When no one is speaking except the wind and the water, you
begin to hear with the elements of your being.
Stars exploding. Then hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and the
other elements – coming back together to form the world. And you and me.
But long before conscious awareness. Before male and female.
Before words. The wind and the water were speaking. Have been speaking. Perhaps
they began by singing. A deep breath becoming music. A song? Could what I am
hearing be a song? How could I – so very, very young – how could I possibly
know?
And yet when there are no sounds but the wind and the water,
I begin to listen.
How could I hear the song? A song? The sounds are very, very
old. And living.
… hhhaaaeeeiiiooouussshhh …
Singing.
Softly against my cheek.
Singing.
Whispering.
Singing.
Song without self-awareness …
And my mind chatters on. What am I – this stutter of me? What
am I missing? I barely have ears.
But when no other voices but the wind and the water are
speaking, I begin to hear with the elements of my being.
I begin again.
What if what I am hearing is this? But what am I hearing?
Wait. What if? But when the only sounds are the wind and the water trying to
make up their minds, there really is no need for me to interrupt. It is enough for
me to make eye contact with a drifting cloud. Or nearby, the ripples on the
sky-reflecting lake at my feet. The sun winks at me as if it knows something
about what the wind and the water are saying. I should listen. I should listen.
But I feel as if I should say something. I feel … I want to join the
conversation. But what human word would belong?
I make a few notes for myself. Perhaps I could send a card:
to whom it may concern. Later. Much later. I should listen. Begin to listen. Maybe
one day I could find utterance worthy of their conversation, but I think that I
am not old enough yet for what the wind and the water are saying. Their
thoughts are too subtle and enduring for words. And maybe they are singing.
I don’t understand.
I listen. I begin to listen. I am drifting off. Naptime for
me. Let the old ones continue their conversation. The wind and the water…
Maybe it is a song. One very long song. Could it be a song?
How would I know? My mind keeps trying to say something, but
only manages a few fragmentary words. But when no one else is making a sound
but the wind and the water, I begin to hear something with the elements of my
being.
**
And this recording barely captures the sounds I heard. And now that moment - many moments - are merely memory. But perhaps I will listen to the wind and the water again. Who knows?
A kind of love letter. This one, about little loves. And somehow I go long and sentimental.
Spoken version: About 12 minutes, with photos of wildflowers.
Written text:
Wildflowers
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Perhaps a simple salutation would suffice for a beginning. ‘My
dear’ and then would follow a long ellipses.
But I thought of you. And only you, however short-lived was the
glimpse of your eyes looking into my soul. I was wandering in an alpine meadow
in the high Colorado Rockies. Old enough to think clearly about the difference
between wildflowers and women. But it seems that my emotions had yet to catch
up with the rest of me.
There was such a profusion of wildflowers among the grasses.
Over the years, I had hiked at these elevations before. Maybe, this year had
been a good year for rain. Maybe it was simply the season. It was late July.
But my mind slipped from seeing the field to seeing
wildflowers one by one. I knew only a few by name. And then a kind of flower I
had never seen before caught my gaze. And then another. And another.
And then it was you that I missed. I suppose it sounds
silly. I was only to be gone for a week. And in truth, I often didn’t see you
for longer than that when I was at home. And then it was not much more than a
smile and a word or two – some change from a few bills in my hand – and then
often I would simply stare out across the street until only a few ice cubes
remained in the bottom of my egg creme.
Of course, it wasn’t that. And it was not just you. But it
was only you, for a moment. You have multiplied my feelings of care – added to
my heart’s list, truly, one at a time. And so, when I walked alone in a meadow
filled with wildflowers, I thought of you. And in the mix up of names and
faces, I thought to match the flower’s faces with the names of women who had
brushed up against some soft spot in my heart. I couldn’t do it. It’s not that
it was so silly a notion to match the species of wildflowers with the faces and
lives of human beings. I simply couldn’t keep all of it in my mind at once.
I could have been anywhere. But I wasn’t. The sky might have
been blue, but it was gray that morning. I walked on a slope, a road gouged out
above where I stepped. There was some dew. The ankles of my pants were getting
wet. And then the wildflowers reminded me of some baristas from more than 500
miles ago. Young women making drinks and sandwiches, waiting for the rest of
their lives to begin. And you.
I thought for a moment of my mother’s face. Her’s was a
great love. And now her’s and my father’s face will never be before me again. That
should have been the sort of thing that was stirring my feelings. Or the face
of my other great love, only just out of my sight for the time being. But now –
and I am slipping again back in time – now that I am walking among wildflowers,
why should I want to see your face? Why does such a little barely apparent longing
grow to fill my heart?
There were some wildflowers called asters, I think. Round
circles of lavender rays. Already loosely bunched for picking, but they
wouldn’t be separated from the earth by my hand from the cool and fiery field
of other flowers. And Indian Paintbrush. An orange so brlliant it seems to become
red. And then, already I was running out of names and one after another there
were more wildflowers. I had to look away or lose my mind. Maybe my heart. I
confess, I don’t even know what those words mean.
This is not heartache. It is heart over-flowing. If it
sounds like nonsense on this page, the feeling still seems right – if at the
same time, somewhat lacking in propriety.
And then time passes. A day or two later, I am back on the
road again. Heading for home.
And now I shall miss the wildflowers I could not name. And another
very early morning, the bristlecone pines, stark black, reaching up against a
starry sky. I shall only be able to recall that I had seen Orion’s belt, three
stars rising straight up in the east over the hard black ridge across the
valley. And another time, the pyrite glimmering in the rocks in bright day.
The very same sun and stars will shine on me when I am back
home, of course. But not quite the way I saw them on that singular morning. And
surely, context matters. And, you see, each star also seemed to want a name as
well and I couldn’t manage it. There is
a constellation or two that makes me think of people that I love. And there is one
that makes me think of you.
And so, perhaps, I will also miss that early morning
leftover patch of snow on Mt. Bross, reflecting the gradually lightening sky
into my eyes. Or perhaps the snow reflected the half-illuminated moon. The very
same moon – a singular moon - reflected in a pool of clear water, rippling away
when I reached for it.
I was only passing through the Colorado Rockies. And yet,
for a time, heading toward home, I would still miss the sound of water
murmuring through beaver ponds.
But as the prophet saith, the grass withers and the flowers
of the field fade.
And one day back home one of the baristas I hardly know and yet
have known enough to care about will make an egg crème for me. And I will sit
at the stainless steel counter daydreaming of wildflowers far away.
I think that maybe love is only like this, after all. I
practice caring by taking baby steps. And now, I suppose, it may have come to
what Emily Dickinson wrote ages ago, the heart wants what the heart wants, or
else it does not care.
If so, I think that it has indeed come to only this or that
and the other thing. I will miss the boulder in the middle of a snow-melt
stream, interrupting, briefly, gravity’s law. And I can hope that my
high-altitude sunburn will hide the flush in my cheeks when I see your eyes
that I had missed seeing a little when I wandered alone among the wildflowers.
On another day, I shall push through the coffee shop door.
Pay me no mind if I tell you that your eyes remind me of asters. They are not
even the same color. Nor are they yellow-centered. Rather your pupils are
closer to the color of the bright night blackness, luminescent – only deeper,
somehow. That could hardly be possible. But I have yet to measure forever.
I do not wish to flirt. I only care about you and all of the
other women who have a claim on my heart because I do not know how not to care
- sometimes. Often, only for one at a time. I do care. I’m not sure that better
understanding would do me much good. Perhaps, I am but a fool. But I do think
that the word ‘pathetic’ might perhaps be reserved for those who cannot care
for pyrite, let’s say. Or if I felt no twinge over wildflowers, death may just
as well come sooner as later. Of course, I could not take all of those alpine wildflowers
with me – or you. I did press a few of them in a book. And I most certainly have
some very dear loves so close to my heart that I will try to hold onto them.
But there are all of these little loves scattered about. And you. All I know is that my heart only
wants to see you once more again.
I am still only taking baby steps although I am old enough
that some people think I should know better. But when I manage to care about
the way your eyes change as you look over your shoulder hearing the sound of
the front door bell as I push my way through, it is but a single aster.
Something to live for.
I will not weep over spilled milk. That would in fact be
pathetic. But that faint band of uncountable stars over head was not the same
thing. And among the wildflowers, I really only missed you just enough to pause
for a moment.
And the chocolate syrup in the bottom of a glass is only
black.
Maybe I shall show you a photo of some of my lost loves one
day. The Indian Paintbrush, thriving among grey boulders. You surely must see
that wildflower one day for yourself. If it were merely orange-red, how could I
possibly care about that?
One night, early morning, I walked alone in my moon shadow.
And one morning, night gone, there was a clear, blue sky. And it was not all of
you, even most of you, who walked along on that pathless path with me. Yet some
part of you must have been in the wind, or maybe it was in the water. I think
that I only missed that infinite part of you that my heart truly wished to see
in that moment. It was you that I
missed. Great or small is not the question here.
So if you will look carefully, the angle from the sun
shining just right will make the pyrite in the rocks glimmer like silver or
pale gold. It will help if you’re not easily fooled by what might be or not be.
Attend. And if wildflowers will remind you of small loves or large ones, you’re
apt to see beauty wherever you look. Enough to waken your heart, my dear …
Hold on there, human. That language is archaic. Try this
instead.
Let’s say that I find myself alone, the sky is reflecting in
the river, and then my thoughts overwhelm me, Is this language necessarily inappropriate:
“I lift up mine eyes to the
Universe from whence I sprang, my conscious awareness sings, I exult in my
being.” And then in the next breath, I might breathe these words: “I am humbled
to stand here in the presence of an Existence – a Great Mystery - that I do not
understand.”
Is it impossible that my thoughts, sparking across synaptic
clefts, do not extend outward or inward beyond time and space? Hang the double
negative. What does it mean that I express thoughts and feelings at all? Why do
I experience wonder?
It is beyond my experience or my human reasoning that there might
be more to life than the matter and energy of our natural experience. Science
says that those elements are One. And science also says that if we go back to
the beginning of time, one explanation of Everything is that there was a
Singularity in which All of existence was infinitely compressed and then somehow
Space and Time came into being, exploding with almost unimaginable force into
everything that we know. And within everything that we know, there still remains
so very much than we cannot know. At least, so much that we do not now know. Perhaps
we can possibly know more than we do know and I think that we should embrace that
challenge. But we do not even know if it is possible to know everything - even
about time and space. And beyond our natural universe, does some Mystery await?
So I have capitalized some letters to make my point. So
what? Whether or not we use language that is archaic … No, when we use language at all, we are only really referring to reality. But I believe that
there is clearly a vast reality beyond my own being and my small awareness. Just
that muddy wreck of a river - my own momentary experience of the Kaw - is
largely beyond me. That, to me, is obvious. What words should I use to speak of
some other kinds of experience - realities of which I do not know?
I would like not to speak nonsense. That is, I intend to
respect human reasoning and to try not to obviously contradict myself. And I
should try not to say that I know things when I only speculate or imagine.
‘God’ has become a troublesome word. It seems archaic to
refer to the old conception of a Supreme Being – commonly called God - in the
face of modern scientific thinking. But ultimate questions of human existence
and awareness remain. What human beings can know about space and time has grown
in amazing ways. But the unknown remains. And unknown unknowns.
There is one conviction that what we can (in theory) know is
all that there is. Some people believe something like that in the overwhelming face of the
evidence of how much we do not know or understand. An archaic word such as ‘hubris’
might be used to sometimes describe the character of such people. They are commonly
called atheists.
And the folks still clinging to various versions of ‘God’
language are not running short of their own forms of hubris. From my
perspective - and that has changed radically over time - much ‘God talk’ is
nonsensical. Hubris would be at least more understandable.
Again, I try not myself to speak nonsense when I am trying
to make sense. Mostly, I try to speak out of my experience, listening to others
as they carefully pass along what they have discovered through processes and
thoughts that seem reasonable to me. But I let my imagination run free.
I do not suggest that you try to walk on water unless the
temperature has dropped well below freezing for several days. But in the summer, when it is hot, I might just try it. Who knows? I can only get wet. I am not
trying to start an Inquisition.
I try to know and be myself, to know and be with other human
beings, and to know and experience the world around me. But almost everything
in my own experience - if I am paying attention - leads me to Mystery.
I could have just as well expressed myself simply in words such as,
‘I don’t know,’ instead of ‘Mystery,’ but I have a sense of the sacred (that I
cannot put satisfactorily into words even for myself) and so I tend to use
language that reflects that sense of Mystery.. You should use whatever words
you want. And we might disagree over what is nonsense.
So walk to the river with me if you want to. We don’t have
to say anything. The sky will be reflected in the river. I think that the sky
and the river are as real as we know. But sometimes I wonder what it all means
and why I feel the awe that I feel.
Perhaps my words are archaic, but I sometimes worship the
Mystery. I embrace the Unknown. I am only human.
