The great thing about growing plants—flowers, fruit or vegetables— is that when you grow them close together, or allow random seeds to grow, they arrange themselves. They make accommodation with one another to catch the sun, and achieve a tumbling profusion, such as we may find in wild or semi-wild places. As for my backyard, I dug up some potatoes last Sunday and we had them for lunch. I can hardly call them “homegrown”, for that implies intention. They are serendipitous, the result of a series of mistakes. Running out of potatoes months ago, I’d bought some from the Medina Cash and Carry around the corner, past their best so that bits had to be cut out and put in the new compost bin. Then I couldn’t wait till the compost had fully rotted but dug some into the garden. With their own lust for life, they grew. By the same route we have acquired several other potential vegetables such as melon or pumpkin—will have to wait and see which. And the rest is populated from saved seeds.
The resulting wilderness is a perfect place to contemplate—fancy term for “do nothing”. And to just see what happens. One thing that happens from doing nothing is going into your own space, instead of constantly trying to adjust to the common culture in which you find yourself. By doing nothing in a 
wilderness—wayfaring across the landscape or sitting on a secluded bench—you remain grounded in the environment but freed from the demands to conform. And then you can ask yourself what is your purpose in life. I don’t believe in telling myself what’s important to me; for that would imply the superiority of mind and will. There’s another voice, much more interesting and that’s the one which gets an airing here.
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The other day I met an old pal in town, perhaps the only man in this valley roaming the street with Buddhist enlightenment on his mind. But suppose Buddhsim is an out-of-date approximation? Suppose enlightenment (if there is such a thing, which I doubt) is a “descent” to animal nature, rather than an ascent from the physical into nirvana? The Tao te Ching hints this. Religions have tried to embellish their cause by maligning the animals, but they have disfigured it instead. Animals have a natural dignity to which homo sapiens can only aspire.
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BBC Radio 4 has been commemorating the first men on the moon with a series of programmes, including one by novelist Jeannette Winterson called The Inconstant Moon, which mingled the tale of the NASA mission with myths and imaginings. I felt these are two different topics. Despite what simple minds believe, outer and inner reality don’t ever have to meet. The American mission, with Armstrong and Aldrin actually moon-walking, seemed to trample on the collective unconscious. No wonder there are those who still insist it was an elaborate hoax.
The vast realm of imagination, woven over millennia by solitary seers and whole societies, has little effect unless it’s seen as part of external reality. The moment you acknowledge that it’s fiction, it becomes limp and pointless. Secular Western society makes a clear distinction between art (novels for example) and what it calls “superstitions”.
Doctor: I don’t know what’s wrong with you so I’m going to give you this sugar-pill to take twice a day. It’s known in the trade as a placebo.
That would hardly work. The illusion has to be elaborated and respected. Well, perhaps not much: the other day the doctor sent me to have a swollen toe x-rayed. I’ve found it less painful since then, almost forgotten about it, in fact. My mind and body have an understanding between them. Pain is the messenger, consciousness is the addressee. I read the message, take the best action I can, and throw the message away, based on a trust that the doctor will contact me when he gets the x-ray results.
All this goes some way towards explaining religion.
a wayfarer’s notes 
Many years ago – when I thought that I “owned” a backyard – several people commented on it. They thought that it should be “tidied up”. My response was “Nah, I prefer controlled chaos”.
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You have a lot to say here, Vincent — particularly about the seemingly random order of “chaos” in nature. Isn't it fascinating how well designed plants really are? With absolutely no effort on our part, plants just keep doing and growing and being… but somehow they can take on a grand nature when we tend to them personally: http://bit.ly/O3NHv
But tending to plants is really as you say. It's “a perfect place to contemplate.” Doing “nothing” is an exercise well worth engaging in sometimes — a reminder that action is not compulsory.
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David, now you own the entire world. Such is the privilege of the wanderer, and Diogenes.
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Tim, your pic on Facebook reminds me of my efforts to root some cuttings of a myrtle bush belonging to a friend on the Isle of Wight. I have wanted a myrtle bush for many years. My cuttings are alive but not growing much, and today I found aphis on the growing tips.
It seems the parent bush was grown from a bouquet at the wedding of Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Victorian poet, who lived on the Isle of Wight at Farringford, a couple of miles away.
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hi organic farmer,
looks like you only eat pure things 🙂
looks like england doesn't have much snakes, otherwise your wayfaring activities would be curtailed.
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I don't know about pure! But we are careful what food we buy: both animals and workers must have been kindly treated.
And it is true about the snakes, yes. I was reading some satire recently about the English having been blessed with a country free from earthquakes, hurricanes and dangerous wild animals – as if it were God's blessing. But never mind that, everyone should find reasons for pride in their own habitat.
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Good post here. I appreciate your high degree of synthesis, acknowledgement of the in-visible and that which exists just in the (personal and corporate)consciousness.
Brett
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We have a serendipitous gooseberry bush. Those elements of nature that serendipitously lodged it with us, regularly try to deprive us of its increasing fruitfulness. I suppose this is, to some extent, quite fair. However, we are working hard now at trying to thwart the antics of the descendants of the providers as we like what we have been given!
In addition, I recently found some healthy looking potato plants that I thought were past their prime and which, had been disposed of. Indeed, they had been disposed of in the compost; the discarded plants seemed to like their new 'plot', the compost heap, and look as if they will be fecund.
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hi Vincent…
it's a delight to come and read and have very little to add actually, except for one thing that does occur to me… from potatoes to doing nothing on a secluded bench, and then the finale of a sore toe… these are all images i can see and therefore participate in some way or another within my own wanderings (and it appears the wandering of others as well from the comments that come before me)… i really like that…
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I have sent an email to powysian at hotmail dot com. Thank you.
PS How do I stop double replies being notified, the comments of others and my own comments to theirs? I use Gmail and I wonder if that has something to do with this wonderful duplication.
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ZACL – on your own blog you will be notified of comments automatically, if you have done the usual thing and requested to be notified by email. If you additionally tick the box marked “email follow-up comments to …” when you respond to readers' comments, you will get notified twice. To remedy that, you can click the link where it says “Unsubscribe to comments on this post.” and then you will be notified only once (as the blog's owner).
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Thanks Joanne for comment, I feel that my other blog posts have failed to evoke visual images for you. Not a surprise. I will remedy this soon, I hope.
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Thanks Brett. I think I have read enough of your own blog and interests to understand what you mean by “synthesis, acknowledgement of the in-visible and that which exists just in the (personal and corporate)consciousness.” But I still hope you will talk about this more.
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“acknowledgment” specifically in that imagination, and the encompassing net that culture gives, exists at least as much in the (imagination) as it does in the 'real world.' To many, the reality of the moon walk is more real in imagination/culture than as a real event that took place in the Milky Way.
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By the way, your “descent” to a quality of animal nature brought to mind this Eckhart Tolle write-up, on living in this moment (the only time we can actually live in): http://thepointmag.com/here1.html
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Thanks for the reference to Eckhart Tolle. I had hear of him through many sources, but this article is a little more objective. He leaves me quite cold actually. But that's doubtless due to my immunisation against gurus.
Some think there are good gurus and bad (e.g. corrupt) ones. For a long time I've felt there can be no good gurus – that the very idea is bad. I think the reason is that they invade your space, they lack respect for your wholeness, they want to trample over your experience with theirs, and expect to be thanked for it.
For me, helping others starts with giving them respect. And probably ends there too, way short of interfering with their lives.
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