Pepper Trail | Poetry | The Land: Word, Image, and Dream

THE LAND: WORD, IMAGE, AND DREAM

In the beginning was the Word.

A writer wrote that. We writers believe that we create; that words are the stuff of creation. There is a giddy godlike thrill in looking at a landscape or at a face, and awaiting the arrival of the words that will truly create that landscape, that face in our understanding. It is a peculiar and addictive sensation, one that every writer knows. And so, for us, “In the beginning was the Word.”

Of course, it isn’t true. Our words do not create the world. To think so is profoundly disrespectful to all the other beings with whom we share creation. And it isn’t even true within the limited sphere of human consciousness. Before the Word is the Image. Whether our eyes are open or closed, the Image is how our mind first organizes reality. After we form our image of the world, we are able to act – and usually one of our first acts is to express our understanding in words.

But before both the Image and the Word, there is a deeper layer yet. This is the Dream, the restless, shifting mixture of thoughts, expectations, values, and needs that constitutes our consciousness. The Dream explains how two people can take in the same landscape, the same image, or the same words, and perceive them completely differently. The dream drives us to create the images that we do, to arrange words as we do, to lay ourselves upon the land as we do.

This past September, Jim Chamberlain, Paul Tipton, and I were fortunate to spend a day, swept with rain and sun, exploring a few small parts of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and its surroundings. Our mission was to Mark Our Place, which we took to mean to look at and think about where we live; this land: what it means to us and what, perhaps, we mean to it. And so we were brought back to the beginning: to the word, the image, and the dream.

You will not be surprised to learn that the three of us came away with different responses. That was precisely the point. Paul and I are writers. Jim is a photographer, and worked with both of us to deepen our merely literary productions.

		THE LAND: WORD, IMAGE, AND DREAM In the beginning was the Word. A writer wrote that. We writers believe that we create; that words are the stuff of creation. There is a giddy godlike thrill in looking at a landscape or at a face, and awaiting the arrival of the words that will truly create that landscape, that face in our understanding. It is a peculiar and addictive sensation, one that every writer knows. And so, for us, “In the beginning was the Word.” Of course, it isn’t true. Our words do not create the world. To think so is profoundly disrespectful to all the other beings with whom we share creation. And it isn’t even true within the limited sphere of human consciousness. Before the Word is the Image. Whether our eyes are open or closed, the Image is how our mind first organizes reality. After we form our image of the world, we are able to act – and usually one of our first acts is to express our understanding in words. But before both the Image and the Word, there is a deeper layer yet. This is the Dream, the restless, shifting mixture of thoughts, expectations, values, and needs that constitutes our consciousness. The Dream explains how two people can take in the same landscape, the same image, or the same words, and perceive them completely differently. The dream drives us to create the images that we do, to arrange words as we do, to lay ourselves upon the land as we do. This past September, Jim Chamberlain, Paul Tipton, and I were fortunate to spend a day, swept with rain and sun, exploring a few small parts of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and its surroundings. Our mission was to Mark Our Place, which we took to mean to look at and think about where we live; this land: what it means to us and what, perhaps, we mean to it. And so we were brought back to the beginning: to the word, the image, and the dream. You will not be surprised to learn that the three of us came away with different responses. That was precisely the point. Paul and I are writers. Jim is a photographer, and worked with both of us to deepen our merely literary productions.