Lindsay Baer (c) 2006
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The Ecologist

Life, life, life, is more than just my or your obtuse theories about it,
says the moving pictures. Which is of course, true.
I think I would like to live someday where I can see tides,
where I can learn the movements of the sphere I am living in
without an obtuse angle to guide my eye.

I want it to spin, heavier at one end, swirling and full.
Rising in on my sandy toes and see amidst a natural rhythm,
my own emptiness, my own silence;
for in the voice of gulls, of fish, and golden lobsters clinging to nets --
I hear my own inner talking
An eco-essence that shines from within like the sun
and warms the paths that have been tread in an act to find meaning.

O when do we become tired of being strangers?
Of walking about unnoticed, pretending we don’t matter,
that we are singularities. What a selfish bean am I,
with no magic left to sprout, I do not grow to the realm of giants,
I have instead confined such stories to the back of the soul
where the light can not reflect-- cannot be absorbed.
I hear them tell me this is safer.

We tell other stories that make darker things grow and
stifle the organs of perception,
like an oil slick on the skin of seals,
the gills of fish filled with hardened matter that molts scales
and measures per ounce the insignificant caw of organic seasons.

We dominate to make believe that we are beloved by the clockmaker.
Time is of no consequence, J says, it is a learning mechanism,
but we have become too mechanistic,
too caught in the cogs that count seconds passing.
We do not tinker with life life life as we do gears,
and when we try, the coil creaks,
the crystal blinds us and our eyes stare at white light and imagines
a ticking that sets the rhythm of the heart center.
A pulsation that mathematics can’t reach
but traces over with patterned memorial fingertips:
callused and used and weathered.

We remember our walking sticks
and the rough rises of the mountain path that made us miss our breath,
but only when it is missing do we recognize
our love for what inspires us. Without which we expire,
exhale and crumble, like rocks under moss, underwater,
under wind, we are polished by the breath that warms us,
speaks in languages we have forgotten,
too late for this life life life.

We stare down at our wristwatches, and upon second and minute hands
count our day. We cannot wait for it to be over.
Because we do not sit and visit with our own reconnaissance,
but shut ourselves into towers of our own division
and look down at patchwork like quilts,
ignoring colors as impetus and instead map in order to know.
We, so very uninformed, kill the explorer.
And he huddles in the background or sinks
Slowly amongst red reeds that drowns Egyptians
and their wheel and others march between the space
where hydrogen and air made water.

We escape into mistranslation, and where once we walked in river reeds,
we now are covered in red, stained by choices.
A monk’s hand catches us in our spirit.
I wonder if the fisherman sees such when nets rise up
with silver slippery bodies, glimmering in their fear of death
And like any light, is snuffed out.
And the lighthouse drowns in the deep of night
and ships, creak off the rocks, their perception of land slighted
by the sand bars they did not know under low tides lay there sleeping.

O yes we could measure lives in many ways
By time, by coffee spoons, and so many peaches,
by mountains conquered, and sunrises listened to,
a silence that was so full of our communication, eye to eye and nose to nose,
sharing lung capacity.
I am open to investigating pine trees, scouting sycamores,
surveying beaches, inspecting the fashions of mist,
their long grey-blue dresses.

I have tried to stop twice already but there is something
in this ecosystem that is me, that is innately not myself that keeps me
poised and watching the way we do the story we have heard a thousand times.
We know each page of the storybook printed with pictures.
We know when and where there was a misstep.
We can feel the meter is off.
Yet we are unaware of the tilt of planetary balance,
the empty spaces,
the vacancy of species,
we are upending ourselves and cannot see we are falling.
Perhaps because we have grown so accustomed to it.

Falling in love,
from grace,
out of favor,
into money,
into despair,
into depths of down, down, down.
This life, life, life is still so mysterious, and yet
this is not enough. Mystery is not to be trusted,
magic is dead to us,
we buried it with atomic fusion, and we proved life
was expendable. For what?
Expend, upend, exhale.

No room, no room: those trees are blocking my view of the city.
It used to be a useless valley but look what we’ve done.
We’ve made the space useful, he says.
To which the reply must be: I thought being space was purpose enough.
But here we see the twinkling lights and are mesmerized,
and this is understandable,
but the sadness is, we have mistook the manmade beauty for stars.

We forget to remind ourselves that the microcosm exists
no matter how many times we trip not seeing the rock.
We blame it on our own feet, and do not look up ever again.
We cobble shoes that shine to remind us
what we are missing. Not breath alone, now but light too.
This life, life, life spins on and here I am wishing
on tides and skipping stones: and I am looked down
upon from tips of noses, that I am not progressive,
I do not desire corner offices. I want my mountains back,
and with wild wilderness where wild creatures roam and
create bumps in the nights, and
questions of whooooo in the winter.
The owls always ask too many questions.
There is but one solution.
And we wonder why extinction smiles back at us.

The following is confiscated (borrowed) from http://www.sanatansociety.org/ayurveda_home_remedies/ayurveda_three_gunas.htm 

 

According to the ayurveda, medicines and foods are sattvic, rajasic or tamasic or a combination of these gunas.The gunas are three fundamental attributes that represent the natural evolutionary process through which the subtle becomes gross. In turn, gross objects, by action and interaction among themselves, may again become subtle. Thus the three gunas are defined as :

Sattva : Essence (subtle)
Rajas : Activity
Tamas : Inertia (gross)

People equally can be more or less dominated by one of the three gunas and an important way to regulate these gunas in body and mind is through ayurvedic cooking :

Sattvic foods :

• Are fresh, juicy, light, unctuous, nourishing, sweet and tasty.
• Give the necessary energy to the body without taxing it.
• The foundation of higher states of consciousness.
• Examples : juicy fruits, fresh vegetables that are easily digestible, fresh milk and butter, whole soaked or also sprouted beans, grains and nuts, many herbs and spices in the right combinations with other foods,…

Rajasic foods :

• Are bitter, sour, salty, pungent, hot and dry.
• Increase the speed and excitement of the human organism.
• The foundation of motion, activity and pain.
• Examples : sattvic foods that have been fried in oil or cooked too much or eaten in excess, specific foods and spices that are strongly exciting, …

Tamasic Foods :

• Are dry, old, decaying, distasteful and/or unpalatable.
• Consume a large amount of energy while being digested.
• The foundation of ignorance, doubt, pessimism, …
• Examples : foods that have been strongly processed, canned or frozen and/or are old, stale or incompatible with each other - meat, fish, eggs and liquor are especially tamasic.

 

Saints and seers can survive easily on sattvic foods alone. Householders that live in the world and have to keep pace with its' changes also need rajasic energy. They ought to keep a balance between the sattvic and rajasic foods and try to avoid tamasic foods as much as possible.