Reaching After Fact And Reason

Midsummer, uncertainties, mysteries and doubts

Midsummer has messed up my schedule, as so many neolithic folk have surely said. So here is this week’s The Crow, flapping in and perching a few days after the solstice. Hope you enjoy it.

Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash

1.

A giant soap bubble floats past on the breeze, shape shifting like a distant murmuration of glass birds, folding inward and outward, elongating and expanding, as if it were fully aware of its temporality and striving to experience its ephemeral lifespan to the full, hovering along, as fragile as a dream on the cusp of waking. It looks as deep as an ocean and as thin as a film of petrol, undulating between weight and lightness, permanent and perishable, a finely spun membrane drifting through time.

I find myself leaning toward the bubble, holding my breath, mesmerised, coaxing time itself to hold still. As if somehow I might tip the balance in the bubble’s favour, if only for a twinkle. But of course I merely witness the elemental impermanence of life as the liquid film collapses and the bubble slips behind the curtain of time. And there we are, the dog and I, left alone, staring at nothing but the pulsating potentiality of an effervescent empty space.

I intuitively understand the shifting, distorting nature of that bubble. I feel myself contorting and billowing and transforming accordingly, pummeled by my own internal world or under the gaze of others, as if any kind of attention were a breeze.

A train in the distance slices through the dawn chorus, dominating the soundscape with its metallic pitched howl and impatient rhythmic pounding, only to be drowned out itself by a large bee foraging the flowers trellised along the Falu red cabin I’m leaning against. The dog lies patiently in the grass, occasionally raising his head as the breeze brings some delectable wildness to his senses. The sun is struggling to find a way through the cloud, and I’m wondering where that bubble came from, when suddenly I see a child standing in the garden holding a stick and string contraption, like two fishing rods tied together, beside a bucket.

The dog catches sight of the child too, and raises a growl. I bid him to relax just as the interloper promptly draws the sticks together with the fluidity of a conductor, dipping the string into the bucket, leaning against her balance and widening her arms, she gently births another shimmering Jupiter-like entity toward the sun’s lemon grey corona. The dog and I are once more spellbound. The child, or whatever she is, doesn’t watch the bubble at all, but keeps her eyes fixed on us, intrigued by our spontaneous yielding to the beauty of the moment.

When I come to my senses and turn back, the child she is gone, slipping back behind the curtain of time perhaps, returning to the spirit world from whence she came? I do not know and I do not struggle with it, but instead I accept the enigmatic and ambiguous nature of the world that now saturates me as the corner of my eye catches the bubble imploding into a sparkling mist.

2.

Later, my love and I are sitting in a tiny restaurant, so close to the neighbouring tables that we’re all bumping elbows, although no one cares, captivated as we all are by the care and attention lavished on this meagre establishment.

The maître d’, a wiry man in his early sixties, recommends a dish from the blackboard of three choices and then sends over his son, the Sommelier, to pour tiny tastings into large glasses and encourage our education. The Saint Émilion, he advises, is the most satisfying accompaniment, and as the multiple layers of expertise uncover areas of my palate I had no idea existed, I nod with unnecessary embarrassment and acquiesce to his gentle grandeur.

This small place is run, or perhaps nurtured, by a father and son, who exude the only healthy version of pride, a blend of delight and dignity. They float about with graceful expertise, both fulfilling their tasks with the confidence of people who have felt love. There was no superiority or pretension in their manner, just a kindliness coming from a place of genuine care where the uninformed are treated with courtesy and a gentle nudge toward enlightenment. They deliver their knowledge and dishes with the demeanour of hard-working parents encouraging their children to sate themselves, a deep and ancient satisfaction taken in seeing the pleasure of others.

She and I make small talk, pointing out various eccentricities in our fellow diners and the decor, but mostly we’re lost in the moment, the flavours and textures and the craftsmanship. Although we both chose the same dish, we nonetheless describe and share our experience, obtaining confirmation or seeking to uncover some sensation that might go unnoticed alone.

We can’t really afford to dine out, but this is a special occasion, it’s midsummer and the planetary balance is about to topple back in its perpetual wobbling cycle of life. We’ve found ourselves in this tiny bistro, seemingly from another era where we are so grateful to be treated with such respectful hands and where the pride of artistry has nothing to fear from greed or profit. This is a place where humans work. Where humans eat. Where humans understand that diligence and patient nurturing brings forth excellence, joy and gratitude, which in any sane world would be enough.

And precisely because of this each moment is forged into us as we grow and expand and fold inward and outward like floating bubbles, all to aware of the elemental impermanence of things as the evening carries us all toward the slipway of time.

As we’re eating the ripe cheeses, I tell her about the child standing in the dawn light and the bubbles floating by and we fall into a conversation about what might be and what might not be, and how we project onto life that which we want, and how some of those projections are given more credence than others. While we are talking we do not reach for definitive answers or demand agreement from each other, but instead we play with the ideas and feelings of what might be. And I suggest I am coming to prefer the world as enigmatic and ambiguous. Where once I leaned toward certainty I now recognise that wisdom may well lie in enjoying these uncertainties, mysteries and doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

“I have no idea what an observer collapsing the wave function actually means, but Keats’s soul calls to me from the human realm and feels like truth”, I say, and she says, “you’re surely not campaigning for ignorance?”, and I say, “I’m just not sure if understanding the mechanics improves the ride”, and she laughs and says, “Still reaching after fact and reason I see”, and I laugh and swig the remnants of my glass and reluctantly we reach for the reality of the bill.

3.

We keep a vigilant eye, the dog and I, aware that we are not the only apparitions trespassing through this midsummer forest dawn. There might be or might not be a spirit child, playing with temporality and delicacy and beauty, toying with fluidity and relationship and the cyclical nature of life. I find myself wondering if this child might have something to say. Maybe she is gently nudging me toward a new knowing of some kind. I hear myself chuckling and feel my head shaking. Part of me is not impressed by all this foolishness.

The morning light is strengthening as the planet rolls toward the sun and its life giving rays once more saturate the rust and chocolate pines and thirsty birch trees shedding their rice paper bark. The limey green blueberry leaves are awash with diamond twinkles as the light is refracted through a mist of damp spiderwebs that cling like miniature macramé to the ever ripening black-blue starlight-frosted berries. There is the pungent smell of warm wood and pine needles and a resinous sweet scent of vitality above the deep rich odour of decay and decomposition below, a powerful perfume of a woody life and death.

I look at the dog, considering he is the nose in this minuscule clan, and see him fixed on a small gully where the soil is deep enough to support the tallest trees on this side of the river. He has seen something and he’s frozen in anticipation, waiting for my signal. I too, freeze and look down toward the dead still water and see a small figure standing on the shore, her arms stretched wide like albatross wings, her head thrown back, staring toward the heavens, bringing two sticks together that form a great petrol membrane around her like a shining igloo.

She pulled undulating membranes together with two flimsy sticks, as a band of young crows circled in the updraft calling to each other and the sun’s rays raced through the rusty pines, bouncing off the water. A low and deep murmur of swaying trunks and the high pitch rustling of leaves build a chorus as the figure seems to rise inside her bubble and drift across the lake.

“Can you see her?” I ask but the dog has left his post and darted toward the shoreline in pursuit of something and then I see a roe deer buck break cover and bound up the incline and away across the gorge with the dog in pursuit so I’m forced to whistle twice until the dog obliges and spins on his heels to return.

And then it is all gone, like a popped bubble, as the moment faded into itself and the circle of life turned once more toward the sun and I hear my love laughing and saying “Still reaching after fact and reason I see”, and I chuckle again and kneel down and put my hand on the dog’s head and sigh and breath in the beautiful aroma of life and death.