Koyaanisquatsi, by Philip Glass: Commentary & Inspirations by Jehana Silverwing

Released by Nonsuch Records (Warner), 1998.

"Ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi language), n. 1. Crazy life. 2. Life in turmoil. 3. Life disintegrating. 4. Life out of balance. 5. A state of life that calls for another way of living."

Cloudscape:
Awaken, determined for new beginnings. Again. This one, however, I promise to be different. I take in a banana (mellow, soothing) and that cup of coffee addiction (alertness), and resolve to walk. This time it is different -- I walk the path of un-winding, widdershins around the "block", resolving to leave the old and stale and that which is indeed out of balance somewhere behind me. And, yes, it is a process, not automatic, and requires periodic affirmation/dismissal.

There, on the roadway, I meet the trees, Virginia creepers or poison ivy spiralling upwards, choking off root-nourishments and sustinance. I see proud sycamores, distinctive bark, with leaves almost maple-like to the layperson -- today I especially note the sycamores. Tired ash trees, thirsty willows, majestic and anciently wise maples. I note these as well.

A German shepard stands in his driveway and watches me pass, jackrabbit ears. Decides to follow me. I remember all the stories I know of dogs attacking joggers, and wonder why he pays no attention to his territorial boundaries, or if he considers this whole near-mile "block" his boundary. Clicking clawpads behind me, following... never getting any closer, though. I wonder what to make of this sign. After awhile, he distracts himself, and follows me no longer.

I greet the only other people out, a woman with a brown shaggy dog almost as large as she, and a man in his yard with a (relatively) small brown and white dog who bounds after a brown and white bunny. The bunny escapes.

A quiet morn of what promises to be a scorcher of a humid day.

Prophecies:
I reflect... Koyaanisquatsi -- world out of balance. It is only June, and the Yarrow are blooming. Yarrow I associate with August, or late July. The plants that signal themselves by warmth are early this year -- the Dames' Rocket has long since moved on. Somewhere I've read that New England is turning about ten degrees warmer (yearly average temp) than it used to be -- a product of global warming? (Global warming is a product of averages -- average the planetary surface temperatures, and you will see what looks like a mild increase, as years move by. Sure, some isolated areas will decrease, some isolated areas will exhibit major increases, but the measurement itself looks at a mean effect -- and it can be mean.) Are we causing this? Is it part of a natural cycle? Both? Can we do anything to minimize our own effect on it, or has something been put into place which is now out of control? Or can we control it somewhat?

(If you've read enough of this website by now, you know I am not a black-and-white person -- my answer would tend towards the latter response.)

A state of life that calls for another way of living: How?

I suspect that the answer comes from within, first -- with the recognition that we do not live in a vacuum. Although tuning into the News Reports, the empty vacuum tubes of the ancient TV which crouches one-eyed Cyclops-like in my den -- I see the empty prophecies of the empty vision-void politicians with names of George W. Bush, Al Gore, Bob Barr, William Jefferson Clinton, Dan Quayle -- and I shudder and shudder at the vacuum we try to fill our voids with. A sickness that believes in easy black-and-white answers, in black-and-white "individual freedoms" (for their own kind), in black-and-white "family values" (for their own kind); a sickness that sees only one's own path towards these without the plurality and choice inherent in the very words themselves. (Do not mistake this: Pagans themselves can be and often are just as black-and-white and self-righteous about their own beliefs and dogmas as anyone else -- we just don't have major politicians yet... I'm convinced this is a personality trait, not a function of any given belief or non-belief system) Or a sickness with no point or purpose but expediency, power, and election/re-election, a vacuum of the mind, spirit and vision.

Vessels:
But are firm convictions antithetical to a true attitude of plurality of mind? Do they necessarily make for black-and-white thinking? Does a true attitude of plurality mean that any sort of behavior is thereby acceptable? A conundrum, but I think there are ways out of that self-inflicted (societally-encouraged?) box. For me, neither extreme is remotely true. I suspect we are asking ourselves the wrong questions.

It is not going to be easy. One path is indeed the spiritual, learning from our ancestors (ancestors of our familial pasts, ancestors of the lands upon which we reside, ancestors whose words and ways of living touch our inner cores). Learning that goes beyond the words and the dogmas -- and we all create dogmas, or learn to rely upon them -- crutches which may sometimes be necessary just as crutches were necessary when I broke my leg, and which may be necessary as a lifelong tool for others not so fortunate as to heal. A crutch is not necessarily a derogatory word. A dogma isn't necessarily a derogatory thing, although I submit that unexamined dogmas, just as the unexamined life, are terribly sad things.

Step outside, step outside of the box, the spinning incessancies.

I breathe in the air of the day, seeing my own four walls, and not quite clear myself on how to surmount/accept them. I can see, without exactly knowing what to do about this, that there are few easy answers, and certainly not to complex questions. I try to bring my own life into Balance and into Harmony and into constructive Will, and hope that maybe some of this bleeds over into the world around me; I try to take in from the world around me what is indeed already in a sense or state of Harmony and Balance and constructive Will, and meet more of my larger Tribe (in all walks of life -- Christian, Pagan, agnostic, atheist, gnostic, other) who search along similar directions. And as well build my connections to my personal closer Tribal Family who attempt to walk in harmony upon this Earth: which includes among others those with the spirit of Flambé at its strongest, and/or those who incorporate a Pictish / Scots-Gaelic / Brythonic spirit-calling on this foreign soil (which has also nourished and formed us -- thus I also hold honor to the Native American spirits of this space). And those, of course, who work to integrate integrity into a core harmony of spirit.

Koyaannisquatsi:
Read from the Hopi prophecies. Watch the movie from which the music of Koyaanisquatsi comes.

Learn to see. Learn to study. Learn to act.