driven toward the larger whole?

 we stumble toward Gaia

as I'm approaching my allotted life-span,

I increasingly wonder who I am,

what the self is,

what consciousness is,

where it all comes from, where it all goes,

there's a seemingly deep contradiction

in two forces that work to drive the cosmos:

1, entropy, dissolution, the collapse of the complex to the simple, and 

2, its powerful antithesis, the coming together, 

the building of more and more complex structures,

life upon the mechanistic connections of matter,

one cell organisms finding the way to multi-celled life forms,

the complexity of the human eye, of a forest,

communication is at the heart of life,

as one asserts and the other reacts,

and the world complicates itself,

the blueprint of DNA orders us,

cells message each other and respond,

trees send scent to activate neighbors' immune systems,

mycelia somehow coordinate the whole through the roots,

with decision-making collective and distributed,

communication pulls the simpler to the more complex,

I wonder if the universe somehow expresses itself

in a fundamental, ineffable reach toward connection, 

and toward the larger whole,

what many believe God to be,

the wholeness that underlies it all,

that aches for us to "get it" and act for the better,

all around us, it seems like we are testing this hypothesis:

like the distributed intelligence of an octopus

the Internet has no hierarchical brain,

instead the parts strive as themselves,

do they also strive to find and create a collective will

that can help us more fully deserve the gift of self?

I use and appreciate Wikipedia, and donate money to it,

for it works to enable the many to work as one,

our challenge as a species

is to enable all life to be as one,

we stumble toward Gaia to be born anew.

by Henry H. Walker

August  28, ‘24

into the wild

 

apprentice to the plants

I work hard to understand the gestalt of the world around me.

Before I worked hard to understand the gestalt of people and our worlds,

I apprenticed myself to the natural world:

to appreciate the flower, the peak,

the grand stories the seasons tell,

the alchemical reality of water as it empowers us all,

as it allows life,

 as it celebrates itself in the sea, 

and in the return to the sea,

I have followed streams to their beginnings,

celebrated every waterfall, every water falling, I could find,

everywhere water let us celebrate it,

in the heart of the oceans, 

at the edge of the sea,

where thrive the border world of tidal pools,

who let us glimpse the fecundity where land meets water,

to where it collects enough to shimmer reflection back at us,

to where it pools enough for us to immerse,

where we can jump in and splash our joy,

animals are close enough to us in heritage

to draw me to their stories:

the bears in the Smokies,

the wolves in Yellowstone,

the heron, 

the salamander, 

the cicada,

it's the kingdom of plants that increasingly draws me:

the trees that know centuries within their selves,

the mycelia that know and coordinate all the community they can,

the ephemeral flowers who rush 

to be themselves with perfection of blossom

and who retire when the canopy grows too full,

and then ready themselves for the next time to manifest,

I seek to use many of my next days

to better understand and celebrate the second world of flora,

and also to even more 

fully understand and appreciate

the first world of rock, sun, and water,

whose dance with each other underlies all.

by Henry H. Walker

August  18, ‘24

I credit Indigenous wisdom as to the "worlds" I describe above.  A Native People, the Anishinaabe, are described in The Light Eaters as considering plants the second brothers and the natural forces referred to above as "the elder brother."  

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger, p. 36.