Ageing and unlearning
My log companion 7 years ago
Am I really writing about my relationship with a piece of wood as it rots over the years? Yes, I am – let me explain:
For a number of years now, I have made it a point to regularly spend time sitting on my bench which looks out on my vegetable plot. This is my ‘sit spot’- a favourite place where I feel (and am) part of the local changes through the days and seasons. Returning to the very same spot over months and years, helps open up a different relationship with time and with place, one which would otherwise be very hard to access for our minds fed on notions of linear time and progress. Through the seasons I have developed a relationship with individual plants and birds and their cycles, canopied by the branches above me, which diffuse the sunlight. I sit here through mellow days, times where I’m sheltering from the baking sun, or warming myself up in the low winter sun, feeling the periodic droughts and downpours, the crunch of frost, or the swell of the Spring bird chorus.
One particular companion through the years has been my wooden log – or more accurately a round of wood from a felled silver birch tree, salvaged locally. Placed next to me, originally as a spot to stand a thermos of tea, or to put seeds out for the local fauna, we’ve cohabited this place and looked at each other for about 7 years now. And we’ve both aged and transformed. I love the silky vellum texture of the silver bark, so elegant and smooth. Gradually, ivy has clambered over the bark, clothing my log in rich dark greenness. And in recent years, the wood surface has started to crumble as it is eaten away by fungi and insects. A bracket fungus now adorns one side of the log.
Now ivy is covering almost the whole of my log and the wood inside is soft like dry Weetabix with the silver skin peeling and curling. There’s undoubtedly far more life associated with the log today than when it was a newly sawn round seven years ago.
For myself, I’m definitely older and frailer too, seven years later, though my interest in sitting here is undimmed. I’m not trying to achieve anything by sitting quietly here through the years. I am just part of my very local more-than-human community in all its myriad expressions. Although I’ve spent many years of my life in the past practicing meditation and other spiritual methods, these days I’m content to merely sit here and gaze gently around. I am not seeking any particular state of mind; I’m deeply at ease with what is. Perhaps because I’m much older now (or partly maybe because I’ve actually learned something over the years), I no longer seem to want or desire anything for myself. As long as I have food, shelter and communion, I really don’t need anything more, and life is overflowingly rich as it is. I often used to strive hard in my spiritual practice, though now it seems that I am just quietly present and aware – and funnily enough, I guess I could say – in meditation.
On reflection, I realise that I am, by and large, undistracted and available; I’m usually not lost in my mind or down the rabbit hole of my phone screen. I’ve come to gradually privilege my sensory experience rather than my thoughts, as I see, hear, smell, taste and touch all around me. Why? Because it’s more interesting, real and amazing. Learning seems to be a process of unlearning. I’m reminded of the words of Dogen, Soto Zen founder,
“When you find your place where you are, practice occurs”
A mouse on log’s dissolving surface
What I do experience much more nowadays, is wonder. I am amazed and in wonder on a very daily basis: at an exquisitely fresh bud opening, the kind look in a passerby’s eyes, the intricate veins of a leaf, sunlight through a cumulus cloud, the mystery of life, and also the way that much of modern society charges ahead as if living in the dreamworld of the Matrix.
And I’m of course by no means free of contradictions too. I’m drawn to the natural rhythm and harmony of Daoism and have practiced Qigong daily for years which roots me into the earth. At the same time I’ve been an environmental activist attempting to draw attention to our collective plight. So I guess I’m kind of a daoist activist, though it sounds like a contradiction. But I’m comfortable with holding seemingly opposing views at once, making space for contradictions to sometimes compost together. I used to know and be sure of so much and felt the need to defend my ideology, whereas now, while I’m still interested in various philosophical, cultural and spiritual approaches – perhaps even more so – I hold them lightly. I’m just more interested in the phenomenal nature of life rather than any need to have it all worked out. Wonder is openness. Both Aristotle and Plato said that philosophy begins in wonder, while Alfred North Whitehead continued the sentence,
“…..and, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.”
Log and I are ageing together. The way that it’s heading, in a very few years, log will have dissolved entirely into the earth below, into the river of life; small eddies that we are, returning in time to the greater flow, and nourishing and enriching the whole with our contributions. While I am fortunately still very fit for my age and engage in a range of exercise regularly, I’ve given up on the tough exercise regime I used to adhere to – a macho leftover from my days of striving for the promise of eternal youth and six packs.
Ageing definitely brings a lessening of stamina and injuries come more easily and take longer to heal. That’s just reality and nothing to rail against. The topics of ageing and death tend to be avoided in our society. Contemplating my log through the years has taught me about decay and rotting. The equally valid flipside is to see this as transformation and a return to the Source, and rebirth. I’ve just spread my homemade compost over my newly planted potato bed and the compost was rich, sweet, crumbly and so nutritious you could almost eat it. I always find it miraculous how the disparate mixture of green weeds, kitchen food waste, and cardboard and paper which I add to the compost bin, transforms into this golden brown nurture for plants.
Here I am writing about nothing and nowhere special (except to me): a rotting lump of wood on an allotment on a piece of reclaimed brownfield land. Yet caring deeply for any small place and giving full attention to the details expands the picture out infinitely. It’s nowhere yet it’s really the portal to everywhere.
“Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”
My Back Pages, Bob Dylan
