APW: Listening (Podcasts + Wind)

I have been working outside building a nature trail in Weaverville, approximately 20 miles north of Asheville. The setting is beautiful: hand crafted wooden houses, gardens and orchards and streams running through the land, hundred acres of forest in conservation, mountains of varying slopes, abundance and diversity of flora and fauna.  As I work, my ears are either listening to the breeze makes its way through the trees, brush the brittle leaves against each other, birds communicating to each other in a world we know little of, the silence away from the internal and external human chatter, or I am wearing headphones. In which case, I enter the world of Podcasts (primarily Radiolab, Backstory, Onbeing and 99% Invisible). 

These podcasts have become a weekly meditation.  They are very well produced, tremendously engaging and raise more questions than answers.  Blending great storytelling through captivating narratives, professional sound editing, objective journalism, and scientifically backed facts and true stories around the globe.  I am brought back to when entertainment was engaged with auditory rather than visual senses. One day I am transported to the day a 27 year old Mayan deaf-mute recognized that language exists and broke down in tears before wanting to learn the name of everything (Words ­– Radiolab)!  Or to a newsroom in East Africa where a young journalist from Nairobi questions an American government official whether they are ‘serious’ about what they say, meaning are you putting your money where your mouth is, putting his life on the line with this question (Translation – Radiolab).  Then I am transported to the 60s where an innovative design engineer invented the computer mouse.  His vision was for using a computer a to be a learned skill that the user engages with differently over time as your understanding of it improves (Of Mice and Men – 99% Invisible).  Though that lab is still operational and his ideas of global networking (google docs and skype) are coming to fruition in the last decade, his name and ideas were overshadowed by Steve Jobs, who designed computer technology with the goal to simplify everything, thus shaping the direction of the tech world to an easy to access user-friendly interface.  This story was sprung by the advent of all the Youtube videos displaying babies operating iPads.  These 2 year olds are not geniuses.  They are no brighter than the 2 year old a decade or century ago.  It is the world that has evolved, not the human, and this I find to be a very interesting distinction. 

Would you agree that it is always the environment that dictates growth and lessons?  Consider history.  If I am wrong, please reference a story that contradicts (or reinforces) this thought?  When I think of this, I am very humbled.  With a reverence to the natural world, for its intrinsic value and its influence on the social world.   This is one of the reasons I am trying to grow my depth of understanding of various sciences, primarily Ecology and Biology (focusing on plant communities). 

With more focused study, and a greater history of understanding, we are able to delve deeper into subjects.   Some would argue we have created an enhanced toolset.  Others might say it is the mind and that heart that truly guides and we are further removed from these warm lights that guide us in cold, dark nights.  Either way, I am certain that we have lost many ancient practices, including resting, zooming out and taking in the view.

The goal of modern society, as I see it, is to continually improve itself, and it teeters the edges of what is possible.  We’ve got a rush of people skirting towards the cliffs, both geographically and metaphorically speaking, creating a lot of room in the center.  When we are centered, we may see clearly and reach our greatest state of being.

Is our herding towards the edge free will, or a determined construct?  I am reading The Garden of Emuna, and I wonder, if everything is in fact the will of Ha Shem, how then to relate to the larger destructive patterns that exist.  I have a personal peace, though as I exist in this context, I wonder what direction to take, how I should interact with all the sizable communities on this planet.   This question does not gnaw at me, as I know where I am now is where I need to be.  Though the question certainly surfaces when I interact with the globe through current available methods of communication.

This is one of the reasons why I find listening to be so guiding.  Listening to both the social and natural world, while applying your own objective and subjective filters, to find and walk your path.  Observing and interacting.  Disturbing the norm, then observing, interacting, and reflecting.  Always listening, in the present.  Food for thought.  For you, for me.



I host all of human potential.

I am an accidentally cultivated expression, 

a Reflection of hundreds of selves, 

Thousands of suns / Millions of galaxies.

In this counteracting,

Integration of Thrust and Patience,

Gravity begets gravity begets the core

Becoming lighter (in dreams)

Is this the direction of inclination?

Of social breeding?

Of planetary concern?

And one more question

to ponder Down the lonely road

(bestowed with interdependent biota)

If life is infinite restraint,

Is Love letting go?

-MK