There is an old New Orleans funeral song (I like the George Lewis version): “Didn’t he ramble/he ramble/he rambled all around/in and out of town./Didn’t he ramble/he ramble/ he rambled ‘til the butcher cut him down.”  It is bright and cheerful and incorporates an attitude to life that I think is all too rare today.  Maybe it would be good for us to do a bit more rambling, a bit less logical pursuit of imagined goals.

Of course, such an attitude is heresy in an era of “purpose-driven” meaningful lives.  People are constantly told that to be happy they must have an easily-encapsulated moral philosophy _ almost a sloganized motto_ of what they should do.  Each moment should be devoted to whatever shiny objective they have chosen to add the luster of pride to their dreary little lives.  Media is filled with puritanical admonitions to live frugally in hope of future glory.

A ramble, by definition, has no destination.  It is valued for itself.  It glories in unexpected enrichment as a person strolls undirected over woods, meadows, beaches, roads, city sidewalks, ugly terrain, or wherever a path may be available.  Variety is certain.  The mind is as free as the body, and comes up with unique ideas to match strange perspectives.  At the end nothing much has been accomplished, and there is no shiny trophy commemorating a task well done.  Rewards of a good ramble are entirely self-contained and as transitory as the next breeze.

Now, I am not saying it is not good to do something constructive sometimes.  There are periods of life that require intense single-minded concentration on a task.  Rambling all the time is just as corrosive as constantly striding heedless towards some destination.  Each phase of life is rewarding, in its own way, and is part of how we have a fully experienced existence.  Sure, spend some time thinking of nothing but that project that you think needs to be done.  But, as the saying used to go, smell the roses along the way _ sometimes stop working on the project and wander around the garden doing nothing.   There are an awful lot of moments in a lifetime, they can be spread into a grand profusion of activities.

Civilization now provides infinite resources of knowledge, possibilities, and challenges.  To cope with ever-more-detailed specializations, society has raised crops of pointy-headed experts.  Each of these has a myopic view of the universe that they encourage us to follow.  And, to be honest, the most lucky and driven of those creatures often become rich and famous.  But from any perspective other than their own, much of what they advise is counterproductive to a rich and full life. 

How would your funeral sound?  Would they play “didn’t he ramble?” and mean it?  Would you prefer weeping, or a long obituary in a prominent journal?  Maybe a mix.  I usually don’t waste much time thinking about life after me _ other folk’s problem.  I certainly never try to imagine looking back from a casket.  But I would like to think that, at least, there would be few regrets.  Those would include not having taken advantage of this miracle world that was offered, not simply strolled about and been grateful.

Society demands we not think that way.  Society is an ant heap.  Use up soldiers, drive the workers, keep the queen safe.  An individual is essentially unimportant and fully replaceable.   What any given ant thinks does not matter at all.  I am not, I do not want to be, such an ant.  At least not all the time.  I spent my ant years commuting and in a career, but even then I broke out whenever possible.  We are richly endowed to be much more than ants in our own noggin.  Do not put a lot of faith for your own personal salvation in the needs of the anthill.

Let us never forget that a good ramble always includes legs in motion.  It is not virtual viewing on a computer simulation.  It is not reading a book.  It is not even pursuit of a hobby.  It is, from external perspectives, “wasted time.”  But that wasted time must include using the body, moving along sidewalks or over hills, looking actively at whatever comes into view, listening to the environment, and letting the brain roam as unchained as the feet.

Rambles provide a good anchor for celebration in our very weird universe.  We are fated not to understand everything, and that is ok.  We are mortal, and we adjust to that grim ending.  But we need not listen to experts, work an ant’s routine, nor mutate into potatoes on a couch.  A ramble is a cure for almost everything, and (as an expert) I advise it whole-heartedly.

“Why is the sky blue?” is the quintessential child’s question.  Adults could query “Why is the air clear?” or “Why can we see?” or even “Why can we breathe?”  Short scientific explanations about blueness refer to scattering of light by molecules.  Details about which molecules are most involved on earth (nitrogen and oxygen) and why humans have evolved to perceive blue and use oxygen are usually omitted.  On other planets, we now surmise, the sky might not be blue at all.  Even on our own turf, different eyes on different creatures will perceive it much differently (if at all) than as a “blue experience.”

With many important things on our minds, we usually pay no attention to the sky and air around us.  Perhaps a sunrise or sunset captures a moment of reflective beauty.  Perhaps a storm interrupts our well-laid plans.  Pollution _ local or global _ may cause indignation, but most of us happily step into the trees at a park and glance at a blue sky; smile and look away.  No rain, bright sun, things are good.  The way it always was, and always should be.

Early science fiction was really about society, but it tried to avoid pure fantasy.  So for the most part almost all extraterrestrial stories _ from space opera to carefully crafted parlor mysteries _ took a blue sky as given.  Intelligence, it was supposed, required certain normalities, the atmosphere being one.  In doing so, it was simply following ancient and medieval convention.

Until recently, air and blue sky just were, filling the universe wherever there was not solid land or water. Sophisticated ancient cosmologies imagined crystal spheres floating on air, Medieval European visions assumed breathable atmosphere continuously from heaven to hell, early science figured air filled all the empty space around the moon, sun, and planets.  Eventually, space was filled with ether, then vacuum.  Discovery that atmosphere is a thin shell around our sphere projected that other celestial bodies must also be surrounded similarly.  Only in the last hundred years were we informed that some planets, stars, moons and asteroids have none, some have superheated noxious gases, some have cold dry wind lacking oxygen, and some have nearly unimaginable mixes of peculiar gasses.  Few, so far, indicate an oxygen/nitrogen composition.

Most air is nitrogen, but most effects of air are from water.  Extraterrestrial searches seek “goldilocks” planets _ not too big, not too small, just the right distance from a sun to provide liquid water and gravity to keep it in place.  Meanwhile, geologists increasingly believe our aquatic envelope has been provided by accidents like the moon’s creation, or just enough volcanic action to provide an aerosol sealant, or a molten core to generate a protective magnetic shield, and other exotic local accidents and solar cycles.  Water may not be nearly as common a component even at “perfect” planets as we like to imagine.

And, of course, that all-important oxygen, which is only there because of just the right type of bacteria doing their thing for billions of years.  Incidentally providing a protective ozone shield for just-enough mutations leading to a relatively mild evolution without radiation poisoning.  Another just-right consideration.  Without that, blue sky pretty much vanishes, not to mention anyone like you to see and appreciate it during a lunch walk.

Do you ever consider how it stays the way it is?  How do water and oxygen keep heading back up and down.  People point to trees, but it is probably really viruses and bacteria and fungi, many in the oceans, that keep our oxygen level as it is.  It is waves and evaporation that keep water in the air.  It is an ozone shell that helps trap the water which floats towards space, a van-allen belt that keeps hydrogen from being stripped and lost.  There are so many complexities to maintenance of our sky that the mind boggles, even before we consider how many billions of years it has been relatively stable.   

Every breath we take is an infinitely convoluted procedure to achieve continued existence.  Each glance we make into a blue sky is an insanely moderated chain of chemical and electrical reactions that somehow gives us experience from photons.  Every memory we have of storm or cloud or clear sky is impossible to comprehend as neurological storage.

Most amazingly, we do not have to understand any of it to appreciate it.  Surely the earliest humans enjoyed blue sky as much as we do, at least unless they were hoping for rain.  So what if, like many other things, it is insanely more complicated than we think.  A child can appreciate it, with or without annoying wonder, and so can we.

A hundred years ago, educated people believed that the scientific universe was a pretty rational place, ruled by action and reaction, cause and effect.  If you knew the positions and vectors of everything at any given moment, you could easily extrapolate everything else, forward and backward in time.  Only ignorant religious people thought an omnipotent intelligent god could overrule that sterile logic.  It was merely our feeble understanding of today that made life so unpredictable.   But eventually science rediscovered chaos and indeterminacy.  Sociologists and economists noted “black swan” events.  And now civilization is suddenly finding how disruptive a chaotic pandemic can be.

Rationally planning the future is a wonderful fantasy that works much of the time.  It is analogous to an integrated circuit _ cheap and reliable, easily discarded and a new one acquired.  The flaw in integrated circuits is that they are integrated _ they cannot be repaired.  Even a trivial break can irreparably destroy its functionality.  Planned futures vanish just as easily _ a carefully prepared nest egg can be lost in a momentary market crash, the detailed construction of a perfect retirement shattered by an unfortunate medical diagnosis or automobile accident.

Daily predictability is not applicable to the long term.  Nevertheless, each day, we do wake up the same age, in the same situation, facing the same problems and joys.  Our car will start, work will commence, the sun will come up, weather will conform to average.  Over the long run, those items may change a lot, but day by day they continue in the same old groove.  Unless there is a disruption.  And history indicates that an unpredictable disruption is almost predictable.

Panic occurs when our ability to control the situation deteriorates.  Normally, we can be pretty sure that if we do not have milk in the refrigerator today we need to buy more for tomorrow’s breakfast, taken care of with a quick shopping trip.  Broken cars need a mechanic, rain requires an umbrella. We have a calming belief that we control that aspect of our lives.  Yet if a storm or disaster disrupts the supply chain we worry, people grab, stockpile, panic.  Tiny inconveniences like lack of bread or deep puddles culminate in mass anxiety.

There is such a thing as “normality,” where we usually live.  But normality is not guaranteed.  It is simply inertia and cannot account for unexpected events.  Chaos also guarantees that nobody can determine the right bets to make _ hedging against the normal, as it were.  Maybe the price of milk will skyrocket, maybe it is tulips, maybe gasoline will be unavailable.  Sink resources into the wrong thing and you may end up with a refrigerator full of sour curds and a lot of lost opportunity.

In any crisis, experts offer advice.  Most of what people want to hear is how to control the outcome.  When nothing is offered, or suggestions are impractical, we will follow any superstition to warm our hearts with an illusion.  Washing hands, avoiding eye contact with strangers, drinking lots of ginger ale _ whatever we hear and want to believe _ become necessary for peace of mind.  Because of the placebo effect _ a great deal of this superstitious behavior actually works to that end.

In the modern integrated-circuit world, where everything has to go just right or nothing works, we have come to trust movie scenarios.  A coronavirus pandemic seems very like the Zombie apocalypse.  We will all soon be lurching around eating each other.  There is a rush of fear, a spasm of irrational behavior.  And then day goes by after boring day, and tasks must be done, and no bodies are littering the neighborhood.   And life goes on.

There will be lots of chaos to come.  Scientists and preachers have been telling us for years, sometimes for thousands of years.  Chaos is one of the foundations of the universe.  But so are cause and effect and logic.  We need to be aware of uncontrollable unpredictable chaos, but we can also learn to mitigate its effects.  To some extent, we can even evoke control by determining what to focus on.

As for me, equinox has arrived, spring blooms enliven the landscape, the sky is blue, and I still feel pretty good.  None of my neighbors is pounding on my door with a bloody detached hand.  If this is really the end _ I don’t think it is _ so be it.  A passenger on the Titanic can listen to the band playing and enjoy the music until the sea closes in.

Daffodils and forsythia get all the glory.  Let us rather compose an ode to the unloved, unnoticed, forgotten.  Around here, skunk cabbage provides such marvelous metaphor.  Early colonists hoped that its brilliant early lovely huge green leaves would provide a tasty and nourishing source of vitamins after long winters of snow and ice.  Great disappointment when they tried, and hence its name.  No industrial uses have subsequently been discovered.  It could go extinct without anyone noticing.

Skunk cabbage grows in wet marshy places on which nobody wants to farm nor to build.  Lately, its environment has been shrinking because those habitats were either flooded with dams, or filled in for development.  Where it survives, it is quite hardy, remaining through the years in niches that seem all but impossible.  It is up early in March, flowers weirdly crunching underfoot of the unwary.  By April, its emerald presence is unmistakable, since it thrives in huge colonies. 

Part of the excitement of looking at a skunk cabbage is that the flower is endothermic.  That is, it generates its own heat, which allows its early emergence.  Another part is just that the flower itself is so unique and strange.  And I wonder what insects it expects to come and pollinate at such a frigid time of year.  (Yes, I know I could look it up, but sometimes I like wonder to remain a bit magical and mysterious.)

Thrill of the hunt occurs each late winter when I head into a local bit of woodland to see whether that patch of skunk cabbage still remains.  Like that O’Henry story about the last leaf, I am heartened to find it is still there, somehow.  Then I have a lot of sympathy realizing that I am probably the sole soul who will stop by to notice.

And what is the purpose of skunk cabbage?  Again a lesson, because the only point of that organism, and probably mine as well, is the perpetuation of a particular genetic structure, or, in older parlance, that particular form of life.  Any given plant will be gone in another year, eventually flooded or buried, and possibly all descendants of this group will vanish forever without a trace.  Does that make it meaningless to have bloomed and grown now, for all its intangible effect upon the world?

My own purpose relating to this plant is similarly in question.  I will not be able to save this environment, I will not be able to assure this plant remains, I will not be able to control sea rise or drought or continental drift.  Heck, bulldozers might arrive next week, toxic chemicals might have done their work before I arrive each spring to look.  No, I am helpless as a protector.  I can at least appreciate its effort and its existence.  I can see it as a vision, as a symbol,  as a connection to the past, as a hope for the future. 

I am grateful for my relationship with the humble skunk cabbage.  I have followed it in various places for the last fifty years or more.  As a measure of my own life and as a harbinger of my eventual meaning.  If there is a bit of enlightenment which follows from my meditations, I am even more thankful.

As I grow older, I resist binary division _ something being “this or that.”  And yet, it is such a natural and useful way to think.  An example is our experience of time as being either a “cycle or an arrow.”  Do we see this moment as a unique part of a journey, or a repetition of something we have done before and will do again.  In full complexity and contradiction, I realize that both perspectives are true and false at the same time, and moreover that time itself is a slippery concept not only beyond binary understanding, but beyond any comprehension at all.

My essay is really about how to view my life (as an elder, I frequently waste time considering such things, rather than doing something useful.)  I have increasingly come to view my past as a series of stages on a long parabola of change.  There are lots of people who resist thinking of time as an arrow.  Their internal perspective is a perpetual cycle, in which they view themselves as forever thirty.  At twelve years old, they have planned their future, and they continue to map imagined days to come as they near eighty and beyond.  Working at a purpose from adolescence until death, doing the best they can, unwavering exemplars of ants on a mission.

For fortunate survivors of life’s lotteries, time should be a varying gift.  Existence is remarkably different for a child, an adolescent, a young adult, a mature adult, an aged adult, and an old geezer.  And all the stops in between.  That biggest chunk of “middle age” also has its own subsets, some more definitive than other.  Ask any woman past menopause, or a professional athlete nearing forty.  People tend to refer to aging as a series of “losses”, but the proper way to see it is as ongoing fractal gifts which allow us to examine our universe in different ways. 

Ancient Greeks were right in describing their immortal gods as silly, shallow people.  Endless cycles are simply monotony, good or bad.  Buddha strove to escape that wheel.   Masters of the Universe in our economic society are equally foolish, equally shallow _ old charioteers who claim they are just as good or better at whatever they always have done as they were when young.  Even if they are _ what a sad and claustrophobic trap they have set themselves.  All the cosmos to explore and they happily prowl a tiny cage of their own construction.

Should we not fear death?  I suppose _ it is almost inconceivable _ except that we do approach it each night as we fall asleep.  Personally, I more fear incapacity, and I have always feared suffering.  Death is just an ending.  What we live is far more important.   When we define our lives as simply routine cycles _ go to work, make money, for example _ our whole being can be written in a few pages.  A journey, on the other hand, goes on and on through volume after volume, each amazingly different as each year and decade provides new challenge and response.  

Western thought dreads the purposelessness of oblivion, hoping for “life after death” or meaning in the advance of civilizations.   Its myths teach of eternal heroes, salvaged from whisper by mighty deeds of honor.  Heroes whose memory will live forever.  It dreads the claim of science that the cosmos is temporary, that not only does everyone die, not only are all deeds and civilizations eventually dust, but also the universe itself will encounter a definite and complete ending.  Some retreat into hopelessness, or hedonism, or denial.  Everyone is affected.  Can there be purpose when everything is doomed? 

Not all human thought is Western, of course, even though that dominates our current world.  Other cultures, and more ancient civilizations, survived happily and comfortably with a mythology and philosophy that easily encompassed temporary achievement and death.  Some animists thought that there were three stages of a person’s existence _ actual life, remembrance by others after death, and the final forgetting.  Others taught that gods and fate were fickle and much of went on in heaven was irrelevant to our common day to day reality.  All such peoples were not lost in morose contemplation of ultimate meaning.

So I wake up in a world where there are truly troubles and my own small cares.  But there are also wonders around me.  I concentrate on the wonders, grateful for their experience, and honestly do not care at all what will come after I am incapable of knowing.

March marches in with better sunshine, equinox only weeks away.  This is often a turbulent month, with high winds, unexpected deep freezes, and an occasional blizzard roaring in out of nowhere.  For me, March also heralds real new year, when my brain begins to unclog, casts off the pallor of imaginary hostage confinement by weather, and plans actively for good times to come.

If I search diligently, spring emergence is ubiquitous.  Bulb shoots thrust higher by the day.  Rose and briar stalks streak red and green.  Buds swell on almost all trees and bushes.  The andromeda tree in front is ready to flower, and I have cut forsythia to force in our kitchen for a burst of color.  Garlic clumps dab emerald among fallen leaves, soon to be followed by more unwelcome mats of chickweed.  Already, in sheltered spots, ragweed stakes out territory.

Fewer birds have overwintered near our yard this year, perhaps scared away by a nearly resident falcon which often perches on a dogwood tree out back.  I’ve not yet seen a robin, but they will return soon.  Crows and jays are beginning to screech.  Small birds flit about as they have all winter.  On the harbor,  waterfowl resume mating antics.   If I stop and pay attention, I can believe another cycle begins as always.  If I pay more attention, I realize that there is less wildlife than I remember.

On a warm afternoon, clouds of gnats will puff in shafts of sunlight.  An insomniac bee may start making a futile search for flowers.  Spiders might produce webs.  In warming beds of leaves, all kinds of larvae stir after their long rest.  One day, suddenly, there will be ants and unwelcome termites, and other arthropods which I cannot name.

Only the most ambitious and restless have begun spring chores.  I do know people who already turn over garden beds, while here and there chainsaws and leaf blowers pierce the lovely quiet we have enjoyed for such a brief respite.  But mostly it is too early to paint, too cold to put out patio furniture, much too winter to even think about flowers and grass.  However, the thought that all this activity will soon arrive in force is enough to make me grateful for a little longer period of rest, sort of like pushing a snooze button on the seasonal alarm clock.

The worst frost spell is unbound; I begin to dream of green fields and gardens and long afternoons on a hot beach with gulls flying overhead as salty drops dry on my skin.  Not too long from now, what will we do, where will we go?  I compose a wavering list of places to visit once again, to renew acquaintance with locations in the most pleasant weather imaginable.  Not memory, although remembrance is involved, but dreams of how fine it will be.

Still, it is only March.  I have to rein back my thoughts and return to actual blustery conditions.  I continue to sit inside on too many dreary wet days.  All those wonderful spring-summer-fall marvels to come are _ well, just “to come.”  It is real easy to become fidgety and wonder why grey skies do not break open, why the beautiful promise of brilliant sunbeams is so often crushed by actual conditions when I step outside the door.  March by the solar calendar of our latitude continues defined as winter. 

Then I return to the cold comforts of a season of hibernation.  Reading in warmth, able to sit and not feel guilty for not doing something _ anything_ more.  Enjoying thick hot soups and stews.  As always, when I try, grateful for progression in my life, for the fact that days are not always the same, for the variety of being.  Spiced with the meteorological variety offered by this month.

We just are.  We wake up as reality surrounds us, dispelling the intricate mythology of our dreams.  We wander a world that mostly makes sense, solid and predictable in all kinds of little ways, mostly beautiful when we bother to examine it, intricate beyond reason, flowing into futures fully unseen.  Because of what we are, we usually take all these marvels for granted.  Nevertheless, as curious monkeys we keep asking “why?”

God or gods _ supernatural beings, some conscious _ were the easiest explanation for how all this came to be, and how it is eternally maintained.  Prayer is part of our mental evolution, whether as mantra, placebo, or true incantation _ it does seem to work for most.  The simplicity of “just so” is blinding.  A tree is a tree because it is a tree.  Why?  It was made that way.  Why are our lives as they are?  Fate so wills.  Having a leading part in some cosmic narrative, having some important place in the universe, having some justification for everything that occurs is essential to our egos.  Any link to wider purpose soothes our spirit.

Science offered another option.  In the last thousand years, especially the last few centuries, written knowledge and scientific inquiry dominated our logical framework.  Knowing cause, we manipulate effect.  First, we became masters of the universe.  Discouragingly, then, we discovered that everything is infinitely more intricate than it appears.  Once it seemed we were eternal homunculi, or a bag of chemicals to be activated by an electric charge, or inanimate dust animated by divine spirit.  Now biologists marvel at trillions of cells working together, each doing innumerable tasks in unmeasurable time, just to keep me animate.  Chemists stare into complex chemicals formed by atoms which are almost empty space.  Physicists compose mathematical sonnets to weird components of such atoms. Yet with all that powerful knowledge, the scientific answer to “why?” remains little more than “because.”

Ask again, “Why are we here?”  The easy answer is the gods have their reasons.  The scientific answer, more and more, looks like we result from a gambler’s run of cosmic accidents.  If not for the precise collision that gave us the moon or unlikely combinations of events that led to a water atmosphere and oxygenation from a chance bacterial creation of photosynthesis _ there would be no life as we know it.  Without plate tectonics and snowball Earth _ possibly no vertebrates.  Without other extinctions_ perhaps no animals as we know them.  Without a lucky asteroid of just the right size, velocity, and vector, dinosaurs would still rule the planet _ and no, they would not be intelligent.  Or everything would have gone extinct.  Without the inexplicable ice ages mammalian intelligence focusing into humans would never have occurred.  Increasingly it appears that we must accept that we are alone in time and space, the tail end of a string of devious improbabilities.  And “why?” has become a pretty scary question indeed.

As for humans _ miracles do not apply _ we are way beyond miracles.  The glory of senses, the incredible existence of memory, the magnificence of logical trains of thought, the infinite range of imagination _ all are literally incomprehensible.  Even those, however, pale when compared to your supernatural consciousness.  Each of us unique, each of our moments unique.  Our outlook has cycled back towards a person being the height of creation.  We are immersed in a sea of awe.

Sure, bad things happen.  I often fear that we are, or will have been, those fabled giants of old, heroes of a golden age once upon a time, vanished gods with awesome powers.  As in ancient stories, we are flawed by wrath, stupidity, and trivial pursuits.  Each of us endures more or less terrible twists of fate, although in overcoming such problems we may become glorious.   We admire beauty and are entranced by the multiple facets of life _ but happiness is complicated.  Some guys have all the luck, others do not, and life is definitely not fair. 

Good or bad, I know that I take too much for granted.  I often pay little attention to the fact I can see, hear, taste, feel, rest, do, or think.  I worry too much about mistakes in the past and plans for the future and miss the reality of each moment.  I am part of a social framework that delivers knowledge and support and enjoyment and _ well, I simply assume that is normal.  None of it is normal.  As the saying goes, we don’t know what we’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

I try to arise each morning overwhelmed by the gift of being me.  I try to pull myself back into that state whenever I am becoming too bored or complacent or anxious.  Perhaps it is shallow and foolish to do so, a modern Pollyanna Pangloss.  I don’t care.  I finally realize how little I comprehend, how much I experience, and I rest content.

Usually mid-February is a frozen wasteland.  Dirty snow piles are everywhere, refrozen puddles mottle roads and parking lots.  Salt spray creeps up cars.  In an obscure town lot, giant mountains of white are filled with trash and decorated with cinders.  Often not even a hint of brown grass peeks through crusted layers of ice on lawns.  Bitter raw cold discourages even minor strolls into desolation.

This year _ not so much.  It is fashionable, and probably true, to blame global warming.  Almost no snow, and that melted almost immediately.  Exposed grass more or less green.  Roads clear.  Even the skim of ice that often forms on ponds and puddles overnight has been hard to find.  Rain and fog, mist and mildness and wind, and a lot more green everywhere than what used to be normal.

It seems the freeze has migrated _ metaphorically _ to politics.  Rarely have I encountered people, including myself, so set in their view.  Upon a time, people could at least argue.  Now, it seems, we are internally opinionated statues.  For this, against that, policies or people.  Each of us fanatically certain and each equally certain that others are wrong.  Even remedies are cast in flawed bronze _ utopian visions from Marxian dawn, or technocratic fantasies of fifties science fiction, or nostalgic senile remembrances of childhood when the world was all bright and shiny.  Compromise or reevaluation taking into account the contradictory complexity of our existence is considered the worst moral turpitude.

Frozen February defeated by global warming is a harbinger.  Frozen politics handled by slippery politicians is a contradiction.  Lately, ignorant solipsistic leaders who casually lie tend to win.  Money is hardly an issue _ like ancient Roman Consuls, each candidate knows that you cannot spend too much to win an office that will repay, legally or not, hundreds to one.  A truly amoral vindictive candidate has the added bonus that almost all prudent patricians will contribute to its (sic) campaign simply for self-protection.

February is filled with local misery _ the cold, the snow, cabin fever, boring days and nights following one another in short daylight.  Similarly, politics is filled with local grievances _ every citizen seemingly certain that someone else is to blame for anything that goes wrong in life, and equally certain that any other citizen deserves whatever they have got, for good or bad.  What should be our happiest era filled with social harmony is rapidly devolving into pure idiotic envy based on ridiculous comparisons of perceived wealth.

Just as the big picture seems irrelevant to those dealing with immediate weather, it seems that we are all missing other big pictures.  The old saying “the more things change the more they stay the same” is no longer applicable.  Big changes have indeed happened, more big changes are coming, and, just like climate itself, things will never again be the same.

Although we are aware of constant variation in our situation and environment, we take an awful lot for granted.  Days follow nights, air is breathable, supermarkets have food, our home will be there when we return.  Sometime soon that may no longer true.  A so-called “tipping point” sneaks up on us _ we are suddenly old and unable to walk easily, for example, after years of limping along more and more painfully.  This February feels filled with such tipping points in nature, politics, personal life, society.  I honestly do not have a clue what to expect next February, and more and more I find the only rational response is to suppress such thoughts.  The future is definitely not frozen into the patterns of the past.

For now, it is rain and wind and more rain and more wind.  Better than deep freeze and snow, I tell myself.  But there is a little nagging worry in my soul that maybe our universes would be better off a little more solidified and frozen and “normal”, at least for a while.

February was named for an obscure Roman purification ritual, and was also the last month of their calendar.  That doesn’t matter at all, but a traditional way for any student to begin an essay is with either a definition or an etymological detail.  Any word is a nonsense sound until language assigns an agreed meaning _ although each of us assigns implicit personal connotations which vary from explicit dictionary entries.   My “February” is not necessarily yours.

I guess most people dislike such a blah month _ not really to hate so much as to endure.  Mostly it is true entry to the new year, a firm footstep into all that is to come.  Its predecessor is much too slippery and burdened with fresh memories to provide that springboard.  February firmly faces forward.

Trees are jagged and bare, grass brown and muddy even if visible through dirty snow, cold settles in, birdcalls are muffled.  An act of will is required to bundle up and walk around.  The rewards of doing so are a little harder to find than in other seasons.  We are told to indulge in an hour of sunlight a day to reset our circadian rhythm _ good luck in finding any patch of open sky.  

Even at the beginning of the month, there may be hopeful signs.  Some waterfowl begin mating rituals, swans for example flapping lustily off the water in brief showy flights.  White snowdrops have opened at the end of our driveway, and other bulb shoots are beginning to show.  A nearby witch hazel tree is in full golden bloom.  On milder days, birdsong tentatively echoes over the silence.  Blue Jays and squirrels are becoming frisky.  Close examination will show a bud or two on bushes swelling noticeably as days creep by.

Symbols for hearts and cupids are everywhere, displayed as money-making guilt-markers by restaurants, romantic venues, gift shoppes, and just about anyone who can invent a hook.  Exotic cut flowers become ubiquitous, flown up from summertime growth in the southern hemisphere _ prices doubling as Valentine’s day nears. 

In my youth, we sometimes had Washington’s birthday off, but now it is common for schools to go into “winter break,” a custom which has caught on with parents and random employees.  A great migration to warmer places for a week or so fills the coffers of the airlines, and empties our town (already a bit thinned from the exodus of snowbirds after Christmas.)  The remaining population dreams of spring travel or summer excursions.

On dark mornings, I often wake up in a meditative mood.  Well, why not?  No rush to get outdoors _ yard chores are out of the question, woods are almost uninviting, weather is often wet and raw.  I’ve visited most local indoor refuges, and had my fill of eating out.  I remember our lives, and try not to evaluate the past too severely.  I plan and try not to worry/hope too excessively about the future.  I relax and enjoy the mere fact that I can relax in such security and luxury.

February is a quiet time, a great time to just snuggle in for those of us who can do so.  As one of those fortunate folks, my task is simply to recognize that this short interlude is a genuine gift as the rest of life rushes by.

In New York, February is by far the hardest month to endure.  Frequent snow and ice lingers mercilessly in cycles of unfreeze and freeze, accumulating soot and garbage, creating potholes.  Even ski resort operators worry because the quality and quantity of necessary white stuff is uncertain, and many folks simply head elsewhere for higher mountains and more perfect conditions.  A few early bulbs may be tricked into blossoming, only to be blasted by an unexpected “polar vortex.”  And yet, for all that, I might still cast a vote for January as my least favorite month, to which I am always happy to bid farewell.

One of the problems is simple letdown:  Holiday Hangover.  After the bacchanalia of New Year’s and Christmas, the feasts of Thanksgiving, and increasingly fabulous Halloween, January offers very little in the way of excitement.  People go back to their normal, often dull, sometimes glum lives.  All hope resides in the future _ winter or spring breaks, upcoming summer vacation.  It’s as if all the good times have packed up and gone away for an interminable stretch of weeks.

In a “good” January, temperatures hover around forty degrees during the day, and precipitation falls as rain.  A “bad” January, on the other hand, is filled with afternoons rarely getting above thirty, and several heavy snowfalls that never melt.  The rays of the sun are too oblique to do much; ice remains forever.  Adding insult to injury, daylight grows longer, but the average temperature continues to plunge.  Grey skies, in any case, are usual.

And then, there are those resolutions.  Almost everyone plans to improve their lives, engage in better things, erase bad habits.  By the middle of the month all that remains is residual guilt at all that is not going very well.  Thankfully, with the arrival of February, even vague unease has departed and vows are gratefully stowed away until the next winter solstice.

Welcome sunshine is surprisingly too bright.  Glare from low rays blinds us morning and night, giving way to the glare of headlights in mid-afternoon twilight.  If there is snow cover, sunglasses are required.  Yet this brilliance is a tease, which looks welcoming warm from inside, but quickly disabuses anyone who steps out.  Those lovely beams seem to put all their energy into the visible spectrum and leave the warmth in outer space.

For a lot of us, there is too much time to think.  Janus was famously the god of past and future, looking both ways at the same time.  Curled up on our couches during spare time, our own minds wander equally, regretting what has happened and worried about what will come.  The lethargy of the season assures that we marinate in such useless apathy for a long time rather than jump up and engage in the always fruitful present.

Goodbye and good riddance, January.  Happily, I have survived you yet again.  Admittedly, this has been one of the “good” winters so far.  Enduring the upcoming shortest month of the year may not be so bad after all.