• About
  • My Writing

Deborah J. Brasket

~ Living on the Edge of the Wild

Deborah J. Brasket

Tag Archives: Pago Pago

“A Scattering of Rocks” — Zen in the Garden of Eden

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by deborahbrasket in Human Consciousness, Life At Sea, My Writing, Nature, Poetry, Spirituality, The Writing Process, Writing

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

beauty, human consciousness, Nature, Pago Pago, poetry, writing, Zen

Nuka Hiva MarquesasSometimes there’s no other way to capture a moment–a way of seeing or being in the world–than through poetry.

So while I prefer writing prose (I know I’m no poet), I find myself returning again and again to certain poems I have written, as if they were traces in the sand leading me back to the very time and place where something singular and significant rose briefly to mind.

I think of these as my Zen moments.  A sudden clear perception of something so extraordinary and subtle, it can only be experienced in faint, fleeting whiffs.

But the scent of it lingers in mind long afterwards, as if waiting to be re-released, like rosemary or thyme planted along a garden path waits to be crushed underfoot.

Big Sur and Mothers Day picnic 082It’s like the story of a student begging his master to explain the meaning of Zen. But the master, cruelly it seems, keeps putting him off until one day as they were walking together through the mountain laurels the master suddenly exclaims, “There!  Do you smell it?” So happy at last was he to help his young student grasp what he was after.

It’s like that. Nothing after all was ever hidden.  It’s just waiting to be crushed underfoot.

The poetry I write attempts to capture some of that, or at least to trace the footsteps leading to the moment where it all came together, where the heel of my foot accidentally, spontaneously, released the scent of something rare and fleeting and not to be forgotten.

I’ve shared a couple of these poems already on these pages, in “Walking Among Flowers,” and “Night Howls.”  Although what I experienced and tried to capture in those poems was something more visceral than a mere whiff, more like the thwack of the master’s cane coming down on my back, although just as fleeting.  The poem I share below, “A Scattering of Rocks,” captures something more like that walk through mountain laurel.

La Gitana in Pago PagoWe were living in Pago Pago, American Samoa, aboard our sailboat La Gitana.

My husband and I were working to supplement our cruising kitty, he as a welder in a local boatyard, while I tutored Korean children who lived in small communities scattered among the foothills.  Every afternoon I would row ashore and walk back through the lush green mountain valleys along dirt roads to the children’s homes.

I loved those walks.  Often I practiced what I called “no-thought,” emptying the mind and just letting sights and sounds and smells wash over me wordlessly.  But more often I was overcome by the spectacular beauty I saw all around me and my relative insignificance, humble in the midst of such awesome power. And then one day it happened.  I smelled it.  A scattering of small rocks along the wayside was the trigger.

          A Scattering of Rocks

Many times I walked this way, a dirt path

parting from the road through yonder valley.

And always, the high green mountain wall

stared down from its dizzying heights,

while the spacious valley opened up,

opulent and serene.

But only once was I struck by a mere trifle,

a scattering of small rocks tossed haphazardly

across the path.

There was no significance in this.  No meaning.

Yet the sight so lightened my footfall, 

I might have been a leaf blown yon,

or a pebble tumbling carelessly away.

So amazing were my antics

even the high mountain wall and verdant valley

broke loose, doubled over in laughter.

Now I cannot pass this way without us sharing,

like old friends, a light skip and chuckle.

I don’t know if this poem will mean anything to anyone other than myself, but I’m hoping those who have had similar experiences will capture a whiff of what I was after.

Photo DBrasket IMG_2741What’s significant to me is that while I was steeped in the deep beauty and sensual richness of that tropical landscape that could, quite literally, take your breath away, it was something as mundane and homely as a scattering of small rocks that was the catalyst to this singular experience.

The awesome beauty that surrounded me melted away into mere laughter–a shared experience, but not the thing itself, not that which gave rise to the laughter.

Not perfection, not imperfection, not perfection and imperfection together, but the sudden acute realization of the perfect imperfections that permeate life and percolate almost imperceptibly to the surface. Spontaneously, like alliteration, like rhythm, like rhyme. Like verses from the nursery which make no sense at all—until they do.

“With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,

we will make music wherever she goes.”

It’s like that, making music wherever we go.  When suddenly, we slip upon it, there we go too–tumbling carelessly away.  And everything breaks loose in laughter.

[The poem has been revised since first posted, moving some of the line breaks as readers below have suggested. Let me know what you think.]

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Print
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

Night Howls

31 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by deborahbrasket in Backyard, Deep Ecology, Human Consciousness, Life At Sea, My Writing, Nature, Night Watches, Poetry, The Writing Process, Universe, Wild Life, Writing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

human consciousness, Nature, Pago Pago, poetry, sailing, Tree of Life, universe, wild

Silver Moonlight, by Steven Richardson

Last month around this time when the moon was full, our nights were filled with howling. Almost every night we could hear the mournful cries of coyotes in the fields behind our house, along with ecstatic barking, yipping, chortling–as if they were celebrating a kill, or worshipping the moon, or engaged in some wild orgy.  Or perhaps they were merely giving voice to the irresistible life force pumping through their blood and brains and hearts, a force of nature too wild and fierce to hold back.  

The sound, terrifying and exhilarating at the same time, echoed long in my mind afterwards, like ripples of water moving away to the edge of consciousness and reverberating back again. Like something heard long ago deep in my bones, from an evolutionary or primal past.

They say we humans carry in our genes the imprint of life-forms going back to when the first cells emerged on earth.  Deep in our blood, our bones, our very atoms, lays some faint memory of our ancient beginnings. Phylogenists call it our “vast evolutionary tree.”

If we go back even further, traces of that time when the morning stars first sang together may still be felt when we look out on the night sky. We are the stuff of stars, after all, so say astrophysicists. 

Carl Jung envisioned our Collective Unconscious as a reservoir lying deep within our psyches containing our evolutionary memories.  While they lay below consciousness, they break through in dreams and myths and fairy tales, in primitive urges, the call of the wild, in our more-than-human yearnings.

Beautiful Rage by Steve Richardson

Beautiful Rage by Steve Richardson

Sometimes we feel this wildness rising within when witnessing powerful displays of nature: thunderstorms booming across the land, waterfalls careening over cliffs, huge waves crashing against rocks, hurricanes lashing at trees, lightening forking across a dark sky,  earthquakes heaving beneath our feet.   It frightens and excites—creating both the desire to escape and to embrace that primordial power.  One wild howl elicits another—the urge to howl back, to voice our own wild yearnings—to sing or dance, or paint or play, or grab words from the air and fling them onto paper.Photo DBrasketI heard that howl and answered back one night on anchor watch in Pago Pago.  A hurricane was blowing a few miles off Samoa and we were set to ride it out if it blew into the bay. 

I stood at the bow of La Gitana, hanging onto the staysail as the deck lurched beneath my feet like a wild stallion while the surging waves rose and fell and the chain from the anchor rooted deep in the mud below grew slack or tight.

Storm Clouds and Moonlight by Steve Richardson

Overhead a torrent of clouds crashed against a full moon, sometimes swallowing it whole, then washing away streaming moonlight. All around me the night raged while the anchor held tight, and I held tight, the terror and exhilaration pumping through my blood and brain.  The wild urge to let go and be carried away by the night was fierce. Later I tried to capture what it felt like.   Here’s what I wrote:

Night Howl

(Anchor watch in Pago Pago, Samoa)

Alone beneath a wild and ragged night I watch,

                            moonlight and clouds wind-tangled across the sky.

Suddenly I am loosened, lifted, flung far–

fingers raking stars, mouth howling moon, mind mooning time

my heart-beat

riddles the universe.

Alone beneath a wild and ragged night I stand, astonished,

gaping into the maw of some vast mirror.

It’s close to capturing what I felt, but the last two lines trouble me. “Gaping” and “maw” keeps the visceral effect I’m looking for, capturing the sense of trance-like awe and terror.  But mirror moves it away into something more philosophical or intellectual. 

Public Domain 800px-Milky_Way_IR_SpitzerI’m tempted to stop with the line “my heartbeat riddles the universe.” That captures the physicality of my wildly beating heart breaking out of my body to become the heart-beat of the universe.  And it also hints at the mystery of human heartbeat itself being a riddle, the riddle of the universe, that the evolution of the universe over eons led to the creation of a human being, whose heart—its essential being—is the ability to reflect back upon the universe, to take it all in. 

Human consciousness is the mirror through which the universe sees and knows itself, and through which we see and know ourselves—the fullness of being, our primal past and present standing face to face.

That’s a lot to howl about.

[Many thanks to Steve Richardson for permission to use photos of his oil paintings to illustrate this post.  You can find more of his work at his website.]

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Print
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

Welcome Readers

This blog explores what it means to be living on the edge of the wild as a writer and an artist.

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 10,453 other followers

Recent Posts

  • A Magical Day at San Simeon Bay
  • A Trip Through Time and Space with Pauline Anna Strom
  • Will Salmon Swim Upstream Through City Streets?
  • Strange Dreams, A Poem
  • Still Open to the Beauty of the World
  • A Young Poet and Rapper Throw Light on the State of Our Union
  • “The Fierce Urgency of Now”: Dismantling the Big Lie, Bridging the Big Divides
  • Joy Amid the Turmoil: A 2020 Recap

Text and images are copyrighted by Deborah J. Brasket except where otherwise noted. Feel free to share giving credit and linking back to this site.

Protected by Copyscape Plagiarism Finder

Top Posts

  • Blogging and "The Accident of Touching"
  • Celebrating Lasting Love
  • On Herds, Husbands & Riffing on Writing
  • Poetry in the Time of Corona
  • Artists & Writers in Their Studios
  • The Art of Living, a Reminder
  • Pinch Me! Writers House Accepts My Novel
  • Pied Beauty, Poem & Paintings
  • The Insatiable Eye - Sontag on Photography
  • Immersed in One's Art

Follow Me on Facebook

Follow Me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Monthly Archives

Topic Categories

Popular Topics

abstract art Addiction adventure art artists beauty Blog Blogging books children Consciousness Creative Nonfiction creative process creativity death Deborah J. Brasket deep ecology desire Dreams Come True Entertainment Europe Family fiction Ghost Stories grandparenting Halloween healing human consciousness humanity inspiration Italy life lifestyle literature Love Marriage meditation memoir Mixed Media music National Poetry Month Nature Novel oak trees painting Paintings Parenting personal Philosophy photography Pinterest poem poetry Politics quotations Reading reality Romance sailing Sailing Around the World Science sculpture short story spirituality Supernatural the creative process travel universe vacation Wallace Stevens watercolor wild writing writing process Zen

Purpose of Blog

After sailing around the world in a small boat for six years, I came to appreciate how tiny and insignificant we humans appear in our natural and untamed surroundings, living always on the edge of the wild, into which we are embedded even while being that thing which sets us apart. Now living again on the edge of the wild in a home that borders a nature preserve, I am re-exploring what it means to be human in a more than human world.

Recent Posts

  • A Magical Day at San Simeon Bay
  • A Trip Through Time and Space with Pauline Anna Strom
  • Will Salmon Swim Upstream Through City Streets?
  • Strange Dreams, A Poem
  • Still Open to the Beauty of the World

Tags

abstract art Addiction adventure art artists beauty Blog Blogging books children Consciousness Creative Nonfiction creative process creativity death Deborah J. Brasket deep ecology desire Dreams Come True Entertainment Europe Family fiction Ghost Stories grandparenting Halloween healing human consciousness humanity inspiration Italy life lifestyle literature Love Marriage meditation memoir Mixed Media music National Poetry Month Nature Novel oak trees painting Paintings Parenting personal Philosophy photography Pinterest poem poetry Politics quotations Reading reality Romance sailing Sailing Around the World Science sculpture short story spirituality Supernatural the creative process travel universe vacation Wallace Stevens watercolor wild writing writing process Zen

Topics

Addiction Art Blogging books Creative Nonfiction Culture Deep Ecology Family Fiction Human Consciousness Life At Sea Love Memoir music My Artwork My Writing Nature Oak Trees Photography Poetry Recommended Authors Recommended Books Sailing Science Short Story Spirituality The Writing Process Uncategorized Universe Writing

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
    %d bloggers like this: