Just a little less silence, but it's in there.

 April 12 

I begin this morning very quietly. 

The body has a comprehensive sensation, a vibration that defines my presence. 

The associations wander, much like ants, in an established and quite simple pattern that seeks contact with something specific that appears to be nourishing and should be reported to the rest of me. Ants explore in these simple ways, but once they find something they feel is significant, they organize very complex forms of behavior. 

There are ants in the kitchen and our upstairs bathroom — in fact, they are probably all over the house — who do this day and night. When they get lucky and find cat food in the dish, hundreds of them gather for the feast. The operation of the associative mind, our casual intellect (which is much more like a calculator than anything truly intelligent) is very similar to this.

In any event, this morning it’s up to its ordinary activity. The feelings aren’t that active, but the one clear feeling that arose as I began this morning was gratitude for the flavor and heat of the hot cocoa drink that I have every morning now that I have stopped drinking coffee. This feeling of gratitude is directly connected to my participation in the vast and endless chemistry of the planet, which—I remind myself, a task— I ought to be more immediately aware of at all times. 

The organism functions differently without the constant stimulation of caffeine; there’s less tension and stress, but I also notice more clearly exactly how tired the organism gets throughout the ebb and flow of the day.

The tulips are coming up. It’s been gray and rainy for the past day, which paradoxically increases the intensity of their color when seen up close. Many of the plants in the garden are awakening and most of the trees along the river that bloom in the spring are already in full flower: enormous weeping cherries, thundercloud plums, magnolias who are already shedding their leaves. This is an environment of great beauty that interrupts its own quite sacred sobriety with a drunken expression of beauty one time a year. This is that time. Perhaps, here, I should mention one more rite of spring — I put the bees in my hives on Saturday. This is a whole and separate thought which should just be briefly mentioned here, because to think on it carefully would make the essay much too long.

I have a friend for whom this will be the last spring. She is dying quite slowly, and yet of completely sound mind. 

She is brave and sets an example.

It’s my responsibility to live better and more wholly and with more intension on her behalf; it’s my responsibility to live more completely, as well, for all those I know who have already died.  I can’t explain why this is the case; but I’m quite certain that each of us is tasked with becoming more mindful, more aware of ourselves, as we age in order to take on the burden of living and working and absorbing impressions on behalf of those who have already died. They need our work; we support them. Only by being honorable and trustworthy, intelligent and kind, can we give them the kind of support they need now.

This question of kindness is essential. (Thanks, Germaine.) I get irritable and I see how I want to be unkind, not for any good reason but just because there are parts of me that don’t obey, that are bad dogs. They’re always territorial and angry at others and quick to judge. They run around the village constantly. 

I ran into somebody the other day who is like that and thinks they are quite mindful, but are nothing of the kind. They send emails that are snarky and judgmental as though it were a good thing. I ignore them, because I don’t want to have contact with people who are intentionally nasty — mindfully nasty, you might say. Yet I need to look at myself quite carefully because that tendency is in me as well, and although I’m constantly restraining the dog, keeping it tight on the leash, it tugs constantly and I need to be quite aware of that tugging, sensitive to its every increase in tension, in order to remind myself that this is a dog that wants to bark and sometimes even bite.

This question of the need for a more attentive inner discipline reminds me of fishing. 

I’ve been living by the pier in Piermont, New York for the last 20 years. It’s quite a good fishing spot. I used to be an accomplished surf casting fishermen, accustomed to using the very lightest tackle to catch the biggest kinds of fish, especially bluefish, which are violent and pathologically dangerous once hooked. Despite this background, I sat next to this relatively excellent fishing spot for 20 years and might have finished maybe once or twice. Well, it’s quite true: 20 years ago I gave up many things at the same time, most notably my career as an artist. Something changed in me the morning that happened. I don’t quite know who I was before that day, but I wasn’t me. Not the way I am myself now.

Last Friday, early in the morning, I was out on the pier on my bike and I saw a man who had landed a very handsome striped bass. The impression struck me quite deeply and I formed the intention in that instant to reboot my fishing skills.

This is a deliberated return to that past life and person which I abandoned. It’s still in me; the first time I tied a nail knot again after all those years my fingers instantly did all the quite complex tasks that are necessary—without me even thinking about it in the least. My ants are steadfast; the memory of the body, the path to known nourishment, is strong. In any event, I had to go through the garage, resurrect, examine, sort and rehabilitate all my lures and tackle, clean off the dirty old tackle boxes, reorganize. It turns out that much of what I used 20 years ago, which was rather heavily employed during its former life, is so aged and battered it needed to be replaced, included my rod and reel. 

I’m now re-outfitted and have been out on the riverbank for over two hours this weekend.

Two hours of fishing may sound like leisure time to some, but the type of fishing I do requires constantly casting a lure and retrieving it. One is on one’s feet the whole time and it’s physically exhausting exercise that uses a wide range of muscles I haven’t used in that way for years. Yet the rhythm of the casting, the focus of attention on the lure as it swims at the surface, and the relative silence of the land, the sky, and the water in their intersection all become part of a meditative action that is executed in the middle of rhythmic and intentional movement. This is what attracts fly fishers to their craft; and surf casting, which hefts more weight, is otherwise quite the same. It just takes more muscular energy than the delicate dance of the fly rod, the curve of the line, the lay of the fly on the water.

Anyone who fishes to catch fish is a fool. 

Fishing is for the action, the experience. To stand on the water in the morning, in the fog, as I did yesterday, to see the ducks swim, the stones on the shore, the tide come in, is a prayer and a benediction. There might be a fish; but the greatness of time is expressed in the action, not the result. In a way, the catching of any fish is not a triumph — although we take it that way, we fishermen, fools all — but a tragedy, the end of a life. 

The meditation, in other words, leads one way or another to two things that are essential to the soul: suffering, and nourishment. They aren’t separated. They’re not separated physically; some other creature, even a plant, suffers every time things nourish me. 

But they are also not separated metaphysically, because the nourishment of Being depends equally on suffering. This taking on of Being and mindfulness in order to live more kindly and more attentively now, on behalf of those who have died, is part of that action.

These are my thoughts this morning.

May we try not to beat so loud on our pots and pans today—

warmly, 

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.