acting upon the world

 how to understand reality, and to act

I understand hunger and the foods available to me,

I understand people and how to build connection and community

with the savory and the sweet,

speaking to tongue and stomach,

and thus to the heart,

part of these actions is following recipe,

the physics and chemistry of it all,

I remember well my mother revealing how to make a white sauce,

the secret to combining fat, flour, and liquid,

and telling me exactly why not to use too much baking soda,

and what were the secrets of summer transparency apples,

more importantly, though, I remember the goal of the cooking:

to meet people where they were and to help them get further,

Jean used cake and coffee to draw people to the cabin

after Gatlinburg City Council meetings

so that sharing food might lead to sharing goals and actions,

I bake cinnamon rolls as a way to thank another

for who they are or for what they've done,

the shared food connects us and builds a larger whole,

I came to this musing as I consider intelligence

not just the quantity and quality of neurons firing,

but how to use all that firing to act upon the world,

patterns can speak to the deepest of what is true

and allow the possibility of tweaking then,

Howard Gardiner opened this door

when he expanded the concept of intelligence

beyond the verbal and the mathematical,

so that more of the brain, and of the heart,

gets involved in the discussion,

I just had a powerful visit with two friends

for whom music is how the universe best shows itself to them,

and works with them to create order above elemental chaos,

an instrument will sing a story,

and they will sing with it, with them,

a composer creates a wholeness

that lives anew in each retelling,

and touches us deeper than we often live,

down where we are closer to the most primaL,

I see the world most clearly in words and in pictures,

so poetry and photography are how I often speak my truth,

though deeper than those are the worlds where music operates,

consciousness is an awakening

within which the mechanisms of geology, physics, chemistry, and all,

are not just masters but tools, also,

we rise to work with the rest of existence

to choose and follow a path unique to the awake spirit,

intelligence involves finding pattern

and using that which is revealed

as a key to unlock the rules of the game

and then to play it well.

by Henry H. Walker

December 25, ‘24