Field Note on what it feels like to be here.

I was standing in the forest, my forest, recently destroyed by an F2 tornado, surrounded by fragments of what had once been whole. The trees, gnarled and broken, seemed to hum with an unspoken presence. It was not just their ruin that struck me; it was the profound sense of loss, of something larger passing away, something I could feel but could not yet articulate.
 
In that space, I began to sense what the forest might be asking of me: to create something that would carry its spirit beyond itself. I saw the path forward in a series of stations—image-text pairings that might transpose the enormity of what I felt into a context where others could feel it too. But that raised a question: could I create something that made others stop and feel the bewilderment, the isolation, and the depth of meaning as I did? Or would the strangeness push them away, leaving them seeking clarity where none could be offered?
 
It was then that the sentence came to me, like a thread I could follow –
 
What this means is what it feels like to be here.
 
At first, it was a potential title for Stations. I was inspired by poets I admire: Lucille Clifton, James Wright, and others in the Deep Image tradition. Poets who used titles as narrative anchors. Their poems, so lyrical and elusive, find their grounding in the titles themselves, which often serve as the only map to the work’s meaning. I thought perhaps this sentence could serve the same purpose.
 
But the sentence was not just a title. It became something larger, a lens through which I could see everything I was trying to do. It felt complete, self-evident, like an answer that contains its own question. I have always been drawn to statements like this. Concepts where the logic loops back on itself, where the clarity does not come from explanation but from recognition. Recognition that like a bell that once struck continues to resonate.
 
It was so simple, so clear, and yet it contained everything I was trying to articulate. The sentence was a kind of self-evidence. It seemed to hold its meaning within itself, a loop where question and answer were the same. On the surface, it appears direct: What this means seems to promise an explanation, an intellectual unpacking. But then it shifts: is what it feels like, pulling you into the body, into sensation. And finally, to be grounding it in presence, in the act of being.
 
Mind. Body. Spirit.
 
The sentence itself mirrors the triadic structure I find at the heart of meaning-making. The mind seeks understanding (what this means), the body offers sensation (what it feels like), and the spirit emerges in the fusion of the two (to be). This third element, the spirit, is ineffable. It cannot be captured by language because it exists beyond it, as an emergent property of the interplay between knowledge and comprehension.
And finally, they all commit to their logic by insisting on a sense of temporality. To be here is where everything fuses. It is the present moment, the actual point of being. But more than that, it is where the act of existence itself unfolds. Here is not a static place or fixed time. It is fleeting and ever-changing. It is the fire consuming its fuel. And just as life itself consumes to persist, here is where knowledge and sensation combine, giving rise to something entirely new.
 
This is why the sentence has stayed with me. It feels complete in its paradox, its constant becoming. What this means—the realm of mind and knowledge. What it feels like—the realm of body and comprehension. And to be—the act of becoming, the emergent spirit, the wisdom that cannot be directly described or contained but only felt in its fusion.
 
It reminds me of the words God spoke in Exodus: I am that I am. A statement of being, not as something fixed, but as a process, a becoming. The act of being is always unfolding, always a fusion of thought, feeling, and presence. And this sentence, what this means is what it feels like to be here, carries that same structure. It answers all questions about life and its implied meaning in its spiritual balance.
 
I ultimately decided not to use it as the title for Stations. I leaned into the framework of the Stations of the Cross, letting that tradition carry the weight of the work. But the sentence stayed with me, becoming a cornerstone of my philosophy. It encapsulates what I am trying to understand and share: that meaning is not a thing to be grasped, but a process to be inhabited.
 
And so, this second Field Note is dedicated to this sentence. It is both a guide and a riddle, a statement and a question. What it offers is not an answer, but a way of seeing. I hope it invites you into the same act of presence that it asks of me: to dwell in the interplay of mind, body, and spirit, and to find, within that fusion, what it truly means to be here.post.