Inside the meadow there was a stand of trees and inside there was the cool shade and whimsical winds sometimes made a sound through the branches. I stood there and rested, halfway through my sojourn exploring nature. There were times outside of there that blue butterflies were thriving and many grasshoppers bloomed, plus some spiders.
Up above in the summers a blue sky often, but, if it turned and became overcast and that atmospheric energy entered the air, that sort of ‘before the storms’ feeling, well that was just as good as I wasn’t that far from the paths that led out and it was also an interesting change to feel that charge in the air.
And in the four seasons, that area was a dutiful and true friend, for it at its base never wavered. I think I realize now that the truth of the truth of the truth of the real and actual truth is that that area became along the way a special and loved and loving destination, a marriage of sorts between a poet and the lands where the walking would help the poet go a symbolic and literal step more towards becoming a mystic.
Spirit message. Intuition. Renewal of the mind, body, and spirit. self-healing. Kindness. Clarity. A structure out of regular psychological sets and more centred in the universal or cosmic. Society was literally and figuratively so far away in those moments, times with feet grounded on the earth, and say, the summer fields colourful or the spring universe beginning to bloom, but also the autumnal grounds with leaves or after, the wild winter, its snow resting upon the world’s reeds, branches, and pathways. Yes, it was a fine place to be and learn, to get ideas for poems, stories, and pictures. And to naturally expand consciousness.
The first memory was of a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey pin, blue and white, just the outline of the leaf if I remember correctly. And there was another one, circular with a blue background and a white leaf, again, if I recall correctly. This was all practically another lifetime ago, the late 1970’s and early to maybe middle 1980’s. I liked those pins, and some had a safety pin type apparatus at the back while others had a straight metal part that one put a clip or metal end on.
A few times my cousin and I walked to one of the convenience stores and bought a pin or two. I can see in the mind’s eye the other NHL teams, smart and well-made pins, twenty-one teams then. I recall The Philadelphia Flyers one, The Washington Capitals, those two especially for some reason. And there was another All Stars one, maybe designating the NHL all-star game held once a year, I think.
Later, having achieved the highest level for my age group, Major, also called AAA, the teams I played for, Mississauga Blackhawks, Wexford Raiders, and Toronto Red Wings, went on numerous tournaments. Sometimes the organizations gave each player a bunch of pins to trade with the other teams. I’d end up with many pins from all over. I put them on cloth, a few cloths in fact, for safe keeping. These cloths with all kinds of hockey pins I had for a long time but have misplaced them. Sadly, I don’t know where they went.
The hockey pins represented sport and skill, of the heroes and greats, and later of my teams and travel and experience on the ice against all these teams. That was one level but there was a more simple and yet magical level also and it was the colour and style, the metallic feel and weight of the pin. They could go on jackets or sometimes trucker hats. I can’t remember what exactly made me remember the pins, but something somehow did. Maybe a dream. Maybe something in real life. Maybe some angel of sport or pin or an angel of time itself…
Beyond the Extraordinary or of Joseph Conrad (Experience, Language, Hard Work, and Genius)
Many of the scholars and documentaries and such rightly claim that numerous things contributed to Joseph Conrad’s highly successful and monumental canon of literature. They point out his multiple languages, plus a passion for the sea and written word, and the study and hard work, plus an immense dedication to craft and truth both. But, though that’s all obviously true, in reading him there is something more, and it’s that he was possessed of genius. And in two ways.
One part of his genius was in seeing, and he himself said that above all he wanted to make people see. And the other half was in expression, in writing. He saw and he wrote. Many people speak multiple languages, and several are writers and poets, but is there anyone that can turn every sentence into gold like Conrad? Little or few. And in a climate modern where sparseness and brevity is lauded as a fashion for some odd reason, his golden descriptive sentences shine even brighter, turning the idea of telling a story into something immensely valuable. Conrad can show the way back to true storytelling and literature.
Therefore, it is a sea worker’s life and experience, the languages, the interest, and hard work, but, nature or God also added genius to the mix. If you look closely, even though there are several that can turn sentences that are extraordinary, there are few that can go beyond the extraordinary into something else entirely.
The long and wide sea, full of mystery and magic and danger amidst its beauty. Great is its countenance. Maybe nobody described it such as Joseph Conrad. The sometimes-dark sea, saturnine and rueful. Sea. Ocean. The sands in the shores. All linked together. The world of the water. Vessels. Imagine the coral and the fish, sharks and whales, or the shipwrecks and sunken treasures perhaps ghosts, the phantoms of the depths and saltwater, roam with no need of breathing apparatus. Go and look spirit…pirate first mate captain mere honest passenger who paid their way and was so innocent and unassuming. What millions of secrets still?- UFO bases? Airplanes never found. Unknown species. Sea sea sea. Stories of the sea. Wild. Ocean. To wander its shores and think of it all.
Whenever there are events involving injustice and wildness, we often say, it is ‘jungle raaj’ [the law of the jungle]. The jungle is abused as we often abuse a man who has done an indecent job calling him a dog. A crow, when crows, is a harbinger of a cherished guest, but a crow, nowadays is mentioned more as one, who is killed and hung aloft for a lesson to other crows.
When we compare a man’s mischief, we go to monkeys and cats, and when we refer to his power, we catch the lion. However, when men eat human flesh, and turn indiscriminate, we invoke wolves. A man who is dunce is likened to an ass, and if something is going very fast, it is said to be talking to the winds. How is power of a man measured if not as horsepower. And most of all, when we have to reject something as absurd, a bull comes to our rescue, along with his shit. We call it ‘bull-shit’. The jungle is never far away when we men have to say something, and it has to be exemplified from the animal world.
In fact, we go to nature to authenticate our experience. In the same way as we quote from great authors and thinkers and even from Vedas. If some man has eaten up some other person, there is no way to say it more effectively than saying that he has eaten into him like ‘deemak’ [termiotes]. If some misfortune strikes a man, we compare it with lightning.
If we have to compare a man’s steadfastness, we invoke mountains. If a man starts going to a place of worship after committing sins, we are reminded of a cat going for Hajj after eating nine hundred mice. And if we want to tell man he should have a great patience, Farid the great poet says: a man should have the patience of a tree. Men who are full of wisdom, are humble just as a branch bearing a fruit bends. As pure as the Ganges, as high as the Himalayas, I wonder if there is any human emotion which can be delivered authentically without referring to nature.
So, it is the nature which we often call the ‘jungle raaj’. The idea of ‘jungle raaj’ conveys the idea of lack of justice in the human world. It is interesting to see why man thinks that his world is more just, as compared to the world of nature. Here is a glimpse of the life of the jungle, which human beings often denounce. The big fish eat the small fish. The powerful kill the less powerful. This is what happens in the jungle and even in oceans and the same thing happens in the world of men too. But the point of departure between the two world arrives soon, and I wonder if we can really accuse the world of nature as a land of lawlessness.
The Order of Nature
The order that we find in nature is far more powerful and more established than in the human world. Birds, animals are born with a default understanding of their role. Just imagine, they have no schools. It is only the human being who needs training in schools. And we need worship places to teach us how to pray and remain connected to the creator, whereas animals are always in a state of prayer. A Punjabi poet, Prof. Puran Singh finds the buffaloes and calves [animals on their fours] always in a state of prostration. Animals and birds have no liquor shops, they do not have ‘bars’, they do not have rave parties, they do not molest women. And most of everything, have you come across any murder in the forest?
In the forest, which we call the ‘jungle raaj’, there are killings. The big animals eat away the smaller animals. In fact, most of the birds are non-vegetarian. They eat up smaller insects. But nobody raises any cry. Because it is their way of life. There are no murders as I said, no police stations, no violation of rights. There are no courts to ensure justice. Only we human beings need courts of justice because the human world thrives on injustice. Murders take place in the human world only. The jungle has no underworld. They have no armies. No weapons dump. We have never seen them fighting pitched battles as men have done in the past over land for oil or resources.
Nature is a repository of sense and wisdom. Jungle is far more composed and balanced in its attitude towards life. They do not attack humans. Only humans have assaulted and molested the vegetation and the trees.
In fact, for the human world, ‘jungle raaj’ refers to the lack of justice and fairness, and a world which is given to crime. The fact is that the world of the jungle is the real world of nature where the law of the creator, the original laws are in operation. Man, with his greed and weapons, has created a world of crime which he equates with the ‘jungle raaj’. In my opinion, we denigrate the jungle in order to establish our superiority, whereas the facts prove it otherwise.
The final truth about the law of the jungle and the law of man’s land is a comparison between a sense of live and let live, and a passion for greed and exploitation and ultimate elimination of the other. The jungle ‘raaj’ is original and superior, whereas man’s laws are artificial and inferior, if not altogether infernal.
Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, with an opus of 190 plus books, is Laureate of the Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky awards. His name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. Anand’s work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision. He is President of the International Academy of Ethics.
