See
the Earth unearthly.
Earth without
oceans. Without mountains, valleys, chasms. Earth without rivers,
caves,
deserts. Earth without sky. Earth without Moon. Earth without earth.
Earth
without you. Unearthly.
Now Earth is new, just expelled from a star
that had grown too great with its own creativity. Earth is whirling in
space,
heaving, seething, pulsing-a pinpoint of molten matter 8000 miles
thick.
The
bowels of
earth and the surface of earth
are the same: an elemental commotion so hot that every atom seems ready
for
breakdown. Or build up. Earth is swaddled in a blanket of agitated
gasses and
sublime radiation, thousands of miles deep. Action and reaction.
Electron and
proton. Atom on atom. Nucleus on nucleus. Heavy on light. Light on
heavy. All
on all.
Here is a sphere of iron and
gold and
silver. Of hydrogen and oxygen and carbon. Of copper and tin and lead.
Of
sodium, radium and uranium. Of chlorine, neon, nitrogen. Of mercury. Of
sulfur.
Of silicone. Of iodine. Of 92 elements compacted into a ball. And it's
excited.
Everything is in flux. Everything bounds and rebounds. Everything
changes.
Currents of iron rush from the center to the surface, from the surface
to the
center. Back and forth. Back and forth. Aluminum, tungsten, magnesium,
calcium,
silicon bubble and dance, spurt in jets; sink, rise; sink, rise. Action
and
reaction. All on all.
Thus,
a
gigantic cauldron, Earth begins its
voyage around the Sun, the first of some four billion, six hundred
million to
come.
For
millions
and millions and millions of
years, Earth revolves and rotates, cooling, always cooling. And as it
cools, it
becomes more complex.. It keeps changing. The heaviest matter condenses
into a
core, the lightest floats like a scum. Elements combine, make minerals,
make
liquid rock-make something utterly unmade before. Its dense envelope of
gas and
radiation thins. In time Earth is cool enough for water to form without
being
instantly vaporized by the burning surface. And it rains. It rains for
a
billion years. Electrical and magnetic storms sweep from pole to pole,
then
sweep back again. The equator is an unimpeded highway for tornadoes
that roll
straight around thellearth_e0 globe. Again. And again. And again. And
again.
And
a light
crust forms. And primitive seas
form. And the crust cracks from the weight of water. And water rushes
in to the
interior, and is explosively ejected, and rushes in, and is ejected,
and rushes
in, and is ejected, and rushes in, and is ejected. The crust contracts,
expands,
deforms: some crust sinks deep towards the center of the Earth; some
rises high
above the waters and land appears: the first continent, the super
continent
from which all subsequent continents will be derived. And Earth begins
to
settle down. But not completely.
Earthquakes
and massive volcanic eruptions
shake Earth daily if not hourly. Water encounters everything, every old
element, every new mineral. A little bit of everything-- and a great
deal of a
few things--go into solution. And now the seas are a rich chemical soup
such as
no star could ever create, even though all of this has come from a
star. And so
the foundation for life is laid. All the essentials are there, nothing
is
missing. And there is no eye to see it, no ear to hear it. It is as if
nothing
were happening at all. Yet history has already begun, is already very
old.
Within
the
Earth already lie the rise and
fall of countless species, the birth and death of hundreds of
civilizations.
Sharks are there ready to swim; dinosaurs are there, ready to rage; and
gibbons
ready to gibber; wolves ready to howl. The ruins of Niniveh, Troy,
Petra,
Carthage, Copan, and Angkor Wat are already there. The Egyptians with
their
masks of gold, the Jews with their sacred tablets, the Chinese with
their
porcelain bowls, The Indians with their thought of Krishna, the
Babylonians,
the Assyrians, the Armenians and the Persians, the Greeks and the
Romans, the
Incas and the Aztecs--they are already within the Earth. And Buddha is
within
it . And St. Francis. And Caesar. And Shakespeare. And Newton. The
Bible is
within it. The Koran. The Upanishads. Painting is within it. Speech is
within
it. And sex. Earth is waiting, waiting for all to emerge.
Earth
waits
for the octopus and the tiger.
Earth waits for the mushroom and the orchid. Earth waits for the
mammoth and
the ape. Earth waits for the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China.
Earth waits
for harvests and festivals, for famines and wars, for courage and
cowardice,
for hope and despair. Earth waits for you. For just as Earth is the
child of a
star, you are the child of the Earth, and no less descended from a
star. Earth
waits for its star-child, Man, to come and give it the name of Earth.
You
and Earth
and history are one. You do
not belong to a race or a nation, to a time or a doctrine. You belong
to Earth.
Through you--through Man--Earth has sought and found a mouth to speak
with,
eyes to see with, hands to work with. Through Man, Earth discovers
itself and
reveals itself to itself and to the rest of the universe. Early
man--unblinded
by science and religion, undeafened by economic and political
theory--seemed to
know this. Early man was not alienated from the Earth. For him every
tree and
stone, every river and mountain possessed a spirit that was that was
inextricably entangled with Earth. Kings felt and understood their
decent from
the Sun. Their people felt it too. And if they could not express it in
cold
equations as a fact of physics, believing in it as divine truth, that
does not
make them more naïve or less sensible than any one alive today. What
they had,
what we have lost, is a sense of wonder, a sense of union with every
living and
non-living entity on Earth and in the Universe.
Man
has come
a long way since he first
appeared as a species. He has a long way to go. Perhaps Man will go.
Perhaps
Man is a stepping stone to a higher species with powers over mind and
matter
that are impossible to imagine right now. For, surely, Earth is still
waiting,
waiting for more to emerge. Earth is not finished . Earth has all the
time in
the world.
Everything
about Earth is a mystery.
Geologists do not know the structure of the core. Biologists do not
know how or
why life began. Physicists cannot explain gravitation or magnetism.
Psychologists are defeated by telepathy. Historians and modern
architects
cannot even agree on how the pyramids were built. It is as if Man had
forgotten
his origins, like an Easter Island figure staring sightless and forever
toward
an unknown shore. But how can this be so?
Since
every
single thing on Earth derives
from the same source, every single thing must carry the memory of that
source.
Like some text in a lost language, the history of Earth--of the
universe--must
be written in the mind of everyman, but inscrutable, indecipherable.
For us
then, is the task of recovering, of finding what has been found and
lost a
hundred times before.
Man
must
return to the source of his being
and drink from it, or Man will perish, which (clearly) Earth will not
permit.
Earth will not allow four and a half billion years of creativity to be
annihilated by its principle species in a few hundred years. Earth has
shown
itself to be too flexible, too productive, too loving, for that. Earth
is not
on a suicide trip around the Sun. It has much to do, much more to do.
And so
has Man.
To
find out
where he is going, Man must
first find out where he came from. Music and poetry help him remember,
as they
always have, for they are basic, uncorrupted and incorruptible. They
are the
original magic out of which religions were formed, and though those
religions
may be extinct (even if still practiced), the magic of music and poetry
is not
extinct. It lives in every one of us, The contemplation of art helps
Man
remember. Meditation helps Man remember. Communal action helps Man
remember.
Love helps Man remember.
Look
at the
Earth. See its oceans and
mountains and valleys and chasms. See its rivers and plains. See its
webs and
spiders, its foxes and grapes, its vultures and flamingos. They are all
sacred.
See its sky and Moon. And then see yourself. You have been alive since
the
moment of Earth's creation. And you will remain alive as long as Earth
continues its daily round of light and dark, and yearly round of
miraculous
seasons.
Life
spins
its own meaning and its own
purpose. Life is its own religion and we are all high priests. Neither
Life nor
Earth nor Man needs a savior or a received religion to impose form and
direction. The direction and form are there. We must search for them.
And just
by trying, just by meditating, just by contemplating, just by
submitting to
Love and Love's potent alchemy, direction and form will find us. They
will find
us where we have always been--with our feet planted firmly in Earth and
our
heads pointed towards the Sun.
You
and Earth
and history are one.
Donald
Lemkuhl
January 1974
