Gaia

Walking in the woods, trying to describe the arrays presented to me by the gods and sprites of the natural world. The arroyos of color, texture - canvasses of intercalated, twinings of life, of becoming, and of moving away - mixed media projections of the mentation of life itself. The small and the large. Screens of leaf and sky, water and field, ripple and sunbeam, reflecting my mental images back to my greedy eyes, giving me the opportunity to interpret my mental images in relation to the mind of Gaia.

I'm surrounded by mind, speaking to me in languages I have yet to learn. I strain to see everything that is being presented to me - the forms and shapes and colors being described to me in words I have never heard, but yet, are easily understood by my voracious desire to know.

I feel I'm beginning to parse the knowledge stored in the earthly mounds I struggle to climb. At least I feel the knowledge. I rest on a rock on the ridge of the mound and let the damp grass caress my bare feet - foliage of all hues of green, interacting with minuscule wings, antennae and bristled feet, massaging the deepening knowledge of nature into my bare feet. I undress and roll in the grass to absorb those feelings into every pore and orifice of my being. My cells suck in the life - my skin is tingling with the caress of tiny wing, antennae and bristled foot.

I wish I could describe my reality to others, but there aren't words to describe the absolute. I do invite you join me in the grass. Feel the sun on your body, the life tickling your skin. Hear me emoting with nature. Gaze into our eyes and join us. Intuit the ultimate in life, love, nature, touch and ecstasy, as we entwine with nature and each other, and as we are taken over by the ecstasy, I realize you're fading. After all you are only a conjure. A mental artifact created in the search and desire to understand, create, explain and share. Share the orgasmic blossoming - the unfolding of cosmic petals - the fingers of Gaia drawing forth the epitome.

I rest. I doze. I continue to soak up the cooling warmth of the setting sun and watch the natural projection of shadows forming on the forest. The forest screening my lowering world, as the light dims in the west the sky lowers to the tree tops, but the sunset continues to warm my blushing face. I see an owl, a bat, a Luna Moth flying towards the moon. There on the edge - the showy edge between the trees and the meadow - a doe steps out followed by a speckled fawn, followed by their shadows.

I think about words. I meditate on words. I conjure and search for words. I feel the emotions, but I don't have the words. There should be a word. There should be a word for every sensation, every gradation of emotion, every thought, every sight, every sound - but all is infinite - language is finite. I watch as night draws a shade across the day. The vision is splendid. The fawn follows the doe back into the forest. Words can't describe the sight. Language doesn't understand how I feel.

My walk is becoming a journey. I should return home. But what is home but a word which I can write on this page? No, home is much more than a word. Has anyone yet found the words for home? Home is where the heart is. Home is where you hang your hat. Is home a metaphor? No. Home is one of the most real of all things. Home is innately itself; in and of itself. Home is an emotion - a point emotion, standing alone; as well, a line emotion - yearning to go on and on, indescribably searching for the heart place and the hat hook. Home is just an emotion, but that is more than enough. For now my journey is my home; the land is my home; my home, encompassed by my being. My family is all being inside my home.

I walk down the mound, down the hill, down to the stream - I feel elevated as a god - I, the mate of Gaia, stride to the stream, clothed only in twinkling starlight, to make my bed of moss in my home by the stream.

I lie in my bed of moss, caressed by moonlight and the touch of stars - fanned by wings of the night. As relaxation massages my body in her tender grip, touching me here and then there, making desirous shivers course through me, with the skillful manipulation of her feather brushes and palette of night-time breezes, insect wing and dew-drop; as she arouses the dreams of my night, my daytime self starts his rest.

On the verge of sleep, I sense the slipping. That mixture of relaxation, excitement, and sometimes other point-instant feelings, that immediately dematerialize as consciousness leaves, but develops into line-lengthy adventures of the other side. The dream-world journeys are stories for another time.

I feel her touch as I awake, as if she has been touching me all the long night. My mate, my love, my nature, my relaxation and my stimulation.

The eastern rim of hill suddenly streaks bright dawn-beams to my waiting eyes. I blink and sigh and smile. It's a clear morning - nature and I can see each other clearly. I repose on the moss as naked as nature, surrounded by deer in the dim dawn, with bird-song awakening in the brush and trees. Flowers glistening with dew in the meadow, as the first glimpse of dawn chases the shadows of night into the trees.

I lie in the moss, flat on my back as if pinned there, smiling. Tied wrist and ankle to the earth by Gaia, my mate. The damp moss cools the back of my body; the rising sun warms my front - rising, rising, my body and the sun. I dream in the stimulation of the sun.


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My walk has become the journey of a lifetime. Perhaps every journey should be the journey of a lifetime. Isn't every lifetime a journey? Strolling through time. As a child your journey is slow. As I age I go faster. I beg my journey to slow; moving quickly is tiring. My journey through nature has just begun. This lifetime has just begun. I just walked into the forest yesterday. I was planning to go home, but I conveniently forgot what home meant. I was lost in the real world, in the world of nature. But I wasn't lost; I found my family. I discovered my true home. I can't move backward through time. I have talked to the elder trees. They tell me I cannot return. They have sheltered my home and theirs for eons. They have watched their young die of fire, disease and murder, but they endure. They have taken me into their family.

This morning when I arose from the moss, I followed the stream into the forest, watched the colors, smelled the aromas; investigated movement, questioned. I talked to the trees and questioned the everlasting. Slowly answers come; colors get brighter, smells become both more sweet and pungent, movements more sinuous and undulating - the glory of change and novelty. And the unending questions, the multiplying unanswerable questions that Gaia asks of herself and of me, as I am now, an integral part of nature.

Time goes by in an unending cycle of glory. This infinitude of interrelated complexity becomes so simple to know, when looked at intimately, when I live it, when I become part of it, when I become the mate of Gaia. My Eden was always here. True life. I eat what it eats, I breath its air, I drink its water - I become part of it, as it is part of itself. Inside and out, nature and I are one. Gloriously, it and I maintain an individuality while partaking of each other as part of the whole.

Yes Gaia, my love. I shall stay.