Encountering River ep.2/6

"Ten Thousand Things in Me"

By the second week of our first inquiry, Peter and I are beginning to discuss pronouns and how best to refer to the living world. The use of the word ‘it’ seems to diminish a being somehow, and so I start using ‘they/them’ which at least comes closer to granting personhood. We also begin referring to ‘the river’ as ‘River’, a move that is again connected with respect and the honouring of more-than-human lives.

Cycle 2: 29th May, 2020

“Ten Thousand Things in Me”

I admit to feeling slightly untethered this week. The arrangements for our joint inquiry feel loose and I realise I am not quite sure what the parameters are. Did Peter say I needed to go to the same place? Were we trying to recreate similar conditions to each other or were our individual inquiries more loosely connected than I had previously thought? Despite being filled with a million questions, I feel something necessary in allowing my modern Western mind to practise becoming comfortable with uncertainty, so I decide against contacting Peter for clarification and rather just trust in the process and simply go to the same place by River as last week. It is worth noting that despite taking the same materials as last week – pencils, notebook, camera and recorder – I am so drawn into being with the world that the idea to respond creatively, other than taking a few pictures and some video, does not arise.

By 10am the day is ripening with heat. I walk slowly to the river, stopping by trees offering cool respite beneath generous, rustling leaves. A group of horses move synchronously across a field, one stopping to eye me, straggles of grass poking out of his mouth as he chews. Heat begins to shimmer on the surface of the road and there are moments when the air is so heavy and still it is as if the world itself has stopped breathing.   

Arriving at River I pause to seek permission from two gorse bushes, their bright yellow flowers filling the air with a heady scent. I  sure am not sure what, if any, sort of answer might come, and so I stand for several minutes offering my attention to the brightness of the yellow which is so bright it is almost blinding, before wandering down to the riverbank after what feels a respectful length of time. Some large flat boulders by the water are perfect for sitting on, but they are already too hot and so I carry on walking downstream in the hope of finding somewhere more shaded. A small tree with soft grass and just a few nettles is about the best I can find, so I spread my blanket out and sit down facing the water, before closing my eyes and seeking attunement with my surroundings through the focused rise and fall of my breath.

A noise from the opposite bank startles me and I open my eyes to see a group of five sheep wandering the bank on the opposite side of the river. The black-faced leader baas loudly and I watch, trying to shrink myself in the hope I don’t further alarm them. They continue grazing, moving slowly away, the leader pausing every now and then to baa loudly at me, though the others seem oblivious to my presence. A large grey heron swoops low overhead, turning upriver when he spies me. I think about myself and my bodily human presence, and how creatures cognisant of us often tend to move away. I wonder about the energetic patterns of life, about how it folds, unfolds and enfolds itself. Feeling hot and a bit sad for reasons I can’t quite fathom, I decide to move and packing up my things, I thank River and the creatures I’d encountered and begin walking back towards home and a patch of forest I know that is both shady and unencumbered by nettles and brambles. I realise that the sun is actually in charge of my movements and I think about the many ways in which we humans mistakenly believe ourselves to be autonomous and in control when really we are ruled by implicate and explicate forces (as David Bohm liked to call them) that remain largely unknown.

The forest I arrive at is mostly young oak trees. The grass beneath is long and fat, the juicy kind of grass that cows love to curl their tongues around. I spread out my blanket once again and lie down. As I do, two crows rise up noisily from a nearby tree. I’d learnt recently that crows’ nests are notoriously difficult to find, even for crow-lovers, and I wondered if I’d perhaps stumbled upon one and was now being watched as a suspicious entity close to something precious and unseen. I think about boundaries, perceived and otherwise, and feel a shock of awareness at how often my mere presence must induce concern and wariness in other beings. Attempting once again to shrink my presence, I lie down on my back and observe the fractal patterning of leaves wobbling overhead. Failing to see where the trees end and the sky begins, the leaves seem to stretch on and on into infinity.

Shifting position to lie on my side, I am soon absorbed in the antics of one of the tiniest creatures I have ever seen. Their insect body is mysterious to me and appears to be doing something monumental, the abdomen expanding and contracting in rhythmic waves. Their creamy outer shell is almost translucent, the face a dark brown. I have no idea what this tiny being is and wonder if there is anyone in the world who even knows about this creature or what it might be doing. Although its being-ness is clearly independent of my knowledge of it, I feel a sudden surge of shame to be sharing the neighbourhood with such a wonderous thing and yet know absolutely nothing about it. If this bug wasn’t here I thought, would the grass still be here? Would the trees? Would I? Whatever they are, I know that somehow the land has birthed them, just as it has birthed us, and I marvel at the organising principles at work in the universe that two such wildly different entities as this insect and myself can co-exist and perhaps even be necessary to one another.

After some time the insect begins to move. Suddenly they fall, and though I look for them in the dense entanglement of vegetation, they have disappeared. Stay well little one! I whisper and remaining at the level of the micro, I observe several other tiny insects until a sudden breeze brings me back to awareness of the wider world. Time has passed, Earth has spun and I need to return to my human family. Standing up, I suddenly feel massive, in the sense of being a huge mass of concentrated information and material. I recall an article I’d read that spoke of recent discoveries showing there are more microbial beings inside of a human than there are human cells. I stand like a tree, extending my arms to the sky and imagine these microscopic beings vulnerable to the thought waves and emotions that continuously course through my body. Feeling as huge as a universe I suddenly feel responsible for these beings in ways I had never considered before. Don’t worry, I impart to my inner cosmos, we’re all in this together. And I pledge right there to do my best to steer a kindly ship. Feeling inside the world, with the world inside me, I walk slowly back through the cooling day to home.

Later, dipping into a newly arrived Hunger Mountain by David Hinton, I find this passage written by Confucian sage Mencius in the fourth century BCE:

The ten thousand things are all there in me. And there’s no greater joy than looking within and finding myself faithful to them. Treat others as you yourself would be treated. Devote yourself to that…  (p.65)

And I think about fractals and the nested holotropic reality we exist within, and the mantle of care this knowledge could perhaps foster if held closely in our hearts and minds.