Nomos: Shaping the Land. Physis: That shapes us

Nomosshaping the land Physis that shapes us

A NOTE ON THE COVER IMAGEWhy the anthropomorphic, cartoonish cover image on a book comprising landscape photography andnature poetry? The “Aspen Tree” image serves as a present day incarnation of the archetypal aspect of the“Green Man” decorative tradition. “His” worried expression here evokes a wraithlike appearance of our sus-pect part in Mother Earth’s precarious position at the hands of Western man’s pushing. “The Enigma of theGreen Man” website’s author writes1: “The very fact that images of the Green Man have appeared historically in such disparate locations have led commentators, Roweena Pattee Kryder and William Anderson, to suggest that the figure is part of our collective unconscious, and represents a primeval archetype (in Jungian parlance) central to our relationship with Nature. Phyllis Araneo has suggested that the appearance of the Green Man in European and worldwide art is a cyclical phenomenon triggered by times of crisis or significant change. In the same way, the environmental crisis we are currently living through may have triggered the modern resurgence. In its modern revival (in the wake of James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis and the birth of the modern Green movement) the Green Man can be seen as the archetype of the “conserva- tor”, whose brief is to counsel us to take from the environment only what we need to survive and to conserve the rest, and to remind us of our responsibilities for the stewardship of the natural world. A quote from Mike Harding succinctly summarizes this position: “If anything on this poisoned planet gives us hope of renewal it is this simple foliate head that has been there in one form or another since the beginning.”The accompanying image of the multiple human hand impressions encroaching and blocking resonates withhis plaintive expression. If the archetype historically represents hope, his expression here results from man’sstrenuous “shaping” to which he has been and is subject: “Earth is screaming: all the shovels, all the shovels.” 1 Presumptuously summarized from http://www.greenmanenigma.com/theories.html

Nomos: Shaping the Land Physis: that Shapes Us Joanne Light Stephen Patterson tapwema press

ALSO BY JOANNE LIGHT Meeting the North Coastal Nova Scotia Outdoor Adventure Guide Hiking Nova Scotia “Religion on a Monday Morning” has appeared in The Second Mile (Lancelot Press),The Very Ffaynte Cryes of Earls Court Avenue (Toronto ) and Seasons’ Light (Ann Hart Publishing 2011). “On the Coast of Sandwich Point” has appeared in Seasons’ Light. “Pebble” has appeared in That Not Forgotten (Hidden Book Press).STEPHEN PATTERSON’S PHOTOGRAPHY HAS APPEARED IN The Last Wilderness The Endangered Oceans This edition published by Tapwema Press in 2013 Copyright © Joanne Light and Stephen Patterson 2013 Tapwema Press 1585 Oxford Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 3Z3 Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Light, Joanne, 1952- Nomos : shaping the land / physis : that shapes us / Joanne Light and Stephen Patterson. Poems with accompanying photographs. ISBN 978-0-9692584-4-5 I. Patterson, Stephen Scott, 1958- II. Title. PS8573.I413N64 2013 C811’.54 C2013-900774-1

“I t was strangely reassuring and calming to sit on my stone. Somehow it would free me of all my doubts. Whenever I thought that I was the stone, the conflict ceased. “The stone has no certainties, no urge to communicate, and is eternally the same for thousands of years,” I would think, “while I am only a passing phenomenon which bursts into all kinds of emotions, like a flame that flares up quickly and then goes out.” I was but the sum of my emotions, and the other in me was the timeless, imperishable stone.” - Carl Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflections

For my father,Charles Light, who loved the forests and fields of Nova Scotia and for my mother, Marion, who faithfully helped himrealize his dream of a life engaged with the land. You both gave the greatest gift—a life near the natural world.For Northern Canada’s First Nations and Inuit youth, who taught me much about freedom and whose cultures, having been herefirst and for so long, provided me with the opportunity to explore a vast geology—“nutshimit”—and witness the true size ofstars. - Joanne LightFor my parents, whose unconditional belief and loving support of my aspirations to be a photographic artist and musician and formy loving wife, Mary and beautiful daughters, Jocelyn (Joey) and Laura, who brought deeper meaning to my existence and taughtme to enjoy the simpler things in life. - Stephen Patterson

INTRODUCTIONP hysis? nomos? Strange title words! As a child of of chance and human action. Nomos says that no one ecological state is inherently preferable to anythe glacial plain overlooking Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fun- other, but that all of them are a product of humandy, I would never have imagined I would one day use choices (even the ones with no people, since we willGreek terminology to title a poetry and photographic have made the choice not to go there).” So therebook. Coincidentally, Don McKay’s brilliant musings in it is: rock (apart from man) equals physis; stoneDeactivated West 100 speak to the two words. He writes: (rock as a function of man’s shaping) equals nomos.“What is the difference between a rock and a stone?Many will say there is no difference. But if we ask a For me, a rocky landscape gives emotional sus-geologist, the answer comes out pat: a stone is a rock tenance and a sense of the unconscious, present asthat’s been put to use: stone hammer, rip-rap, gravel, mystical energy. As for Carl Jung’s timeless, imper-wall, paving stone, tombstone, milestone, statue. Now, ishable stone in the front page quote, so for me, asa geopoet, I surmise, will give the same answer, but trees, salt water, flowers and especially rocks werewhere the geologist snaps a lid shut, the geopoet opens the physis that formed (shaped) my psyche. In con-Pandora’s box. What happens between rock and stone trast, my father spent his time shaping a land gush-is everything human, from the modifications neces- ing with rock. With an iron staff he picked in a zensary to make homes to, at the other extreme, the ex- frenzy, removing the endless glacial detritus, build-cesses of ownership and exploitation, which submit all ing a stone wall, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, untilends to ours. So another answer might be: rock is as the glacial plain was a field, fertile enough to sup-old as the earth is; stone is only as old as humanity.” port forty acres of alfalfa for his cattle. Such was his signature: a boulder wall, the nomos he shaped In 1491, Charles C. Mann writes: “The ancient from what was there.Greeks saw existence as a contest between nomos(rationality/order/artifice) and physis (irrational- In adulthood, I travelled far to other rocky land-ity/chaos/nature). In environmental terms, Tho- scapes in the Canadian sub-arctic, living with Firstreau, who saw the landscape as imbued with an es- Nations’ people. I wondered why my immersion insential wildness that could be heedlessly destroyed, the land’s mysticism made owning property seemembodies physis. Physis says, let Nature be our an odd idea. Learning a bit about the Cree, Inuit,guide; step out of the way of the environment, and Wolastoqiyik and Innu languages revealed a wayit will know how to keep itself healthy. Nomos is of being that shed light on my own consciousness.the postmodern philosopher who argues that the In some western languages, the noun/verb separationentire landscape is constructed—that it has no exists. For example, Shaping the Land that Shapes Us syn-essential, innate qualities, but is simply a reflection tactically implies “We shape the land” and “the land VII

shapes us.”—a noun, “a static something” acting (by bol: moving energy to evoke the Higher Power (God,way of a verb) on “a something else.” Psychologist and the creator, et al) conjuring the awareness of oneness.language “guru” Steven Pinker teaches that languageis a pathway to understanding a culture. In looking at Poets spend time developing their unconscious men-English, we might infer that Classical Greece (the foun- tal drums within the constraints of language, hon-dation of western thought) dichotomized the psyche ing consciousness—“putting a shape to the wind”with its either/or thinking (e.g. noun/verb; Aristotle/ as poet Irving Layton said: using nomos to expressPlato; Apollo/Dionysus; quantity/quality; physis/no- physis. Don McKay (again in Deactivated West 100):mos) and, as its inheritors, we exhibit the tendency to “Suppose we try to define place without us-psychically split our thinking, seeing ourselves as sepa- ing the usual humanistic terms—not home and na-rate from otherness (nature), we being the subject act- tive land, not little house on the prairie, not even theing on a separate object, such as my father’s shaping founding principle of our sense of beauty—but asthe land or, conversely, the object—the rocks (among a function of wilderness. Try this: ‘place is a wilder-other natural features) shaping my imaginative uncon- ness to which history has happened.’ Or: ‘place is ascious: me. Without seeing ourselves as the object of land to which we have occurred.’ This would involvenature’s shaping, our baser, instinctual fear moves to asking, for example, not ‘what’s the beach to me?’dominate the biotic processes, giving us free rein to ex- but ‘what am I to the beach?’ Our occurrence to theploit what nature gives. In this way, we have reached land—the act which makes place place— could be aa wall—the critical clash between the environmentalist major change (homestead, development, resource ex-and the developer, which, as Mann writes, cannot be traction) or a smaller claim (prospector’s stake, surveydismissed. Humankind has shaped nature but nature’s marker, plastic tape, souvenir stone), but it shifts theshaping is absolute (Witness climate change.). How to relationship; it brings the wild area into the purviewredefine ourselves as a part of nature, not its exploiter? of knowledge and makes it—perhaps momentarily, perhaps permanently—a category of mind. “Remem- In indigenous languages (culture), where no inani- ber that place we found the huckleberries?” “Well, I’llmate/animate separation exists, I found a model for tell you where to go if you want to shoot some realdefining the self. Poeticaly speaking, I am held in the rapids.” “Now that’s what I call a nice piece of realcradle of an animated present—a psychic soup. I am estate.” Place becomes place by acquiring real orthe shaped particles integrated with a particle uni- imagined borders and suffering removal fromverse—a oneness, as with Blake’s sand grain, or Jung’s anonymity. Sometimes this seems almost whol-stone as himself. The Western ‘separate self ’ is an il- ly benign. But sometimes it is possible to imag-lusory error in thinking. Mysticism sensed this. Physics ine an inner shudder, akin perhaps to that inwardhas theoretically proven it. The trancelike chanting and quailing you feel when some authority say, or, forbeating of the Indigenous drum seems a fitting sym- that matter, an author) selects you from out ofVIII

the safe and faceless crowd in which you swam.” This book’s content is a resonating collabora- This book is the product residue from a dy- tion between two ways of expression. The slow contemplation and constant reshaping of a poemnamic process—the shape and the shaping; “the might be said to be more of a “nomos” practice,fish swimming in its water.” With the poems, it’s while a photograph’s intuitive seeing and capturing“rock into talk into rock” a resonating of infin- of what is there (whether in a natural or altered (byity/eternity with temporality, surrendering to na- man) state) seems the physis way. But underneathture’s ‘super shaping’ of our species in the shad- both lie the complements:—the poet’s sudden un-ow of our egoistic disregard for biotic reality. conscious need to express in words; the photogra- pher’s extensive practise of honing compositional Stephen Patterson is a rare ‘seer fish’ swimming skills to increase his vision’s acuteness. Both are in-in nature. He grew up exploring an old growth tricately woven in the artist and point to the natu-hemlock and beech forest with abundant ponds; ral balance of the “both/and” consciousness. streams; lady slippers and painted trilliums, nowthe Clayton Park suburb. He tells how one day he This is also true of traditional indigenous wis-went to visit the pond of his first bullfrog sight- dom where, for example, acknowledging theing and found no pond at all, just a graded road, “other” before eating expresses “power toward”the beginning of a total annihilation of the ar- that which has been overpowered, rather than theea’s physis—with the integrity of what had been “power over” disregard for the other of imperial-there absent from the developer’s consideration. ism. Replacing either/or with “both and” (a shift to “physis” thinking) would guide us into follow- Luckily a camera in his hands provides us with ing more nature-based human decisions like thea record of his brain’s reflexive dance with nature. lead of Ecuador’s “Rights of Mother Nature/Childhood fort and tree house building was a sec- Pachamama to exist; persist; maintain and re-ondary framing to that produced by his intense ob- generate its vital cycles, structure, functions andservation of how the angles of trees fit together processes in evolution while persons, people, com-and the play of light revealed itself. With the eye munities and nationalities have the right to benefitas his main tool, he builds a monument to see- from the environment and from natural wealth.”ing. His main building interest was observing antfarms, learning how another species shaped its en- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: “Avironment. With human building, he mourns the thing is right when it tends to preserve the integ-loss of the practice of leaving some trees at each rity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.site with the current “bulldozing of everything.” It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”I can’t help but wish we were less active in our want-ing to dominate and more like Patterson: sensory A fine balance will result if we can find the willobservers—“artist scientists” of nature as it exists. to focus on both McKay’s rock and stone at once. IX

RELIGION ON A MONDAY MORNING I walk to the altar of stone and take my confession where the spring unceasingly flows; pull out pails pails of ‘never-minds’ to cool my priestly burning.1

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My communion is by the side of a country road, a tapestry of spring hues hangs before me. The hymns are bird songs, long memorized.3

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I look to the east and an new born orb rises to the flutter of fresh plants. It died for no one, but lives each day— a steady resurrection for the seeing5

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And lowering my head to the humble spring, I drink from this chalice, whose mystery from some deep dark rock pool I can never fathom. And this church is all around me— its stained glass morning sky— and God is here in the wind.7

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READING BIOGRAPHIES OF FAMOUS MEN After the first million words, I’ve found out that Jack Kerouac screwed Gore Vidal and/or vice versa. After asked if he were gay, Trudeau said, “Let me have your wife for an hour! Just watch me.” This rubble trivia pins me under the blast path of my insatiability. A weak pick, finally stronger, pounds: Mind your own animus. Send pipes to it, deep down. Mine your gems in darkness. Shine your light there.9

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MIDDLE EARTH For the Chilean miners buried half a mile down Beyond this continental trap of ego mined, hard with daemons (gems of endless wanting), black angels are shining on my monitor from middle earth, barely scraping a living from falling rocks, which fell on them. Everyone wonders how they are calm in dark, in dank, with little drink or meat. Is it such a mystery? Their Rock is not of the earth, but in the seam outside the seen. From my hard rock bed, in shock and awe, I view their plight one foot away, but know how deep they are. Tasting a different dust I may never make it out unless the fool’s gold self I seek implodes or I can drill a shaft to where they are.11

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