Author: Wayne Slingluff

Closer Inspections

Monday

  • Among other waning-season signs are the profuse blooms of rose of Sharon, now showing off in yards everywhere.  But even were those absent,  crowns of trees have taken on distinct reddish or yellowish tinges, and close inspection of the leaves finds bits of rust, areas of brown, gangrenous insect-caused holes.  This is all caused not simply by heat and drought, but also by the ever-lowering angle of the sun and shortening evenings.  Schools of snappers now agitate the water as they seek to escape larger predators.  Even the mix of outside birds has begun to include early migrants.
  • So I vow to look a little more closely at the small picture.  Not the microscopic, which is fascinating in its own right, but the visible bits of which reality is composed.  A single branch or leaf, one bloom, a stalk of grass.  In the loveliness of summer I have sometimes become too enamored of wide distant scenes, waves and shores, clouds over hills.  Time to return to the scale of reality at which I actually exist.

Tuesday

Seeing worlds in a grain of sand
Perhaps a little too abstract
Too hard to focus with these eyes
I need some slightly larger facts
“If there were world enough and time …”
Torn wisdom fragments from my youth
I question from my greater age
What such young poets knew of truth
And yet I know I once knew more
Of sandgrains, stars, and even time
Now just today is what I crave

To stare at any leaf I find.

Wednesday

  • This thistle has terminated its destiny of sprouting, growing, flowering, seeding, and sending forth the next generation.  Most of its offspring are doomed, a few will thrive next year.  Even those that fail will enrich the planet with oxygen and food.  Such cycles of all plants and animals create Earth’s incredible biosphere.
  • People always accepted that we were related to animals.   Darwin’s great sin was to show we are just like them.   Beauty, meaning, purpose are in that sense unnecessary.  Humankind has now spent over a hundred years trying to replace the certainty that there was “more to it” with other systems: religion, political movements, social crusades, science, technology, art, individual lifestyle.  Nothing has healed the damage.

Thursday

Enjoying the feel of a dusty road at Caumsett, I ran into Stan and Myra coming up the hill the other way.  We were all soaked in sweat, so the natural greeting was “Hot enough?”
“Sure is,” panted Myra, seizing on the chance for a hiking break.  “Summer won’t give up this year.”
“But we were noticing,” added Stan, “that there are lots of signs of it reaching an end _ look at those brown fields…”
“Well,” I exclaimed cheerfully, “After all, tempus fugit.”
“Wayne!” scolded Myra, “watch your language!”
“I think he means tem-pus foo-jit,” Stan said.  “Time flies.”
“Everything in nature except people seems to be getting that message,” I ignored the correction.
“Everything in nature has to endure this heat, drought, freezing cold, snow, and predators all the time,” pointed out Myra.
“Yeah,” Stan remarked, “but the only cycles we really notice are those of work and politics.”
“I can only agree,” I sighed.
“And aging,” chimed in Myra.
“Depressing thought.”  I waved around.  “Contemplating nature is supposed to be uplifting.”
“But, even so,” she continued stubbornly, “we are, in the end, as impermanent as everything around us here.”
“Take her away!” I laughed.  “I still have a ways to go here.  See you around …”

We parted happily, our thoughts perhaps a little more profound, as hawks circled overhead.

Friday

  • Hooray!  Something does eat this plant!  At this time of year, bindweed is the scourge of any gardener, who discovers that overnight beautiful beds of phlox and roses have been strangled in a thick mat of nearly impenetrable vines and leaves.  And if not cleared immediately, it goes to flower and seed.  Then that space may be nearly unusable for a few years, even with diligent care.
  • Our world hurtles on.  Pessimists wail it is hell-bent for destruction.  Optimists dream it is rocketing towards paradise.  Most likely, as always, contradictory bits of heaven and hell will intertwine.  But no matter what, like weeds and the world itself, we all hurtle on.

Saturday

  • There’s great satisfaction in discovering signs and assigning patterns.  I watch a changing leaf here and a browning seedpod there and suddenly the world of autumn unfolds before me.  I immediately imagine what will come, and seek confirmation of expectations.  That is essential human (and animal) mental behavior.  It is, after all, the basis of training anything.
  • Such information is useful.  Properly leveraged, it can make some people rich.  More importantly, having the foresight of possible and probable future problems is one basis of civilization.  Knowing there will be a winter is why we sow and grow and harvest crops.  Knowing there would be a dangerous night with predators active is why our ancestors built camps and utilized fire.  Knowing the Nile will flood … well of course the list is endless and ongoing.
  • One problem I have already discussed.  In concentrating on signals about what may come, I may forget the thing in itself.  It is well to guess what the future may hold, but the present is already full and I should try to take advantage of it.  Besides that, I can easily lose myself in the game itself, rather than the actual reality that game is trying to reference.
  • The other problem is that my connections may be wrong.  Since I, like any other human, am the center of my universe, I assume unconsciously that the universe is all about me.  I become certain that if I wear a lucky sock my team will win, if I pray to the right gods it will rain.  Most of those me-centered predictions tend to be incorrect.  That doesn’t stop my brain from happily constructing them from gossamer patterns of invisible connectivity. 
  • Summer is ending.  Fall arrives soon.  The signs are all about me.  So what?  I need to take out the fiddle and play up a storm, for until summer does end, it still remains.

Sunday

  • Until a few hundred years ago, things seemed remarkably simple.  Not systems, of course, nor life itself; but those objects which constituted reality.  A bird was a bird, a tree a tree.  Thunder was mysterious, but nevertheless a certain event.  There might or might not be gods.  A solid framework was resolutely present.   Since then, of course, everything has been revealed as infinitely complicated, no matter how closely examined.  A bird, its components, its atoms, those atoms, their subatomic structure _ nothing ever really clarifies except at its proper level.  There is always more to it.
  • The wonder is that there is no end of wonder.  No matter how deeply we peer, how closely we examine, how devotedly we concentrate, there is even more to amaze.  And yet, as we move up to broader view, outward, there remains enchantment.  A night horizon with moon, sky and stars is as amazing as any set of chemical bonds.  Beyond and out into the vast universe, continually astonishing.  And yet _ being human _ I can sometimes become blasé and bored with it all anyway.  That in itself is worthy of wonder.

Ragged Climax

Monday

  • Like many gardeners, nature itself seems to have given up on the weeding.  Whatever vegetation has survived this far extends out of control, taking over every vacant bit of light and moisture, yet hardly making a dent in the survival of any nearby plants.  A glance at any exposed space would convince a neutral observer that this land is well on its way to becoming jungle.  Unchecked, this growth would quickly return fields and towns to primal wilderness.  But the season grows late ….
  • Oppressive heat and humidity has many of us longing for the cooler breezes of autumn, of which we will tire of in turn.  It is easy to forget how not long ago weather was a local matter of life and death, rather than a seasonal entertainment.  Blizzards and floods could kill on vast scales; drought, heat, and cold could bring starvation;  any extreme condition represented misery.  Technological civilization insulates us from such intimate connections, which is on the whole better for everyone.  I know it may all collapse, wilderness triumphing after all, but at this moment I am very content to be able to experience any meteorological inconveniences innocuously.

Tuesday

Streams of sweat drip sting my eyes.
I’m thirsty, heated, happy, slow
Watch gentle waves in absent wind
Nowhere to be, nothing to know
An empty bottle cast on shore
Residues of memory
Phantom dreams drift of our past
My contemplative lazy me
This cannot last, no worries, cares
Soon worlds of problems must appear
Tomorrow will _ but this is now
Sunshine seas erase my fears.
Beach nirvana, is it wise?
Or lotus-eater melody?
A stream of lassitude allowed

A moment to be fully free

Wednesday

  • Exercising an innate capacity for appreciating beauty is a constant joy.  Some approach it with exclusivity, as if true beauty is perfection in an imperfect world _ and consequently rare.  Their primary ability becomes locating flaws great or small which mar that which they wish to experience.  Others claim beauty is everywhere, even in trash and tragedy.  They seek to adjust their perception to cast an enchantment on whatever exists.
  • I am obviously prone to the latter.  A glass of cool clear water is as satisfying and wonderful as a perfectly prepared cup of coffee or tea, although coffee and tea (however prepared) are also fine.  Of course, I understand some things should be changed _ a house on fire may be majestically beautiful, but it should be extinguished.  Trash on a beach may add ironic visual highlights, but should be removed.  Overall, however, I exist in an environment much of which I cannot control nor modify except within myself.  I prefer to find most of what I encounter there an echo of the harmony of the spheres.

Thursday

Joan waves another fly into the onshore wind, as the muffled sound of a distant speedboat blends with thunder from an overhead low jet heading for landing thirty miles away.  Waves sparkle below tree-greened horizons as families splash in bathtub-warm mid-tide.
“Not too many people, for such a hot day,” I break our silence.
“Well, it’s starting to get low and a little dirty.  They probably don’t want to get an infection,” she replies.
“Oh, people like you are afraid of everything,” I chuckle.  “I swim in all the tides, head under water, and nothing ever happened to me.”
“It will, sometime,” she notes darkly.  “I heard on the news …”
“That’s the problem!” I break in.  “That stupid news.  Someone somewhere got an earache, someone somewhere drowned, someone somewhere always something.  Zika, skin cancer, West Nile, paralyzing jellyfish, cataracts, and probably food poisoning from eating a popsicle from the ice-cream truck.”
“Well, things do happen to people, all the time,” she says in a reasonable tone.  “We
need to be careful.”
“Compared to our ancestors, we are about as safe as it is possible to be,” I look around at well-fed folks lying half naked, protected by life guards, help a phone call away.  “And yet everyone still worries.  What if one of those backpacks explodes …”
“Don’t even think about it,” she grimaces.

“Fear of fear itself,” I mutter.  More loudly, “Ready for another dip?”  She nod’s agreement and we head down to water’s edge, challenging fate once again.

Friday

  • Deep drought continues at lower soil levels, but the surface has been periodically refreshed with frequent thunderstorms and short downpours.  Grass remains green, everything continues to grow.  Nevertheless, the blooms of summer are quickly turning to seed, autumn flowers are showing, and all vacant areas have been overrun with massive bunches of ragweed and crabgrass.  Summer remains in force, but is beginning to strain with the effort.
  • I’ve already heard folks complaining about our protracted spell of sun and heat.   What seems a perfect month or two to a few of us is wretched for others.  Isn’t that too true about an awful lot of things these days, from food to entertainment to future hopes and fears?  Such diversity of opinion is wonderful, as long as we can somehow manage to hold common ground, which is one thing that sometimes seems in question lately.

Saturday

  • “Let a thousand flowers bloom” is a nice sentiment, but ignores the fact that in the real world over 900 or so of those will be crowded out, withered, eaten or killed off in some other manner.  What is left is magnificent, but nature remains ruthless. 
  • Since at least the time of the ancient Romans, each generation has produced a few people who miss the “good old days” of their fevered imaginations.   According to them, the golden era has passed and these are degenerate and wretched times, with everyone (except them) too lazy, too coddled, too ignorant.   I’ve been hearing a lot of this claptrap lately, starting with making us “great” again.
  • I’m the first to admit I’ve led a fortunate life, and there are others who do live in eternal misery.  I would never have chosen to be alive in any other era.  Discoveries are happening daily, but there remains mystery in the world.  We are overpopulating the planet, but there is still enough for most. 
  • As for purpose, which is frequently said to be missing, we’ve been doing all right.  There have been no major wars for over fifty years, whole populations which would formerly have been starving are now fed and clothed.  Everyone everywhere has hopes of a better future.  All we need is to decide to clean up the environment and spread the wealth and that would provide purpose enough for quite a while.
  • Glass half full?  More like almost overflowing.  And yet there are angry folks everywhere, and agitators who stir the pot, and even those who are obscenely wealthy think they are god’s gift to the world and why couldn’t everyone else just work hard like they did.  I’ve gotten to the point where it is almost painful to listen to the news or read editorials.

Sunday

  • Days of brutal humid heat have kept much of the population safely hidden into air conditioning.  No such luck for the outdoor flora and fauna.  Lack of rain, air pollution, all the usual complaints of late summer.  Meanwhile, everyone frantically realizes that regardless of how it feels, the season is drawing to a close.  Panic to enjoy the last weeks has set in for boaters and other vacationers.
  • I’ve been more or less confined to the house, not wishing to run into big box stores for relief.  In some ways it is worse than cabin fever when blizzard-bound.  Even the few times the temperature let me venture out to read on the patio, mosquitoes have quickly driven me back in.  So I too am trying to throw off my recent lethargy and low spirits in a final summer fling of activity.  

Nervously Normal

Monday

  • Sometimes the mood is that of an approaching hurricane.  Calm now, nothing anyone can do here except make futile preparations, and wait to see what exact track it takes and how severely it hits the neighborhood.  Everywhere in the world, which attained an all-time high in average warmth last year, there seem to be 100-year droughts, 1000-year floods, massive devastation both directly from weather and as a result of its anomalies (vast forest fires, immense insect infestation, death of species.)  An apocalyptic outlook is fairly easy to feed in such times, even though locally everything remains as it has always been.
  • We tend to forget exactly how bad some local and even regional events used to be for the people living through them.  The year without a summer in 1816 causing starvation in New England, famine in France in 1787, widespread deep snow killing crops and hastening the black plague in 13thcentury Italy.  Middle Eastern ancient religious texts speak of vast floods, as do Chinese chronicles.  From an individual standpoint, the past was just as bad _ and often far worse _ than what we are experiencing.  And we should not forget that through everything there were always people who blamed themselves, their neighbors, or their society for what was going wrong.  But will “think globally, act locally” be enough this time around?

Tuesday

On the beach _ a summer glory
On The Beach _ a frightful story
Doomed insects dancing in the wind
No gods to care if they have sinned
Fish flashing, brightly wild and free
‘Til swallowed whole when they can’t flee
Birds growing fat on bugs and seed
Triumphant conquest by the weeds
I see it all, I simply pray

I’ll watch again another day

Wednesday

  • Long Island has large parks in addition to vast stretches of sand and wetlands shoreline.  So for those fortunate enough to have time and leisure, shady lanes wind through forests, and dirt paths wander surrounded by ferns.  This year there is a minor drought, so insects are less annoying than usual for August _ not good for swallows or bats, nice for someone striding along trying to flick gnats out of their eyes.  In such moments the world seems benign and well.
  • I used to take these hour or two strolls with improvement in mind.  Although that is still true as an exercise and a mental contemplation, I often no longer fill my moments with attempts to identify trees and flowers, nor to visualize scenes “as an artist,” nor to follow deep and often futile trains of thought concerning philosophy or the cosmos.  I am, finally, content to not know so much, to just enjoy the experience, and to be grateful for a sense of well-being.  I recognize that we must preserve wilderness and rain forests and coral reefs, but truthfully for myself what must really be fought for are these nearby refuges that can be reached and experienced without great preparation.

Thursday

Only our heads show above the waves as we notice Harry and June plopping down their beach chairs next to ours.  Temperature in high eighties, so they are soon along side, June and Joan pairing off to discuss offspring and other social gossip. 
Harry comes up dripping and smiles.  “Ah, global warming.  Good for something, anyway.”
“Right,” I agree.  “Water really beautiful this time of year.”
“I wonder what we’d do if a tsunami happened right now?”  Harry likes the oddball and even ridiculous non-sequitur in his conversation.
We both glance at the narrow inlet a half mile away through which all the tides must ceaselessly flow.  “Outrun it, I suppose,” I say, figuring not much would get in very quickly and would dissipate as it spread.
“Probably right.” Harry agrees.  “But there’s so much concentration on catastrophes that I find them almost interesting to imagine.”
“Black swan events don’t need global warming,” I note.  “That’s the trouble with projections.  A hundred years before the big asteroid, any intelligent being would assume dinosaurs would still be ruling the Earth today.  And nobody still knows where the ice ages came from, or when they might return.”
“Don’t forget the Black Plague,” he added.  “And the Huns and ….”
“Oh, I know, there’s enough to go around.  What’s that got to do with the price of bread, anyway?”
“Well, it’s one way to avoid guilt.”
“Ah, guilt,” I ponder.  “Well, I don’t feel all that guilty about all that.  Our generation worked out a few problems, as did generations before us.  The next ones will just have to do the same.  But I’ll tell you one thing…”

Harry ducks his head again and looks at me expectantly.  I continue “I doubt if we have any idea what those problems will really be.”

Friday

  • Sticky hot thunderstorm weather has settled in for the week.  Peeking outside the door causes sweat to break out.  Taking a walk will lose a few pounds of water.  Any moment, tropical downpours may empty buckets on the unsuspecting, then stop as quickly as they began, almost without warning.  Nevertheless work must be done, often outdoors, and humans are surprisingly well adapted to such conditions.  Well, people did come out of Africa, after all.
  • Generally, those who can avoid going out in such conditions do so.  For the last hundred years or we’ve been able to fully control internal temperatures, and the use of those has spread.  Many folks seem to rush from air conditioned home to (pre-) air conditioned car to air conditioned store or office.  Soon, no doubt, they will be wearing air-conditioned suits as well.  Maybe it is nature evolving us to finally move off-planet.  In the meantime, I enjoy the hot and sticky, at least for moderate amounts of time, although I admit I also hide away in my burrow a good part of some days.

Saturday

  • Little doubt of climate change any more.  The world has not only hit record highs on average the last few years, but the immediate consequences of energy-activated weather are too prevalent and destructive to be ignored.  The acceptance is odd, in that only a decade or so ago there were fierce protestations of how silly the idea was, massive counter-examples being utilized to prove nothing was happening. 
  • But prevailing wisdom has changed, just as the arguments against air and water pollution control eventually fell into disuse in the sixties and seventies.  Anyone with half a brain now knows the biosphere is heating up, and those without half a brain don’t matter anyway.  The only remaining question is what can be done about it, if anything.  More importantly, what adjustments and preparations are appropriate _ individually, locally, and globally.
  • Some say nothing.  I think they are wrong.  I lived through the times when we were reliably informed that dense smoke in Pittsburgh, toxic smog in Los Angeles, fires on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland  were simply necessary adjuncts to our consumer lifestyle, and of little consequence.  DDT was the only way we could manage insect-borne diseases _ what’s a bird’s life against a child’s? they asked.   But somehow, civilization moved on, and all that has become almost a forgotten past and prelude to new challenges.
  • Consensus does eventually filter up from accepted common sense in the masses to those in power.  In spite of our predilection to see the worst in humanity, most people do care about their immediate environment and want the world to remain habitable for their children.  I suspect in the next few years, climate change will become one of the driving forces of political decision-making, if only for how to handle its increasingly devastating effects and increasingly costly preparations.  Putting New York under a bubble will not come cheap.
  • I have faith in our technology.  With will, we can still find a way.  An easy start is a large carbon tax.  I believe that once we all start to act for real  _ just like the pollution crises _ significant solutions will arrive in a decade or so. 
  • Until then, we have the opportunity to swelter, watch historic fires and floods and winds, and imagine catastrophe around every corner.  In the meantime, I will poke my head out the door yet again and maybe even venture out on a short stroll to warm my bones.

Sunday

  • Dew-drenched air forms a light haze in early morning.  Soon enough, sharp low sunbeams will slash that into sparkling clarity.  By this afternoon, only distant features will be dimmed, the Connecticut shoreline across the sound a vague blue ribbon, if it can be seen at all.   Fish are leaping frantically, spoiling calm reflections.  It seems a summer moment from forever.
  • Forever, we have learned, is a scientific fiction.  We swim in change, for better or worse.  It once seemed cruel that we are born, age, and die _ some cosmic joke in an eternal universe.  Although it is hardly comforting that the universe itself shares our fate, we can no longer complain about being singled out.  Like the universe, we just have to deal with things as they are _ and at this particular moment, right here, they are lovely indeed.

Livin’ Easy

Monday

  • Residual industrial residue along the great falls of the Genessee.  At one  point this water _ diminished now due to a moderate summer drought _ provided enough energy that the millstones grinding western wheat renamed Rochester the “flour city.”  Later it drove machinery for the largest button factory in the world,  generated electricity, and was tapped for countless other uses, not least of all several large breweries that still exist on the high cliffs alongside the river gorge.  Maybe in the future it will once be utilized for renewable energy, not so great for the scenic view.
  • Industrial architecture and ruins in North America only go back a few centuries, hardly touching the older debris of Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Yet they too insinuate tales of rise and fall, great commercial empires, individual struggle and triumph.  Weaving such reminders into the fabric of our cities’ revitalization is one of the supreme architectural challenges of this age.

Tuesday

Summer half gone
Half to go
Shimmering afternoons, endless
(but growing shorter)

Slowly transient paradise

Wednesday

  • Huntington home, back by the beautiful bay.  Salt water instead of fresh.  Anxious people following anxious activities, afraid of missing something or losing a possible future option.  Long Island is marvelous, but laid-back it is not.  Quite a contrast with some other places, although not quite as hassled as New York City proper.
  • People everywhere have worries.  But certain places emanate cultural tension, and others are more laid-back.  Of course, I’m only looking at summertime _ it’s quite likely that come the cold season everyone buckles down to business at the same pace.  I remain amazed that in relatively short distances, attitudes can so differ.  George M. Cohan immortalized that idea in “Only 45 Minutes from Broadway …”

Thursday

George was as usual reading his paper with half an eye on the activities on the boat launch.  “Hey, Mr. Lazy, ain’tcha got anything better to do?” I call.
“Nope,” he replies.  “Done my time, back when.  This here is now my work, my passion, and my purpose all rolled into one now.  Enjoying my life, appreciating the world, artistically shaping each day as I want.”
“My, my, a deep philosopher.  You should have a long white beard, toga, and sandals.”
“Maybe next week.  Anyway, I’m well glad to be out of the rat race.  It seems to be even less fun today than when I remember.”
“I think,” I muse, sitting down on the wooden bench next to him, “or at least I remember it being pretty nasty when we were working.”
“Well, I didn’t get calls all times of day or night.  I didn’t worry about losing my job any given month or day.  I still had a life of my own, with my family.  And nobody tried to tell me that selling communications equipment was the justification for my being alive.”
“I don’t know,” I begin to argue, “there were long hours, and homework, and …”
“For those who have jobs now,” he points out, “your work is everything.  Twenty hours a day, no letup, no relief.  For those without, finding work seems to be just about everything.  No time for much else ….”
“Sourpuss.  Too many papers …”
“Hey!  I’m happy!  Look at that blue sky, those lovely hills!  Whatever the problems of the world may be, at least they are no longer mine.”

We spend a little more time watching nautical activities.  My legs finally well rested, I nod goodbye and continue on my way, mind filled with new thoughts, senses telling me to ignore them.

Friday

  • Almost all late bloomers are now in action.  These spartina grass blades prepare seeds for next year, even though as perennials the same patch should return next year.  Depending, of course, on tides, storms, sand shifts, and grinding ice floes.  Birds relax a bit, fattening up either to survive the rigors of winter or to migrate elsewhere.  Birdsong is notably less melodic, restricted largely to shrieked warnings of nearby predators.  There are even occasional hints of the final act of summer opera _ a few yellow goldenrods, rose of sharon.  Numerous fish jump and skip the surface,
    disturbing lightly riffled harbor waters.
  • I could dwell on what may come, worry about snow and cold, regret the missed chances of July.  Or I could glory in the heat and bursting vitality of this morning.  Or I might ignore it all and be disturbed by events in faraway places, or by intellectual and social actions “of great pitch and moment.”  I believe, however, I shall settle for what I usually do, which is to sample many things in due measure and occasionally let my thoughts fly off into meditation or fantasy, occasionally swoop down to fully sample my engaged senses, occasionally pursue some fleeting chain of logic.  Seems like a good season to become unfocused and simply accept enchantment as it arrives.

Saturday

  • Retirement and aging in general are often compared to autumn.  That may well be, as time goes by.  But for the more fortunate it is more like perpetual late summer.  Crops are planted and taking care of themselves, harvest and preparation for winter is indefinitely delayed into the future.
  • One major fault of our culture, I believe, is to try to ignore differences in age.  We see “ageism” even in relation to how we consider ourselves as some kind of deep sin.  An old person, we chant, is just as good as a young person.  Elders themselves are encouraged to see themselves as young. 
  • A consequence is that ages of man _ which should be encouraged and celebrated _ are mushed together and afflicted with insipid constant philosophy.  Childhood, instead of a being a time of exploration and carefree play, is increasingly a nasty directed mini- adulthood.  Youth is chained and restrained and encouraged to think like an old miser saving for an improbable future.  Middle age is filled with achievement, limits, triumph and despair _ as always _ but has incorrectly become the onlytrue standard of who one really is.  And those who manage to grow old are seen as hedonistic freeloaders who ought to be working and playing as hard as anyone else.
  • Hedonism, laziness, accomplishment, and all the other good and bad attributes society assigns to individuals, especially those outside norms, must be placed in relation to one’s situation to have any meaning.  An essential part of that situation is age. 
  • Retirement, like late summer, is a time of reflection and wise contemplation.  The frozen past resolves itself into meaning, and a more gentle purpose can seize each ambition of each day.   Livin’ easy, perhaps, but eliminating nagging guilt for doing so is sometimes a challenge.

Sunday

  • Green dominates the natural world pervasively.  Only sky and water manage to compete, if an open view emerges.  Patches or points of color from flower or fruit are lost unless one observes closely.  As always the unnatural world _ if human activity is so termed _ remains an exception.  Houses, cars, clothing, trash, roads, anything may be any hue at all, and as large as conceivable.  But in late summer, even those stalwart standouts or eyesores get a run for their money from the verdant vegetation.
  • Leaves are as varied as snowflakes are supposed to be, if I bother to examine them closely.  Every glance through vines and branches presents a unique picture of our universe.  I am not willing to believe that each miracle of creation is striving to match some universal perfect form.  Each of these bits of life is in itself its own perfection, unique in all time and space.  But _ well admittedly, it is all just green and more green endlessly, and just a little boring as well.

  

Good Ol’ Summertime

Monday

  • Right here, right now, is “the good old summertime” for some people .  Those who can find it _ by no means everyone in this 24x7x365 world, even on Sunday _ enjoy the bliss of leisure.  Children playing on the beach, swimming in salt tide will remember hot afternoons of sand and sun fondly.  Teenagers flirt, old folks lie for hours remembering or trying to forget.  Nostalgia, past and future, ripples like heat waves off the parking lot asphalt. 
  • These may be the last decades that July is to be treasured so fondly.  Future generations may yearn for the “good old wintertime,” when it is cool and children are allowed outdoors.  Already much of the nation is beset with record heat, huge fires, extreme droughts, “thousand-year” floods.  For that matter, not too long from now, there may not be many sandy beaches from which to dream.  But this year, this summer, this month _ I see “good old days” forming before my eyes.  

Tuesday

Celebrating summer too easy
Takes a real poet

To charm with snow, freeze, ice, flu.

Wednesday

  • Kids at summer camp catching (or at least trying to catch) things in nets above and in a pond.  Seems timeless, but of course childhoods like these are a relatively recent invention.  Always amazing that in suburbs and even urban areas dragonflies, tadpoles, minnows, butterflies and so forth are still managing to survive _ and even to surprisingly thrive.  Like catching glimpses of dense schools of bait fish in the harbor, or frequent flights of hawks and ospreys overhead.  The natural world is damaged, but still vital.
  • Most astounding to me locally is how many fish can be caught, how many berries can be seen on bushes.  In the world, how vast quantities of seafood are still caught in the wild _ even in the presumably heavily polluted Mediterranean.  I sometimes wonder how distorted a view of our environment those of us who live in urban or suburban enclaves may be receiving.  But I also know that the truly horrible wreckage of nature goes on away from most people _ on chemical-drenched factory farms, on remote wasteland coal and oil fields, in endless pits dug to retrieve industrial minerals, and everywhere in the pollution of air and water where no one can see.  No dragonflies, tadpoles, or hawks are likely to be sighted in such places, nor groups of children to complain at their absence.

Thursday

I sit back, surveying the end of the harbor with a happy sigh.  Boats are being set into the water, kayaks explore alcoves, stand-up paddle boats threaten to dump their rowers any moment.  Once in a while a noisy jet-ski putters towards open space, or a sailboat under motor power arrives to tie up at the dock.  An egret struts on low-tide mudflats. “Just like I remember over fifty years ago, when I was a boy,” I remark to Bill, reading a paper on the bench alongside.
“A lot has changed,” he responds, sourly.  “The similarities may be deceiving.  You know, I grew up here, and back in 1955 or so this was nearly wilderness.”
“Not so,” I protest.  “I’ve read the local histories.  This place has been civilized for a few hundred years, cleared, farmed, built up, polluted, industrialized, decayed, repopulated.  You just caught a fragment in the grand mix that looked less civilized.”
“Wrong,” he states.  “My perception counts.  It was more wilderness back then.  This clutter” he waves at the bulkhead, the dock, the busy street behind us, the marine stores lining the shore “this garbage was not here.”
“OK,” I agree reluctantly.  “Maybe you’re right.  Was it better?”
“Ah,” he takes a deep breath.  “That’s a hard question.  So much has changed, on the surface anyway.  But so much remains the same underneath.  People were people, I suppose.”
“What will the kids today grow up to think?  How will they remember this?”
“Oh, for them I guess it will be recalled as a different kind of golden age.”  He watches a gull swoop by just over our hats.  “Depending on what kind of dystopia they end up with in fifty years, of course.”
“Cheery, aren’t we?” I laugh.
“A lot of good things are happening, I suppose.  A lot of good has happened.  I can’t complain much.  But I wonder,” he pauses.
“You wonder?” I coax him, curious.

“I wonder how fragile this web of wonderful stuff really is, and how close we are to losing it all.”  An extra-loud low jet bound for Kennedy cuts off conversation, as a wail rises from the fire station and an insanely thundering helicopter swoops towards the hospital.

Friday
  • Annual trip upstate to visit our son in Rochester.  This is some 400 miles of expressway driving, through farms and mountains and old cities, along rivers and railroads.  An hour in the tangled infrastructure of New York City, and days of strolling sidewalks and visiting areas of what is supposedly a devastated upstate economy.  From listening to news, one expects to see something similar to the pictures coming out of the Mideast tragedies.  Not so.
  • The roads, even in NYC, are well maintained and being more so.  Traffic, both pleasure and commercial, is everywhere _ trucks loaded with wares fill the roads.  Fields are fat with corn and cows, barns and houses sparkle in the sun, fantastic local artisanal produce fills the public market.  Mountains are blanketed in dense green forest, rivers are full flowing, lakes are plentifully supplied with power and sailboats as masses of people watch from restaurants and bars along the shore.  Rochester itself seems to be gentrifying older areas and rapidly building newer ones, and few of the people I passed _ day or evening _ seemed terrified by their environment and clinging to guns for protection against looming menace.  All in all, I decided perhaps I was better to trust the evidence of my own eyes than the words of politicians, journalists, and editorial writings.  Not a surprise, but I sometimes need to be reminded.   

Saturday
  • Like all our memories, nostalgia is unique for each of us.  We recall different moments in different ways.  Some we blank out, some we enhance, some we even invent.  And each is a special mélange of sight, sound, taste, smell, visceral physicality, emotions, thoughts, and layers we have embroidered in afterwards.
  • By definition, nostalgia indicates some positive connection with the past.  Nobody is nostalgic for the horrors of war or the ravages of disease, although there may be certain elements of such (the comradery of fighting units, or triumph over adversity) that can be polished to a warmer glow.  Since most nostalgic recollections imply some distance in the past, their very foundational truth is questionable, as is often obvious by comparing stories with those of others who were present at the same events.
  • For my baby-boomer peers who grew up in the fifties, summer remains one of the finest nostalgic periods.  Back then there were few demands once away from school, except for perhaps some “good for you” summer reading that, if done, was often accomplished less than a week before new classes started.  Many parents could truly relax for a weekend or a week or so, getting away to some quiet and inexpensive resort, doing nothing but what happened to be around, never interrupted by calls from work.  Was it true?  I don’t know, that’s how we experienced it.  At least, in my own nostalgia, that’s how I remember experiencing it.
  • As Proust noted to such grand effect, a scent can trigger an unconscious tumble into a nostalgic fugue.  My own nudges seem to be more visual and kinesthetic.  Walking in humid heat, sweat beginning to drench my shirt, hot sun glaring all about, easily pushes my deeper consciousness back to childhood, and to the happiness of innocence when the who world was available for the taking, and all the time in that world to accomplish whatever I wanted.

Sunday
  • Surprised to find so many people lining parkland shores of Lake Ontario on a bright Sunday morning.  Turned out there was a colorful regatta offshore in strong winds _ here boats return to the “Port of Rochester” through the rock jetties lining the mouth of the Genesee river.  On the other side, an official beach-volleyball tournament was in progress, families swam in waves that were almost surf, and barbeques were being prepared in huge smokers under leafy canopies alongside numerous picnic shelters. 
  • None of this appears in national news, rarely enough on local media.  We learn of each fire, each car accident, each criminal event.   I think we start to think that the only sanity that exists is some magical bubble around us, that the rest of the world is a hellish expanse of horror (a favorite cliché word of the moment.)  But evidence remains that this is a happy and fat land filled with pretty good times for most of the people, most of the time.   The world has never seen its like before.

Hotcha!

Monday

  • Noel Coward’s song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” seems to apply to local joggers who grimly exercise as humid heat reaches into the nineties, with blazing sun piling on.  They assume they risk degradation and death to pursue dreams of fitness. Certainly to listen to self-qualified “experts” in such matters, mankind was never meant for such conditions.  We should be burrowing underground until weather becomes more favorable.  Or at least leave the heat to the leaves, and limit excursions to air-conditioned malls, cars, and _ in the words of Henry Miller _ nightmares.
  • I grew up in a time when as I recall only movie theaters and a few larger supermarkets had cooling facilities.  The Delaware Valley is famous for nearly 100% humidity, stifling stillness, and blazing solar beams.  Farmers never cared, neither did we, and my friends and I played and worked outside shirtless without a care in the world.  Somehow,  apparently against all the odds, most of us are still alive.  Either we were exceptionally hardy or the experts are not quite so expert.

Tuesday

Dog days of summer settle
Named for rise of Sirius
Back when folks could still see stars.
Today seasonal tribute is less cosmic
We seal our boxes tightly

Flick a switch from Heat to Off to Cool.

Wednesday

  • Thunderstorm sweeping by last night brought heavy downpour and colder Northern air, temperature is ten degrees cooler today, accompanied by a dry breeze.  Even in the midst of our most extreme seasons, we experience great variations.  It’s doubtful that the rest of nature notices _ it’s warm or not, there’s water or not, food or not, predators or not.  Life in instants has no time nor means to reflect on longer patterns.
  • People, on the other hand, can attune themselves ridiculously.  Some think any variation beyond 72F _ give or take a degree or so _ is uncomfortable.  For them, 80 remains a heat wave, with danger at 90 or _ Heaven forbid! _ 100! Connoisseurs of climate.   Our individuality and worth seems too welded to acquired specialization.  I’m as guilty as anyone, as I stroll about thinking how grand I am.  We should cultivate contempt for any expert who becomes too obsessively expert.  We must experience narrow vivid instants, but also holistic perceptions which require no particular delicately encrusted expertise.

Thursday

Trying to prevent drips from my peanut butter sandwich at a Halesite picnic table.  Even in the shade, sweat dripping into my eyes makes the lovely water scene waver and sting.  I’m startled by Ed’s loud shout _ “Hot enough for you, young man?”
“Oh, hot enough, I guess.  Not really a roaster.” I sadly indicate my lunch. “This is just a mess because it was in the sun while I was walking here.”
“I think it’s about as hot as it should ever get!” declares Marie, bedecked in in wide-brim tan straw hat.
“I, on the other hand, still consider it slightly cool,” maintains Ed.
“Normal variations, I guess, we’re all different that way.”
“Well,” he looks around at boats large and small, “I know you’re right, but you’d never guess we knew that from reading or watching things lately.”
“What’s that got to do with heat?” demands Marie.
“Just this,” he continues.  “I’m sick of the grouping of people as if they were sacks of rocks.  ‘White college males think …’ for example.  People are complicated.  No two people think the same about any issue any more than we do about whether it is too hot or not.”
“But if you took a poll here,” I point out, “they’d all agree it was generally hot.”
“Well, OK,” he admits.  “But the politics today is on the tweaks.  I’ve never seen such lather over Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
“Controlling nuclear arsenals is hardly tweaks,” starts Marie …
“Hey!  Hey!” I try to calm them down.  “I just want to eat my sandwich in a lovely spot on a perfectly fine afternoon _ without paying too much attention to exactly how fine it may be _ and enjoy this moment of being. “
“But don’t you think …” insists Ed.
“Nope.  Not now.  No opinion.  Undecided.”
“But …”
“Ed,” I say ge
ntly.  “Hate to tell you but nobody cares if you or Marie or I think it is too hot, just right, or not hot enough.  No more than what we think about the state of the state.  Would you like a grape?”

A loud horn sounds nearby and we pause to watch some private behemoth easing out from a nearby dock.  

Friday

  • Optical illusions demonstrate how easily the mind slips from one conception to another when presented with visual evidence.  Similarly artists have woven illusions or abstractions to enlighten or confuse thoughts.  At first glance, this picture might well be a Monet water pond, or a Pollock abstract, or some meaningless scatter painted by an unknown.  A second look picks out reeds and reflections and makes sense of the photograph.
  • We have only recently realized exactly how arbitrary and fragile our vision.  The eye may see what a camera lens does, but only an interpretive brain can produce “common accepted reality” or an artistic revelation or some internal Quixotic interpretation of the scene.  I enjoy unfocusing almost as much as deciphering the photons reflected into my retina.  The world is marvelous not only because it may be “just so”, but also because it may not be at all what we so confidently imagine.

Saturday

  • Conventional wisdom claims we live in places that would be impossible without modern technology.  Florida and Arizona before air conditioning were terrible places to settle, at least for Europeans.  Without rapid transportation of bulk goods the vast grain farms of the Midwest and the cattle ranches on the parched plains of Texas would be impossible.  No matter where we look, we seem to be tied into a social and technological grid without which we could not survive more than a week.
  • That is obviously true.  But it is not new.  Civilization has been like that since the taming of agriculture, which just about everywhere in the old and new world required bureaucratic government and irrigation.  Only disease and harsh conditions, which thinned populations dramatically, let some humans avoid that fate, but we could seriously question whether the nomadic and brutal life of native Americans and the short and uncertain lives of all other “primitive” peoples in places like Africa were better than the lash and the wheel. 
  • Intellectual contemplations like those do not matter.  The fact is that generally people today, whether by choice or force, live or aspire to live with access to full consumer comforts.  Few parents would willingly consign their infants to aboriginal life with a tribe in the Amazon rain forest, or any other such “romantic” notion of going back to nature. 
  • What we have, however, learned over the last few centuries, is that such “progress” has costs, many of them not immediately apparent but accumulating nearly fatally over time.  That is what we are dealing with today, in life, in outlook, in hopes, in politics, in every phase of life.  What will we trade for what, and what will we not?
  • I think we have been living through a few years of grace, while these profound cultural questions sink in and various answers rebound not only by word but by entire lives.  When there is little more to strive for, as an example, is the only proper response a hermit-like lethargy, or a constant chatter of games and conversation and arts, or a drug-induced internal withdrawal, or an artificial fanaticism leading to active anti-social madness? 
  • Hot times, for the mind as well as the body.  We wonder if this period is our summer, with decline to follow, and if so, how long the heat can last and how well the water will hold out.

Sunday

  • “Heat Dome” seems to be as bad as predicted, although hard to tell how much of it is psychological.  No question sweat pops out with the slightest exertion in the shade, spontaneously in the sun.  Thick haze a constant reminder of bad air quality.  Fortunately, Huntington by the harbor has at least a steady light breeze, barely waving flags but cooled by evaporation.  From all accounts, it is one of the more fortunate areas of the country this weekend.
  • Nevertheless, I stayed in yesterday, perhaps deciding to act my age, perhaps merely being lazy.  I only went out to do some necessary watering, or to read on the patio later in the afternoon until the mosquitoes arrived.  What surprises me is not how lethargic this lack of normal exercise made me feel, but rather how dull my mind became.  Stimulation through motion and exposure to nature seem to be necessary if I am ever to have a creative thought. 

Wonder & Worry

Monday

  • Looking out the window, walking through a meadow, watching a brilliant sunset,  catching flashes of lightning bugs at night, and hearing the shrieks and melodies of birds all day long, this seems the most perfect of places in the most perfect of times.  Flowers bloom everywhere in this benign climate, entertaining storms pass quickly by, squirrels play.  Inside, the larder is always full, there are infinite wise books to be read, marvelous distractions available on media all the livelong day.  Yet we are warned not to be fooled, for all is falling apart.
  • A favorite phrase of essayists these days is “the best of times, the worst of times.”  Global warming, falling test scores, increasing racial tension, defunct political consensus,  neonicotinoids,  GMO’s, the list is endless and increasing with each ever-more hysterical dawn.  I’m getting older and _ in the words of the old Kingston Trio “Merry Minuet” _ I don’t like anybody very much.  But I have come to accept that “best” in the present is worth a bunch of “worst” in the future.  An intellectual hedonism.  Perhaps I am condemned by such an attitude _ but perhaps pure appreciation also counts for something.

Tuesday

I wonder at this grand fine day
I worry of tomorrow
Wonder as we dance and play
Worry at our sorrow
Our universe is grand and free
Until it kicks our teeth
We carpe diem just to be
But may find no relief
I wonder who I am and why
I worry what to do
Wonder at the earth and sky

Worry if it’s through.

Wednesday

  • Amazingly, in one of the most populated areas on Earth, it is possible to slip away to a few places where there are few signs of people.  Astoundingly, in spite of centuries of industrialization and pollution, the air still seems clearly scented with flowers, the water tangy with salt and little else.  Birds fly endless rounds, insects flit about the marsh, flowers bloom on the sand.  And most surprising of all, parts of this scene are wilder than they were a century or two ago.
  • We have become increasingly urban.  Our own experiences are often of home after home, building after building, traffic on streets with no scrap of land visible.  Our essayists flit from megapolis to megapolis, in sealed aircraft, not noticing the “flyover” barrens below them.  Yet most of the world remains open land.  A few hours away even from here are vast tracts that _ if not untouched wilderness _ are nonetheless unused wildness, filled with decaying buildings and the rusting scraps of an older era.  Rural residences, farms, small towns are depopulating almost everywhere.  Perhaps, walking in empty fields and wetlands, I can yet preserve hope for the future while contemplating that fact.

Thursday

Jim and I exchanging banter during some demonstration or other at Hecksher Park.  The banner says something like “Save your shoes, save the Earth,” sponsored by Nike.  Almost a hundred folks of all ages are grimly striding around the lake, happily engaged in this godly duty of environmental repair through consumerism.
“More dystopian thoughts,” I venture.
“Oh, haven’t we had them during our lifetime?” muses Jim.  “Gee, I lived through the communist red menace, certain nuclear war …”
I add “irrecoverable river and air pollution, no birds or wildlife because of DDT, cities going up in flames, race riots, cultural disintegration from the sexual revolution.”
“Yeah,” smiles Jim, taking up the theme, “the end of oil, population explosion like locusts, nuclear meltdown,  Japan buying the world.”
“Starvation from a new ice age …”
“What?” he exclaims.
“I was reading an old book.  That was a common theme of the seventies _ we were about to move out of an interglacial warm spell and into cold desertification of our grain belts.”
“Oh, right, I forgot.  And then …”
“Don’t forget we were all going to die of AIDs, China buying everything, computers running amok,”
“Y2K!” we both laugh.
“The end of metals and all other commodities, autism plagues, social revolution redux, united Islam conquering a fractured West.”
“And here we are,” Jim waves at the crowd.  “Still worried, still hysterical, still inventing problems.”
“And solving them,” I interject.
“Well, or letting them solve themselves,” he notes.
“Here we are,” I say slowly, “Practically in utopia, and still inventing insoluble problems and certain death.”
“Well, it keeps life interesting.”

More people stream by, the sun shines, and swans glide majestically across the calm waters.

Friday

  • Bindweed and morning glories now blooming _ surprise _ every morning, along with the chicory. Other summer flowers are following their genetic pattern.  Meadows are filled with daisies, butter-and-eggs line the roadways, hawkweed offers bright yellow spots and thistle and vetch provide patches of purple.  It is as if views have been orchestrated for pleasure.  Terns and swallows swoop, hawks and ospreys float in circles, sparrows and finches dash from bush to bush.  Ah, another fine mid-summer.
  • People don’t conform to predetermined patterns, not even those of their parents.  Older folks know the younger generation is failing to measure up to their own lofty achievements.  For example, nobody under fifty can read maps and is hopelessly lost without a GPS nearby.  Such complaints, often humorous but with sarcastic bite, fill media.  The young, like the meadow flowers and larks, laugh it off, knowing that the world is theirs and will remain so until the next even more awful generation happens along.

Saturday

  • The fascinating dichotomy of the times _ this so much better, that so much worse _ extends through science and technology into nature and human existence.  At no other period have we been so aware of the entire world, so deeply understanding of its underlying complexity.  Yet with that awareness and understanding has come the horrible realization of how rapidly much is vanishing and destroyed forever, and how fragile the rest remains.
  • For those willing to make an effort, the complex intertwining of physics and life reverberates in a grand symphony back to the big bang itself.  For those open to marvels of our mind, the mysterious rapid evolution of the human species and its implications is an infinitely engrossing study.  We are on the verge of a true useful philosophy of being, even though it remains sadly out of reach at this moment.
  • Technology, meanwhile, hands its marvels and curses as always.  For every wonderful advance _ miracles as trivial as being able to eat strawberries all year round or major triumphs over diseases like heart disease and cancer _ there seems to be some counterbalancing evil.  And yet, on the whole, which of us would willingly roll back the clock even a hundred or two hundred years, in terms of knowledge, technology, society, or any other part of our mostly happy and comfortable existence?
  • I could make predictions, but like all predictions, they would be wrong.  I could wish for things, but since my time remaining is brief, my wishes tend to have a limit of decades rather than centuries.  I could fear much, but fearing that which one cannot control or affect leads only to madness. 
  • So another day dawns.  I revel in new discoveries from my immediate environment, from my extended media, from my inner thoughts.  It appears I have another day of wonders before me, and that Is more than satisfying at this stage of my life.  Tomorrow, as always, will have to take care of itself. 

Sunday

  • Above ground, this is a festival of peace and plenty.  Nothing is grabbing ground furiously, the only real struggle is finding enough water, but plants have evolved to handle that.  Everything has its place and is either preparing the next generation or storing resilience for the coming winter.  Inexorably, the sun provides less and less power for doing so each day.  Goslings and cygnets and all other cutely named baby birds are nearly full-grown, feasting on unlimited abundance.  Under the barely rippled surface of the water, however, a frightening Darwinian massacre continues as fish eat fish eat fish. 
  • So it may look like peace and plenty, calm and stability, but struggle continues, and if species could worry they no doubt would do so.  We are blessed with imagination, so a lack of water signifies more than itself, high heat may mean global disaster, bright sun may even now be starting a later skin cancer.  And even if all is well nearby, the distant world certainly has problems.  I think such perspective is a trap.  Life is a gift _ it is always unstable, what matters most to you and me is what is local to you and me.  

Go Fourth!

Monday

  • Fireworks have been exploding loudly in the evenings all weekend, three days of colored flashes and sudden bangs.  The wildlife seems to take it in stride _ what are those crazy humans up to this time?  Just about all the boats that have a prayer of being used this summer are now in the water, after frantic activity at the marinas and ramps.  Beaches have been jammed in spite of cool breezes and hazy sunshine.  Today will be filled with scents of burning meat from shortly before noon until after midnight.  And, of course, somewhere all day someone will be intoning how solemnly this day should be celebrated ….
  • I’m actually as patriotic as the next guy.  This country has been good to me _ I’ve lived a life much more complete and pleasant than almost anything I have read about in history or travel.  Our United States and its ideals has been something special in the world, and I hope it will continue so.  The anger, moans, and groans of today may yet transmute into some interesting pathway into the future.  For if our country is anything, it is about experiment, and letting individuals together try different ways of thinking and living.  As for me _ well it’s unfortunately come down to less great thoughts and more grilled hamburgers and sunscreen.  Some of the fun in life is once in a while to have no deep thoughts at all.

Tuesday

This land was nothing under ice
Then glaciers left huge rocks and sand
As seas retreated from the land
Forests grew as seeds were spread
By wind, or birds, or human tread
This land was here before the strife
Of English, Dutch, German, French
Before disease and wars left stench
Of rotting corpses, blood and gore
From all who had lived here before
This land was here as it was torn
Cleared to graze or grow rich grain
Filled with farms again, again
Leveled, ploughed, dammed and worst
Waters polluted as if cursed.
This land was here when I was born
Although I did not know it then
I’ve heard fine tales of other when
Much has changed to elder eyes
While all lament lost paradise
This land is here while I sing song
Still glorious when sun shines bright
Luxuriant from storms at night
Stuffed with traffic, beaches, stores
Yet still the youngsters cry for more
This land will not be here for long
As water rises topping waves
Will overflow roads, houses, graves
And all will be as once had been

Perhaps pre-fated, from our sin

Wednesday

  • Mathematical considerations and Newtonian mechanics split the year into 4 equal seasons, controlled by orbits and axial tilt.  But nowhere are seasons exactly equal, neither within a year nor between years.  Huntington is rather normalized, but spring sometimes ends abruptly somewhere in May, while winter may arrive in late October.  This year, the more shocking aspect is that signs of autumn have sprung forth because of drought almost before the flowers of spring began to transmute to seed and fruit.
  • No matter, people ignore all that anyway.  Summer traditionally and narrowly unfolds between July 4 and September 7 or so.  For my childhood family and friends, this was our unique vacation _ nobody took a week or two off any other time of year to ski or fly south.  Happily, as promised and expected, full summer has finally brought high temperatures, humidity, lots of green and increasing insects.  Wonderful times for beach and sunsets _ even though earlier nightfall and these pesky reminders hanging on ailanthus trees murmur subconsciously that what seems endless time has not actually paused.

Thursday

A bunch of us were gathered outside the library, waiting for the parade to begin.  Ellen had been a teacher and was complaining “The young folks today don’t know any real history about the Founding Fathers or anything else.”
“What?” asked Jeff, eyebrows raised.  “They don’t remember George Washington leaps the broad Potomac in a single bound?”
“I forget,” said John, picking up the thread. “Was that before or after he single-handedly cleared a path through the Allegheny wilderness with a machete for Braddock’s troops?”
“Nah, that was after,” chimed in Mary.  “First thing, he killed a bear when he was only three.”
“Don’t forget about him blowing over his father’s cherry tree orchard with one mighty breath.”
“Ah, Washington, Washington,” Anita remarked disparagingly, “what a wimp.  The real hero in that bunch was Hamilton.  After all, who plowed the Erie Canal, straight as an arrow East to West, Albany to Niagara Falls?”
“With his mighty blue ox Babe!” shouted Tom.
“In just one day!” chirped Mary.
“Oh, yeah?  What about Jefferson?  He cleared the forests of Virginia for his friends, started the French Revolution, and wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica when he retired.”
“The kids,” Ellen interjected darkly, “have no idea what an encyclopedia is.”
“Then how will they ever find out that Franklin electrocuted Philadelphia while he was inventing the steamboat and automobile?”
“Me, I prefer my heroes a little more human,” mused Karin.  “Take John and Abigail Adams.  Forcing the British out of Boston with brilliant legal maneuvers in Faneuil Hall.”

“Happy Fourth of July anyway,” laughed Dave.  “And we should never forget the brave men who fell at Waterloo this day to keep our country safe from tyranny.”

Friday

  • Hot, humid, occasional thunderstorms.  Wildlife seems not to notice, although there appears to be a shocking lack of insects this year.  Will swallows and terns starve?  People at the beach are grateful for less bites.  They remain afraid to swim because of declared high bacterial levels. 
  • Bacteria, of course, rule our world, both in numbers and sheer biomass.  They are far more helpful companions in our biosphere than antagonists.  In any case, the harmful ones are largely kept in check by salt water.  These beachgoers are presumably the same people who worry about “chemicals” in their food, not realizing that all food and they themselves are nothing but chemicals.  I wonder if any of the sunbathers worry about no insects?  I’d like to believe it’s just a local phenomenon, but I fear that “local” is increasingly identical to everywhere else.

Saturday

  • As Lincoln pointed out, the real American Revolution was not in establishing a constitutional republic, but in acting on and holding sacred human rights as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.  Yes, such ideas were a common theme of eighteenth century intellectuals, but nowhere had a body of people acted on them as the reason for their nation and government.
  • Why, exactly were the notions of “self evident,”  “all men created equal,” and “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” so shocking in the context of rebellion and foundation of government?
  • In spite of latter-day evangelists hanging on the word “Creator” with all their might, the very notion that anything could be “self-evident” is non-religious.  “Self-evident” implies lack of authority from experts or writ, each person as interpreter of the meaning of the world, the protestant idea run amok.  The notion that anyone can make up their own mind about meaning and righteousness continues to annoy and frighten rulers and the wealthy.
  • Debunkers of the American Myth denounce the phrase “all men” as limiting.  What about women, slaves, the poor, the ugly?  But the key is in the selection of a huge group.  “All men” has a far different connotation than “all kings” or “all nobles” or “all priests.”  “Men” in this context is inclusive almost to the point of meaninglessness.  It invites expansion, and resists narrow definitions.
  • That everyone must be granted equal self-determination is explosive fuel. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” sparks the ignition.  In spite of libertarian contradictions, this phrase is harnessed because all the others in society have the exact same rights _ no more and no less _ than anyone else, however certain they may be of their own ideals or however much temporal power they have accumulated.
  • America has warts, as all societies do.  But its devotion to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence _ and not to any of the other dinky procedural claptrap in the Constitution and Bill of Rights _ is what made America great, and what continues to make it exceptional in the world.

Sunday

  • An easy interim period for most plants, enough water, sun, warmth _ winners have won their struggle.  Animals,
    on the other hand, are having it harder.  Young birds, mammals, and fish are watching their companions being hit by cars, eaten by cats, devoured by bigger fish, and dying in countless other ways.  Older specimens are already beginning to lose the edge they need to survive the winter.  People may worry about faraway news and distant concerns, but for everything else in our environment survival is real, instant, and constant.
  • Our natural companions are probably not attuned to our inner concerns and thoughts.  One of the most surprising things about us humans is that the more secure we become, the more neurotically we consider what might go wrong.  Evolution on Earth planet did not get this far by thinking ahead.  Sometimes, we might be better off paying attention to what is, and less engrossed in what might be.

Animism Light

Monday

  • Animism is belief that spirits are everywhere _ trees, birds, puffs of wind.  At this time of year particularly, when there is still room for all bursting life and winners and losers are yet to be determined, animism is an easy faith.  I have a hidden spirit, why should a tree not have the same?  Certainly something unknown or unknowable makes each living organism grow and strive.
  • There is a comfort in believing everything, no matter how small and insignificant, fits together meaningfully.  Why should not only mighty oaks, but even each leaf on the oak, each acorn, each rootlet have a genie shaping and protecting and guiding?  Why should not I have the same?  Science, at least modern clinical science stripped of its early poetry, fails dismally at grand explanations.  Animism in that sense is as good a religion as any other for celebrating our amazing existence and the consciousness with which we have been gifted.

Tuesday

An ocean of spirit, or spirits in each
Spirits we never can see
Tantalize dreams, just out of our reach
Wondering what might be
We do not know, we cannot
Today like tomorrow, and yesterday too
Our logic informs us that’s so
Always been like that, if memory is true
If false we’re unable to know
We do not know, we cannot
So here’s to fair dryads, nymphs, and such sprites
Thunder gods riding through rain
Fairies in daffodils, angel delights 
Perhaps just as real as your brain

I do not know, I cannot

Wednesday

  • Birds _ dinosaur-descended distant cousins _ seem to possess intelligence and sense.  Flights of birds were interpreted by augers in Classical Rome to predict the future, in the belief that some cosmic spirit guided the flight’s patterns.  It is well-established that hunting peoples frequently performed ceremonies for their prey, both before and after capture or death.  The belief that the world and all it contains possesses spirit is universal.
  • I rarely take pictures of birds, insects, fish, or mammalian roadkill.  That is not because I do not notice them, just as I do not ignore people as I amble about.  I simply prefer compositions of slightly more permanence, which means I am often engaged with flowers, leaves, and distant horizons.  As is often true, I find that deeply studying or contemplating one particular aspect of life inevitably leads me to a better appreciation of all the rest that it contains or that lies about it.

Thursday

Startled by a sudden splat, I glance at my companion whose arm now displays a smear of blood. “Why Steve,” I mockingly remonstrate, “don’t you know ‘You should never swat a fly’?”
“Got him!  What?” Steve exclaims in grand confusion.
“Old Jim Kweskin, Maria Muldaur jug band tune about insects having their own value ….”
“Don’t care about your ancient songs,” he states.  “Bible gave me dominion over anything that bothers me, you know.”
“Ah, but some Eastern religions believe …”
“Look, I’ll pick whichever damn songs or religious texts I want whenever I need them.  Besides, wasn’t a fly anyway, just a mosquito.”
“Same difference.  Your karma is damaged. Each living thing may possess ….”
“Nope, nope nope.  According to the most up to date modern scientific theories, my karma is all balanced out, thank you.”
My turn to be startled.  “What are you talking about?”
“Each moment,” he lectures smugly, “is an intersection of infinite possible worlds in some vast incomprehensible multiverse.  In some of them I hit the mosquito, in some of them I miss.  I suppose in some of them it gives me a deadly disease.  This particular me just happens to inhabit a universe time line where I was able to squash the pesky devil.”

“But …”  unfortunately at that moment I had to slap at my own bloodsucking annoyance, which rather definitively put an end to our philosophical conversation.

Friday

  • The role of spirits when material manifestation is gone?  Who knows?  A flower looks alive in a water vase for a long time, but is its spirit still there, doomed to a short sterile existence?  What of a bloom perfectly preserved?  The special name for the invisible residuals of life is, of course, “ghost.”  Here at the Huntington historic cemetery should be many ghosts, but all that can be seen are quietly inert scribbled rocks and weeds.
  • Ghosts of people are memories among the still living, and a few somewhat longer-existing objects such as tombstones, artifacts, and place names (Reverend Prime has a street named after him.)  In spite of speculation and elaborate attempts, no real contact has been made with folks once “departed.”  Why we would ever wantmore than memories, artifacts, and place names to haunt us is something I never quite understood.

Saturday

  • True science depends on repeatable experiment with fully observable results in the “real world.”  True science would correctly claim that in such a sense nothing spiritual is “true” or “real.”  I yield to that argument and agree that spirit is not real and cannot be real as a scientific construct.
  • A less provocative, but absolutely similar, problem arises as to whether “hope”, “love” and so forth are “real” or not.  Science will claim they are caused by hormones, learning, neurons, obscure brain networking, and what not.  But science cannot account for their reality in our experience.  Surely for me love and hope are just as real as a cup of coffee or the clear light of a bright morning.
  • Some theoreticians now speculate that intelligence and consciousness is a result of networks, which need not be brains.  That network intelligence functions just as well for a colony of ants or an immune system as it does for dendritically connected neurons in our skull.  That perhaps there is an evolutionary intelligence guiding Gaia itself.  If so, we are part of it.  And, if so, perhaps hope, love, and the belief in spirits are essential parts of our existence itself.
  • Who would live without hope or love?  And isn’t a belief that there is some kind of guidance and meaning in everything we encounter far more life-enhancing than a cold psychopathic dismissal of all there is as just differently scattered energetic particles? 
  • But ignoring all the deeper, or perhaps more idiotic, thoughts, perhaps even if animism is simply a fine fairly tale, a myth to comfort us, surely that also has survival value.  There are metaphoric truths necessary for life that will never be proven in a test tube or on a survey form.  We reject them at our peril.

Sunday

  • Humans inhabit an ecology of phantoms _ spirits and other concepts that are only with difficulty discussed and never adequately defined.  Happiness, meaning, love, beauty _ the list is endless and important.   Imagination _ what things mean, what the future may be, what happened in the past _ imagination is the lodestone of consciousness.  It creates magic from sensation.  Sometimes such thoughts are easily wrapped into unconscious metaphors, which is when sprites and dryads seem to play in meadows and trees.
  • I think this is what we really are _ I know it is what I really am.  I reject any other definition of myself, for all such dry and objective evaluations are eventually false.  I love beauty, I seek understanding, I rejoice in empathy.  The only limit I am willing to accept in this spirit world is that my world is mine, and I would never force it on anyone else.  I can thus follow my superstitions and metaphors and imaginations wherever they may lead, accept whatever comforts they provide, hesitate only when I encounter another human in this vast cosmic mystery.

Top Sun

Monday

  • Longest day of the year!  Druid festivities!  In northern temperate climates, summer solstice makes sun worshippers of everyone.  Of course, high sun itself is rarely pictured _ a boring brilliant spot of yellow high overhead.  For those shots we must rely on specialized equipment, NASA, space telescopes and expensive filters.
  • There will be innumerable spectacular pictures of sunsets, fewer of sunrise (takes an early bird indeed to capture sunrise at this time of year!)  But few if any of the prime disk in all its glory. I’ve been taught since toddlehood that to stare up at noonday will blind me.  Even sketchy instructions on a digital camera warn of burning out sensing arrays by pointing directly at our solar powerhouse.  Besides, almost anything is much more interesting than the source itself _ that’s like taking a photography of a light bulb.  How quickly my silly mind can denigrate the most critical element in our lives. All it does is illuminate and warm everything, without it there would be nothing.

Tuesday

Constant, predictable, overwhelming sun
Day, heat, light, life
Nowadays taken for granted

Too obvious to worship

Wednesday

  • Honeysuckle in full bloom is as beautiful as any other flower, but also stuns those passing by with a blast of unexpected strong sweet perfume.  The olfactory shock encountered when entering a cloud of fragrance from less obvious privet hedge or linden trees is even greater.  Of course, few experience such glorious surprise anymore _ the ambient temperature is over 72, so they generally rush past in hermetically-sealed air-conditioned obliviousness.  On the positive side, they never catch the occasional whiff from rotting garbage or low tide mud flats.
  • I recently read some woman explaining how liberating it was to go to an expensive spiritual retreat and stare at a single flower blossom for an hour.  I fortunately find it equally (and less costly) spiritually satisfying to sit on a sandy beach viewing sparkling waves and hazy far shore, or to lounge in my back yard watching clouds, leaves, and birds, as time drifts by.  Detaching from our annoyingly intrusive world is difficult but rewarding, and well worth any effort to accomplish.

Thursday

Joan and I are under our umbrella in bathing suits at West Neck Beach a day after solstice.  A surprisingly large weekday crowd is enjoying the afternoon.
“I’m amazed everyone is not sheltering in place at home,” I remarked, “terrified of Zika and the new killer jellyfish.  Not to mention left over West Nile Virus, Lime disease, or stepping on the spike of a horseshoe crab.”
“And skin cancer,” added Joan.   “Hand me that sunscreen, please.”
“I guess it’s the novelty,” I continued.  “It’s the first time it’s been this hot, and everyone is excited to be nearly naked outside.  By the end of the summer …”
“Well, those girls you’re staring at are certainly nearly naked,” snorted Joan in a huff.  “Good figures, though.”
“Ah, when you’re as young as they are it all comes naturally.”
“Including ignoring warnings and common sense.”
“Well, after all, so are we,” I noted.  “We’re here just like them, mosquitoes or not.  To tell you the truth, harmless but painful greenhead flies bother me a lot more than imagined terrors.”
 “You’ll change your tune if one of those new jellyfish sends you to the hospital …”
“Maybe.  I suspect we’re in more danger driving here and back.”
“Beautiful, anyway,” Joan leaned back and adjusted her sunglasses.  “We used to spend hours …”

Happily under the blazing sun, we drifted off to shared memories about supposedly simpler wonderful days gone by.

Friday

  • Local schools are finishing up their year.  This weekend, commencement parties commence.  Cars will line streets, late night booming music, laughter, and yells, young bellies full of beer and god knows what else, sexual rites _ or at least sexual rites dreamed of.  Followed the next day by prost
    rate sun worship on the beach, weather permitting. We pray for no human sacrifice, but automobile carnage after midnight on twisting roads will probably appease the dark gods.  Our culture’s exact analogue of ancient solar festivals.
  • We are not so far removed from stone age Druids as we may like to believe.  Every day we encounter irrationality and superstition, in everyone else of course, but also in our own urges and thoughts.  Most of it is harmless enough, and a big part of what makes us interestingly human and not merely wet logical intelligence.  I envy those young folks their enchanted and fearsome realm, but I dread the nasty sorcerous and disastrously righteous politician/priests into which some of them may grow.

Saturday

  • Apparently our universe, filled with explosions and emptiness, began almost 14 billion years ago.  The sun only about 5 billion, almost contemporaneous with the Earth itself.  Primitive life more than 3 billion back.  Then evolution, rush, us.
  • During all that time, the noisy racket all around did not much affect this ball of rock.  Only a mere infinitesimal flicker of the Sun’s immense ongoing power reached it, and much of that was deflected by magnetic shield, or reflected by high atmosphere.
  • In other words, the universe has wasted a hell of a lot of energy and time if you and I are supposed to be the outcome.  Not an efficient effort at all.
  • Most of the energy we use is in some way solar-based _ photoelectric, hydropower, wind, fossil fuel compressions of ancient biomass, new biomass.  Only nuclear, geothermal (also nuclear), and tidal are not in some way related to the sun’s output.  And most of our energy conversions to electricity are horribly inefficient, passing through a mechanical generator stage to do the work.
  • But should we care?  We are not using energy efficiently, but even the solar power we do utilize is hardly an efficient capture of the full output of that reactor.  Life hardly uses all its solar-based energy efficiently _ at least for individuals, although a case can be made that the entire biosphere and Gaia itself is about as efficient as possible.
  • Efficiency has never been the measure of our relation to the sun.  We accept its gifts gratefully, except when they become extreme.  More efficient delivery of its output would instantly burn us to a crisp.  A slight reduction would starve and freeze us.  What we mostly get from our sun _ and what we probably should aim for in the rest of our complicated systems _ is not efficiency, but absolute stability over long periods.  That is probably something worth praying for.

Sunday

  • Long days, short nights, bright light, warm afternoons, carpets of flowers exploding, greenery in glorious control of every vista _ a perfect time, filled with daily happiness and hope.  Yet already the sun sets a little sooner, some plants have begun to hibernate waiting for the next spring season, and insects start to have their way chewing through the feast spread around.  The cycle back to cold and dark has begun, even if it is easy to ignore, impossible to remember.
  • Hard not to compare it to political and social events of the day.  We like to believe we have escaped cycles, that the future will be filled with ever more glorious wonders of science and ingenuity.  Yet many civilizations have felt the same, not least that of the industrialized nations in 1913.  Unlike the classic Newtonian majesty of solar astronomical events,  human affairs are unpredictable, harsh and often catastrophic.  Unlike the billions of years adjustments of the biosphere taking solar rhythms into account, we have only our day of which to be certain _ I may not exist in another year, our culture may crumble.  The biosphere has little imagination _ but imagination may end up being the Achilles heel of our entire species.