Wait .. where's Nature?

Let's suffice it to say that I missed the Nature Walk Tour the class went on. Because of this, I decided to take my own walk in Audubon Park on Friday, after the torrential rain stopped. I headed to the park around 4 PM, with my Norton Book, umbrella and notebook in hand. I dodged street cars, normal cars, people on bikes, women with strollers, men with dogs and little screaming kids being chased by other little screaming kids. I guess everyone needed a little outside "nature" time after the rainstorms. Every bench, at the front of the park, was over taken by preppy moms, chatting to one another while watching their loud children swing, fall and eat dirt. I hopped around puddles and wet benches, before finally finding one dry enough to sit down on and read.

In Book Fourth, Wordsworth talks about his circuit of the Lake. It was as if Nature, herself, rejuvenated him and gave him, " .. consummate happiness" (ln 140) I continued reading this passage, constantly being interrupted by panting runners, barking dogs and chattering families. Maybe I was in the wrong place? Taking clues from Wordsworth, I grabbed my things and began my own leisure circuit around the green swampy water that I imagined was a lake.

There were gorgeous flowers arranged in rows, trees that lines the beaten path and mosses that draped perfectly over large branches. Birds flew overhead and ducks splashed in the water. The aforementioned rain had left an earthy smell that seemed to match the serene landscape before me. For a moment, I felt like a true Romantic, understanding Wordsworth's lines in Book Twelve:

And on the melancholy Beacon, fell

A spirit of pleasure, and Youth's golden gleam; (ln 265 - 66)

Finally, I felt at peace and actually inspired. I had made it to the wooden pavilion and settled in to write some notes and read "The Tables Turned". All the sounds seemed to meld together and create a beautiful soundtrack, that could have been sold for some major cash as a sleep time record. Thoughts of book reports and balancing equations were far behind.

Enough of Science and of Art

Close up those barren leaves'

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives. (ln 29-32)

I was relaxed and felt the breeze and listened to the wisdom in the songs of the birds. At least until the sounds of the real world came crashing back in. Two dogs decided it was obviously mating season and chose to expand the Circle of Life. The cars honked and bikers yelled to one another. A huge beetle scurried across the wooden floor near me and the rain started to fall. Maybe Nature was a little too much for a city girl like me, so I (quickly!) gathered my things and headed for the safety of my air conditioned, rainless and kid-less dorm room.

Park vs. Wilderness

Considering that I just spent nearly three days in the Wilderness with little electricity, no air conditioning, ‘soft’ water, and nearly fifty other sweaty humans who when they step out of said ‘soft’ water smell just as bad (if not worse) than before, I cannot help but contrast this with our Walking Tour of Audubon Park. The park was beautiful to be sure, but man’s mark could not help but be noticed; the grass cut weekly, a concrete slab placed around perfectly selected giant oak trees (suitable for climbing) with a giant golf course smack dab in the middle. A leisurely stroll across placid ground. The Wilderness in its naturalness is far less selective: the tallest ‘whispering’ pines, so numerous in quantity, spring up where they may surrounded by shrubbery five feet high. Rocky, soggy ground that seeped into my tennis shoes after being forced to trek what seemed like twenty miles through the beating rain and tortuous sun. Killing flea-like bugs with my Norton textbook. Wilderness far more miserable, yet so much more ‘experience-able.’

But with these differences came so many similarities. I was accosted by butterflies (Who knew they were such violent creatures?) nearly ran into several giant spider webs, smelled muggy lagoon/lake water, and got blisters. Most importantly I noticed that nature never fails to make one experience and feel, no matter their orientation or degree. This may sound contradictory taking into account that I found Wilderness more experience-able. However, you can be calmly smirking at a fat squirrel on an old tire in Audubon Park or you can be sweating to death in the middle of nowhere, but the senses are involved in both cases, equally affecting one’s mood. (Aha! Blake was onto something with his ‘senses’ talk…)

After this week, I can understand why the Romantics were drawn toward nature. Being able to experience nature forces a person to step away from their comfort zone; you can learn so much about yourself. By doing this you start to see day-to-day life more clearly in a way entirely new.

I cannot express this better than Wordsworth:

“One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good

Than all the sages can.”

- “Tables Turned,” lines 21-24

A Walk in the Park

After walking through Audobon and reflecting, i noticed that i was becoming very irate with the nature that was almost unnatural in a way...every plant i saw that was put there and placed strategically by man was annoying me in a way that i couldn't quite put my finger on at that moment. So i continued to walk and think. I came to the conclusion that the nature that made me smile and feel warmhearted were the random trees, flowers, etc. However, the nature that made me particularly upset was the certain formations that were put there by gardeners.  I found myself thinking what is so natural about the unnatural way that man is creating these formations of gardens? I felt that the fact of nature is contradictory in some ways.  I linked this form of thinking to Wordsworth's "Lines Written in Early Spring."  He repeats the lines Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?  These lines were sort inspiration to my thoughts of not only what man has made of man, but what man has made of nature as well. How can we call a manmade natural thing nature? Because a part of it is, yet there is an unnatural way that it got there... hmmm...enjoying the beauty of nature is so easy for me, but sometimes, it makes me infuriated in a saddened way because man chooses to try to control nature as it does its own species.

i jotted some thoughts down in my notebook:

How much power does nature have on man?

Or is the power nature has more than that of man?

Let the flower grow where it will be happiest.

Let the tree flow lopsided towards the sky.

Experiment - finding your way

“Let nature be your teacher” says William Wordsworth. So I did a walking tour and was curious what would happen, ready to learn. Would something happen at all? Doing a walking tour today is an experiment: we live in a different world than the Romantics did. Although the park is round the corner there is still the traffic that you can hear. And it is just a park, not the overwhelming nature in its full size as I experienced it when I was hiking in the Alps. There you are alone – except for your partner(s) – and you can hike without seeing anyone else for hours. This makes it easier to get a feeling for nature and the surrounding. But okay, the park is the closest place to go. And maybe this could be the first thing nature teaches me: no matter where you are, you can learn when you are ready for it. The second challenge: to enjoy the tour and not thinking about it as a waste of time, not thinking about the lot of work you have to do, not thinking about anything else. Just enjoying the moment, thinking of where I am. Right now. Nothing else matters, nothing else should matter.
In the park. First of all: confusion. What to do, where to go? So I just started walking, trying not to think too much. My gaze wandered from one place to another one. I am still impressed by the oaks. So big, so old, so strong. Despite, or because of it, they are beautiful in their own way. I know that there are different types of oaks but I do not know the difference. Does it matter?
Then I saw the new planted trees. They were small. Hard to imagine that they will become as big as the other oaks. Was it Wordsworth again who said that nature is a perfect circle in itself? If this is the case, I wonder why humans (have to) act by planting new trees? Seeing this I had to think about something at home. In Germany, I live close to a wood. A terrible storm destroyed a lot of it; the hills looked bare, hurt and vulnerable. Some places were not afforested again to see what nature would do. One year later, these places were full of foxgloves. You saw a sea of flowers in every tonality of purple. It was a wonderful view. This picture in my mind led me to think about Blake: you have to destroy in order to create something new. And so did nature.
The best way to get in contact with nature is to touch it. Feel the bark of a tree, smell the different odors. I got the impression that seeing, watching is not enough. I need my other senses as well. I climbed a tree. This was another challenge. Do I have the heart to climb this way? Am I brave enough to climb at all? By experiencing nature, I experience myself. This feels good!
Close to a bench is a flag in-ground. It says:

"Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16).

I was on a walking tour so I tried to pay special attention to a lot of things. Would I have seen the flag otherwise? “Ask where the good way is” – I do it every day, every day I try to find my way. And so, nature reminds me of it - although the flag was man-made. But I was ready to learn, so I experienced. Is it this what nature teaches us?

MEDITATION W_LK

First off, I do not want to come of as overly cynical, I am grateful that a place as beautiful as Audubon Park exists for us to enjoy, but I stumbled upon something on my walk that was simply too ironic to ignore.
This archway reading "Meditation Walk" (the A is now missing), marks the entrance to the Heymann Memorial Conservatory, which was a botanical display initiated in 1884 along with Horticulture Hall. In 1898, a golf course portioned off a great expanse of the free space in which the display existed. Upon meeting this archway, I laughed at what I saw through what was supposed to be the portal to a peaceful world of tranquil outdoors reflection. The scene I witnessed: a group of hard-boiled-egg-bellied men on the aforementioned golf course, waddling to and from their golf carts, adjusting their khakis, groaning about some new lawsuit as they lined up to tap their little white balls; all this framed with the iron-working of the arch. The mood was anything but meditative; nature only existed as a putting green. This could very well be these men's only contact with nature, "getting out for 9 holes"; the thought crossed my mind that if there had been electrical outlets in the tree trunks, these men surely would have plugged their laptops into them.

I sound rather biting, but at that moment, I felt angry and I wanted to criticize these men straight to their face. Alas, I was on a meditative walk in "nature," I was not there to talk to people, so I continued on my way wondering how that archway had become so inane, about "What man has made of man." The park today is a far cry from the same area which would have been experienced by the romantics. It was difficult to see those oaks, the same oaks that they saw, in the context of joggers who only had thirty minutes to get in their workout, in the context of casual utility. These trees no longer stand as focal points or entryways into worlds of imaginative bliss, but as the backdrop to the daily grind, simply something nice to glance at as you come round your third lap. We have filled our lives with the unnecessary and the transient, to the point that we do not even have time to be with ourselves, in our own minds. The romantics took the time to get out of this world and into the world of nature which does not care whether or not you have only written four pages of that eight page paper. In nature, everything comes into focus, the frivolities of man made reality peel away like layers of cheap paint. All our stresses, our commitments, the schedules upon which we base our everyday are constructs, things that could be dropped in a split second and the world would continue. Something I briefly jotted down while I paused on my walk:

Men hold fast to sentiments
that will not save them.
The shaggy tree that leans just so,
the grass that nips at its roots,
the duck that guides
the green blades to water's edge,
they will all eventually die.
Never to come back,
never to be mourned,
never aware they were there at all.
Men hold fast to sentiments
that will never save them.

Not a good poem, but definitely a reflection of my immediate sentiments during the walk.

Meditation

Adding to the long list of contradictions attributed to the ideologies of William Blake we recently touched upon the differences of sight and vision as an extension of the body functioning as the prison of the soul. Picture your face, your outward signifier of social difference. Corporeal sight functions as a way of internalizing the physical world around us. I see you, that tree, and those telephone poles and I understand that I am seeing such objects. The instant my eyes set upon an object, my brain automatically interprets, reasons what that object is. It becomes real to me, exists in my immediate reality. When I close my eyes, however, that reality does not go away. Just because I can not see your face does not mean that your face no longer exists in my perceived reality. It remains in my memory, in my imagination, which exists beyond the tangible world. Blake argues that man is blinded in a sense by corporeal sight; that the world can be experienced more fully through imaginative vision. Imagination pushes us beyond the bounds of reason and exposes that reason itself is bounded.

I think that the most immediate way in which to explore outside the bounds of reason is through meditation. The Romantics may not have called their walks through nature meditation, but that is definitely what they were doing. Contemporary life does not always lend to the physical exploration of natural settings, so meditation offers a sort of out of body experience that can happen in your own home. I always thought of meditating just as a way for the body to relax, a calming experience rather than an internal exploration. My sister-in-law encouraged me to start meditating for a half hour or so every day to help with anxieties and stress, etc. But then she came over with a guided meditation of past life regressions and asked if I was interested (she was doing a paper for one of her graduate classes). I thought that it would be fun to try, but I didn't think that anything could actually happen because I have never really been able to relax enough to be hypnotized. But it turned out to be an amazing exercise in allowing the imaginative mind to overtake your corporeal body, and all rationality or reason aside, explore parts of the mind that I didn't think accessible.

It began as all guided meditations do, dark room, very quiet and relaxed setting, breathing exercises to bring about the most relaxing state. Her voice soothed and quieted my thoughts, focused only on a bright light. As the regression continued, she eventually led me to a door, and as the door opened the threshold of reason and imagination was crossed. Asking descriptive questions about my surroundings, she encouraged me to describe all that I was seeing (silently of course). Where was I? What environment surrounded me? What was I wearing? Was I male or female? Going into this regression, of course I thought about what kind of individual it would be cool to think that I was in a past life. Of course I thought of great women throughout history, in the style of Elizabeth or Marie Antoinette. I can with absolute honesty say that the vision I had during this meditation was the furthest thing from my mind possible. I was standing on the bank of a river, surrounded by green, an ancient temple in the distance. I could feel the cool wind on my naked body. I looked down at my hands, large, dark working hands. I knew that I was male. I didn't see my body, I just understood that I was male and I was naked. I was jerked awake from the vision and I sat up, my sister-in-law curiously asking if I had seen anything. Had the regression worked? And I was silent. My mind was trying to reason what I had just experienced. But I couldn't.

Throughout reading Blake in this class I have been thinking about this experience. I don't necessarily believe that I was actually a man in some ancient civilization (I latched on to Mayan civilization for some reason), but I think that it makes me feel what Blake is trying to express when he says that reason is bounded and that imagination allows us to bridge that boundary.

SUVs Aren't All That Bad

Of all of the mind boggling interpretations of our Romantic readings and complex discussions, this statement from the first day made a particular impact on my way of thinking about this course: Romantics experienced their world by walking. So simple. I know. Nonetheless, it posed a particularly obvious question: How do I experience my world? Digesting the question, I got into my car to go home when the answer suddenly dawned upon me. I’ll leave walking to the Romantics; I prefer driving.

A few years ago, driving represented the necessary evil to getting anywhere. It was a nuisance, and I avoided it at all costs. Recently, though, I’ve come to appreciate my car as a place where I can collect and organize thoughts, the portal to peace of mind. Since the semester began, I find myself overwhelmed with all of the information thrown at me in class, particularly Romanticism and Apocalypse: Literature and Critical Theory. And while I cannot sit here and recite all of the complicated particulars of class, I can assure you that this constant state of confusion has been more than beneficial to the way that I evaluate the world while driving. Even though I don’t come to any concise conclusions, I nonetheless find solace in my attempts. Reflecting while driving becomes a strange experience in itself though. My best thinking is done in a state of complete thoughtlessness, windows down, music up, hand swimming smoothly through the air.

Through the polarities of thought and thoughtlessness, I’m able to escape to a place unattainable by anyone else. Who knew that a car could provide such an escape? These thoughts particularly came to mind when reading Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” namely this line: Importance makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius. Always driving around New Orleans, I know all too well of these “crooked roads,” though they take more of the form of potholes and protuberances in the roads. Created from the tension between the potentially smooth ride my car can provide and the streets that prevent this from happening, the perfect ride occurs, perfect because of its contradiction-driven energy. The ride may not be stereotypically smooth, and passengers can expect at least one gut-wrenching jolt to avoid a flat tire. However, these jolts remind of us that we are constantly in flux with the roads on which we drive, in flux with the world around us. The world’s roads come in a variety of lengths, types, and conditions and help serve as a reminder that not everything is laid out before us; we sometimes have to take a different route that may not be as smooth and provides a challenge. The rational car brings us along the network of imaginative roads, destination unknown