Exiting
The Core Dialog (or, Default To Pseudoscience)
dedicated
to the late John Hurrell Crook (1930-2011)
You were my Guru
sharing an
elevator from Toronto to Bristol
Social
Ecology's Père.
Restless wife
leaving you
imploding, reinventing
a
rugged Quelea
a monk of
fieldwork.
Did Africa loom?
Did you miss
reading journals?
Did your
colleagues write?
Did you feel manly
or was that all in
the past?
Before the Four
Purposes supplanted Science
exceeding Dharma's
proscriptions
filling every void
now seeking a
different balance
compelled like
other stoics to forfeit Natural History
for Moksha
manifest as enlightenment
and for the
spiritual wealth of Artha
no longer weighed
in the currency of papers and books
a domain of joy as
intentional Kama
Charvaka appealing
to lone materialists
not at ease with
magic and gods
switching from
fact-finder to spiritualist
alien in the halls
of Cambridge.
A wife defined by
roles to others
categories like
tributaries always moving, changing
sometimes in
random directions
or immeasurable
and ill-defined
engineering the
ecosystem of kin, friends, acquaintances
as
the Falémé
nurtures soils and microbes
power over living
things and things not living
abiotic and biotic
landscapes rugged
as the slopes of Kouroudiako
where a wife near
Saraya knows abandoning her fate
would mean death
or silence
not the freedom
felt by your wife leaving Bristol for London
then more popular
than Stilton
dancing in halls
when once she served port to your peers.
Her agency yanked
you from worthy colleagues
no further
prospects save surrendering Self
as another form of
contract
left by your woman
to conquer new demons.
With
or without Ego,
cause and effect prevail.
The act of writing
is a conduit to Truth
that you abandoned
for another sort of insight
turning inward to
reject the landscapes of probabilities
odds offering few
direct rewards
propelling you
instead behind a veil of contemplation
seeking your
non-self rather than a higher self
a mien without
craving
if that state is
possible
beyond mere
abstinence from pleasure
not pleasure but
abstinence from the satisfactions of the unconscious
relief from
responsibility
trading arrogance
for enlightenment or another quality of knowing
not seeking facts,
equations but received integrity
seated alone on a
mat.
A body crafted for
work
Gramsci built for
hegemony
von Frisch built
for bees
Strassmann built
for microbes
Dickinson built
for poetry
wired for thought
expansive and novel
Seewiesen
encompassing Max Planck and Munich.
Your body
performing intentionally
in Morocco and the
Himalayas
willing the unity
of Science and Buddhism
removed from the
certainties of reductionism
leaving you to
walk unclothed across ice
at a time when you
needed the sun's thaw
striking a bargain
with Sheng Yen
to wear the rough
robe of celibacy
though you never
extinguished desire
recalling craving
controlled by midbrain
competing with
frontal cortex for control.
Originally
published in International Society of Behavioral Ecology Newsletter,
2015, vol. 27, issue 2, pp 10-11
