To litter or not to Litter? - meditations on Lydney

Just returned from holiday to Wales. Arriving in Lydney last Wednesday it was a real pleasure to step immediately into beautiful woodland but the local clearly didn't appreciate it as forest and waterways were piled high in burger boxes and other takeaway rubbish. How odd I thought that they should litter their own doorsteps. Then I realised that for us who had travelled the 130 from London the forest at the back of their garden was their doorstep, but for them in Lydney - - who evidently didn't travel far - their garden was their doorstep but the forest was removed and far away. I imagined immediately an alien arriving at Earth and seeing us littering our "doorstep" with utter carelessness!

There is a lot in this. My first take was seeing the downside of the concept of "property". That which people feel to be "theirs" they take care of - which is good. But the implication present in this "care" is that things which are "not theirs" they do not take care of. It is a short sighted and two faced concept of "care". Yet I (coming from London) should not have cared about Lydney or its people at all by this measure.

Evidently the appreciation of Nature transcends petty property boundaries as does an appreciation of people. But a trap is set because the person who appreciates Nature may come to own that appreciation and form a new type of property (as I have done in the past). An offence against Nature is perceives as an attack against them. This is another myopic type of "care" because hatred is then extended to those over the fence who do not appreciate Nature. Those who litter Lydney are not enemies of those who appreciate Nature at all.

Adding to this I realise that even travelling to Lydney is an act of ego. I have begun to realise that I can travel hundreds of miles in the UK and find new species of insect and plant ... and then returning home I find them in Berkshire or Kent. Going on holiday gives us the belief that things are "new". It hightens our senses and causes us to look at things again. But I realised in Paris (and noted in this blog) what the tourist calls "new" is really "everyday" to the people who live there. What causes the tourist to look again at Paris is nothing about Paris but simply a hightened state of mind causes by the act of travel. A Parisien can look at Paris with new eyes just as easily if they want. As my sister once said, the purpose of travel is to return home and see it as home. Or, I'll rephrase, the purpose of travel is to enable us to be have a strangers eyes upon our own home. The wildlife of Berkshire is every bit as amazing as that of the Forest of Dean (outside Lydney). Before criticising the people of Lydney for overlooking the natural paradise outside their gardens maybe I should look at my own life on Reading.

Later in the week in Hay-on-Wye, in a bookshop, I found an excellent quote from Heraclitus: Dogs bark at those they do not recognize (fragment XVI). Ignorning the official understanding I understand it to mean that people who have not yet travelled beyond themselves (experienced ecstasy) take great care of themselves but leave litter in the world around themselves. They also make a great noise about that which is "new" [to them] and forget that which is "old" [to them]. The world is so divided according to their own perspective. Yet we know that the Truth (or Logos, Dao, Dharma, Dhamma) is the same for all people so it follows that our opinions and personal experiences and whims are not truth. The foolish - as Heraclitus calls us - are fixated upon the world according to only ourselves.

The problem with all this littering and not littering is that each of us is fixated upon looking through our own perspective. Some will say that we have no choice as we are stuck within individual bodies and individual eyes and literally have different perspectives. Yet SRH! to say such a thing is already to have access to a universal truth which applies equally to all people. This is the first statement of LOGOS which is beyond mortal conception.

During the holiday this Dogs bark at those they do not recognize developed into a more settled conception of dialectics and the Logos. All things are empty because they are nothing until they are split by the mind into oppositions. It rained a lot on holiday. Those who have always been wet however never seek dryness and so they never realise they are wet. Those who have always been dry know nothing of wetness and never realise they are dry. It is only I who are wet and now seek dryness who is wet. And if I see the clouds amassing I anticipate the rain and feel my dryness more acutely than ever. Existence is created in tension between opposites. This is exactly why "My Muse" has been so long lived because somehow I understood this a long time ago and created a "real" "girl" by holding our sexuality so close but never releasing the tension. Male and Female are opposites each experiencing the other through the tension.

It matters not whether you like being dry or like being wet - the point here is that they are exist in relation to one another and when they are not held side by side for comparison they fade away and eventually cease to exist. How can one desire dryness or wetness when one doesn't even know that one is wet or dry!

The foolish mind like the dog is always raised to barks by the arrival of the Other - the arrival of wetness to show up our own dryness. This is the trivial life of the mortal who is brought to realise his own Life too late when Death comes knocking to scatter and make litter of him.