Anatomy of Landscape and landmarks in language

Every day, all day long, in their lives and in their dreams, people have been using, working on our language for 600 years. We ought to be pretty good at it by now!  If we could travel back to England in the 1400’s we’d be able to hold a conversation with them.  Think of all the original ideas and reinforced expressions that have gone into Modern English. The language you and I speak today is the end-result wrapped by all those life times.  What a gift!

Have you noticed when you are speaking or writing, that you know more than you thought you did, that using language causes you to reach further into yourself?  Two centuries ago a man named William Blake did that and left these words for us to unwrap:

“For all are men in Eternity, / Rivers, Mountains, Cities, Villages, /  All are human, and when you enter into their Bosoms /  You walk in Heavens and Earths, /  As in your own Bosom, /  You bear your Heaven and Earth, And all you behold; /  Tho’ it appears Without, /  It is Within………”  Think of it:  nature and everything we make as organisms just as we are, alive with all the attributes of human beings….—Breathing, Pulsing, Willing to Be as we do…but Forever.

The nature we have been given and the civilization we are creating exist within us and are our Heaven on Earth.  These are Sublime ideas….sublime---from the Latin, reaching the lintel of the doorway….the top of the door frame…up to the top….EXALTED….Blake’s 48 words that I recited show how language can transport us to a place where we can see more….

Not all language gives us examples so obvious….some are subliminal—same root words as sublime, but it means subconscious, under the lintel.   Let’s explore this.  Think of the word Blake used—Bosom, where our heart, considered the source of our affection and feeling resides…it once was common to use the expression “The Bosom of the Earth” ….to describe an experience that only nature could give us…making us feel sheltered, at one with our surroundings, that what was around us was actually within us. 

Historically, when man named a place, he believed he had taken ownership of it.  But, in fact, we only lease what we title.  When we name a place, what is really happening is that we belong to it.  But we have made it recognizable.  Don’t be taken in by my semantics.  Let’s take a trip instead. 

Have you been to the Marin HEADlands?  You are standing above the FACE of the cliffs that overlook the Ocean. You see that you are on the highest part of the coastal range, the summit, the crown, like the  CROWN of your head.  Shielding your eyes from the setting sun, you descend to the BROW of a nearby hill, you cross the BRIDGE of your nose to get over the RIDGE of bone over your eye’s socket. 

Huh, the parts of our body have become signs, landmarks to help us identify the shape of the world around us.  You find yourself at the MOUTH of the Russian River, and on a windy day it feels like you are in the TEETH of a storm. You see a TONGUE of coastal land that licks into the shallows of the ocean, not to be confused with a SPIT of land that would be even smaller than a tongue. 

On a bad day on the coast, when the wind, fog, rain, and cold all conspire, it feels like you are being blasted at the JAWS of Hell.  Best thing to do is high-tail it out of that NECK of the Woods, after you pull over to the road’s SHOULDER and check your GPS to make sure to don’t take a false turn and end up in one of the ARMs of the sea prevalent on the coast.   

Crazy when you think about it—the Brain has both PATHWAYs and WAVES. We are using them now, art we not?

Let’s go beneath the skin…..we have BOWELS OF THE EARTH, if you’ve been in a cavern you know what that’s like.  SPINE of the mountains, LUNGS of the Earth, that is what the Rain Forest is called.  And of course, we have the HEARTLAND—that place where we hale from, have nostalgia for, and want to return to.  Local mercury and silver mines had VEINS. And Highway 101 is one of Sonoma’s Arterial roads.

Where was I?  Arm…We have FINGERs of Land that reach into BODIES of water. This final LEG of our journey brings us back home near one of my favorite places, Shenandoah Valley which gives you a perfect view of the Sierra’s FOOTHILLS.  Have I TOEd the mark enough?

I can’t hardly stop myself. 

Metaphorically speaking, we have fashioned our landscape into a likeness as familiar to us as our own bodies.  We cannot help ourselves from wanting to belong to our world, from wanting to be Men in Eternity.      

It is sublime, exalted--whoever did all this language, hid those images in our subconscious expressions, yet left them so easy for us to use. But words were not made to be held in secret. Blake would tell us that what we see and name is really Within us.  The very moment we give it word, the very moment we hear it spoken…. It takes a place within us, a place to be shared with others who walk in our Heaven and our Earth.