I Am Sleepy Time Bear in a Meadow

I feel possessed by a past version of myself. It’s a version of me that craved slow, deliberate motions in the quiet limelight tucked into the hidden crevices of a day. It’s the person that named this project. How far afield we have come from that time when that person was here. And yet, here they are, rapping at my door. There must be an inherent elasticity in time and space, because all at once, my heart felt them looking through mine own eyes.  To say I am surprised by this development is an understatement. I am flabbergasted, gobsmack’d even. However, here we are, drinking our little beverages in a meadow integrating with one another again.

You might think I am mad with such dramatizations, but I assure you I am well within my faculties. I am just here with no pretense. I am not telling you tales of burning all the bridges to my home. I am not an evangelist, spreading the good news of the fiber spells along the electronic nodes of the internet. I am not trying to convince you of the foolhardiness of some precept of American culture.  No, I’m just back to this place of stripping away all the extraneous pretenses from my own storytelling. I am back to just wanting to rest in this age-old experience of being an animate bit of clay that renders his own spiritus visible through the work of his hands and mind. I am SLEEPY TIME BEAR IN A FALL MEADOW, globdammit!

This past version and this self writing now are in agreement: there doesn’t need to be anything more than that—a point echoed in the One Straw Revolution. As Fukuoka states in the One Straw Revolution, “humans know nothing.” Our philosophies “have come to spin faster than our changing seasons.” I don’t feel like I know anything, even with a PhD and an internet connection with access to the equivalent of the libraries of Alexandria. The whole process of ascending the great spiral staircase to become part of the clergy of knowledge left me realizing how little we do know, as humans, and the impossibility of using our rudimentary tools to come to a deeper understanding of the great mysteries of our lives, a point echoed in Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution. The whole process left me realizing that really I just want to rest in this simple, seasonal dance with the divine where I root down in feeling the wool with my fingers and sensing through the thoughts in my mind as the world tucks itself in for another winter hibernation. Yes, I just want magic, matter, and spirit all intertwined in this age old interplay of seasonal awareness. That is my slower philosophy of choice.

I want to continue into this harvest season, scythe in hand, stripping away all truths that do not ring of the essential like this simple idea does. There will be time when we emerge from the winter for the embellishment of the first blooms. For now, let us clean the garden bed of our mind and our own experience of all the dead flora. It will return as compost to nourish our emergence in some months time. For the time being, let us rest like the freshly fallen leaves, our tour of duty tending to the lungs of the earth done. Let us close our eyes for a spell and just let the crisp autumn breeze float across our nose and whip our beard to and fro (if you have a beard that is). Let us be the vagabond, sleepy time bear out in the meadow soaking up the essential marrow of this life with their herbal tea.

“It would be well if people stopped even troubling themselves about discovering the “true meaning of life.” We can never know the answers to great spiritual questions, but it’s all right not to understand….Just to live here and now—that is the true basis of human life….To believe that by research and invention humanity can create something better than nature is an illusion.” Masanobu Fukuoka 112-113

I want to enter this autumn season devoted to shedding the need to define, define, define and create, create, create. I want to embrace what Masanobu Fukuoka discussed in One Straw Revolution above. Specifically, I do not want to feel the need to create something better than nature. No, I just want to practice my wheel of the year as naturally as the seasons change. I want to shed what does not serve me alongside the trees shedding all their leaves. I don’t want to obsess about the perfect ritual or craft the perfect prose about how I celebrate. I just want to rest in the million celebrations of a season offered to our senses as we go on with our lives shifting through the seasons. That’s my wheel of the year wherein I become a mirror to the evolving world around me and do not try to become anything but one small speck in the grand tapestry we all co-create.

OK, I need to go ride my bike. I am very lucky, because my hamstring has not exploded since I strained it a month ago. Today, a slow 34 mile ride is on the docket. So I have to load up all my snacks, water bottles, and my little bose speaker. My new lighter, long distance bike is always ready as well. So I am a few weeks away from taking my 62 mile ride up waterton canyon and back. IT’S AN EXCITING TIME TO BE ALIVE. hehe.

As always, dear reader, thank you for being here.

Best,

James

JUMPIN GEHOSAPHAT! You read the whole thing. Well, little buddy, type your email below if you like what I am laying down. This essay series is free!