Depending on the lens we look at the world it appears to be an entirely different place. Years ago, I read Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, where the explorer Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the features, people, culture, and history of cities in Khan’s expansive empire. In reality, however, though each city depicted is seemingly distinct, they are all actually different versions of Venice, the city where they live.
Any place on earth, not only Calvino’s Venice has multiple histories and innumerable layers to its identity. As peering through a microscope reveals, there are worlds reside within worlds. Believing we know a place and why things look or function as they do, we explain them to ourselves and to others, but many things nevertheless remain outside of our comprehension. Much of what makes up who we are remains hidden beneath our skin and inside our thoughts.,
The southern most active volcanic area in the Cascade Range, at Mt. Lassen National Park in northern California, visitors can get a glimpse of nature’s hidden hydrothermal world. From approximately three miles beneath the surface rises a deep huffing sound like an enormous, arhythmic drumming can be heard while climbing the hill approaching the fumarole at Bumpass Hell. According to the US Geological Survey, Lassen Peak was formed approximately 27,000 years ago after erupting for several years and rising to a height of 2,000 feet, becoming one of Earth’s largest lava domes. The dome went to sleep for 27,000 years then woke up on May 19, 1915, when it erupted destroying a three-square mile area, created mud flows, a new crater at the mountain’s summit, and an avalanche of volcanic material, only to erupt again a few days later, on May 22 the volcano exploded again, blowing down trees, houses, ejecting pumice, and spewing gas and hot ash 30,000 feet into the air.
I sat on the hillside beyond the edge of the white mineral deposits ringing the thermal vents, watching as the vent hurled chunks of rock some thirty feet into the air, spewing them out into every growing pile. Further down the road in the park, mud pots burble up from deep below, painting the earth in tones of ochre and, rust, mustard and gold.
Not a geologist, I don’t know how to read the landscape’s history. Much of the land’s story was hidden to me. In the park, we can now walk on what was once buried beneath a volcanic cone covering. Though the earth’s crust feels solid when we travel across it, inside there are oceans of molten, liquid earth. So much is hidden from our everyday view.
It’s not only the land that holds and hides its history. We are an embodiment of our history, as is everyone we meet.
I am no one,
I am
everyone I have known:
all those voices coming on the wind,
writes Michael L. Newell, in his poem “Self-Portrait” from his new book, Making My Peace. As the poem goes on to say, all we’ve experienced and all who we’ve encountered have helped to make who we are. As Newell goes on to describe,
from the past, the aching, haunting past,
the faces barely recognizable in browned
and curled photos found tucked in old books,
in crumpled letters scattered among old poems,
in boxed up bric a brac long forgotten;
who, I ask myself, am I, if not these forgotten ones
who whisper in my head every second of my life,
whose words have shaped thought, deed, laughter,
As Newell indicates, the moments, places and people that have influenced and shaped our lives may be hidden from direct sight, but they are present, similar to the hidden activity beneath the earth we see glimpses of while sitting in front of a fumarole. Newell concludes the poem stating,
We are the dreamed, the dreamer, the stranger who became more
and then vanished, the intimate who disappeared into the long night,
but left behind words, images, and the tilt of a head which remain
in memory’s ever expanding pouch where nothing is ever completely lost.
While Newell’s poem describes the legacy of other people’s lives on our own, Robert A. Johnson, in his book, Living Your Unlived Life, explores playful ways to bring to light unseen aspects of ourselves such as writing a note to the Eternal Youth that continues to live in us whatever our age, and to put it by our bed or computer. My thought is that the focused awareness of what brings us joy and the dreams that live inside of us reflected in the letter will more easily help to bring that dream forward into life. Johnson suggests asking what is keeping you from stepping out and exploring a new path or the next part of your journey, how fear might bind you to ways of living that no longer serve you. Quoting Gilbert Murphy, a Greek translator, Johnson says, “Live in the service of something higher and more enduring, so that when the tragic transience of life at last breaks in upon you, you can feel that the thing for which you have lived does not die.”
Johnson has a variety of other exercises such as writing in a journal once a week or more and using black ink to record thoughts and a different color of ink to represent feelings, and a third color of ink, such as blue, to represent when you are writing about physical sensations. Over time, this gives you an idea of how you process experience, suggests Johnson, and writing in the journal can help you notice repetitive patterns such as what happens repeatedly when you’re stressed, what you tell yourself when you wake up every morning, what you do with intuition, as well as internal messages that shape decisions and how you evaluate reality.
Rob Knight, a Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, on his TED talk says, “The three pounds of microbes that you carry around with you might be more important than every single gene you carry around in your genome.” A person’s gut bacteria can influence things such as anxiety, stress, and mental health, among other things, according to Medical News Today.
From the Peter Wolden’s book, The Hidden Life of Trees, and Susan Simard we learn how trees communicate and share nutrients with each other underground through fungal networks, information about the network of life that has only recently come to light.
Outside of Bogota, Colombia, María Luisa Hincapié and her family work to protect the biodiversity of orchids in their Forest of Orchids, and around the world young people you may have never have heard of are working in their communities to carry on the work are doing to support their communities during the pandemic.
Like bees among the flowers collecting pollen, in every location there are embodied stories and mysteries that add to the greater web of life that uplifts and sustains us. As Newell said in “Self Portrait,” “We are the dreamed, the dreamer, the stranger who became more…” Life adds to life. As Lassen’s volcano exemplifies, land shifts, gets removed and remade, and “nothing is ever completely lost.”
If you’re interested, Michael L. Newell’s book, Making My Peace, is available here.
Anna Citrino---Poetry, Place, Pilgrimage 