Wordsworth

Walking may ache the soles, but certainly benefits the soul. I am curious about the human condition, you may have picked up on this if you follow my blog. Since losing my pigtails I have wondered about what it is that is the ‘isness’ of me, and by extension, the ‘youness’ of you. Where is the location of my personality? What is soul ? How much consiousness does a dog have? How much self awareness does a dog have? My dog seems to have as much of a personality as I do, he sulks, he talks ( really), and he has days where he is willing to socialise with his canine companions and days when he is not. So how do I know that? By living with him. And if dogs exhibit these capacities, then what about sheep and cows, birds and lizards?

As I was walking by the falls that you can see in the accompanying picture, I was considering why water holds such a fascination for me, and I know I am not alone in that. Water, fire , clouds are all non animal, non plant entities that fascinate, and I think that may be because they somehow connect the consciousness with a plane of thinking that elevates us beyond the everyday business of supporting ourselves. Water moves, it’s fluidity, it’s flux are not just a metaphor of living, they ARE living. By experiencing the ‘isness’ of water, we are in a different consciousness that is meditative, restorative. I wonder if this is the stuff of religious ecstasy. As I was mesmerised by the action of one small waterfall, and moved my gaze to the right, I was aware of the whole landscape in my view shifting, as though it were breathing, it moved within my looking upon it. Now I know that that hallucination was most likely due to a slight astigmatism, it was a product of my brain compensating for a flaw in my eyesight. Knowing that doesn’t make the feelings of awe and contentment any less, but it does preclude the paranormal explanation of me being in a ‘magical’ situation. For me, nature is the magic, the doorway to a consciousness that unites the livingness of everything within it. Simples. I run to the poets, and here is Wordsworth, and an excerpt from’ LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR,’ July 13, 1798.

And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,…

And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

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