Now that it’s almost summer time again, the greenery is literally the scenery. I have been blessed with a terrace, and that terrace is filled with trees, bushes, flowers and just an assortment of Chi-enducing beings. The greenery surrounds me and my wife, and we spend as much time as possible in that surrounding. It is in many ways our equivalent to a garden or an oasis.
On the inside, my wife has just finished alphabetising our bookshelves. Not an easy task! Where it used to be all my “intuitive” order (meaning more chaos than order, albeit one in which only I could find my way), now every book in our collection is meticulously and lovingly put in its proper place.
The result of both these processes is a feeling of absolute well-being and harmony; safety even. You need to go no further than to Cicero, who already in the first century BC eloquently stated that all you basically need in life is a garden and a library: “Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil”.
However, Cicero has been misquoted throughout the millennia and I just did it again. What he wrote literally translates as “If you have a garden in your library, nothing will fail.” Yes, please note: “a garden in your library,” not “a garden and a library.” The magical merging of these concepts show that Cicero had a creative and very pagan mind. Why? Because these phenomena are both essentially the same: beautiful extensions of a deeper world soul (Anima Mundi) that permeates both our outer and inner natures.
Each book is a plant; a unique phenomenon and expression. Each plant, ditto a book. Each plant gives off seed that will eventually become something “same but different,” as will each book. It’s a cultivation process that no amount of concrete, asphalt or tyranny can ever stop. The will to live is simply too strong to be contained or circumsized in any way.
A garden and a library then might seem like paradoxical phenomena. If the force itself can’t be contained or controlled, then why even bother applying things like personal aesthetics or shelf order? Isn’t it all just pure vanity?
The reason why we should always strive for this possible paradox is simple: life-affirming alignment. If we are outside of nature and outside of the library we can only apply mental or intellectual filters – at most. Nature can then seem to be “conceptual,” as in chaotic, violent, brutal, beautiful, serene, etc. It’s the same with the library. You think it’s either good (“I get inspired by an accumulation of human knowledge and wisdom”) or bad (“Why bother reading when you can do things instead? There are too many books. The Internet is smarter,” etc.).
But when you’re on the inside looking out (or further in) it’s a completely different story. You realise that life force, Chi, is a very real thing, just like the oxygen the plants provide. In the library, you can of course pick any book and let it provide you with its intellectual-emotional-moral Chi. You can also just stay in the middle of it and let it affect you by osmosis (a very real and tangible phenomenon). Or indulge in any combination.
The human desire to create her own order may not be just a causally brutal way of organising the outer in order to subjugate it, but rather an attempt to subjugate herself in order to fully be able to take in the life-affirming aspects of both these cultures otherwise so overwhelming.
If we are faced with mortal dangers in the jungle or have no water in the desert, the life-affirming and aesthetic aspects of a systemic perfection become pretty null and void. If we are faced with books-as-information/data online or look inside a humongous and soulless chain bookstore that doesn’t appeal to us, the life affirming and potentially inspiring aspects of systemic perfection also become null and void.
We need to cultivate our garden, as Voltaire so correctly stated, and that both in the organic and intellectual sense, as Cicero also so correctly stated. Only then can we be fully immersed in an optimal arena of life enhancement and affirmation.
It doesn’t take a lot either. There can be a library of just one book, just as well as there can be a garden of just one plant. What matters is the degree to which we let it speak to us (and it will if you only listen closely). A very interesting dialogue may ensue.
An addition of just one more plant and one more book, and you’re on your way to timelessly teaming up with the finest human endeavour there is: cultivation. Not in order to subjugate and exploit the outer, but in order to refine and elevate yourself during your own brief lifetime in this magnificent system of endless gardens of books and libraries of plants.
(This text is for Adam Parfrey, 1957-2018)
