Untitled (April 17th, 2023)
Saturday we lounged about, went for a long walk—at it’s apex we walked into a goose nest. We travelled down a one-way path to an overlook, and in doing so, had crossed directly through its nest. Going, we didn’t notice. Realizing we needed to walk the same path in order to get back, however, we found that we needed to cross back through the nest. Only this time, the mother goose was squatting on her eggs, and a father goose was standing as her protectorship—he would not let us pass. Trying to walk through him, however, proved the wrong course of action, and he charged me, wings outspread, mouth open, and hissing, almost in audible english, cursing me like the wind. He lifted off of the ground and flew at me, and my field of view narrowed; I was ready to fight him off with my bare hands:
“When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.” -HDT
How I wish that had been me in the moment, and how difficult it really would have been to think to whistle for him as he charged me. “Say, not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.” Instead, I was ground to reality, my corporeality, my biology: optic nerves and sympathetic tracts. I was being absolutely out circled by this goose. And yet we in that moment us two were on the same plane, that of instinct. As he beat his wings and hissed, I was ready to disappear, only my senses remaining in tact. Yet if I had simply whistled after him, had I viewed the world as larger than just the hands and stick I was holding directly in front of me (quite foolishly, I will add, as it only enraged the goose more), I would have noticed that he was in fact not charging me at all, or at least not in the sense that I was imagining. This is the true accuracy of Thoreau’s odd little koan—he’s channeling the realization that we must all make to open up into our own sense of attention and experience. Notice more than the hands in front of you! Whistle for the world, realize that no one is chasing you, there is no world separate that you feel necessary to fear and conquer! Have the likeness of a judo toss, and lean into the weight of the world—only then can you toss it over your shoulder. How difficult it is to take this Zen philosophy to heart! So easy to read and be amazed, to feel the literary tricks and traps fly about overhead, but how hard it is to wake up, feel real lucidity for a few moments, only to be caught once again in this web of the past, and to be carried straight downstream to the “future” of one’s mind’s eye. If only I was better at whistling, if only I was ready to accept the wideness of the world for what it actually is, I could truly understand Thoreau’s challenge. But “if only,” is too harsh sounding—I have made quite a bit of progress this year, and I can’t forget that either. Maybe “making progress” is a trap in and of itself, but for now, I am okay with crawling out of one trap into the next. It may be a cruel double-bind we find ourselves tucked away in, to see this is both a start and and end, or maybe neither. Maybe to have one’s field of vision narrowed by an angry goose is actually to have it broadened. And maybe the hissing of the goose was actually the whistling of a wind chime, or the sound of the wind blowing itself perpetually outwards.