“An
Autumn Story”
(This
is not fiction: that is to say, not a construction of conscious
thought. It happened this morning just the way I've described it)
Lot's
of activity and change this week. Spent some time with one doctor
discussing my improving knee and the fact that I can start getting
more exercise to build it back up. While I also spent time with other
doctors assessing my brain injury and how I should proceed with plans
to build a life around my “new normal”.
Today
turned out to be one of those spectacular sunny early fall days that
exist as a picture in the hearts and minds of anyone who has spent
much time in New England, the lust for which is renewed every autumn.
All in all it seemed like a good day to begin a daily walking habit.
I
walked in the warm sun, with a few early red and yellow leaves
drifting in the soft September breeze. I walked by a pear tree at the
end of the road, where the plump yellow orbs wafted a sweet
lusciousness and invited a bite. And past an ancient just-mowed field
where as a boy I rode my pony and where certainly generations before
had done the same. The smell of a just-mowed field is one of those
touch stones of youth stored away somewhere in my memory. As I
walked, my mind wondered over the choices I've made, and still must
make, and my imaginings ventured toward the unknown future with some
trepidation.
Passing
the pond where multitudes have skated and picnicked, and talked, and
loved and cried, I decided to rest my sore knee beside the leaf
dappled water. I sat on a stone bench erected by broken parents in
the name of Brian, their child who left this plane much to soon and
who played hockey on this pond so often and so many years before.
While
I sat in the partial shade of a large oak I contemplated people's
unease of getting older and of life's ultimate eventuality.
I
paused and let my mind drift.
~
I
felt the warm summer wind with the sun high in the sky as I
languished there hanging from a limb. Plump and green and far from
danger. An acorn. Life was good, and simple. The days were long and
warm and mostly calm. Yes there was the occasional terrible wind and
crashing rain which would claim some but not most of our community of
nuts living in a rustling world of lush greenness.
One
day I noticed that the wind blew cooler and our stems grew stiff and
brittle. And first in ones and twos and eventually in great masses,
our community was coming to an end. At first we ignored and denied
what was happening, but after a time we each waited in fear while we
prayed that our time would not be too soon, or cause us much pain. We
looked upon those of us now resting motionless on the ground so far
below, turning old and brown and decaying. What a pitiful sight. What
awful thing had we done to deserve such an abject fate as this?
One
lonesome cold day as the wind whipped and rain slashed as I wished
the terror would stop but also hoping it would continue for at least
one more day, there was silence. Peace. I was weightless and the
thrashing noise turned to a soft woosh. It was wonderful. What magic
had occurred? Had I been saved somehow? Was it because I was somehow
special? Had I sufficiently pleased the bright warm god in the sky?
After
a time was a bump, and another, and then rolling, and once again
silent stillness.
Looking
around I saw all the others, laying beside me in great masses. Still,
but quite alive and looking back at me.
Given
time to get used to things it was comfortable on the ground
surrounded again by the others. Motionless, but in a way more
content, for now there was no terror about to pounce except for the
occasional bushy tailed beast who would steal away with some unlucky
soul.
Like
all the others, my shell slowly turned brown and there was a musty
smoky perfume everywhere. It smelled pleasant. Expectant.
After
a time I saw a crack appear in my neighbor's shell! He must have
expired in the night and as he did his body gave way to its fate.
Looking around I could see many others whose departed bodies had
failed in the same dreadful way and who had left odd stems protruding
from those cracks. Their guts exposed in a vulgar last display of
fruitless effort to survive.
It
was sad to finally realize that although just days before we had all
thought we had been saved, it was only a pause in the relentless
return to the dark infinity from which we were born just those few
months prior. In the end we would be recycled through the ground, and
although a new acorn would emerge after the long winter and spring,
what would become of us?
Where would all those stories of remembered warm days and cool nights
and our aspirations and dreams finally end up? Apparently they would
devolve
to nothing as surely as our dark, now-rotting husks. Lost to
eternity: in the end it seems, it would all be a complete waste.
~
Fear
of the unknown. Fear of the future. Fear of the loss of existence;
is a cold dark thing. It is a dye that stains deep into a soul. It
changes how life is perceived and lived and loved.
As
I sat there and imagined these things a single red leaf drifted and
settled in my lap. I sat by the water and felt the warm sun on my
face, and I looked up into the enormous tree from whence it fell. And
I smiled because I
could see
what the acorn couldn't, or wouldn't. It was moving through a longer
process than it knew. Those guts it would be spilling in its final
act of rage against death were to become its first of millions of
roots that would support a colossus that would live hundreds of
years. That huge oak would remember all of these experiences, and
over its lifespan, spawn countless like it. Each to ignorantly fumble
along through its existence. Each never knowing its own magnificence
but each unconsciously plotting a unique path to reach it.
I
also smiled because I realized that perhaps unlike the acorn, I have
been given glimpses of my own real self. Not enough to fully see and
experience my eventual form but perhaps enough to see, to
know, that a
much deeper existence is real and it awaits. Unfortunately for the
acorn it must travel successfully through each of the stages of
growth to reach the point of being a great oak tree. My glimpses have
shown me that I need not worry about such things. My peeks under the
veil have shown that eventual transcendence, although having an
unknown time and method, is inevitable. Is unavoidable.
So
enough time having passed, and having other tasks ahead today, I left
the side of the pond to walk home. As I left the gravel driveway and
exited to my right, I began to walk, watching the 3 inch white line
stretch ahead of me marking the side of the road. After several steps
one (and only one) dark spot appeared on the line. As I walked past I
noticed it was an acorn. A single perfect acorn with no others to be
seen ahead or behind. I leaned down and picked it up. It was perfect
and greenish but turning to brown.
When
I rolled it over I found a crack and inside the crack, a little pale
yellow shoot just inside.
That
acorn sits as a reminder on my desk, perhaps considering its
existence, as I sit and consider mine.
Sept
28, 2012
JKM
III
------------------------
Epilogue
I
have been spending a lot of time trying to improve my understanding
of the nature of life, of existence, of consciousness, of reality. A
big task to be sure, and perhaps a wandering road with no end, but it
seems to me a reasonable cause none the less.
Circling
around this topic are the existential questions: where did we come
from, and upon our demise where do we “go”? In a passage from
“Across The Unknown” written in the 1930's a living person was
posing questions to an entity about our inability to see beyond the
veil of death. This inability, to have direct experience of that
which lies “beyond”, is why many rely on faith as a bedrock
principal. Unfortunately, to me, and many others, “faith” is
intellectually bankrupt, and anyhow far to dull an instrument to be
used for such a delicate and important purpose as this: as it doesn't
illuminate, but rather it sooths. The entity, which was wholly in
agreement, posed something like the following:
you
are like an acorn, unable to see the entirety of your situation. If
only the acorn could see that what it perceives as “the end” is
really just a normal transition to the next part of its existence as
an oak tree.
As
I thought of it, that crack in the acorn's shell is no different then
the teeth falling out of a 5 year-old, or the hair from a 50 year
old, or the caterpillar's move into its silken tomb. These are
transitions that might be viewed as the end, and so they are in a
way, but they are also incremental beginnings, and more importantly
in a human these things also contain a continuity of conscious
existence.
Even
for those who “believe” in hereafter, the conundrum of death is
mostly that they can't see the far side of the doorway through which
others have passed. However, according to many accounts, we do
have the ability to directly experience that door from the other side
while living our lives. By directly experiencing it, this would allow
a journeyer to step around “belief” altogether for the surety of
a “knowing”. I have so far discovered that for me, belief is
hollow. It is a knowing which I seek, and perhaps to which the road
leads.
