Or… What It Takes to Hunt a Mole (or Anything in the World or in You)

Still close reading Marc Hamer’s A Life in Nature.

Below is a video of that reading along with some translations.  Isn’t that all reading is–translation.  We extend the metaphor of an author into ourselves.  Unfortunately, there are so many truths of such fine quality, I tend to read too quickly. I find that I need to devise ‘impediments’ to slow me down.  Not exactly handicapping myself, but more like taking time for the moment, to find a handle for that moment.  That is what these videos do:  they are ways of extending the author imperfectly into myself.

 

 

Sometimes I slow read by highlighting and explicating with a poem.  I create in tandem with reading. Ludicrously slow.  The opposite of what Mel Brooks described in Spaceballs as ‘ludicrous speed’.

 

 

Here is the first draft translation of Hamer’s words into my words:

 

 

The last step (are there ever really finite games or last steps when it comes to creating?) is to use Katie Holden’s “TREES TYPEFACE (A REWILDING TOOL)” to extend the idea of a tree typeface through Hamer and me, a close reading twice removed, perhaps a filter for more poems.  This is all by way of asserting that good writings, read well, are universes of discourse.  You can discover this for yourself with a favorite book.  For me that would be Leaves of Grass.  Hamer’s book is just a natural history side trip, but a worthy one.

 

By the way, all of these trees are within 100 feet of my front door.  They are dangerous and friendly simultaneously.    A good friend of mine once told me we need dangerous hobbies.  A pastime in the trees serves that purpose for me.

Here is another draught of this river:

What It Takes to Track a Mole (& More)

Be solitary.

Slough off your human nature.

Be fluid.

Be free.

Be instinctive.

Moment to moment

have no thoughts,

have no feelings,

have no ideas,

have no mental processes.

Be aware of the field.

You are not separate.

You are not aware of the ‘me’ in the field.

Become the same ‘you and me’ in the field.

Be losing the self.

To track anything

be& do & become

all this.