To dream of peace

This morning, my friend Mary sent me an email with a link to a video from a documentary, “Playing for Change: Peace Through Music”. It moved me, it inspired me, it made me think. My intent here is not to debate politics or beliefs, but I’m often concerned with both. And when I see something like this, I’m reminded of the words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”

But no, of course we can’t. We all wrestle with duality. Good and evil, light and dark, night and day, yin and yang, positive and negative, young and old, win and lose, here and there, up and down, hot and cold, hope and despair—war and peace. Religions are founded on it, wars fought over it, philosophies based on it.

There is no Peace On Earth, because there is no peace within. And so we dream.

Playing For Change: Song Around the World “Stand By Me”

I know exactly what you mean. Peace is a complex notion. One word really doesn’t do it justice in my mind. To me, peace is not the absence of duality, freedom from conflict, or an emotionally seascape without waves. Peace implies a state dynamic equilibrium between these dualities – they ebb and flow without changing the character of the whole system. I lifted this philosophy from my favorite poem, Corson’s inlet by A.R. Ammons:

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning

to the sea,

then turned right along

the surf

rounded a naked headland

and returned

along the inlet shore:

it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,

crisp in the running sand,

some breakthroughs of sun

but after a bit

continuous overcast:

the walk liberating, I was released from forms,

from the perpendiculars,

straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

of thought

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends

of sight:

I allow myself eddies of meaning:

yield to a direction of significance

running

like a stream through the geography of my work:

you can find

in my sayings

swerves of action

like the inlet’s cutting edge:

there are dunes of motion,

organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance

in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:

but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events

I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting

beyond the account:

in nature there are few sharp lines: there are areas of

primrose

more or less dispersed;

disorderly orders of bayberry; between the rows

of dunes

irregular swamps of reeds

though not reeds alone, but grass bayberry, yarrow, all . . .

predominantly reeds:

I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries,

shutting out and shutting in, separating inside

from outside: I have

drawn no lines:

manifold events of sand

change the dune’s shape that will not be the same shape

tomorrow,

so I am willing to go along, to accept

the becoming

thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends establish

no walls:

by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek

to undercreek: but there are no lines though

change in that transition is clear

as any sharpness: but “sharpness” spread out,

allowed to occur over a wider range

than mental lines can keep:

the moon was full last night: today, low tide was low:

black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk

of air

and, earlier, of sun,

waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact,

caught always in the event of change:

a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals

and ate

to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab,

picked out the entrails, swallowed the soft-shelled legs, a ruddy

turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits:

risk is full: every living thing in

siege: the demand is life, to keep life: the small

white blacklegged egret, how beautiful, quietly stalks and spears

the shallows, darts to shore

to stab —- what? I couldn’t

see against the black mudflats—a frightened

fiddler crab?

the news to my left over the dunes and

reeds and bayberry clumps was

fall: thousands of tree swallows

gathering for flight:

an order held

in constant change: a congregation

rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable

as one event,

not chaos: preparations for

flight from winter,

cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, wings rifling the green clumps

beaks

at the bayberries

a perception full of wind, flight, curve,

sound:

the possibility of rule as the sum of rulelessness:

the “field” of action

with moving, incalculable center:

in the smaller view, order tight with shape:

blue tiny flowers on a leafless weed: carapace of crab:

snail shell:

pulsations of order

in the bellies of minnows: orders swallowed,

broken down, transferred through membranes

to strengthen larger orders: but in the large view, no

lines or changeless shapes: the working in and out, together

and against, of millions of events: this,

so that I make

no form of

formlessness:

orders as summaries, as outcomes of actions override

or in some way result, not predictably (seeing me gain

the top of a dune,

the swallows

could take flight—some other fields of bayberry

could enter fall

berryless) and there is serenity:

no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,

or thought:

no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:

terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities

of escape open: no route shut, except in

the sudden loss of all routes:

I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will

not run to that easy victory:

still around the looser, wider forces work:

I will try

to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening

scope, but enjoying the freedom that

Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,

that I have perceived nothing completely,

that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

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4 thoughts on “To dream of peace”

Mary says:

10 December 2008 at 11:17 am

I don’t know where I would be without my dreams but I sure would like to see the world find peace and maybe the people will find alittle peace within by passing that link around. It had me in tears also!

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kasie says:

11 December 2008 at 1:26 pm

That was an amazing video. It was so touching to see all those musicians from all around the world joined together in song. Thanks for sharing.

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twinpapa says:

19 December 2008 at 9:44 am

I know exactly what you mean. Peace is a complex notion. One word really doesn’t do it justice in my mind. To me, peace is not the absence of duality, freedom from conflict, or an emotionally seascape without waves. Peace implies a state dynamic equilibrium between these dualities – they ebb and flow without changing the character of the whole system. I lifted this philosophy from my favorite poem, Corson’s inlet by A.R. Ammons:

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning

to the sea,

then turned right along

the surf

rounded a naked headland

and returned

along the inlet shore:

it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,

crisp in the running sand,

some breakthroughs of sun

but after a bit

continuous overcast:

the walk liberating, I was released from forms,

from the perpendiculars,

straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

of thought

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends

of sight:

I allow myself eddies of meaning:

yield to a direction of significance

running

like a stream through the geography of my work:

you can find

in my sayings

swerves of action

like the inlet’s cutting edge:

there are dunes of motion,

organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance

in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:

but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events

I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting

beyond the account:

in nature there are few sharp lines: there are areas of

primrose

more or less dispersed;

disorderly orders of bayberry; between the rows

of dunes

irregular swamps of reeds

though not reeds alone, but grass bayberry, yarrow, all . . .

predominantly reeds:

I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries,

shutting out and shutting in, separating inside

from outside: I have

drawn no lines:

as

manifold events of sand

change the dune’s shape that will not be the same shape

tomorrow,

so I am willing to go along, to accept

the becoming

thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends establish

no walls:

by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek

to undercreek: but there are no lines though

change in that transition is clear

as any sharpness: but “sharpness” spread out,

allowed to occur over a wider range

than mental lines can keep:

the moon was full last night: today, low tide was low:

black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk

of air

and, earlier, of sun,

waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact,

caught always in the event of change:

a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals

and ate

to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab,

picked out the entrails, swallowed the soft-shelled legs, a ruddy

turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits:

risk is full: every living thing in

siege: the demand is life, to keep life: the small

white blacklegged egret, how beautiful, quietly stalks and spears

the shallows, darts to shore

to stab —- what? I couldn’t

see against the black mudflats—a frightened

fiddler crab?

the news to my left over the dunes and

reeds and bayberry clumps was

fall: thousands of tree swallows

gathering for flight:

an order held

in constant change: a congregation

rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable

as one event,

not chaos: preparations for

flight from winter,

cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, wings rifling the green clumps

beaks

at the bayberries

a perception full of wind, flight, curve,

sound:

the possibility of rule as the sum of rulelessness:

the “field” of action

with moving, incalculable center:

in the smaller view, order tight with shape:

blue tiny flowers on a leafless weed: carapace of crab:

snail shell:

pulsations of order

in the bellies of minnows: orders swallowed,

broken down, transferred through membranes

to strengthen larger orders: but in the large view, no

lines or changeless shapes: the working in and out, together

and against, of millions of events: this,

so that I make

no form of

formlessness:

orders as summaries, as outcomes of actions override

or in some way result, not predictably (seeing me gain

the top of a dune,

the swallows

could take flight—some other fields of bayberry

could enter fall

berryless) and there is serenity:

no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,

or thought:

no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:

terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities

of escape open: no route shut, except in

the sudden loss of all routes:

I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will

not run to that easy victory:

still around the looser, wider forces work:

I will try

to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening

scope, but enjoying the freedom that

Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,

that I have perceived nothing completely,

that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

LikeLike

1. Linda says:
  
  20 December 2008 at 6:06 am
  
  That’s a great poem, Dan. I like the idea of balance, as opposed to a medium. How boring life would be were we all the same. I would rather savor the differences, while recognizing the commonalities. It’s the judgment of which is right, which is best, that keeps us from attaining peace.
  
  LikeLike