from whatever diverse origin: snatches form the radio news, traffic incidents, appearances of wildlife. Conversations, ideas coming into the head, dreams. Pages opened at random in books appearing suddenly from the shelf or on the stray table.

Disappearances and reappearances.

This is part of the grouping I call Synchronicity, in my organization of Journal material. Other combinations are possible. It will be difficult to settle on just one.

I have other work to do, as well. There is always more to find out, more raw experience to digest in the mill, to process and cull to find the kernels. What I prefer to bake is bread using only the grain part, ground and blended to make a rising fragrant loaf.

Clouds racing past the pastel glowing mountain...no one minding the store. No one monitoring the constant accretion of duty, of challenge, of flow of the ineffable pastels glowing from the mountain rich in blue and pink, and if there is no counting no enumeration of the color scale, how is anyone to know which it is: especially when rendered in black and white? To say robin's egg blue or flamingo pink? Too plastic in connotation. So we pour faith into digital code: to communicate in the most efficient way possible, the maximum information in the minimum packet size. Until we reach full unity. This is an effort to transcend boundaries of self, to reach Self. To realize, even if the understanding is poor, a unified state of oneness each with all.

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© Nowick Gray

6 February 1998