Wednesday 24 February 2016

Ancestors

I’ve been thinking about the concept of Ancestors of late and thought I would share some of my musings.  I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of ancestors. Most people refer to ancestors within the context of genetic lineage. I think the idea can be expanded greatly.

In my case, for example, my ancestors are Irish and English. But the ancestors who came to the New World arrived in the 1790s and the1680s. This neither makes me Irish nor English. I am now a Canadian. That being said, am I a new chapter in an old story? Or, am I a whole new story?

If one expands the idea of ancestor back through time, the direct lineage we have in our recorded history is rather shallow and rather selective. How, for example, do we incorporate our pre-human ancestors? So, I think the idea of ancestry is, in fact, the passage of information and wisdom from one generation to the next. It is far more than just a few generations. It is quite literally, all living things on the earth that are, will be or have been.

Quantum physics considers that time is a reference point. It is a point of view. In our present physical manifestation we perceive time in a forward linear fashion. This is a result of entropy or what is called the “arrow of time”. But, in fact, the true nature of time is not very well understood and how we perceive time, is not its full nature. There are proofs that we can perceive non-linear time and there is nothing in quantum physics that states we cannot perceive time in a non-linear fashion.

So, if we expand our idea of ancestors within the context of non-linear time, I think the idea of liminal spaces/edges and the interconnections of all minded things becomes the world of our ancestors. It is from this place that we can gain knowledge and wisdom equally valid as the spoken and written word.

Near where I live there exists the Badlands of Alberta, Canada in which the town of Drumheller is located along with the Royal Tyrrell Museum. When you enter this desert-like valley, you descend in elevation to the floor of the valley through which the Red Deer river flows. The fascinating part of the descent is that you are literally moving through millions of years of time. The floor of the valley is the same geological land upon which dinosaurs walked during the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. As a result of the power of natural erosion and weathering, this land where no human originally walked is exposed. Amongst the scatterings of fossilized forest remnants, and dino bones, one can also find fully articulated skeletons of ice age bison, too. Layers upon layers of time exposed as lines in the earth. It is interesting to note that our First Nations Peoples (Aboriginal) included this place in their myths. European settlers once mined coal from this valley. Today, this land is surrounded by agriculture; mostly wheat. In this place, time and a variety of cultural stories intersect in a very unique and non-linear fashion. The song of this land is, however, mostly pre-human. To walk on the same land as dinosaurs, now reduced to stone memories of a world long gone, invokes deep thoughts of the wyrd of humanity.


Passage


Finger taps to clock tick

Dust 

On leather wood and wool

Old eyes gaze then settle

On photographs and dried roses

Near a blackened mirror

Once reflecting the grace of bright eyes and smiles


78 discs in yellowed sleeves

A phonograph with rusty needle

Whispers memories of instrument and song

While silent walls of chipped plaster

And splintered wood

Vibrate only to street noise

When cane hanging sometimes bounces

And calendars shift to reveal dark paper


Choking weed strewn garden

Broken leaning fencepost

Fallen white wash boards

Weary flowers blossom

Scent pounding on a closed window


Hollow hallway echoes cold

Dust on leather, wood and wool

Grey stone crucifix, perch for birds

Near fresh turned soil

Green to brown then green

A monument to memory revealing
Emergence
Cuardaitheoir /|\





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