Time Elastic

Monday

This weekend in the Christian world words like “eternal” and “forever” were frequently and fervently tossed about. What such concepts actually mean, like that of time itself, is hardly clear. Consciousness, after all, is experienced as an instantaneous timeless moment, with only memories to stitch it into a continuous flow. Yet denying time is silly, it’s used meaningfully in a common sense way, and science can measure its intervals with precision. Science, on the other hand, knows how arbitrary such measurements are, especially at quantum scale, and has absolutely no handle on “eternity.”
A birthday week encourages thoughts of the passage of days, years and decades, and forces a hard look on exactly how I am using my conscious moments now. In an abstract, meditative way the times I have experienced almost seem more an illusion than reality. My current momentary existence is increasingly difficult to comprehend. Common sense, fortunately, intervenes, and I fall into the flow of conventional time passage without much difficulty, and remember the past, and plan the future, and go about my business. But “forever” and “jabberwocky” remain equal parts gibberish in my confused mind.

Tuesday

Yesterday I was a child

Last night I dreamed I’d become old

What happened?

Daffodils smile yellow.

Wednesday

Wild garlic is easily overlooked as a sign of spring, and more often than not once noticed in a garden is immediately weeded out. Most of the showy species around here _ forsythia, daffodils, cherries, crocuses, roses, even Norway maples _ are imports. Globalization since 1492 has overwhelmed most of the local species, especially in populated areas. But garlic and dandelions were always here, within a given meaning of always, and were used as food and presumably medicine by native Americans since they first arrived on these sandy shores.
Some mourn the loss of what has been. Possibly the most radical element of Western mythology is the idea that time is not forever circular, but an arrow with beginning and end. Our singular lives as baby and child through aging and death are not exceptional illusion, they are truth. The idea that a forest or mountain is permanent, that seasons repeat forever, that continents or the sun will always be as they are and were, is the great falsehood. Gradually I have realized that the times through which I lived are unique, never to repeat. Perhaps I have been some cosmic form of wild garlic, but in my vanity I would rather believe I resembled a dandelion.

Thursday

Blustery clear morning, I’m strolling Hecksher Park and flop down next to Bill, sitting quietly on a bench overlooking the newly rebuilt swan nest. “Been here long?” I begin.

“Depends what you mean by long, I suppose.”

“Uh, well,” so it’s going to be one of those conversations.

“By the clock, I don’t know, maybe an hour or so. Honestly I have no idea.”

“Time just passing you by?” I needle. “Nothing to do this fine day.”

“I am doing something,” he points out reasonably. “And enjoying it quite nicely until you came along.”

“What way besides the clock would you suggest makes your stay long or short?”

“Well, Wayne, from my own standpoint it was no time at all. I’ve just been suspended here as the world whirled along. I can see from your antic shallowness that you would have considered it a boringly interminable interlude of tedium.”

“Not fair. I sit sometimes …”

“Maybe. Anyway, seems a very short time to me. However, I’ve watched joggers flitting by like mayflies the whole time, flit, flit” he points out a couple rushing alongside the lake. “From their standpoint I’m as solid and everlasting as this bench.”

“And you have been lost in considering the nature of time and its elasticity and other mysterious and elemental ruminations,” I continue.

“Perhaps time has no meaning,” he intones like a TV guru, “but you wouldn’t know.”

“OK, I can take a hint,” I say, getting up. “Boy, you must have gotten up on the wrong side of bed this morning. You’re in some kind of mood.”

“Mood? Mood?” he stares at the sky a moment. “That’s a whole different question …”

Friday

Warm breezes bring clouds and rain, bright sun accompanies chill. In between it’s nice to sit and watch the water blown about with casual gusts, as geese, ducks, seagulls, and a few lazy migrants cavort. One or two boats are ready to go, owners anxious to take advantage of any spectacular day that might arrive.
I sit and think maybe I should be doing more. Upon a time I would write, or draw, or paint, or fill my mind with plans and hopes. My joints are happy to just sit and do nothing, reminding me they are no longer 21. By afternoon, various muscles will join that chorus. My brain tries to convince itself that it is as good as ever, which works until I try to remember calculus or chemistry. So I sit, I gaze, the world spins. Time suspends even as it rushes by.

Saturday

Western Civilization for the last two thousand years has sought the underlying simplicity of everything. A confusion of gods and goddesses, for example, were simplified into one. Since at least the Renaissance there were further attempts to locate the prime mover, the first cause, unifying mathematic “laws”, the building blocks of matter and energy.
Much of that worked and created a more prosperous and even more magical world. Understanding how all life on earth is related or pondering deep secrets of universal gravity in no way diminishes our appreciation of all that is. We confidently track the past back to a big bang, we confidently predict what will happen to our solar system in billions of years. Entropic Time itself would appear to be one of the simplest rules of our cosmos.
But. Finding the underlying “simple” rules do not negate the fact that we exist in an infinitely complex state, surrounded by infinitely complex systems. Describing the past and predicting the future does not help us understand our momentary consciousness. Time is “just there” but we truly have no greater conception of its nature than any five year old.
I think on this now because our society is sliding into another belief system where simple solutions should fix everything. Simple morality, simple taxes, simple savagery, simple government. Few want to point out that social systems, like our bodies themselves, are complex unities. For fifty years we believed that simply giving people everywhere more goods and services would lead to a simple golden age. It has not. Worse than that, simplistic political and/or religious fanatics are ready to tear down all that has been achieved.
I meditate on the nature of time. Simple, uncontrolled, necessary, arrogant time, which sometimes drifts by without notice, sometimes presses me into panic, sometimes drags forever until it is suddenly gone. Whatever essential time may be, my experience of it is about as complex as anything encountered in my life. If I ignore that great fact, my days are in trouble.
Simple can be beautiful. When simple is declared absolute it can also be deadly.

Sunday

Time may be simple, may be complex, may be the most unknowable thing in the universe. What matters is the instantaneous slice called a moment. Perhaps there are many moments, but we only actually ever experience one, which is now. Now as I write is a dark drizzly day, rapidly becoming colder, filled with mysteries and beauties which I could never describe nor enumerate.
Philosophers have spent lives cogitating on exactly what and why with no conclusion. Scientists measure and tag everything else, but time remains elusive. The nature of time is a rock upon which reason shatters. And thus my elastic time moves along _ this week rushed past, this afternoon crawls slowly, and my entire previous life seems as instantaneous as this keystroke.

Chromatic Contrasts

Monday

Like the start of a fireworks show, this first week of spring produces noticeable explosions of color against background browns either in nearby flower beds or far off landscapes. No longer necessary to peer anxiously checking if one crocus is beginning to open _ there are clumps of them shouting for attention. Daffodils wave brilliantly, but hillsides remain mostly a harmony of sienna and umber. Blushes of red and yellow-green fuzz crowns of trees.
Also like beginning a fireworks show, I have not yet become jaded. The first starbursts and fading trailers still evoke ooohs and aaahs from the audience. In coming weeks there will be more and more, overwhelming in quantity and quality, and yet, somehow, that will remain less exciting than a single forsythia high on a hillside, a blotch of magnificent gold, bravely alone awaiting possible snow.

Tuesday

Lawns are greening, skies bright blue,

Winds blow chill, snow may be due

Daffodils shine every day

Yellow nod along my way

Crocus blooms chained to sun

Open morning, quickly done

Sunlit maples making love

Fogged in scarlet high above

Now I cheer each bright new show

Overhead or down below

Almost too soon this time moves on

Another prelude season gone

Wednesday

Easter week, which some neighbors take as a signal that yards must be scoured as deeply as kitchen countertops. Predictions and actuality of a quickly-melted beautiful snowfall have narrowed the window for cleanup. Today yard crews are blasting everywhere with multi-megawatt leaf blowers strapped to their backs _ they’d use nuclear if it were available. Noise level is approaching insanity.
There are many things taught in school, but unfortunately none involve aesthetics. Our binary culture firmly believes that every leaf and twig should be banished to wilderness, every lawn should be monocultured, poisoned, drenched, and barren. Instead of realizing a few leaves, even weeds, add elegance, balance and communion with the natural world, we consider them an affront to our consumer sensibility, wealth display, and control. I don’t much care that such an attitude is sadly wrong _ I am annoyed that it must be so noisy.

Thursday

While admiring the harbor view from the top of Coindre Hall, I noticed Linda toiling in front of an easel under a subtly flowering maple. “Ah, starting a new career?” I asked as I strolled down.

“No, I’m more of a Churchillian artist,” she wiped her brush on a handy rag.

“Blood, sweat and tears?” I inquired, startled. “Surely it doesn’t take that much out of you, even at our age.”

“No,” she laughed, “And speak for yourself!”

“But that’s Churchill…”

“Just a part. He was a complex man. Surely you read his book on painting?”

I remembered something vaguely. “Oh, yeah, he had an exhibit at the Met once, right?”

“More than that. Painting as a Pastime is still an excellent guide for amateurs on exactly what we think we are doing wasting our time making pictures.”

“And that is?” I had become intrigued, and my memory wasn’t pulling anything else up.

“He said nobody really understands how hard it is to see unless they try to paint. Lines are hard, but colors are impossible. Every time you look, relationships have shifted. He was absolutely right.”

“Doesn’t that just frustrate you?”

“No, surprisingly it just makes me see better.”

“Well, very nice picture, good luck anyway,” I encouraged, continuing on towards the water.

“No need to lie ….” drifted from behind as I suddenly noticed the subtle shifting hues within shadows.

Friday

Unusually warm temperatures followed residual chill of snowstorm, typical spring swing. Today has settled into the normal middle: cold in wind, warm in sun, always on the edge of “too.” Along the harbor, temperatures run five or more degrees below what they are inland, fifteen or so below reports from New York City. Consequently, floral displays change dramatically within short distances.
This pattern will hold for a while. I waver _ grateful that winter has gone, somewhat anxious for May to arrive. Certain garden chores can begin, although there are limits to what can be accomplished. Chance of frost remains, but we put out pansies to brighten the patio. I enjoy staring at crocuses finishing up their run. Blooms pop up everywhere, sometimes exposed when I clear off the detritus of winter storms. Spring is _ above all _ surprising.

Saturday

A set of famous pictures looks like a duck/rabbit, or a woman’s profile/vase, depending on how you glance at them. Optical illusions show what is not there. We used to think that what we see is somehow “real” but now we know we are only interpreting photons hitting a biologic maze to trigger chemical/electrical messages interpreted by interconnected neurons. And those photons are bouncing off impossibly odd combinations of weird forces acting in an emptiness that is not even space. Seeing may be believing, but it is far from absolute truth.
Aesthetics _ theories of perfect visual combination _ are arbitrary. Logical constructions declare one thing right, another wrong. Such a theory will claim, for example, that a complementary color may clash, or accent, or harmonize in a scene. Meanwhile, we only see what we expect. Some of us look at a scene and notice certain patterns _ houses, cars, a piece of trash _ while others admire shrubs in bloom, green grass, and opaque clouds.
As a game, aesthetics modifies notions of beauty. We are capable of admiring formal gardens, or wild waterfalls, or jungle or desert or anything else. Our tastes are infinite, and we can shape our environment to please or startle us with unexpected contrast or pleasingly matched subtlety. Those with vast wealth and power _ Cheops, Tiberius, Kublai Khan, Louis XIV, the Vanderbilts _ constructed immense artificial wonders based on particular opinions, which most of us are happy to experience for a while.
With more modest means, I try to be more practical. Realizing that aesthetics are entirely in my own mind, I must shape my own mind when I cannot control the outside world. A rotting boat in the harbor could strike me as ugly unless I consider it picturesque. Since I can do nothing about the wider environment, controlling my appreciation of it is simply common sense.
That approach has limits. Ragweed is beautiful, in a certain way, but I will rip it out of my garden. Discarded snack wrappers add bits of color to the roadside, but I may clean them up. If I accept everything, I will do nothing, not even that which I ought to do. But if I try too much, I become frustrated and as callous as my neighbors frantically blowing leaves into oblivion. Unlike in movies or self-help books, there is no happily rational middle path.
Nature happily ignores my inner turmoil, and plops any color anywhere and dares me to enjoy it.

Sunday

Carpet of purple mint has its moment in the sun, but is too subtle for most folks to notice. It’s not simply rushing about in cars, but an entire attitude of ignoring the environment except on special occasions. Many pedestrians grimly staring straight ahead with internal intensities matching their dutiful exercise, others lost in music from earbuds to pass an otherwise boring interlude, many of the rest talking on phones. This entire marvelous world is taken for granted, while more important business takes precedence.
Once in a while I wish I were a real photographer with professional equipment. Here the purple is washed out, and I regret it’s not more dramatic. But I remind myself that the purpose of this blog is not to amaze anyone with the photographs, nor stun with my insights. There’s enough of that in the world already, and more all the time. These are just poorly captured moments of an average person on an average day trying to pay more attention to my immediate surroundings. A spiritual exercise, if you will. No prayers nor meditations are deepened with fancier apparatus.

Wild Song

Monday

Western civilization possesses the hubris to think it commands time itself. King Canute could not command the tide to cease, but setting clocks ahead or behind seems rule the sun, even though it is only human convention which has changed. Sunrises are not normally so spectacular as sunsets around here, or perhaps it is merely that I am not so awake as I am later.
My camera with all its fancy color filters and light controls continues to confound me. On the other hand, like all tools, it forces me to pay more attention to the materials I use with it. I look more carefully at sun, birds, and nascent leaves. What I really need is the equivalent attention grabber for the increasing sounds of spring as well _ from the ripple of waves to birdcalls to even leaf blowers and overhead jets.

Tuesday

Birds flit ceaselessly, shrilling for nests

Buds explode shouting silently from branches

Crocuses dance to hidden symphonies. Why

Do I remain so sad?

Wednesday

Andromeda bush out front in full bloom, attracting early insects. Unfortunately, its small dead twigs are ideal for making nests, and its dark spaces underneath eaves encourage small birds fleeing predators like cats and aerial terrors. That results too often in a nasty, possibly fatal, collision at flight speed with the picture window.
We replaced our windows almost ten years ago, getting rid of the ancient cold and leaky antiques that had chilled the house for over a half century. I love their insulation and clarity, but I am saddened by the occasional avian carnage. I know there are increasingly technical ways to make them visible to birds without affecting what we see, which is good, but I do not feel I have resources to update again. So the poor birds suffer for my economy as much as we all do for the excesses of our wealthy.

Thursday

Walking along the crumbling seawall at the old boathouse, taking pictures of the greening shoreline, enjoying birdsong and a burst of sunshine warmth. Linda comes by with her terrier, yapping away.

“Birds noisier than your dog, today,” I notice.

“Really loud and persistent, aren’t they,” she answers. “Guess they like the brighter mornings too.”

“Think I saw some red-winged blackbirds in the reeds …”

“Pretty early for them,” she says.

“Global warming. Standard answer for everything. Like this massive erosion along the shoreline. Just look at that.”

“High tide line way up. Rising sea level.”

“Well, the last set of storms were pretty nasty.”

“Again, global warming.”

“What can we do?” I note. “I’m not gonna make a difference. I don’t drive my car or ride in planes much anyway.”

“All heat, no action. Good metaphor for our current politics.”

“Then what do you make of all the bird calls?”

“Twitter!” she laughs.

We both head on our way, determined to enjoy at least this one fine spring day.

Friday

Many are amazed by the clarity of harbor water in early spring, and imagine that they view what it looked like year-round before modern pollution. Summer murkiness at low tide results from decaying fish and plants, algae, crabs chomping away on bottom detritus. It did so before humans, domesticated animals, fertilizers, and the overharvesting of oysters, although all those have given the algae in particular a strong boost. Ripples may have been a lot less opaque, but never springtime crystalline.
Folks these days tend to overestimate relatively trivial local environmental issues, and underestimate really dangerous global ones. Huntington itself is probably less polluted than two hundred years ago, when farms covered the land, tanners took over the ponds, and all industry just dumped residue into any handy local stream. But the world’s seas, and skies, and weather, and ice were in far better condition, even though nobody noticed. That’s what frustrates scientists and environmentalists now _ global issues can deteriorate rapidly even while
local standards improve dramatically.

Saturday

Civilized springtime noises now begin to overwhelm silence, wind, and birds. Although hard to appreciate, perhaps even house renovation, leaf blowers, motorboats, small planes and helicopters, and the thousand-and-one other annoyances of suburban life _ not excepting parties playing music too loud _ should also be considered wild song.
Humans are the most supernatural elements in our universe, in the sense that they continually overwhelm natural balance in weird ways that have nothing to do with nature before they arrived on the scene. I’d accept, perhaps, an argument that they should not be considered “nature.” But nobody will ever convince me _ especially given what is going on in the world now _ that people are not “wild.” So the first word certainly fits.
Now, it may be that a leaf blower is not a song. Annoying pure noise, far worse than thunder. Same with garbage trucks and everything else, including certain kinds of music that I do not like. On the other hand, a pure naturalist may well consider music as mating behavior, leaf blowers as nesting behavior, and certain kinds of mechanical noise as song.
But, you protest, it’s not vocal. Well, neither are grasshopper or cicada serenades in summer. Before modern humans arrived, clicking of flint and obsidian marked their ancestors’ presence as surely as loud squawks of crows or gulls marked theirs. Tools are as much a part of us as beaks are of birds. Sounds of tools being used productively may have attracted the opposite sex before speech.
Ok, I won’t take this any further. It doesn’t change the fact, one way or another, that around here the sounds of spring _ wild or not, songs or not, come into full cacophony as the temperature rises. If I prefer to imagine it some kind of cosmic symphony, perhaps such is an excusable madness in an unavoidable situation.

Sunday

March, of course, is famous for wind, which sweeps along the empty, storm-ravaged shoreline today. Few flags yet fly, to demonstrate its power. Its constant background sound provides welcome relief to a crescendo of construction clamor onshore. Weekend sounds of children playing, dogs barking during exercise, and pioneer power boat drift distantly. The breeze subsumes all, a muffling blanket, still raw with cold and moisture.
I sit and listen to the peace it brings, watch gulls strut and hidden clams squirt as tide recedes. In another month there will be others here, but for now I enjoy solitude. An ever present mass of miracles spreads all about, which I, enwrapped in petty concerns, too often ignore. Winter ends, spring invites, and hope blooms with the daffodils.

Desire

Monday

Countless shells are piled and ignored on this beach, thrown up by storms from countless countless more living in the water beyond. Nobody desires to take more than a few home. This contradicts modern mythology which states: “Any organism must struggle for scarce resources or perish. All resources are scarce.” An intellectual priesthood intones an innate drive to desire more _ knowledge, power, goods, happiness_ infinitely and forever. Desiring more is a positive social good, justifying wealth, evil, and misery in the name of universal scientific truth.
I gaze on these oysters, whelks, and moonshells and do not seek more, nor do I believe any child would do so. Those priests, if present, would take me aside and explain, “No, son, perhaps you do not desire more of these particular shells. You will soon yearn for something else, or will desire finer and rarer shells, from elsewhere. There is joy in possessing something that others do not.” They are wrong. I recognize no “hierarchy of needs” in myself. Basic requirements satisfied, all other desire is a figment of imagination. Religions and societies less dependent on capitalistic consumerism have recognized that fact for tens of thousands of years.

Tuesday

“Desire and lust drive endless need”

They say

Relaxed with belly full I disagree

You know

“Must strive or die, there’s scarce enough for all,”

You know

I laugh and sing _ “He’s heading for a fall,”

They say

“Some crazy Buddhist freak, or even worse”

They say

I’m quite content with beauty put to verse

You know

“He’ll starve quite soon, takes struggle to buy feed”

You know

Sure, work a bit, but draw the line at greed

I say

Wednesday

Life’s most endearing traits are a desire to continue moment after moment, and an occasional overwhelming desire to create copies. That desire to continue is quite remarkable. A mature specimen of any large species living in a stable niche should be literally bored to death. Survival struggles are generally confined to the young and the old _ not even a pack of wolves, for example, is going to take on a bull American bison in its prime. An organism’s most mysterious genes are those that keep it eating, facing each day, struggling through storm and season, simply to experience another storm and season.
Darwinistic capitalism preaches that “survival of the fittest” means the fit must totally control their environment, and must grow ever more powerful. But in nature, “more” is rarely involved. Predators stop when their territory is adequate size, prey rests when it has enough food, trees attain only a certain height. I believe the fittest prosper in their niche, and limit, rather than ceaselessly expand, their desires.

Thursday

I’m watching swans and children charging about at Hecksher on an unusually warm early spring afternoon, when Jim jogs up and thrusts his hand in my face. “Lookkit what I got!” he gloats. “The latest iPhone. I’ve wanted this since I read the reviews.”

“Ah progress,” I respond sourly, miffed that my pleasant meditation has been interrupted. “I sometimes wonder if our desire for progress might kill us all.”

Jim pretends to inspect me up and down closely, then intones “You look happy, sleek, and fat enough, mister. You’d maybe rather be starving and shivering in a cave somewhere with a horrible toothache?”

“No, I suppose not,” I admit. “But maybe the Polynesians and Classic Greeks had a point _ enjoy life, think grand thoughts, slow down on the aggravation.”

“Right!” he grunts ironically. “New Guinea tribesmen shrank the heads of their neighbors. Those Greeks rushed from philosophical gatherings to attack and sack the next town.”

“OK, OK. But I still worry we rush too far and too fast, desire too much, do irremediable damage before we realize what is going on.

“You’re just an old fart,” he complains. “We’re entering a new golden age.”

“I don’t know,” I state stubbornly. “Maybe more is killing us.
Shouldn’t we desire intangible things as much as goods? Shouldn’t we pause and reflect?”

“Ha!” he exclaims happily. “Fortunately, your questions are easily answered!” He bends closer to the black box in his hand. “Siri?”

Friday

Sometimes the greatest desire is simply to rest and enjoy a calm view of the world. Unseasonably warm weather for the last few days has driven many from offices at lunch, happy to spend time with sun and clouds and temperatures that promise spring. Even seagulls got into the act, mobbing some poor unfortunate who threw the remainder of her sandwich on the sand. Out on the bay, clammers seem to be the only people at work.
In my more active days, I tried to take lunch in the open whenever possible. At that time, many remained tied to their desks as they jammed in nourishment, or else rushed off on some errand. Now I see where companies are forecefully encouraging employees to eat together, in effect making what used to be break time into just another dreary meeting. Freed from such supervision, my only real chore is to continue to waste hours doing nothing but listening to birds and watching the slow opening of crocuses and daffodils.

Saturday

As is said in investment advertisements: “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” We may be about to discover whether a species genetically driven by desire for more can be satisfied with enough. Or perhaps can redirect its acquisitive instincts to intangibles such as beauty.
Why is desire genetic? Any evolutionary theories are pure speculation, but it is generally accepted that our most remote ancestors were driven from disappearing forests onto the savannah because of climate change. Since modern man appeared and left Africa, population pressure combined with human ingenuity to destroy most large land animals and place people everywhere on the planet.
With the advent of agriculture, civilizations with enough land, water, climate, slaves and serfs could provide stable surplus for aristocratic elites. The problem, of course, was that in spite of plague and war, populations in some places just kept growing and needing more resources . Since the Renaissance, humans have increasing swarmed everywhere, and now threaten the biosphere itself. Because of the way we are made, because of all we know, we desire more and more because stability or loss feels dangerous
And yet ….
Although all economics, politics, and social theory is based on how to handle the problem of scarcity, more and more it appears that if it avoids catastrophe, civilization could enter or has entered uncharted territory, where the problem is surplus. That’s why we cannot depend on the past. A person in 1200 dreaming of a day when billions of words would be available for anyone to read would have imagined millions of slaves copying manuscripts. A person in 1800 informed that anyone would be able to listen to any music anytime anywhere would have pictured a world filled with musicians. A Roman emperor could never have conceived of a city fed by the efforts of a few farmers. And so on.
Most socioeconomic theories implicitly assume that idle hands are dangerous hands, that a society liberated from necessary work will rapidly devolve into chaos, that slaking desire with abundance will halt any progress. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps we need new theories.
Oh, some will say I live as the favored few or that scarcity continues evermore as population rages out of control. Yet birth rates can be and are being controlled, the majority of people live with more goods than they had in 1950, automation threatens to drown every job in a cornucopia of output. I believe it may be time to examine desire itself.

Sunday

Words can be irrelevant. There is a huge stretch of imagination to conceive of the bursting of buds in spring as somehow involved with the desire of a plant to continue to live. The impulse, and genetic drive, is more primitive and integral than any fancified poetic metaphors. All such words only have meaning for use, the bushes and trees and even birds (and some would claim people as well) are just doing what they are mindlessly wired to do until Malthusian Darwinism drives them into overpopulation and extinction.
Some of these current bad photos have the (bad) excuse that I have a newer, supposedly more capable, camera and have not worked out how to handle it properly. I will continue to inflict them on my blog for a while because that is the only way to force myself to actually reread and understand all the settings available. Manuals are pretty deadly and now that they are all on line I cannot just curl up somewhere and page through them.

Ragged

Monday

Earliest March is frequently ragged. Temperatures spike high, plunge low overnight. Dry brown reeds and weeds lie broken and torn. Winter storms have littered ground with needles, branches ripped off trees, broken limbs and whole trunks expose fresh scars. Not least, human detritus glitters and shines incongruous colors everywhere, since nothing has yet been hidden by new growth, nor remains covered by a melting blanket of snow.
Like everyone else, I unconsciously filter what I do not want to see. Trash is invisible to my eyes seeking flowers or sprouts. Seemingly dead elements of nature fade behind a desire to discover new growth. I can mold my world as I wish, and that is not wrong. But it is never truly the entire story, either.

Tuesday

Imagine all time all space infinite

Multiverses, fractal dimensions, physicists’ dreams

In all immensity, could there be,

Another beer can just like this?

People consider other forms of life

Perhaps intelligence, bug eyed monsters everywhere

Even gods playing with stars

Are candy wrappers strewn throughout the Milky Way?

Are hydrogen clouds celestial chariot fumes?

Asteroids discarded kitchen tiles?

Suns residue of playful thunderbolts?

Must trails of trash proclaim each life or act?

I’m certain that is true of us

Since flint flakes littered ancient hills

Cuneiform shards piled in smooth desert sands

Beer cans, garbage, natural as me.

Wednesday

By moonlight, this scene would be wild and haunting enough for the most romantic poet. Another tree toppled by heavy snow and fierce wind, leaving only a question as to why those others survived the midnight onslaught. Dreary, bare, browned downs of soggy low grass and stiff reed stubble. Not even enough forage for flocks of geese, abundant everywhere else.
As snow gives way to mud, shrill sharp sounds of chain saws envelop woodlands and clearings. When the mud dries, ubiquitous whining drone of leaf-blowers will make quiet a rare commodity even in deepest forest. And yet, I am content, not querulous. No saws, no blowers at this moment, cool but not cold breeze, blue sky. One tree toppled, but most sturdily remain. Grass will soon grow, weeds jump forth. I find it too easy to project fears into the future, to worry about what may be, and my frightened mind discounts current happiness and wonder. My consciousness only truly exists in this moment, after all, and both past and future are mere memory and fiction.

Thursday

Dashing under shelter of the narrow awning at Surfside Deli, I bump into Carl, also huddling from the fierce sudden spring squall. “Whew! Sure didn’t see this coming …”

The Surfside Deli has never seen surf and never will. It’s on the opposite side of the Island from the Atlantic, and even the minor waves kicked up in the Sound don’t penetrate the narrow inlet. There are occasional tiny whitecaps on parts of the harbor, but this end is too sheltered even for those. I guess Rippleside Deli doesn’t have the right sound, so the owners use the same poetic license that yields “Lakeview Drive” in the middle of an Arizona desert development.

Carl squints into the driving rain, “Nothing about this on the weather last night, that’s for sure.”

“Last night nothing!” I exclaim. “No radar on the internet an hour ago. I looked. Should have brought a raincoat.”

“And hat and gloves,” he adds, ruefully. “So cold, so fast. It was warm and sunny when I left.”

“Yeah, the bad part is I have to trudge back into this mess.”

“You appreciate the plight of those old-time farmers before we had any idea of what was going on,” he noted. “When you get trapped like this out of nowhere you can understand all the deaths from the blizzard of 1888.”

“Oh, we have it easy,” I agree. “And nice warm houses, hot water, electricity to get back to.”

“We’re just the most lucky fellas, I guess,” he jokes sticking his hand into a river cascading from a drainpipe. “
You gonna try to wait it out?”

“What was that old saying about spring weather _ if you don’t like it now, wait a minute?”

“Something like. “

“I’ve got stuff to do,” I insist, as I tighten up the collar of my already soggy “water-resistant” jacket. “My skin at least keeps the rain out eventually. Time to play duck…”

“Quack, quack,” he calls, as I lean into the stinging gale.

Friday

Ragged implies random, like these branches thickly clustered. There seems to be no discernable pattern, each twig formed by circumstances and twisted by the luck of sun, shade, cold, wind, and wet. At this time of year, as we anxiously scan for swelling buds, we are more likely to notice such underlying structure. Plants which appear smooth and carefully-shaped in full foliage reveal themselves much less so when support is revealed, unlike our own more predictable skeletons.
I have learned to accept that luck is part of the universe. We inhabit a relatively quiet and stable bubble of time and space but even our sun flares violently ragged. Elsewhere galaxies collide, asteroids smash. I am happy if tornadoes avoid my house, if my tall trees survive a snowstorm, if my zillions of furiously fermenting cells hold together another day. To find beauty amidst infinitely twisted nature is an art skill of highest order.

Saturday

Chaos theory and the indeterminate character of whatever underlies our universe decree that science and other human tools can never accurately predict exact moments or events, such as this snowfall. No matter how fine our observations and massive our computations the result of one coin flip can no more be foretold than exactly when the next drip from your faucet will occur, or the exact second a given crocus will open.
On the other hand, we’re pretty good at averages, probabilities, and ranges _ how much water will fall from that faucet in an hour, how likely a snow event may be this morning, when backyard daffodils should bloom. I have a fifty percent chance of losing one coin toss with you, but almost no chance of losing a bet that after we have done a thousand the count of heads will be around five hundred.
Humanity has taken what it’s got and run with it. Hard work, difficult thought, and using averages intelligently have yielded a gigantic _ and I would claim beautiful _ civilization. On average.
My real problem, like yours, like everybody’s, is the specific. I may care deeply about that one coin flip. Odds are I will not be struck by an asteroid or hit by lightning or even run over by a car _ but I can never be sure I am not the one out of whoever who gets blasted. There are ragged possible terrors all about, and if I obsess on them I walk in constant fear.
Of course, I work it the other way too. The odds of dying today increase with every day of my life, yet I tend to ignore that prediction. Death is certain for any mortal _ but am I really mortal? Most things happen to other people.
What value, then, odds to me? If I cannot know, is that perhaps a blessing? I seem to have wandered far from chaos theory and ragged nature, but in fact I think I have burrowed towards the core.

Sunday

From this tangled ragged mess of dead stalks, ripped leaves, twigs stripped from overhead branches, and all the dull brown detritus of seasons past, new growth emerges. Buds on thorny runners, green shoots thrusting out of still frozen soil, dark leaves that have somehow survived periods of intense cold and dark weeks buried under snow. Nature’s next spectacular is underway. Ignorant of humans’ gloomy thoughts and depressed attitudes, cycles continue. In a short while, this patch of land will be unrecognizable.
I remain too impatient. I miss many of signs. I cannot quite make out patterns. What will bloom where, which seemingly dead buds are swelling to life, what stirrings occur beneath the superficial cover which is all that I see? I hardly notice that bird species are changing, as new migrants flit by, and robins begin to search for worms. The most wonderful miracle is that one day soon I will suddenly awake to embrace the overwhelming beauty of another vibrant spring.

Taking Notice

Monday

Snowdrops have been blooming off and on since mid-January, so they are hardly a reliable indicator of spring. It’s been a mild winter with rare intense seasonal episodes. Yet suddenly vernal equinox is only one month away, so a previous anomaly may become an omen. Soon it will be apparent if early shoots of bulbs and buds on trees _ unprotected by snowdrifts_ were destroyed in a record cold snap.
Last year’s harsh weather led to a late and concentrated awakening _ everything suddenly flowering at once and shriveling in heat immediately thereafter. I think this year may be a more gradual series of waves flowing uninterrupted from late winter through early, mid, and late spring right into early summer. I’ve been known to be wrong _ so I shall try to pay particular notice to what shows up when. No matter what, I’m sure it will be worth watching closely.

Tuesday

Homage to The Cloud

“I am the daughter of Earth and Water

And the nursling of the Sky”

Poetry flowing incredibly knowing

Beckoning me to try

But Shelley’s a genius, a gulf lies between us

I can’t write like that, we know

His visions are sweeter, I envy his meter

Mere wishing won’t make me so.

If I could but borrow his skills for one morrow

Perhaps create something which gleams

To craft a fine phrase which might thrill and amaze

Nice having impossible dreams

Wednesday

Catkins arrive this time of year regardless of outside conditions. They are a kind of “save this date” reminder that something marvelous will be arriving in the future. Often they have fluffed out and disappeared before any significant foliage opens.
I admit that I sometimes prowl seeking something specific. Such focused concentration unfortunately reduces my chances for serendipity. A loud noise, a strong smell, an extravagant display may break through my reverie to reignite my complicated, marvelous experience, understanding, and enjoyment. Otherwise I wander half-blinded by my thoughts.

Thursday

“I see where you’re writing about noticing things,” says Ed, coming up behind me on the beach. I’m marveling at the full moon high tide as waves begin to develop angrily in the raw north wind. A duck rides them out unperturbed.

“Confess it’s true,” I reply noncommittally. “Lately need a topic _ any topic _ to kick this old brain into gear every day.”

“Ok, but do you mean to notice the big things or the little things?”
“Both, I guess. You have examples?”

“Big things the length of day, the warming air. Little things garlic clumps and chickweed flowers.”

“Haven’t seen any chickweed yet …”

“You get the idea. So which is really important?” he insists.

“Both. Both. The universe is all connected and …”

“Oh, you’re one of those guys,” he waves dismissively. “Why not notice decaying logs and rocks which have been sitting around doing nothing for the last few years? ‘Everything’ is basically nothing.”

“Whoa! I like my brain in gear, but not this much! I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.”

We both laugh and chorus loudly “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

That startles the poor little duck which takes off away from the rising gale. Fittingly, it has finally noticed us.

Friday

Pines depend on wind for pollination _ in arrogance science labels that “primitive” although they’ve been around longer than the flowering plants. They need not wait for insects and simply rely on seasonal breezes to waft fertilization. Then they produc
e seed-bearing cones over summer, dispersed by birds in fall, and require a few surviving seedlings available for spring rains.
In point of fact, this year I have already noticed insect activity. Of course, what I see of flights of gnats or flies is only an infinitesimal showing of vast unseen activity. Termites and ants are rousing underground and in vegetation, bees have been busily fanning hives warm all winter, who knows what else strives beneath and around me. Anytime I think I am noticing everything, I can be humbled to realize how crude my senses and understanding really are.

Saturday

Our thoughts revolve around pattern creation, matching, and recognition. If something fulfills a pattern, we are pleased. If something does not match what we expect, we are surprised, for better or worse. Fortunately, we are often so dominant in our environment that many surprises make us joyful enough to encourage curiosity.
What happens when I expect rain and find snow? When I confidently seek signs of awakening spring and discover only desolation? That’s the trouble with being too attached to preconceptions. On my walk, I must be able to shift from, say, a naturalist perspective (buds are swelling) to one of an artist (aren’t the bare outlined branches lovely.) Or anything else I choose.
Nobody can predict everything nor notice more than a fraction of what exists. Even one seashell, one other person, provides more than enough basis for meditation to last hours or days. If we could predict all, we would literally die of boredom. Maybe that’s what happens to any god.
Proper balance is hard to achieve. It is necessary to wear patterns strongly enough to be pleased when they come true, lightly enough to be happily surprised if they don’t. The best observers and scientists utilize surprises to better understand what they think they know.
For me, being surprised by noticing things is less utilitarian. Rather it is a method to remain engaged and happy _ the word often invoked is “enchanted” _ with all I encounter, no matter how well it matches my particular transient expectation.

Sunday

Incoming water in cold tidal marsh. Nothing to see here _ empty carapaces of horseshoe crabs, dead reed mats woven together as if by demented artisans, ubiquitous fragments of garbage, and mud, mud, mud. Ospreys have not returned to nesting poles high overhead, egrets are wherever egrets go when it is thirty degrees, even seagulls are over on the other side of the causeway. Brown and black, tones as monotonous as the vestibule of Hades. Wet organic decay is the only, hesitant, smell. Sounding occasionally over persistent low murmur of seabreeze is the deep hissing rush of car tires as people race to warm restaurants and shopping experiences.
I have forced myself here precisely because I never do. I am usually in one of those hermetically sealed vehicles, eyes glued forward, mind racing ahead to where I am going. Desolate scenes do not appear in National Geographic, nature documentaries, nor any newspaper unless there is a motionless body involved. Yet this too is the world, nature, as integral to our universal miracle as any dandified gaudy flower bursting forth in a few months. Winter marshland does not lack unique marvels _ I have just been sadly unable to notice them.

Brilliant

Monday

Surprisingly quickly, the darkest days of winter are just memories. The sun rises early, sets in evening instead of afternoon, and is brilliant and blinding at high noon. Somehow the snow has remained white for the last week, and newly formed ice sparkles with crystalline dazzle. Sometimes high ice clouds dim the solar disk to a pale ghost, but often the sky is an impossible glaring blue. Sunglasses may be required.
In December, the indoor lights were on by 4pm, now I wait until almost 5:30, and each day edges a bit farther into night. Soon I will become impatient as I assume the beckoning outdoors has become more temperately hospitable than it actually is. Late winter and early spring for a casual gardener can be a tediously long season of disappointments. I must content myself enjoying abstract visual patterns, which abound in ubiquitous contrasts.

Tuesday

Cold sunbeam, hard water,

Sharp rain

Seem incongruous

Are not

Wednesday

The perversity of the universe tends to the maximum _ at least as regards individual plans. A topic like “brilliant”, conceived when mornings were blindingly bright is greeted by days of snow, rain, mist, fog, and dense overcast. No use trying to convince anybody that dark and gloomy now is much less dark than it would have been in early January.
However, the core idea holds. One or two senses are easily misled. Morning thermometer readings over the last three days were -2, 13, and 50. Jumping out into beautiful sunlight was jarringly deep-freeze, heading into depressing rain is warmly enveloping. Only the wind has remained constant, present via sound indoors or via touch outside. Perversity adds contrast and interest and excitement to what would otherwise be a dull, logical existence.

Thursday

As I strolled out to pick up the mail delivery, I ran into Ed, clutching a huge thick bundle of the latest deliveries. “Looks like you have a lot to look through,” I joked. “Sure hope they’re not all bills.”

“Mostly spring catalogs,” he replied, reshuffling the pile which had started to slip out of his grasp. “I made the mistake of ordering some bulbs from them last year. Now there is no end to the offers.”

“Ah, then I am sure I will be faced with the same as soon as I open my mailbox.”

“They time them carefully, I suppose,” he continued. “By the time you can actually plant anything, no offers show up. Right now they’re just feeding dreams and hopes while we sit depressed in our living rooms waiting for spring.”

“Speak for yourself,” I begin.

He cuts me off, “You said you do the same thing.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Just two suckers, trusting the brilliant beautiful pictures. The sunlight seems as if we could go out and stick them in right now. The catalogs imply you can put them out as soon as they ship in a month or so.”

“Yeah,” I laugh, “and watch them shrivel up in some late frost so you have to order them all over again.”

“Well, they’re cheap dreams,” he began to walk off. “Promises that warm days and blooms will be coming along following the longer days and brighter sun and warming soil.”

“Just not for a while …” I add, taking out my own stack of flyers.

We wave goodbye and head back inside, still marveling at our own unrepentant gullibility.

Friday

Thirty degree wind in crystalline Canadian air feels invigorating rather than depressing. Brilliant sunbeams cast jeweled sparkles on tiny wavelets that support ducks already pursuing mating bonds. March looms with promises of spring fever, already noticeable in some swelling buds and blushing branches.
I need not hurry the season along. My universe is determined not by what arrives from the outside world, but by how I greet each event and observation. Today I am fortunate: this sharp wind accelerates my step, this bright dome of immaculate blues clears my senses. My world feels poised for a new and exciting beginning, and I can only marvel that time has streamed by so quickly.

Saturday

Brilliant usually connotes something desirable. Outdoor life can be marvelous when brilliant sun shines. Everyone wants to hear that their plan or their child is brilliant. But, like most of our words and concepts, desirability lies in context rather than attribute.
Brilliant sun on endless desert, on vast icefield, on trackless ocean can be horrible. Eyes are poisoned, skin crisps. Lacking rain, crops perish. Life in any niche depends on average certainty, too much brilliance just as fatal as too little.
Brilliant people may use their gift to bad ends. We do not need James Bond villains as reminders that intellectual brilliance without socialization is the definition of evil.
In this age of pasty bling, we have lost sight of context. Brilliant inventions like atomic bombs or genetic modification or computerized culture may destroy civilization, yet we gasp and applaud at magical flashing demonstrations of achievement. Brilliant religious or political logical scaffolds built on unprovable or insane foundations cause misery and cult violence.
Brilliance can be noble. However, it must connect to its environment and be harnessed not only by its opposites, but also by surrounding tensions. Life and consciousness exist as a balanced mesh of necessities. Untamed brilliance has now become a threat and a curse.

Sunday

Nearly sixty degrees, full sun, low wind, Saturday, and Caumsett Park packed like a rock concert. It’s good that so many people still appreciate the value of nature _ media seems to believe everyone stays inside on the internet most of the time. Lots of children riding bicycles, seniors “walking briskly”, everyone enjoying this unusual meteorological gift.
Being an old curmudgeon, I slipped away from the crowds and strolled the empty shores of Lloyd Inlet, marveling at the continued destruction of mussel beds. Spring and summer now start to rebuild what ice has torn to pieces. Naturally, a brilliant sun blazed low on the horizon, blinding anyone trying to look across the wetlands in that direction. No matter _ I’m still capable of turning my head the other way.

Heart

Monday

Heart of the winter, here in the heart of Long Island’s North Shore. Walking here good for the heart, and the end of this week is the festival of hearts. Take heart, the end of the cold is near.
One reason to study another language is to learn about my own. Words have multiple definitions, and varying connotations depending on context. Less frequently recognized, words have obscure cultural associations, such as Valentine’s day. Almost never noticed, each of us carries our own unique entanglements associated with words we use, perhaps, for example, of a loved one who died from a heart attack. Some words carry more freight than others, and one such is “heart.”

Tuesday

“A heart once lost is never found”

Meaningless, yet seems profound.

“Be still my heart” a silly phrase

Remains in use, at least in plays

Language poorly mirrors more

One dimension, never four

Yet magically, with hiss and tone

Can make us feel much less alone.

Wednesday

For the last few years this particular time of February has involved one heartless snowstorm after another, with a few days in between. The only difference year to year is how low the temperature between, and how much snow melts. Once again, another all-day snowfall reminds us that Long Island is the southern boundary of New England.
Bundled well, I heartily brave the freezing wind, regardless of the new-fangled (from my perspective) wimpy “wind-chill factor.” In my day, by golly, we took the temperatures raw! I experience a certain amount of fun feeling the freeze and enjoying the break of waves at high tide as snow quiets the world except for wind and the mournful, muffled, fog horn at the inlet. For a few minutes, anyway.

Thursday

“Doing anything special for Valentine’s Day?” I ask Max as we check out of Southdown Market.

“Brenda wants to eat out, of course,” he grimaces. “So we’ll go have spaghetti somewhere with wine.”

“But that’s wonderful!” I exclaim mockingly. “With whoopee to follow no doubt.”

“Ah, those were the days,” he smiles.

“They say the earlier memories come back as we get older,” I note. “For some reason, I’ve been remembering elementary school, valentines, back before political correctness.”

“I’m thinking, but what do you mean ….’

“Oh, you know, we’d all get those cheesy valentines to punch out of perforated cardboard booklets with trite bland greetings and some kind of cheesy animals or cupids or hearts with arrows through them. Used to do it in class, too, sometimes. Good for motor skills, I guess.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember now. Seems a century ago in spirit as well as years. I wonder what they do now? Hearts with arrows seem a little too violent for the public school zeitgeist.”

“No idea. Do you really care?”

“Nah,” he checks out and heads towards the door. “I’ve got enough on the plate just handling my spaghetti.”

Friday

After a few doses of snow come the shots of cold. It’s been a warm winter, even to the point of mostly melting all the white stuff before the next batch arrives. Nature is apparently done fooling around, and temperatures may get below zero for a few days. The harbor has yet to develop even a skim of ice, so perhaps this will do the trick.
Ice coming off gutters always fascinates me, with icicles above dripping onto clear stalactites and stalagmites below. Sparkles beautifully in the sun, constantly changing shape. I have been warned that they should be knocked down, lest they damage the drainage system, but it’s held up for over 60 years with no problem so I feel little urgency to go out with a broom. What I do instead is hypnotically gaze at the spectacle each day, regarding the abstract sculpture as a temporary wonder restricted to this season alone.

Saturday

Poetry and literature can quickly convince us how hard it is to communicate everything. The main thoughts, of course, come through even in translation. But connotations, even if exquisitely captured by the writer, often fail to make it through to a casual reader, and almost never survive translation.
A word like heart, in any language or use, defines mostly one or two things. That carries the logic _ anyone knows what is meant by a stopped heart, or even a heart-stopping experience. Logic easily survives translation, and is grasped by just about anyone.
Connotations are more difficult. In our culture heart is associated with love, honor, even bravery. For some, it carries tinges of religious rapture. And all the historic references _ general and personal _ are associated with those connotations: chocolate candy for valentine’s day, purple hearts for military wounds, bumper stickers praising certain destinations. These cannot carry through translation _ they often cannot make it from one generation to another.
And then, there are the noises itself, crucial to the final impact of the phrasing. Rhymes are the most obvious _ heart, art, fart. But there are more subtle entanglements _ heart sounds a little like hard or hurt. Heart has the same beat as dirt.
Those artists who carry language to the fringes of comprehensibility _ like Joyce or Pound _ are often hailed as geniuses. But the fringes of comprehensibility usually contain the least core logic, and are not only difficult to read for contemporaries, but quickly lose all possibility of being understood except by those devoting lifetimes to doing so.
On the other hand, purely logical writing is deadly. It’s what lawyers specialize in. Not that a reference to lawyers is particularly relevant here, since very few of them have hearts of any kind.

Sunday

“Lowest temperatures in decades” due here for the next few days. Just to prove it is actually the heart of winter. Sometimes it seems that weather forecasters must take college courses in “Hysteria 101” and “Panic 203.” There seems to be no normal situation any more, always drought or flood or freeze or deadly heat. Tide rises and falls normally anyway, creating these little ice castles as it goes.
A romantic would claim that bitter cold and wind on valentines day should lead to more happy snuggling with loved ones. A cynic would say that cabin fever may result in domestic mayhem. As far as I can tell, however, it actually makes no difference to anyone at all. Schedules are set and our insulated culture lets us pursue them unaffected by almost any meteorology that happens along.

Renovation

Monday

First heavy snowfall marks the beginning of new year psychological renovation. Ground details are blanketed, only soft patterns of white and stark branches on crystal skies remain. Now it truly seems the world is ready for renewal. Sunrise, sunset, even the full moon casting blue shadows distill an unspoiled primal beauty. Such a mood is only enhanced by harsh chill winds insisting people not linger too long.
Being perverse, now that the expectations of winter storms have been fulfilled, I am quite ready for daffodils and robins. But like any good renovation project, that will take longer than I really want. We probably have at least a one month of deep winter to go. My goal now is to greet it with anticipation, rather than endure it with dread.

Tuesday

Fresh coats of paint, deep winter snows

Refocus what we see

For better, worse, or much the same

May never be agreed.

Fine beginnings may require

The loss of what once was

That is progress, we are told,

Conformed to natural laws

But new’s soon old, and in the way

Our racing lives move on

Fresh moments fill our circumstance

Each day unique at dawn.

Wednesday

Birds can be observed all year, although an advantage of winter viewing is that they can be almost tamed by a properly positioned bird feeder. Maybe more than that, the viewer can be tamed by having little else to do. Sometimes, during renovation, one is forced to observe a bit harder and deeper because normal avenues of excitement are restricted.
I rarely take pictures right around the house, or, as here, from inside it. But when snowbanks block the shoulders of the road, I use our treadmill for walking and am nudged to notice what can be discovered a few yards away from our bed. Often, it surprises me immensely _ sunset, woodpeckers, beautifully patterned bark. It is an internal fault that I need such excuses to pay attention to things I usually ignore.

Thursday

As we met at the library on a drizzly February afternoon, Anne complained “The potholes are back.”

“Yeah, noticed that,” agreed Earl. “After the fortune the town spent last summer resurfacing the roads.”

“That’s the nature of fixing things that break,” said Sam. “They just break again.”

“But you expect them to stay new longer than six months. My kitchen looked newer for almost ten years.”

“And things like park renovation at Caumsett can last for decades. Lots of decades.”

“The other problem is, I don’t think they do them as well as they should,” continued Earl. “That park they redid on Mill Dam is a big step down in character from the old one.”

“Which would have been in the water by now, with the storms we’ve had, if they hadn’t done something.”

“Wish they could renovate us,” mused Sam. “Wish they could renovate me.”

“You could use it. You do remind me of one of the old roads before they worked on it.”

Friday

Nature is the grand renovator. By summer, these brown flattened reeds will once again be green and upright as if winter storms had never happened. Foundation roots remain firm and strong, and will soon provide the necessary impetus for spring growth back to verdant glory. Nature spends solar energy around this harbor to the same effect as humans use cash to update their kitchen.
Our perceptions depend on how closely we examine the situation. For example, this reed patch is a small fragment of the local environment. And no matter how exactly our memory claims they have been recreated come July, no set of growth is ever precisely as it was. Again, like our own renovation projects, getting the results necessary require more complexity, time, and resources than we anticipate.

Saturday

Huntington is in one of the older sections of the United States, so it faces some of the same issues that have confronted Europe for centuries (at least when wars were not making such decisions for it.) When old structures or areas become decrepit and decayed, should they be cleared for reuse or renovated?
Razing something to the ground and starting over has a lot of advantages. It is often cheaper and can use new technology. Tastes change, as do public and private needs. Rebuilding confronts the core fact that the people who are alive now are the ones with needs and desires.
Renovating preserves links to the past. That is romantically attractive, and has the virtue of fostering historic civic virtue. But to work well, it must bind itself to certain rules: thus far and no further. Such is the terror in living in historically designated houses, for example. Preservation of patrimony is expensive and while wonderful in concept, inconvenient in application.
For various reasons, American culture has generally built in a throw-away manner. Except for various public edifices, even large buildings and public works were considered temporary. A town might remain for hundreds of years, but nobody was concerned about the fate of the local hardware store building. Besides, most people firmly believed their descendants would be living elsewhere in the not so distant future anyway. Public attitude has leaned toward razing the outmoded and starting anew on the rubble.
As a romantic, I deplore cheap practices. Towns do not have the resources to perform preservation, so they flatten and start over whenever something requires extensive fixes. Parks, schools, village centers _ get rid of everything possible and redo at least cost. Redoing at least cost means the elimination of just about every aesthetic consideration.
As a taxpayer, I’m not so sure.

Sunday

After two feet of dry blizzard snow had mostly melted away, another foot of wet snow coated everything. Branches broke, evergreens and shrubs bent low to the ground like penitent monks. February, after all, is the month in which such things are supposed to happen. White ground cover is good for the prematurely emerging bulbs.
I focus on the beauty of the clean white cover. Enjoy the exhilaration of crisp clear air. Marvel at the contrasts provided by bright sky, golden sun, blue shadows. But, being human, I have a little voice continuing to wish spring would just hurry along a little bit faster.

Instability

Monday

Weather predictions are often wrong, seasons disappoint expectations. The whole world beyond a narrow local environment seems out of control. Some seek stability in scientific certainty, some in spiritual foundations, some in calm infinite vistas of eternal nature. But science revises conclusions, religions reinterpret revelations, and nature itself mutates and shifts.
A rock is stable. People are not, and probably should not try to be. A perfect couch potato is a poor example of human possibility, though it has achieved a state as still and certain as death. We were probably born from thunder to ride the storm, and whatever we may do will involve change and catastrophic lightning. That is the truly inconvenient truth.

Tuesday

Inconstant illusions enliven dreams

But when awake

Foster madness

Wednesday

Unstable life on Earth is based on water, which is weirdly unstable in its own way. Within our “normal” temperature ranges, it can be solid, liquid, and gas at the same time. As a vapor, it surrounds us at all times, mostly invisible except when condensing to form clouds, but can congeal to magically fall as liquid or solid. As a solid it floats _ oddly compared to many other substances _ and can when thick enough deform, flow, and carve channels through rocks. As a liquid its weird properties _ such as ionization, ability to dissolve almost anything, tendency to deconstitute into its elements under certain conditions _ are too numerous to mention. Nothing lives without it.
We just take it for granted. Hey, it’s water, all over the place. Maybe it will snow soon. I need to drink a glass. On and on, just thinking it is one of the more normal eternal things we can possibly encounter in the universe. As stable as we may wish our chaotic lives would be. But if water were an inert substance, we would not exist. I should learn a lesson from that regarding what I am and ought to be.

Thursday

“Ah, this is so nice,” exclaims Joan, sinking into a bench at the Arboretum greenhouse. Flowers are in bloom, the warm air is filled with semi-jungle scents, we have yet to explore the wondrous rooms of orchids. “Too bad everywhere can’t be like this.”

“It takes a lot of work,” I note. “All of this could get destroyed in a day or two if the heat failed. And somebody has to trim and water and keep the insects down. It’s beautiful, but not natural. “

“This time of year,” she continues, “I don’t really care for the natural.” She gestures at the bare trees beyond the glass windows. “Unless, of course, we were in Florida.”

“Oh, they have their issues too. The whole world does. It’s one unstable, inch-away-from-disaster, beautiful mess.”

“I guess,” she looks more closely at the bird-of-paradise next too us.

“That’s what I don’t like about the political slogans this year,” I continue, ignoring the fact that she is ignoring me. “Make America great again implies some kind of golden age. This is the golden age. Make America greater I might be able to support.”

“Oh, relax and look around, this is wonderful. What’s that?” she points at a tree. I read the label, but she does too. “Ah, coffee. Interesting.”

‘We’re all hothouse flowers now,” I grumble. “If our heat, water, food, electricity, police, social services, or anything else we expect fail, we will be dry and dead as quickly as anything here.”

“Stop it,” she commands. “Unstable or not, we are having a perfectly wonderful time, and at least this afternoon the flowers seem just as happy as we should be.” As usual, she has the last word.

Friday

Long Island is probably no older than modern humans _ it was underwater when North America’s crust was pushed down by weighty glaciers not much more than fifty thousand years ago. It’s composed of all that is left from those frozen bulldozers. Mostly just sand mixed with clay _ which is just sand ground finer. In such a short time were inland mountains worn away. A hundred years from now, parts of this land may still remain, for a while, above water after Florida submerges in the rising seas. The way things are going, it may outlast people.
Soil is even more recent. I sometimes contemplate the long view and mistakenly think the natural world stays quiet and stable as our lives flicker briefly and vanish. But that is not so, not for rocks, nor mountains, nor entire large islands. For that matter, most of these mudflats themselves are composed of the decaying remains of not-so-ancient trees, fish, and birds. I may regard my existence as brief, but everything else that I love also has a surp
risingly short role in this world.

Saturday

Human intelligence and consciousness is probably rare or unique in the universe. I’m sure life exists in many places, but the peculiar circumstances that led to homo sapiens and the extinction of other hominid lines are unlikely even at gazillion to one odds. Nothing else on earth _ not anything ever in the sea over billions of years, not dinosaurs who roamed and fought for hundreds of millions of years, not even other mammals and primates, have more than a glimmer of the toolmaking, learning, logic, and multigenerational culture that people possess. And it is all based on climate instability.
Dinosaurs, like sea creatures, lived in unchanging and almost static environments. Land mass configuration led to stable climates just about everywhere _ what changed, changed slowly. Specialization led to dominance, but also to extreme niche sensitivity. It remains an open question what might have evolved from dinosaurs were they not wiped out by a meteor, but even the next age of mammals was rather sluggish until the ice ages began.
Then, suddenly, came a time of ongoing slow-motion catastrophes. Rising or falling oceans, extensive floods, extreme extended droughts, periods of freezing cold, areas of tremendous heat. Over and over, never exactly the same way in the same place twice. Hominids began to despecialize, out of desperate necessity, but nevertheless were ruthlessly slaughtered by unexpected climatic anomalies. Many lines failed, our own branch survived by the skin of its teeth, apparently at one time reduced to a tribe with only a few thousand individuals, if that many. And it did so only because of a set of genetic accidents which allowed the development of _ yes, exactly _ toolmaking, learning, logic, and multigenerational culture.
Our core being remains animalistic, our drives are ruled by hormones and sensation. We can apply logic and learning to our situation. We are conscious of the contradictions. Nothing else we know of comes close _ not whales or dolphins, or dogs, or cats, or rats, or parrots or anything at all. We are unique on this planet, now, because we handle instability. We actually enjoy instability and are bored without it. When deprived of change, we retreat into dreams and entertainment to keep us happy.
So _ what are the chances that life anywhere else went through _ and survived _ such a phase? The Goldilocks and Anthropocentric view of the universe _ our universe _ seems more and more likely. I’m kind of sorry we won’t get to meet space monsters and their foes. But that just seems incredibly unlikely. And, never forget, we ourselves have not yet survived the ice ages.

Sunday

Speaking of ice ages …. A blizzard yesterday has left almost two feet of snow everywhere. There could hardly be a greater difference between two days ago and this morning, when leaving the house is difficult if not impossible. So fragile is the equilibrium taken for granted that a shift of ten degrees one way or another determines if precipitation will be relatively harmless water, or annoying and sometimes dangerous snow.
We fortunately live in the electricity age, when such vast storms are almost inconsequential novelties. We stay warm, we watch news, we have light, we cook, we even drive and push snow where we want. No other civilization has had such benefits. If we conquer instability, at least to make it a harmless relic like the cheap thrills of an amusement park ride, it will be because we adjust fully to the use of limitless electricity. The word power is often thrown about as if it is synonymous with our “industrial age,” but none of it goes to the heart of our being like our casual use of all that is electric _ a harnessing of the unstable shells of electrons in atoms _ to gain control over a completely unstable world.