Pondering Adam’s Process

Back when the garden was the wilderness,

it was not the serpent that enticed the man,

but the seed of the fruit itself.

And so we started collecting it and storing it to create

concentrations of fertility.

With these concentrations of plant fertility came ways of never before:

• A depending on one’s own cultivating rather than a dependency on listening and following natures many cycling paths.
• Still a dance with the natural world but a smaller dance within Gaia’s larger dance.
• A new dance necessitating strategizing, planning, manipulation and organizing.
• A process necessitating more energy to rise from our feet and legs that once ran and tracked and followed the migration of animals and plants; from our pelvises that grounded us in the cycles of creating new life; and from our arms that carried gathered and killed

up into our minds.

And so began the beginning of the potential for separation

between body and mind

between humans and the rest of creation.

And so began a new concept of home: A small place, a hearth and structure rather than the landscape itself.

And so began the potential for separating our home into pieces, and ourselves into groups.

They say that agriculture enabled the arts…

Or did it distract our eyes and senses from the deeper art of living?

Paintings mimic the beauty of our surroundings and each other in colored oils and plastics.

At least we are trying to express our reverence for the beauty of life, perhaps it will be a bridge back to connection between our body-beings with the body-being of the earth and all our animal family.

Perhaps it is a distraction.

Perhaps it is both.

After I am in nature some time, my eyes soften and I start to see things more clearly.

I look at my hair and see fiery silken strands fading into bright gold against glowing blades of green atop heartily rough soil.

I remember that I am the art piece and this is all the living breathing art piece.

Perhaps our senses have hardened and our bodies, no longer pressed against the raw elements, have softened.

Perhaps if it is all still alive in us, we can find it by fully feeling.

I imagine dancing in groups of humans outside buildings away from black lights into moonlight and sunlight

feet to earth

skin to skin

I imagine healing, not alone in a bed but carried by a community of human hands

and teardrops and raindrops and sheltering trees and soft, mossy landings.

I imagine what fear might be if I existed as an animal does

dancing with everything.

Does fear as I know it exist without separation?

When I am in nature, I feel a homecoming in my body,

and yet

I also feel more fear

of cold and injury and every painful discomfort that might harm my body. Which fears are created by my mind and which fears come from my body itself?

Even with modern clothing and technology, I have experienced frostbite, life-changing back injury, patterns of indigestion and lack of necessary energy while trying to reunite myself with nature. How can I experience and work with these seeming barriers in myself rather than pushing and pulling against them with fear?

Has my mind been conditioned to control my body in a way that maintains my body’s separation from the world of the earth which I am made of?

How might I re-learn and remember the ways of reacting to the elements with vitality and instinct?

I continue to feel and love myself and my body albeit softened, confused and fearful. I will continue to listen and learn and hope. After all, no matter how lost I am as a human, my body is still made of this earth with a feeling and sensing that is beyond my mind’s intelligence.