Fungi is the taxonomic kingdom including yeast, moulds, smuts, mushrooms, and toadstools; distinct from the green plants. From WordWeb.
Perhaps Walter in Singapore has something to say on the matter.
I don’t often think of being in the landscape however these past days I’ve had the opportunity to be just that. In the landscape, of the landscape.
To explain. Now and then there opens for me an opportunity to go off grid and spend time in a small retreat hut in the monastery grounds. So recovering, well by the way, from a cold and hearing the call to be less outwardly active I’ve carved out a few hours each day this week to hut dwell. A series of mini breaks, three or four hours here and there, to sit with nothing calling for attention.
As dawn comes to the valley, from dim glimmer through murky grey to misty glow, I’ve sat. And I’ve sat on the porch mid-day too, reciting a scripture. Intimate with the great sweep of the valley. An hour or two in the late afternoon, the sun first blazing in the window then dipping behind the hill. Evening, picking my way across the field in drizzle with headlamp batteries fading to nothing – and still finding my way. Deep blackness, inky black, with pin pricks of light. Are they near, or far? Is that one moving? It’s blinking. A plane? A satellite? A UFO?! With little or no illumination landscape takes off into a wholly other world of envisioning. After all sharp focus is only a very small part of our vision capacity.
So much of the time ones eyes are narrowed to sharp focus. On the screen, the phone book, notices on the notice board (bane of my life – where are my glasses!). Text and text and more text. So when there is not so much obvious need for sharp focus one can go wide screen. Be in the landscape. Allow corner-of-the-eye sight. Allow the eyes to roam wide and open, focused but not narrowed in on anything particular. Wholly in the landscape. Wholly the landscape.
With practice, even coming into a large room there can be an entering into a room-scape, rather than immediately narrowing ones beam, so to speak, to ones sitting or standing place. All rather interesting. But enough of this pondering. Take a look at these winning photographs from the Landscape photo of the year 2009 awards published on the BBC web site.
Thanks to Dave for the link – keep ’em coming Dave.
As Faustus begins his bargaining for fame and gain, my scanner highlights a phrase of what Faustus sees as one gain of making a deal with the devil: to be resolved of all ambiguities. Hmm-m-m, goes the scanner. And suddenly I become aware of an evolution in how I see ambiguity. It used to drive me crazy. It seems that this tension has fallen away for me somehow.
Jim has been in contemplative mood following a visit to the theater to see a neighbour play Faustus. See his post Living Ambiguity.
On a personal note: I’m currently allowing myself time and space to have a cold. It is a rare treat! This approach comes highly recommended for those who have the time. Who would have thought one could be happy and content while sneezing and wheezing into tissues.
As far as my Nancy and I are concerned, Jack is a local treasure. Actor, singer, raconteur, Jack is a member of a creative family that has brought laughter to the neighborhood. Jack has already helped us get reacquainted with Gilbert and Sullivan, so why not Christopher Marlowe?
Fast forward to the next evening: Nancy and I are sitting in the small theater of the Theater Arts building in the local university amidst the pre-show buzz and chatter. The man next to Nancy asks: Which child is yours? It’s a friendly crowd, here to witness and encourage.
Waiting to see Jack, I take in the stage setting. Angular, minimal, sharp contrasts between light and dark. As the play unfolds, a pattern of clever use of space and a smooth flow of complicated movements is established. Then there is Jack-as-Faustus: he acts with his whole body in a way that remains in harmony with his speech. And it’s a very physical part.
I also begin taking in the arc of the story. I came here because I appreciate Jack and Jack-as-Faustus, in turn, is bringing me back to the archetypal struggle between good and evil, right into the apparent separation between heaven and earth. That’s when I notice the scanner kicking in.
The scanner that I’m talking about here seems to lie below the surface of my self-awareness. I can’t describe it well, but it acts like a sort of software in my psyche that scans incoming data from all and any source. I can tell when it’s moved beyond an idle and is considering something more actively. This scanner seems to look for puzzle pieces, connections between things, perspectives that lead to wholeness; it has an inclination to look through to the Big Picture.
As Faustus begins his bargaining for fame and gain, my scanner highlights a phrase of what Faustus sees as one gain of making a deal with the devil: to be resolved of all ambiguities. Hmm-m-m, goes the scanner. And suddenly I become aware of an evolution in how I see ambiguity. It used to drive me crazy. It seems that this tension has fallen away for me somehow.
Hell, for me, is not an afterlife issue. I have a reputation with myself (and with Nancy and R.M. Mugo as well, I suppose) of moving in and out of hells on a regular basis. Hells of various depths and dimensions, from bristling to excruciating, come and go. And, likewise, heavens. I am trying, to the best of my ability in the moment, not to pursue or push away either. In that there is a contentment that reaches beyond both.
But there is a price, I find. Not a price that can be bargained for though, but a price that I have to live. Simply put: I must be willing to not know what is going to happen next. I’m not talking about paralysis here, this is not about fear. Well, it may, on occasion, require being with fear or insecurity but it’s not about being driven by fear or insecurity. Ambiguity has become for me an increase in possibility, a wider field of possible action. Life as one surprise after another, moment to moment to moment….
The scanner continues and notes a comment the servant demon Mephistopheles makes to Faustus: Hell has no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place…. All places shall be hell that is not heaven. Hmm-m-m, again. Sure feels that way when I’m mired in a hell realm. But there’s something else here: assuming the imperative to pick between heaven or hell as fundamentally real just might squeeze out any sensing of what is eternal in the present moment.
How can poor Faustus escape this split? Well, he doesn’t. And now I am back watching Jack-as-Faustus splayed on the ground in his death scene. He cries out to God for salvation and dies. A crowd of black-robed figures moves slowly toward him, the lead figure holding the contract Faustus has with the devil. The lights dim just as she reaches the body.
Look what I found in the walk-in fridge the other day. Read about this amazing vegetable and find out how to grow it.
This post is for Julie. Thought these little critters might fit into your gardening plans. At home or abroad…