Plunder

In the beginning was the wood. It took us much time to discover its uses. We ate its tough skin for roughage, we mashed its soft heart into pulp. We chopped it to bits, we rearranged them. We played games with it. Sometimes it was all that kept us afloat. Sometimes we structured them carefully and turned to them for shelter. As we learned what woods could do, we began to comprehend their value. At times we relied on them for everything necessary to survive – the fruit of a tree gave us sweet liquid and meaty flesh. The fragility of the dead still warmed us as it disintegrated in the flames. They grew to be almost sacred – the world as we knew it came to rely on them. We crafted them into signs and created many sounds from them – enabling us to communicate over vast spaces. We were capable of traveling quite far, able to reach one another over distances before considered impassable. Woods made this possible my dear! Some days I might spend hours simply admiring them – looking them over – taking them in. Each with its own fine shape, and own specific range of uses. Some were embellishments, some anchored the whole forest together, some provided seamless access or served as bridges to crawl carefully across great dangers. We constructed some for fences and walls – they helped us keep the unwanted out. Others we piled up like babble in the sheer joy of conflagration and release – it seemed they could life our heavy spirits like colorful smoke. Oh the woods, my darling, the woods! It is they that really enabled us to become what we are today. To reveal our capacities, our feelings and thoughts, intentions and dreams. In woods we could concoct our plans and rest in their leafy comfort. There are times when all one needs is woods. Things can seem overwhelming, catastrophic or of unmentionable sorrow or fright, and yet finding the right type of wood, or clinging to a wood that is kind and safe and strong can sometimes leverage us through great storms. My precious dear, learn as many woods as you can – make peace with them – seek out their countless paths that you might always have a place to go, a world to be.

At Risk

On December 10, 2012December 10, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes5 Comments

Why is it that what requires an army is always represented by one tiny little man? Or that incremental power leaves aside the human – “horsepower” – cannon?

Insurmountable odds left to a roll of the dice.

I used to not have patience for this game, the long slow proposition of loss dotted by occasional accidents of “victory.” Ever outnumbered on defense, I get it now. I’m 42 years old. The dice roll all day, and as the sides increase the odds go down and the stakes are higher.

Why even bother to play? It’s a question we ask regularly. Such a commitment of time, of energy, attention. So much spent twiddling thumbs or enduring loss or unwanted wins.

The world is enormous, and yet miniature, even to Legos.

You and me and you, my sons, miniscule players in a massive machine of rules we did not invent.

There must be a reason we play. I don’t believe we want to defeat one another. But the commitment. The attention and energy, the time. I’m pretty certain we want those things.

So we risk. Join in, gathering around what becomes a battlefield from a motivation of love, of loneliness, collaborations and deceits, treaties made and broken, a collective misplaced on a board.

Bon chance affection.

And another roll of the dice.

With something agreed from the start.