Ferns & Courage

Powered by Castpost
(podcast of this post)

A special part of living in the north end of the Willamette Valley is the breathtaking beauty. A favorite place of mine is Silver Falls. The water cascades, falls, splashes, sprays throughout this State Park from a dozen waterfalls. Moss hangs from trees, lichen creeps glacially over the rocks year by year, the ferns spring up amidst wild flows, framing the fish leaping in the streams and rivers: fragile plants twisting up between the roots of mighty trees.

The ferns provide a primordial touch to the forest. Fronds stretch out to brush the dust from our feet, the fiddleheads slowly unfurl through the afternoon’s light, verdant from its passage through maple leaves. Most don’t notice the fern’s dual nature. They see the fronds and fiddleheads and miss the other half of this unusual life form. The prolathia.

Beneath the ferns are tiny plants, up to a half inch across and lying close to the ground, and they are the direct offspring of the ferns above them. They are the plants which grow from the spores dropped from the fronds dusting our feet.

The little plants are male and female and mix their genetic materials by dropping them into water droplets, producing sporphytes, seeds.

Weird isn’t? It is almost as if they are two species, alternating their generations, asexual and sexual reproduction, spores and seeds, moving through time, taking turns.

--------------------------------

Ever watch The Red Green Show? It isn’t on the Public Broadcasting System any more, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted. There was a prayer that ended each episode, the prayer of the members of "Possum Lodge":

Dear Lord,
I’m a man,
and I’m sorry.
But I’ll change,
if I have to,
I guess.
Amen.

--------------------------------

I don’t understand women. My generalizations are often wrong when applied to specific women, but there are tendencies in the way women think, behave, live, that seem fairly consistent.

That is true of men also. Many women don’t understand men. That’s OK.

It’s almost as if we are separate species. Like ferns, we share who we are, but we are so different that an outside observer might mistake us for completely different creatures.

Men dominate. We tend to hold the higher positions of authority in everything from leading nations to leading card games. The hormones coursing through our veins push us to act. We take risks, we claim resources, we stake out territories. The biological advantage is that our families, our tribes, have greater chances for survival. A disadvantage is that it can get us killed.

Another disadvantage is that it results in unfair situations. Hormones do not reason out what is equitable, what our opponents need or desire, what is fair. We consider them only in bartering small concessions to our advantage.

All this posturing, and growling, and chest thumping often results in the subjectation of not only our opponents, but of the members of our tribes and families. Our partners. Our wives.

Women tend to use other methods to reach their goals. I prefer a particular method to be used on me. It is a subtle manipulation of my ego and topics of discussion so I might develop the idea of what is wanted, without my knowledge, it is all a part of her plan. (Though she doesn’t pull it off often... I think.) It is perfect when she lets me think it was all my idea. She hasn’t hormones that demand the chest-thumping recognition of who is smartest, most clever.

But subtleties are lost in many circumstances. There is another method I have known women to take that is stunning, one which thickens my throat, making it hard to swallow, moving my heart to an understanding of what is right, what is fair.

I know of two songs which explore two occaisions when women have used their own innocence, their own frailty, to shame the beasts which surround them into behaving as human beings.

One song is “Cueca Solo” by Sting.

There is a folk dance in Argentina. The cueca. It is a dance performed by couples at almost any occaision: parties, festivals, weddings.



It is a dance of beauty where scarves float between reaching hands, a dance of courtship and partnership shouting to the world that this is a couple. That here are two people who will dance through all their years as partners.



During the reign of General Pinochet thousands of people simply disappeared. They we snatched from streets and homes, parks and churches, and were tortured and raped and murdered. The military patrolled the streets. The police had absolute authority.

And the mothers, the wives, of the disappeared grieved. Their sorrow grew and grew until one day it found expression in the dance.

They walked to the police stations, to the gates of military bases, and began to dance. They held portraits of their husbands, of their sons, and danced the cueca... all alone. They pinned the photos of the loved ones to their blouses... and danced, alone, cueca solo, beneath the stony gazes of their oppressors.


Such bravery is incredible. It is breathtaking. It makes my heart ache to think of sorrow so deep that their own lives become a small thing, worth the risk in dancing the question: “Where is he?”

There is a second song which makes me consider the magnificent beauty of femine bravery: “Miss Sarajevo” by U2.

In the midst of the death, and rape, and torture of the war in Bosnia, of an “ethnic cleansing” pitting “Christians” against “muslims,” a group of young women held a beauty pageant.



The song begins with a soft beat, strings rise in volume, and Bono’s voice begins asking questions:

Is there a time for keeping a distance
A time to turn your eyes away
Is there a time for keeping your head down
For getting on with your day

Is there a time for kohl and lipstick
A time for cutting hair
Is there a time for high street shopping
To find the right dress to wear

The parallelism of those words...

is there a time...

is there a time...

It brings Ecclesiastes to mind... that there is a time for everything. I listen to those words, wondering... The gentle melody, the rising strings, the lyrics, bring to mind the images of war, of explosions and men running with figures lying contorted on litters, of body bags and funerals.

And the lyrics swing around to gaze quietly, hopefully, at the simple silly ritual of a beauty pageant:

Here she comes
Heads turn around
Here she comes
To take her crown

I wonder at the odd juxtaposition of death and beauty, of terror and normalcy:

Is there a time to walk for cover
A time for kiss and tell
Is there a time for different colors
Different names you find it hard to spell

Is there a time for first communion
A time for east 17
Is there a time to turn to mecca
Is there a time to be a beauty queen

Here she comes
Beauty plays the crown
Here she comes
Surreal in her crown

And the music swings away from Bono’s soft questioning voice to Pavarotti’s tenor as it pierces through the melody and wisks me up and away from my mental images of death:

Dici che il fiume
trova la via al mare
E come il fiume
giungerai a me
Oltre i confini
e le terre assetate
Dici che come fiume
come fiume
L'amore giunger
L'amore
E non so pi pregare
E nell'amore non so pi sperare
E quell'amore non so pi aspettare

I don’t understand the words, but the emotions are clear, needing no translation. I hear a voice which cries out for the beauty of the world, and it questions why men make things ugly. It sings of a love that flows through the boundaries of nations, a love strong enough to push aside such hatreds as that of Montagues and Capulets, “Christians” and “muslims.” It aches for things which flutter from the grasp of innocents lost in the fog of war.

My mind conjures up the images of green light filtering through shimmering leaves, of angry balls of fire rising from war-torn cities, of water falling from great heights, of an infant in my arms, and an infant lying in a horrifyingly small coffin (how is it that such things are ready for use!?!), of women in a beauty pagent asking not to be killed for trying to live a normal life, of ferns beneath giant cedars, and of the beauty of femine courage.