(4)

I had a dream last night, in which I was bitten by a small animal.  I knew as soon as I saw the animal – a rodent of some sort – that it was going to bite me:  and then it did.  The rodent's bite, and my expectation of its bite, felt to me to be intimately connected, as if the one had actually caused the other.  And when the rodent bit me, I didn't feel pain, or even fear, but merely exasperation; for I understood that it was I myself who had caused the bite to occur.  This, then, is an exemplar of how I dream:  I project my inner feelings upon emblematic figures, these emblematic figures being drawn from my waking reality.

My waking reality is comprised wholly of features having an origin independent of me, of course; but upon certain aspects of this reality too I may project my feelings – and when I do, those features of reality are changed in quality, at least for me.  Sitting on my dresser, for instance, is a wooden box, given to me as a gift by a friend.  I prize this box; it gives me pleasure to see it.  Upon my wall there hangs an etching I once bought of a pastoral scene, and this too I prize; it gives me a sense of serenity whenever I look at it.  And there are people I know – my parents, for instance – upon whom I project certain feelings, or whom I interpret according to whatever feelings I happen to be having about them at a particular point in time.  But I cannot change in any literal sense these features of reality.  I cannot alter the design of the box or the scene in the etching simply because I wish to.  Nor can I cause my parents to behave in a certain way, no matter how hard I try to "expect" them to.

How then do I explain those times when it has seemed to me that life was arranging itself in a particular fashion for the purpose of bringing me a message?  How do I explain my being drawn to one particular object – the etching, for instance – which I liked so much I decided to buy it and hang it on my wall?  How explain that a world wholly external to me should produce objects and events which draw from me such definitive responses?  Is there not something remarkable in the fact that I am drawn to – or repulsed by – certain features of this world which would leave another person indifferent, while that other person is drawn to or repulsed by features of this world which in no way call forth any response from me?  Is it not likewise remarkable that each child of a given set of parents, though coming from the same biological stock and influenced by similar environmental factors, should each respond to their parents so differently, and that the parents as well should respond differently to each child?  Is there not indeed something in all this which indicates that life, which endows each person with his or her own individuality, somehow shapes itself to form a particular response to that individuality?

If I propose that life is always arranging itself so as to communicate with me – even if mostly in ways that I never comprehend – I'm suggesting that this world, like the world of my dreams, is nothing more than a projection which serves to embody my inner feelings.  This is a bizarre notion of course, forcing me to theorize a "greater self" now presumably "asleep" – or to assume that I myself, with regard to my waking reality, have powers similar to those of a god.  But if I propose that life never does this, then I'm suggesting that I merely project my feelings upon certain elements of the world from time to time and falsely assume that it's speaking purposefully to me.  Yet I know from experience that moments exist when reality is something more than just a living canvas upon which I project an interpretative value.

What if I approach the question from different angle:  what if I suppose that reality is both entirely subjective and entirely objective?  Or, to put it another way, what if I suppose that reality is partly subjective and partly objective, partly a projection originating from within me and partly having an existence independent of me?  This seems to me to be valid enough in theory; however, I don't know how such a theory could be proven.  There seems no other conclusion to reach but to say that life cannot really be understood through the application of conceptual definitions.  Reality, as we live it, is experiential; or it is nothing at all.  It's only through the act of direct experiencing that we perceive the truth of reality; it's only by removing the illusions of conceptual thinking that we perceive the true nature of reality.  The self-reflective quality of the human species causes us to believe that "self," conceived of in the abstract, constitutes the existence of a transcendent state of being.  But this notion of transcendence is false, is an illusion; and our belief in it causes us to become trapped – trapped by the belief in a transcendent god or gods; trapped by the fear of own deaths; trapped by the feeling of separateness from nature that the belief in our own transcendence engenders; trapped within the endless maze of conjecture which conceptual thinking subjects us to.  But if we can learn to use our self-reflective ability to give us an enlarged sense of our place within the reality in which we find ourselves – this point in space, this moment in time – without falling prey to the illusion of our supposed transcendence, then perhaps we can learn to use our brains as they were meant to be used, as highly evolved organs of sensory perception.  And we can use this organ to become more fully "awake" to reality (or as awake as our present evolutionary development allows), and to become aware that reality has added dimensions to it beyond those we know when trapped by the illusions of conceptual thinking – the dimension, for instance, in which the objective and subjective components of reality are equally valid aspects of an experiential world.

It's a beautiful spring day outside.  Warm but not hot, with a gentle breeze blowing.  The promise that spring holds can be felt everywhere:  birds flit about with nervous intensity, gathering nest-building materials or searching for food to feed the year's first hatchlings; the bushes and trees are vibrantly green; violets and dandelions, daffodils and tulips, add bright dashes of color to gardens and lawns; and everyone who possibly can be is out-of-doors.  Everywhere there is shouting and laughter, bustle and music, excitement and expectation.  I can't resist it either.  My apartment feels stuffy and drab.  I need, I must, get outside into the spring air.

I decide to go for a walk in the cemetery.

I am drawn to the cemetery not by any morbid love for the dead, but simply because it's the only public land around here that's within walking distance:  everything else is privately owned.  There is a park in town, with benches and a fountain at the center of it; but on a day like today I know it'll be overrun with people.  And I am one of those who prefer to be alone.

It's late afternoon by the time I set out.  The kids are already home from school, and I see them in the yards outside their houses, throwing balls about, huddled together in groups planning out some game, or just running around chasing each other, shrieking with high-pitched laughter.  In front of one of the houses I pass I spot a teenaged girl dressed in shorts and a halter top; she's stretched out on a blanket to catch the sun.  As I pass by she lifts her head and gazes at me gazing at her.  I can't see her eyes; they're hidden behind a pair of large, round sunglasses.  Before dropping her head to the blanket again she graces me with a Mona Lisa smile.  Farther along I see a chubby, grey-haired man dressed in a T-shirt and jeans getting into his pickup truck.  "Beautiful day, isn't it?" he says, giving me a grin that stretches from ear to ear.  "Just beautiful, really beautiful!"  Then he clambers into his truck, starts it up with a roar, and goes barreling away.

The cemetery is quieter.  In the distance I see two men – the groundskeepers – on their riding lawn mowers, and there's the occasional car passing slowly by on one of the winding roads, but otherwise I'm alone.  The moss and grass feel springy underfoot; I notice that flowers have started blooming on some of the graves.  As I make my way over to the ravine at the lip of the woods on the cemetery's far side, I glance down at the occasional headstone, noting here the shortness of one life, there the length of another.  Two stones in particular catch my eye.  They are placed close together side by side; both are very small and narrow, blackened with age, and rounded on top where the embossed letters of printing are.  There are no dates of birth and death, no ornamental carvings, no epitaphs.  "MOTHER," says the first stone simply, in bold capital letters.  "RALPH," says the stone beside it.  I cannot help but wonder at this.  And then I cannot help but laugh.

When I reach the edge of the ravine I stop for a few minutes to catch my breath and quiet my mind.  Everywhere I look, the world seems vividly alive.  From the shadows of the ravine small insects fly out, wavering through the sunshiny air.  A chipmunk climbs the trunk of a nearby tree and races out to the end of one of the branches, scolding noisily all the while.  Looking up through the treetops, I notice how the intersecting branches make a puzzle of the sky.  The ground beneath my feet, with its various grasses and weeds, its ivies and mosses, reveals a dozen different shades of green.  Underneath, the earth shows a reddish patch here, a brownish or black patch there.  There are twigs and dried leaves, pebbles of all shapes and sizes, textures and hues.  I look up again through the trees at the deep blue sky.  Making an effort, I try to still the voices that constantly babble away in my mind, concentrating instead on what I'd been thinking about earlier in the day, about the world being neither wholly subjective nor wholly objective, but some curious admixture of the two.  I'm trying to bring my conceptual understanding of this into the realm of experiential reality.  The world seems not only to have become more vivid as a result, but to have achieved a greater depth:  looking about me, it's as if each element of the surrounding scenery has located itself at the center of a circle of existence, while simultaneously continuing to hover at the periphery of each surrounding element's circle.  It's like watching a kind of surreal dance.

Then, suddenly, it's the gravestones I'm noticing most.  Everywhere before me they stand, dozens and dozens of them, all shapes and sizes.  Some are low and squat, some jut high up into the air.  Once they were boulders perhaps, or part of a rock quarry; now they are carved into shapes square or oblong, flat or curved, short and stumpy or tall and thin; and they have taken on an almost human quality to me.  They rear up stiffly, backs rigidly straight; they confront me severely, with a silence that seems to baffle my ears.  It's as they're giving me a reprimand; it's as if I had, by allowing myself to become distracted from their somber message of death, given them affront.

I walk along the edge of the ravine awhile; then, coming upon the opening of a path that leads into the woods, plunge down it.  A tree has fallen across the path since I've last been here, and someone has used a chainsaw to cut a great hunk out of the middle of the tree so that people can pass unhindered.  This strikes me as ironic, this cutting away of nature so that people can enjoy nature.  Farther along I notice soda cans and cigarette butts and beer bottles scattered about, also plastic wreathes and pots galore.  It's been quite awhile now since I picked up any trash from these woods, and it doesn't take long for it to start collecting again.  I think back to my former self, visualizing the young man with the plastic bag in his hand, picking up garbage.  For a moment that man lives again, walking the path just ahead of me.  He stops – bends over to pick something up and drop it in his bag – then stands upright again.  I walk right through him.  It feels as if I've just walked through a ghost.

I notice that the woods are full of another kind of debris too.  Everywhere I look there are fallen trees, some still showing white where the trunk has twisted and broken away, others moss covered and rotting.  Some trees have been caught in the midst of falling and now lean, half-uprooted but still alive, against their neighbors.  Dead branches litter the ground, and there are dead leaves everywhere underfoot.  Yet everywhere too there are signs of new life:  the myrtle growing on the sloping side of the ravine is dotted with starry, purple blooms; the saplings have sent out long, fresh shoots; and down by the creek where the ground is mushy, the skunk cabbages are unfurling their bright green leaves.  Every gradation in the cycle of life – birth, death, decay, and rebirth – is present here somewhere.  And every stage of the cycle is equally important, because every stage is equally necessary.  They all work together to create an interlocking whole.  Where else, I think, need a person look to experience the "transcendent" wonder of the oneness of all things, except to nature?

When I emerge from the woods some time later, coming up the path back into the cemetery again, the sun is a bright orange ball hanging just above the edge of the horizon.  The temperature's beginning to drop a bit and soon it will be dark; I decide it's time to make my way back home.  Winding round the gravestones and the trees and the many rhododendron bushes, I head back towards the road that will lead me into town.  But I must be following a slightly different route from any I've ever taken before, because I suddenly come upon something I've never before noticed.  It's nothing special, really; it's only that, having gone round a few large bushes, I find on the other side of one of them the stump of what must have once been a very large tree.  The stump is, in fact, really quite huge; it must be a good five feet across at least.  It had been cut down some years ago – its round, smooth surface has blackened, and there's moss growing on it; but the wood hasn't begun to rot yet.  I stand up on the stump and stretch out my arms, still wondering at its breadth.  It must have been a giant of a tree.  Experimentally I close my eyes and try to make myself go still inside.  I want to see if I can somehow "feel" the presence of the tree that had once been here.  But I cannot.  I open my eyes again, looking about me to see if my awareness of the tree's absence has made any difference to the appearance of the world about me.  It hasn't.

Yet I do feel something . . .  What is it?  I shut my eyes again and concentrate, reaching down inside myself to discover what this feeling is.  I have sense of hollowness inside me, a feeling of . . . is it regret?  No, not that, not quite.  It's more like a sense of sadness, of sorrow – and yet still there is that feeling of hollowness too.  And then I have it.  What I'm experiencing is a sense of loss – that hollowed out sense of loss we all experience whenever we lose something or someone important to us.

I open my eyes.  A breeze starts up, rustling the trees about me.  What I hear next is a sort of clicking sound, as if the branches and twigs of the trees are being knocked together by a sudden gust of wind.  It's like the sound of a light rapping, a tapping, of wooden knuckles on a wooden door.  And then I hear the whispering of the trees.

I remember an out-of-body experience I had once.  As it began I found myself first floating in the darkness somewhere above the area of my bed, cognizant of having become a disembodied presence that was fully "alive" and "aware" while yet still conscious of the body that was lying on the bed below, lungs filling and emptying themselves, heart beating away.  I could see nothing but blackness all around me, but I sensed, floating nearby, several other disembodied presences.  These presences seemed to be leading me through the darkness until I became aware, after a time, of a great number of presences, or disembodied entities, gathered somewhere in space far down below me.  They were calling to me.  I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I sensed that they were sending me a greeting:  they were telling me hello.  A little while later, I felt that I was moving away from them, and that they were calling to me once again.  This time they were bidding me farewell.  And then, all at once, I "woke up."

It's just the same now with the whispering of the trees.  I have no doubt about it:  the trees are literally speaking to me.  It's just as it was when the voices called to me out of the darkness:  I hear no words, but I'm as certain of what's happening now as I was then.  I'm being sent a greeting.  The greeting is sent in a language not my own, yet I understand it; I know:  the trees are telling me hello!

Then the wind calms, and I hear a car making its way up along the narrow, winding road.  I hop down off the tree trunk and continue on towards home.

The sun has by now dipped down below the horizon.  The streets and yards, so busy a little while ago, are nearly empty; everybody's gone indoors to eat their dinners and watch TV.  A dim, grey light is falling; but it casts no pall over the town.  For this one evening, for this one brief space of time, that grey light shows me a world not gone drab and cold, but one in which everything I see – the street, the parked cars and trucks, the houses and yards, the little flower gardens, the bushes and trees – have all become equal.  Each object holds a place of equal importance to all the others.  They are all of a piece – and thus, for this one moment at least, have been unified and made whole.