Language, Landscape and Light
Author: Hank Kune Issue: 2023-01-04
Language, Landscape and Light
by Hank Kune
Speculations on light, landscape and language to greet a new year.
At this time of year light is so important, here on the west coast of Ireland.
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We see how it illuminates and enlivens things, provoking and disrupting shadows, welcoming new understandings of the world. Even through the cover of clouds and winter showers, it brings landscapes to life.
Mornings, first light comes later here than most other places, at just before nine. Most mornings it rains, or threatens to rain; and rain-light keeps the landscape near. Then in the afternoons it clears.
Last light is lovely, it's the best, showing off the winter colors of the west: amber, mauve, red and many wintry greens. Light makes the world a beautiful thing.
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I have just started reading a fascinating book about the Irish landscape and the Irish language: 32 Words for Field.
It describes the way Irish speakers (from thousands of years ago, until recently) encoded their acquired knowledge, learnings, wisdom, insights and poetry in a language describing specific elements of landscape, differentiating dozens of nuances in nature and culture by naming them, a new word for each idea separately: 32 kinds of fields, 18 kinds of holes, 16 words for orienting yourself by the sun, 9 words for waves ...
A hole made by a spade in the earth, a hole made by water eroding a stone, a hole made by a lobster burrowing for safety in the sand, a hole made by needle pricking fabric, another for a needle pricking skin.
A field with right angles, a field where gorse once grew and was removed by burning, another such field where gorse was cut by scythe, a sheltered field where a mare may have its foal, a field for cows before milking.
Lessons of nature and culture (the world worked by human hands) passed down through generations and centuries. Essential ways of reading landscapes, of negotiating with worlds natural and man-made by looking at things and really seeing what is there, and once seeing them dancing with words through the world.
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This language is vanishing with the last fluent Irish speakers, vanishing along with our capacity to discern 'difference', and an interest in making this distinction. Today we seem to live by lumping things together without paying much attention to difference. Using categories to ignore (or avoid) trying to express clearly - or poetically - what we want to say. “Keyword thinking”, as my sister Beverly, who runs Creative Alternatives in New Mexico, calls it, “making our experience of the world more mundane”.
A shaman she knew once told her about ‘seeing things as if we could hear them speak’. An almost-lost art now. Curiosity, it seems, may be going the same way. “Taking time for curiosity is no longer the norm”.
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In Irish, many of these words are very old (just as the worn-down mountains and rounded hills of County Mayo). Some go back many thousands of years (although scholars don't all agree on how many).
As Manchán Magan tells us in his book, there is an old Irish saying: "Three times the lifespan of a whale is the lifespan of a ridge, three times the lifespan of a ridge is the lifespan of the world". Ancient Irish people saw the whale as living for 1,000 years. That made the ridges 3,000 years old - corresponding to the beginning of cultivated crops in Ireland - and the lifespan of the 'world' as 9,000 years, corresponding to the first appearance of people on this island.
A lot of time encapsulated in a single saying, related to a landscape of agricultural ridges which can still be seen today, not 20 kilometers from where I am writing.
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This language of landscape contains the power to enchant us and draw us in; or refuse us and keep us out. We often refer to the powers of landscape. In some cultures, the words are still here, even though the perceived need for noticing is no longer so strong.
How much do we 'need' to notice when navigating through today’s uncertainties, or tomorrow’s ambiguity? Can we notice our way into the book of the world, into a library of alternative worlds, a range of “adjacent possibles"? How much light do we need to see them?
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I know a number of places where light does special things to landscapes. Both northern New Mexico and the west of Ireland are magical landscapes for me, the one wet and chilly, the other hot and high. Does an old language of landscape also exist in northern New Mexico? In native American languages not yet lost today?
Beverly again:
“We do have terms for different types of snow to differentiate an early winter snow (a male snow, very dry and powdery) from a late winter/early spring snow (a female snow, very wet and heavy); a word for rain that doesn’t quite touch the ground (virga), a word for snow that comes down in pellet form (hominy snow or grapple) and different color descriptors for light to describe times of day, or weather or seasonal variations. For example if the light turns yellow (even in the middle of the night) it means that a snowstorm is about to begin. The light outside my window now is lead gray, as opposed to steel gray, soft gray, or iron gray, all of which mean different things in terms of imminent weather”.
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Does this language of environments and light exist in other places? The songlines of Australia come to mind. Does it exist even in cities? In images from telescopes like the James Webb, plotting the light of the cosmos? In the emerging metaverse? What roles does light play there?
Considering how important light on our or planet is, is there a universal language of light? We know about Goethe’s language of light (conceived as experiences of the eye), and Isaac Newton’s (which denied the need of an eye). Are there existing lexicons of landscape and light used by peoples today, and lessons to be learned from them about the value of paying attention to where we stand, where we think we are going, where we want to go — and what it looks like there. Lessons about enhancing our understanding of how the world works, about recovering our capacity to see and celebrate difference?
32 kinds of fields, 24 kinds of clouds, 18 varieties of roads, how many words for waves and hillsides and snow, and what rain does as it touches down on water, earth, roads, and the human imagination.
And why it may matter.
Speculations for a new year.
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As all roads lead to futures, may ours lead to the light.
All the best for a happy and inspiring 2023!
~ Hank Kune
[With thanks to Manchán Magan, Beverly Kune, and Steve Smith]
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