Songs from the Forest

So here I am. So here You are. So here we are. You and I meeting now like this. Your encounter with this text. Black ink on white paper. Deciphered by You.

Odeien tysixlet sjumdby
youfr omth bl ingarou
nd oftwter sdec.

Decoded from this jumbling around of twenty-six letters. Letters that become these words. These words that are the shadow of my consciousness, falling, here, now in front of You. This "I" that says, "Here am I." You encounter me but not I, You. I put a message in a book and hope, that somehow it will make its way to You. Hoping You will read it, understand it, feel it, respond to it, learn from it, grow with it.

I am sitting here typing, hoping, eventually, to make contact. Eventually. Contact. Contact with someone curious about the events in another's soul. Someone curious about the texture and shape of another's consciousness. Even another's unconsciousness. To listen for what is said as well as what is not said. And also what is said between the lines. And among the lines.

A famous Chinese philosopher named Lao Tzu, once said,

One who knows,
does not speak,
but one who speaks,
does not know.

This idea always haunts me as I write. It forces me to question my integrity, my authenticity. I ask myself: Does it mean that if I actually had discovered something that I wanted to share with You, I would, therefore, say nothing? But here I am saying something. By speaking to You, am I proving to You that I have nothing to say?

But does it follow then:

One who knows,
does not listen,
and one who listens,
does not know?

But of course that can't be so. So where does that leave us? If we were old friends, we might be sitting, silently, on a bench in a park somewhere, communicating, but saying nothing. But You and I are strangers and not old and dear friends. Since we are strangers I must trust in our common humanity. I must address our common experience. I must place my words, with their revelations of my consciousness and my unconscious, with their insights and confusions, with their illuminations and their mysteries, into a type of trust. Taking a risk. Exposing myself to an audience I cannot see, I cannot know. Leaping into the unknown. Afraid of falling.

Chuang Tzu, another Chinese philosopher said:

The purpose of words is to convey ideas.
When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
Where is the one who has forgotten words?
This is the person I would like to talk to.

I am using words to communicate with You yet I hope we don't become stuck fast in this net of words, or lost in this forest of semantics, but go beyond these words into ideas, beyond the ideas into some silent dance that is full of meaning.

So I write. I, who am the only witness to songs that I sing in the forest, when there is no one around to hear them. Then wonder to my self, "Did I sing my song?"

This writing becomes a record of them. Carved by my fingers, onto sheets of paper eight and a half by eleven inches. The words fill up the page carving out these pieces of meaning on the surface of a void. And even though You take meaning from them, they do not become empty. The meaning remains to be read another time, or by another person. Even by the same person at another time and with a different shape to their heart, to their soul.

But what exactly are you supposed to do with all of these words?

I suppose they are here for your amusement and entertainment, for your edification and understanding. And that can go on for forever and a day. Because on a clear page you can see forever, and forever seems pretty nice from this side of time/space. If you get my meaning. Forever is the absolute, the infinite, the eternal, and on a clear page it all makes sense.

Then on other days it makes no sense at all. On foggy days, what doesn't make sense is seen as a problem instead of the answer that it really is. On dreary days we forget that it is not supposed to always be clear, nor is it supposed to be always cloudy. Truth changes from one to the other then back again. Insight comes and goes. Confusion and despair come in like thunderstorms when lightening can strike us down. Like heat waves when the young and the weak among us can die of overheating. Like winter cold snaps that freeze the homeless where they lie. But still we would never appreciate the clouds without the sunshine. Except of course if we die of our cloudiness. As some of us often do. Even out here in the suburbs.

Do you mean what I see?

For example, how can it be that with so many doctors, both medical and philosophical, the patients are still sick? We doctors forgot how to teach ourselves to be patient. To accept the go of the flow and the flow of the go. To sing our songs in the forest even when there is no one around to hear them. We must first have this wisdom; only then might we be able apply it to our practice. Then our patients will be patient and will get better or will die, as it is written.

Written where exactly I don't remember. No, I do remember, it is on my wall. Or it was written on my wall. It said, "It is written." I gave it to a friend of mine when a friend of his died. It was written and he died. In the forest, with no one around to hear his song. He turned into a cloud one day because it was written.

First, we doctors, both philosophical and medical, have to be able to read the writing in the clouds, and on the wall, and then perhaps our patients will be patient, as they are supposed to be. As we are supposed to be.

"Well Doctor, cure yourself first."

Ok, I'll take some willow tea and call myself in the morning.

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