Mon-

Yet that is the glory of consciousness.  I think, sometimes, that were I a god, who knew and controlled everything, that I would seek to ditch it all in favor of being a mortal human.  To be born, to grow and be surprised and mold the world and reflect on impossibilities _ is that not more godlike than any omnipotent, omniscient being could achieve?  Bluntly, where there is no movement, there is no experience.  A cynic might ask, what is the real difference between such a god and a rock?
Tue-

Shells somehow deposited here high above the tide line.  Who and how, we ask, surely not from tide or birds, so it must be a person.  So much of the world remains so.  We are the supernatural creatures, who roam about doing inexplicable things, creating puzzles for the universe.

I am sad today, for I feel mortal.  This is a realization I try to avoid, although it is as much absolute truth as anything I have ever encountered.  Why sad, why now, why me?  Surely I have had my fill of the splendors of the world, of shells and summer and sun.  When I am gone, they will all remain.  I should embrace comfort in knowing that, yet I remain sad at the thought of the world without me.

Wed-

The dock looks solid enough, but that is apparently an illusion.  Our community has been informed that is becoming dangerous and must be (expensively) replaced.  Old pilings in ancient seaport towns can last forever _ look at Venice.

So much that seems permanent is transient.  We now believe the universe itself is hurtling toward oblivion.  People used to believe their lives were fleeting moments in eternity, but now it appears that the only eternity available is each infinite moment of our experience.
Thu-

Used to be able to “sit on the dock of the bay,” but time has relentlessly removed that from what seems an endless and unchanging green landscape.  Most of the singers I listened to in my youth are dead now, but their songs still pop up _ even more frequently now that my memories of olden days are clearer than those of yesterday.  Strange, a little sad, but of course it guarantees that my own life and times were unique to me.

Everywhere, if I look closely, there are signs of changing weather, here with one month to go to autumnal equinox.  The dogwood foliage is fading to brownish yellow, the roses are in in second bloom vigor, the annual weeds are largely done bloom and into seed and dry stalks.  A poignant time for those of us, still feeling the freshness of our late summer, knowing that our evolutionary duty is long completed and all that is required is for us to get out of the way for the next generations.

Fri-

Seems a lot of folks have suddenly discovered the summer is almost over.   More boats in the harbor than I have seen in a long while, some people in the water, others fishing, a few just looking and enjoying.  As often happens, you hardly appreciate what you have until it is being taken away.

Better late than never.  Anyway, it is impossible to take full advantage of every moment, no matter what the self-help books preach.  We soon burn out and become frustrated.  The trick is to somehow keep things fresh, but without excessive overload.  Not easy.  Anyway, good to see so many seeking rewards in being alive on the harbor.

Sat-

Maybe I should sit here several hours, or all day, watching clouds and reflections and life.  There would surely be more than enough to mediate on.  Possibly I could get closer to the meaning of it all, or at least an appreciation of how much there is to this existence I take for granted.    

But I am infected by the same contemporary disease of all those around me.  Like a Sisyphus released to run marathons instead of pushing rocks, I must always move from place to place, moving back to the same place, moving again and again.  Often seeing little of what I should, then restless to view what might be behind the tree or over the horizon.  And, although I sometimes make vows, I am pretty sure I will not change. 

Sun-

 

From this perspective it’s all perfect _ bright, cheery, sunny, green, inviting.  Well, it is, really.  But the day is late, the shadows grow long, the breeze is cool, close up those green leaves are curling and losing vitality, and other flowers have already packed it in, leaving the field to the late-bloomers.  The true curse of knowledge is the ability _ and innate necessity _ to foresee the probable future.  In the mind’s eye, the road is covered with snow and slush, the world reduced to brown and blue, and cold sweeps unceasingly from the north.

One way to look Adam and Eve is that until they ate that apple, they were immortal precisely because they did not know their fate.  They were happy and lived in a perpetual garden exactly because they could not imagine winter.  God, in that interpretation, treated them as just another animal, never knowing of death until it happened, never fearing catastrophe because they never thought.  In the unceasing quest to return to Eden, many try to achieve such a blissful state through drugs or meditation, shutting down reason, accepting these happy yellows as an eternal moment.

  

Mon-

As Darwin and Malthus noted, nature is profligate, and doesn’t care how many die as long as a few live.  That is so contrary to our modern notions of morality and meaning as to almost seem blasphemous, and is certainly so cold and horrible that it is little wonder many prefer more comforting religions where each individual matters.  I sure as heck like to believe I matter and am not merely trapped and doomed as most of these fish here.
Tue-

Absolutely the right mood – beach all ready, sun sand sky, boats, obviously fantastic weather, and an intimate table and chairs just waiting for some couple to have a picnic with bread, cheese, and wine.  And, typically, nobody there to take advantage of it.  Too busy, no doubt, with more important issues.

I know how it goes, I’ve spent much of my life working on what are, after all, very important things like keeping my family fed and housed and clothed.  Our culture provides great benefits, but requires great sacrifices of our meditative and reflective inner selves.  The most unfortunate occurrence of all, however, is when people internalize the cultural requirements so that they think that work, instead of being a necessary evil, is somehow connected with meaning and purpose and experiencing the infinite wonders of the world.
Wed –

Exhibit of a changing world _ pretty much the last of the once innumerable lobster traps piled around here.  In spite of lobsters apparently thriving in great harvestable numbers everywhere else, here they have irremediably died off in the ‘90’s.  Great catches and baymen’s livelihoods are things of the (recent) past, although nobody is quite sure why or how.  Year by year, piles of old steel frames disappeared from the shore and boats and moored docking rafts.  Now as antiquated as an old whaling harpoon.

Somehow, that school of fish survive and even thrive, clams and mussels are bumping along, oysters may even be making a comeback, but local lobsters are apparently gone forever.  Mysterious.  The only moral I take from this is that the world is more complicated than any of our simple rules and understandings would indicate.  We forget that at great peril.
Thu-

Final summer flowers now making a mighty effort in a race with time.  The days grow perceptibly shorter, and the vegetable world is mostly well aware of it.  The seeds and fruits on the perennials are all completely ripe or getting there fast.  Only the cultivated annuals of m
an _ blossoms, vegetables, grains _ are chugging along regardless of celestial influence.

It all seems so timeless, if not as a moment at least as part of an eternal cycle of the seasons.  Yet a minute ago, in geological time, this was all ice, year round.  That’s the trouble with geological time.  It may be true in some fashion, but it is not true of my particular life, and so, like a weed, I wonder if I should concern myself with it at all.
Fri-

Bright berries almost hidden in the tall reeds.  Even ignoring the infinite quantity and form of microscopic life that we can not see, each cubic foot of roadside (or any other surface) rewards long study with thoughts and meditations, if we wish.  Of course, there is never enough time.  And we always remember that such thoughts and meditations are merely fleeting electrical signals in our brain _ the berries certainly do not care how we judge them or their meaning.

We are so used to our strange duality _ self-declared important lords of all, but ignored by everything else _ that we accept the contradiction without question, and even consider it silly to question its existence.  Of course I am meaningful, we cry.  Of course I am meaningful, I tell you.  Of course.
Sat –

Strange spiky berries on the Japanese dogwood set off the long slope to Long Island Sound, lying beyond the harbor inlet.  Somewhat cool for the season, but otherwise a perfect day, filled with sun and scents and insect calls and butterflies and swallows swooping about the lawn a foot off the grass.  Ah, if we could just bottle this to pull it out in the depths of winter, when we need it most.

Oh, wait, that’s exactly what we do with our memories, isn’t it?  If we take care to be in this moment fully, to try to experience as deeply as we can, will we not be able to recall it well even when snow falls thick and the wind howls defiance?  That’s a marvelous, almost magical, gift, and one I too often take for granted or waste remembering bad times instead of good.  Carrying happiness within does require a little discipline and training, even on a lovely morning like this.

Sun-

Spartina flowers are not very large, magnificent, or even attractive, but they seem to get the job done.  Tidal grasses are intricate habitats for the health of the littoral ecosystem, and we rightly worry that they are disappearing with rising water, global warming, and heavy pollution and development.  Still, they’ve been around a lot longer than our species has, through lots of eco-catastrophes, and in spite of what we may think of their flowers I’d tend to place more bets on their long-term survival than that of homo sapiens.

Of course, cosmic thoughts about cosmic time is as useless to me this morning as dreams of winning a lottery or being declared king.  What I have in front of me are interesting flowers and plants, beautiful scenery, and the late summer sun providing melancholy hints of winter to come.

 

 

 

  

Mon-

Wild grapes seem to grow just about everywhere, and hardly ever manage to get ripe since the birds get to them quickly.  These never get very large anyway.  I think the original inhabitants of the continent never managed to harvest, ferment, and store them.  That is unusual only because it seems every culture everywhere has discovered some way to make alcohol out of something _ coconuts, apples, cactus, honey, whatever happens to be lying around.  Of course, the native Americans did discover a lot of narcotic pharmacology, which is also a standard human ability.

As all the crops ripen and overwhelm in August and September it is easy to believe in a benevolent divine providence, filling our days with easily acquired bounty.  Being human, we easily forget the hard work of saving seeds, preparing soil, planting and weeding all spring, praying for rain all summer.  Besides, the hard work remains of somehow saving all this stuff for the cold and desperate days to come.  Well, anyway, that used to be the rhythm.  With supermarkets and whatnot, in these corrupt modern times few think much about it any more.

Wed-

Edible ripe berries not yet harvested by the birds and raccoons.  Hard to say if that indicates laziness or satiety on their part, or if the numbers of relevant species have been so decimated that not enough remain to clear them.  It’s unusual to find so many in the open like this, but they do add a fine dash of color to the landscape.

For almost the first time this year, the temperature is near summer normal around here.  That’s odd only because the world is heating up, incontrovertibly, and yet in this chunk of the continent we are having the coolest seasons in decades.  Such anomalies are seized on by the stupid to prove climate change is not happening.  I shouldn’t complain; the weather has been “pleasantly mild”; but I tend to not feel I have had a real July or August unless at least on a few days I’ve built up a good soaking sweat.
Thu-

Entropy rules the universe, and docks weather away pretty easily over the seasons.  Once the frenzy of preparing and launching boats is complete in the late spring, and before the rush to winterize them and pull them onto dry land in late fall, there is a space for idle marine workers to repair the supporting infrastructure.  On sunny, warm days it looks like the best kind of job anyone could ever have.

Office work is welcome in the winter _ nobody wants to be out fishing or fixing piers in ice and sub-zero temperatures and howling north winds.  It’s too bad we can’t all cycle work with the earth’s orbit,  hibernating and performing financial and other tedious operations in the colder months, doing physical outside chores as nature beckons.  But our tight machine-based culture dare not allow such flexibility.  Except of those of us who are older and useless and have happily stepped off the treadmill.
Fri-

I think this is called sea lavender, although the colors are fairly subtle and hard to catch.  More a light purple mist than actual blossoms.  But, in the interest of something a little different, here it is, with the obligatory water scene. 

Cool temperatures and shortening days are advancing the plant calendars rapidly now.  Any moment there will be a great deal of goldenrod,  every day masses of former high summer bloom go to brown seed.  Trees are heavy with seeds in various colors and shapes, ready to cascade down in any storm.  As dry weather continues, leaves show signs of discoloration, burning, and insect damage.  The world becomes, bit by bit, a bit more ragged in appearance, a bit more ready for coming weather internally.  If you are not careful, in the midst of a paradise of plenty, it is quite possible to turn melancholy over everything that is inevitably slipping away.
Sat-

Perfect little nook on a perfect summer day with all the ingredients that make being here special.  Unfortunately, I can not include a shot of the perfect summer night clambake the neighborhood held later on the beach with torches and bonfire and near fifty neighbors barely squeezing onto remaining dry sand at waxing moon high tide.

For all the problems in the world _ there are many, probably unsolvable, and they have always been there throughout history _ there are wonderful moments for most of us.  Which we should cherish, if for no other reason than as homage to whatever has allowed us to experience them and, even more than that, appreciate the experience.  Sometimes I think that might be one of our main purposes in life itself.
Sun-

I don’t know if the flags mean anything, even if they could be read, or if they are just subsidiary territory markers to old glory (e.g. state of New York, county of Suffolk, town of Huntington, Wyncoma Yacht Club.)  Anyway, at least one guy seems in a purposeful hurry under crystal blue skies with temperature threatening to climb near the nineties.

Always amazing is that these extremely expensive craft, clustered and paying incredible fees for docking rights and yearly maintenance, are stacked up nearly full.  Why own something like that if you are not going to use it?  And yet, that is typical, most days they all remain forever in port, only one or two lonely pioneers willing to venture into the rugged (that’s irony) waters of Huntington Bay.

  

 

 

  

  

Mon-

Near clear morning after storms.  Sometimes nature is so dramatic _ of course we see it all the time in sunsets and sunrises _ that if we weren’t experiencing it, we’d assume it was fake.  The thing that always strikes me is how different the types of ambient lighting are when the air is saturated with water or, like this morning, from a heavy mistiness that once in a while condenses out into light drizzle.

People in hermetically sealed environments and minds _ inhabiting cars, offices, malls, and sports stadiums, for example, or possibly buried or submerged arcologies in the future _ will miss all of this.  They may claim that their own spectacular effects make up for the loss.  I simply pity them.

Wed-

  

The big hoist at the boat yard is as quiet as it ever gets.  All the yachts that are going in the water this year are already there, and none that are in the water are nearly ready to come out.  The marina staff is all busily engaged keeping the folks tied up at the floating docks happy.  Or at least willing to keep paying the high fees.

It is when you see incredible huge machinery like this sitting idly by at an obscure marina, one of countless others around the world, that you appreciate the massive ubiquity of industrial civilization.  One device like this would have been a wonder of the ancient world, even a wonder in the relatively recent high point of the Venetian Arsenal boatyards.  Yet this is a trivial bit of flotsam among our mighty machinery.  I am never sure whether to be proud, or scared, or both.

Thu-

It’s easy enough to understand why we try to beautify bleak surroundings like city courtyards with colorful flowers and other ornaments.  Yet our desire to add interest extends to views that are fully magnificent on their own.  Lonely cabins looking over endless mountain vistas often have a patch of flowers nearby, and here on a beach with all the ingredients needed for an endless visual feast are beds of marigolds adding brilliance.

I think it is wonderful that we do this.  I refuse to be a purist and claim there is anything so perfect that it might not be enhanced with a flower border or a fountain or even a small shrine.  Maybe I am just a Philistine unable to cope with the natural world.  But I sure have a lot of companions.

Fri-

I’ve walked over here every week for over twenty years now, and never noticed that the tree next to the harbor produced apples.  It was kind of a shock to suddenly see them hanging there.  Another example of how we never fully know even what we think we know, because the world is just too intricate for us to fully comprehend.

Perhaps I should throw in some clever biblical reference to the tree of knowledge, but even as a metaphor I have always found that story particularly ignorant and in its own way evil.  If we have been blessed with senses and brains and all the many wonders of thought, wasting them following dry words by rote instead of exploring and experiencing and enjoying all the miracles about us is one of the greatest sins against god and nature of which I can conceive.
Sat-

 

The hard-to-make-out starfish in the lower foreground here were probably dumped on this sand by some fisherman beaching his dingy.  Starfish, eating the clams still harvested in these waters, are not welcomed by the local commercial baymen.  Children delight in them, of course, and they intrigue us all being so different from everything we find familiar, but that does not prevent them from being pests.  After all, mosquitoes are quite uniquely fascinating as well, in the abstract.

Like many other bottom dwellers, starfish are rarely in our thoughts unless hauled out and shoved under our noses.  We assume the water under the surface is somehow still and clear, very like a big tank of tap water, with maybe a cute goldfish swimming here or there.  Instead, of course, it is a dense soup of every organism imaginable, from the smallest to the largest, and the fiercest of nature’s ongoing laboratories.  None of us lords of creation could live down there, naked, very long.  Such thoughts should probably humble us, but we are lords of creation precisely because nothing can.
Sun-

Verdant green leaves with just a glimpse of promised shoreline beyond.  Unwary children would plunge right through.  But we quickly learn that nature has teeth, and poison ivy is something best left alone when possible.  Pretty, shiny, lovely, but …  Not quite a trap, I am sure, but certainly a possible bad surprise.

You wonder, if humanity grows up and manages to survive and control their world, whether pests such as mosquitoes and poison ivy _ to say nothing of smallpox and flu viruses _ will be granted a place in it.  I would not miss mosquitoes ruining my outdoor evenings, and my memories of horrible bouts with poison ivy on extremities could be abandoned without a second thought.  And yet, those are all part of what is, and surely even their permanent loss or exile would diminish our experience of existence.  Glad that it is not to be my decision.

  

  

Mon-

There are droughts, floods, storms, tornadoes, damaging winds, hail, fire, whatever.  Except here, where it has been a little cool but otherwise fair with adequate rainfall.  That all calls into question how accurate the reporting is _ the Earth is vast and news by definition concentrates on the tiny.  For the moment, we seem to be in a protected little bubble of normality, with flowers blooming and insects humming as the have _ or seem to have _ since time immemorial.  A lovely illusion, which I shall inhabit while I can.
Tue-

Berries for the birds in Mill Dam park.  Not all that long ago, our ancestors would happily gather these for lunch and dinner, preserving what they could.  Now, I suppose, my children hardly know where their produce comes from.  Supermarkets are a convenience, but perhaps something is lost by having them easily accessible.

On the other hand, it’s obvious that there was always keen competition as they ripened.  Strawberries get attacked by birds as soon as they ripen, and most of these fruits have already fed birds, raccoons, and who knows what else in this little corner.  We think of nature as a big open bonanza, but it’s a sometime bonanza, you may have to work hard for your food, and a bunch of creatures are rushing around at all times of day and night to beat you to it.

Wed-

Seems like the week for bindweed.  Another ordinary picture of another ordinary day in a strange, infinite, miraculous universe. 

Sometimes it is best to just let the mind go blank, and simply appreciate existence.

Thu-

  

Quiet pond at Hechsher, with geese and swans and leafy reflections and even the algae starting to scum the surface, is also part of summertime here.  In the evenings there are free music concerts.  In the days, when it is not too hot, children cavort in the new playground.  All year, old people in various happy or grim moods stride and stroll on the path going around. 

A park like this is one reason I am not happy with those who believe we should be totally back to nature.  I enjoy manicured grounds, cultivated flowers, and the company of fellow cit
izens quite as much as I do vast woodlands or even wide expanses of water.  We are people, after all, and pretending we are deer is just as ridiculous as claiming that deer have no place in our world.
Fri-

Around the world temperatures are at record highs, but here it’s been one of the coolest years I can remember, from a blustery blizzard winter to a wet miserable spring to a summer that has only really arrived a few days at a time, and then in a kind of half-hearted way.  The weather forecasters keep using words like “delightful” but I find it too out of whack _ I like my heat when it should be hot.

None of the vegetation or animals seem to care in the least.  Oh, the ducklings just hatched last week, which is a bit late, and the flowers seem to be trailing a bit as well, but not my much, and in full power like these when they arrive.  Everywhere is beautiful now, fully green or fully flowered or almost brightly fruited.  If there ever is a benign moment in the relentless selective pressure of nature, surely these brilliant days contain it.

Sat-

As explained, I normally don’t bother to capture wildlife with my old digital camera, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t all around, nor that I am not interested.  There are always hawks and gulls and crows and warblers and cardinals, always at this time of summer fish jumping and swimming, sometimes turtles, never snakes. Not counting the other animate species _ rats, raccoons, dogs, cats, people.  But usually, I prefer the imagined solitude of reflections and vistas.

Anyway, here are a couple of swans preening, as they so often do.  When they want solitude they simply demand it of everything else, chasing away anything up to and including people.  Children are often quite frightened when they are in an aggressive mood.  No question however, that although they are imported and possibly invasive, swans add elements of grace and beauty to aquatic scenes.  I suppose there are lessons in there somewhere, I leave them to you “as an exercise …”

Sun-

 

Marsh grasses making their best effort against the encroachments of a highly populated modern environment.  Nothing wrong, really, with docks and boats, and beautiful houses along the shore.  It’s the transportation and support such as sewage disposal that civilization requires that causes most of the problems.  Pollution was a lot worse locally decades ago, when people took everything more or less for granted.

Now attention has shifted, responsibly, to the global environment, for which amelioration may unfortunately be too late.  But at least for a while, localities can fight the good fight and seek to save what makes them special for a while as forces beyond their control raise the water level and increase the damage of the more frequent storms.  Perhaps we should be sad, but there is, after all, today, and nature in the raw with its ice ages and asteroids is hardly a benign force.

 

 

  

Mon-

Elsewhere in the world it is Bastille Day.  The only fireworks here will be strong thunderstorms, but they have their own seasonal charm.  This is one of the finest times of the year, when the trimming and weeding are pretty much under control, the annuals are planted and thriving (or not), and everything is doing what it must do regardless of my intervention.  A good time to sit back and simply enjoy being alive, which is what everyone tries to do.
Tue=

Just relaxed summertime beauty.  Wonderful moments occur in all seasons, but in this climate in mid-July it is easy to feel one with a benevolent world, and to meditate on how right everything is.  There seems to be little reason to worry about the future, nor to dwell on the past.  Except for an occasional mosquito, nothing breaks our reverie.  Even a storm rain-drop can be welcome, just for the change of pace.

Purists would argue that if this harbor were wilderness still it would be more intense and profound.  There should be no place for docks and boats and roses.  What nature and god provided is always better than anything blighted by the hand of humanity.  I obviously do not agree.  I think our conscious interaction with the universe, our appreciation of being, our unique happiness is the great gift we bring to the cosmos, and we are right to cultivate it and to manipulate the environment _ at least somewhat _ to make it more accessible.
Wed-

View across the lawn of a long-time neighbor at the bottom of our hill.  Like Joan, he grew up in the house he now owns _ in fact a lot of the homes around here tend to be kept in the family.  It is easy to see why, with views like this (although his is probably the best.)

The huge beech tree in the front yard seems immortal, but it requires constant attention and we worry about it during every increasingly violent storm, blizzard, and hurricane.  I suppose he worries a lot more.  The trouble is, of course, that nothing is as permanent as it seems.  Up here near us, an equivalent beech dating from the time of the Revolution suddenly up and died for no apparent reason over a few seasons.  Probably old age, which reminds us of our own mortality in what seems to be our infinite daily existence.

Thu-

Classic.  Pine needles sweeping down, tranquil water, empty mind.  Anywhere with such possibilities seems more open to contemplation than, say, a bus stop on a busy street.  Of course, after about five or ten minutes, most of us modern Americans might start to prefer the bus stop. 
We are hardly culturally adapted to sit still with “nothing to do” for very long.

I find I must always force myself to pause.  Much of life must be passed nearly unconscious of local surroundings, as we are concerned with plans and worries and where we are going and what must be done.  It is impossible to survive without spending most of your time doing that, unless you are very fortunate or unfortunate in life with no need to strive and do other’s bidding.  Even now, in retirement, I am too concerned with what I am thinking or what’s next.  So I try to pause and count slowly to twenty, and take a little while to appreciate the glory of the world which can always be found around us.

Fri-

 

Now is the heyday of the “old reliable weeds” that pop up all over where people don’t want them.  The various members of the compositae family.  One would think that it would be easier to change our aesthetic judgments than to change the world, but people don’t think like that.  A plant like this in a garden is an invasive pest.

A perfect part of summer, on a gorgeous day, with little to do.  I am free as any eleven year old used to be, with a world to enjoy and explore and endless opportunities for self-discovered entertainment.  At such times, I often believe I have been the most fortunate person who ever existed.

Sat-

Field bindweed is the bane of gardeners around here.  It is impossible to eradicate, once it gets a hold in any corner it will, if unchecked, rapidly cover everything else in a thick mat of vines, and no matter how often you weed it out, it pops back in strength within days.  It is not only an invader, but an entire occupation force at the same time.  It is only slightly compensated for by having flowers that are quite pretty, in their morning-glory way.

I guess here I should throw in some analogy to human affairs.  Like the biblical “wheat and tares together sown.”  But this morning, I think it is enough to just regard what “is.”  Everything need not be a signature, omen, example, nor trigger to greater truth.  More profoundly than all the interrelations we may construct in our fertile minds, everything in our universe just “is,” and we should also appreciate that fact. 

Sun-

 

  

Like some relic of an antediluvian age, this little pocket park sits quietly squeezed between commercial buildings, not exactly neglected but in need of repairs along the waterfront.  Having nothing exotic and special about it, the space is extremely underutilized.  Undoubtedly eventually an enterprising town manager will “improve” it tremendously with a children’s playground or some other grand gesture, and thereby ruin the current ambience.

There are those who fight updating and modernization in any form fiercely, seeking to preserve patrimony.  Others are ripping into the future, leaving behind the blighted past.  Balance is impossible, because the one thing that cannot be achieved is some kind of rule-bound tension concerning past and future.  That is, after all, reserved for the actual present, which obeys no rules and simply is what it is.

 

  

Mon-

Tue-

Beyond the grass, children play in the muddy water at the town beach, their cries of freedom from class echoing charmingly (as an older person mostly charming because distant, I admit.)  It all seems so perfect and timeless.  My logic tells me that is not so, to worry about the future, to understand disaster is everywhere.  My inner child has also left the classroom this day, and says to forget all I want, smile and shout my own gladness at these moments, which are, after all, reality.
Wed-

The dune grass is also well on its way to summer peak, presiding over the sand drifts above the calm water.  There is such an infinite of interplay in the visual world around us _ even ignoring everything else which is just as infinite _ that I could shoot a picture from here every day and hardly become repetitious.  Each hour, each weather pattern, each season _ each fleeting moment of focused consciousness and attention _ is unique.

It is too easy at my age to wake in the morning and be bored.  There is a constant wash of memories and a lethargic pull that whispers “you have already done all that already.”  One response is to try to push harder and harder for the novel and new by finding totally new experiences such as travel.  I have found for my own peace of mind it is better to make the effort to understand why I feel that way in the face of overwhelming evidence that my universe is untarnished, fresh, and unexplored each day.
Thu-

Don’t get too many birds in these photos _ nor for that matter special sky and water effects.  I have a cheap old camera, by design, no fancy lenses or filters, don’t even use the standard options and doodads available on everything electronic these days.  I’m not a photographic artist and have no desire to be.  These pictures are taken to encourage me to see more, and the next day to formulate a few minor observations on myself and the world.

The important thing about any beauty _ created by art or otherwise _ is not that we can analyze its components nor basis nor creator.  Beauty is a gift to allow us to appreciate each moment, to feel that all the patterns around us are in balance and that we belong.  Beauty is the full sensory equivalent of an intellectual “religious impulse,” identical except for our need to create artificial categories in all we perceive.
Fri-

I like to think this scene on East Shore Road has not changed much since the mid-nineteenth century.  The houses were there, perhaps almost as big, and the harbor filled with sailing craft.  Of course we have none of the animal smells, the roads are paved, and in the biggest change the hills all around are forested instead of being used as pasture and meadows.  The way we imagine the past is rarely how it was, even visually, and certainly not emotionally nor in terms of human experience.

The world constantly changes and evolves, in spite of the conceit of each generation that what it knows happens to be what is normal and eternal.  Stability is illusion.  Old people worry about what is lost, but they are soon gone, and the tribes move on with only occasional reminders and fantasies of what must have been in the old days.
Sat-

Old fat guy lurking in the bushes like an aged panther waiting for prey.  At least, I guess he imagines prey.  I’ve never seen anybody catch anything this far inside the harbor and discussions I’ve caught mostly spoke of imaginary flounder (not in this season) or inedible spider crabs.  At this point, he is just a picturesque part of the scenery, like some ancient Italian peasant in a fishing village.

I like to think that my life is more purposeful, what I do filled with meaning, more important than merely sitting all day, smoking a cigar, watching a futile line stretch off beneath reflecting waters.  Of course, I am wrong.  Cosmically wrong always, from the standpoint of the mechanical universe.  Socially wrong in that nothing I do will result in financial rewards at this point.  Personally wrong in that walking and thinking is not really more elegant than sitting and meditating.  Still, we all like our little points of better-than –you comparisons in our competitive society.
Sun-

Yep, nothing but green.  No focus, no break, no composition.  That’s the point.  A short time ago, this tiny roadside meadow was filled with flowers.  Already many of the annuals have finished flowering and are busily storing energy in seeds for the coming year.  Most of the leaves on the trees and other perennials have already reached full extent, the new growth is beginning to halt and the nutrients sent back to the roots.  Basically, this is as green as it is going to get.

We think of timeless nature and its great cycles, as if it were some quiet library or majestic swells on the ocean.  But the ocean is not alive.  Life is roiled by constant disasters, plans, adjustments, chaos, and only survives by getting what it can when it can.  And that is just the plant world!  This quiet boring verdant patch is seething with tension and energy and competition.  Me, I just enjoy the lush ambience.

  

 

 

 

 

  

Mon-

We really should.  Any wonderful day for any reason is worth celebrating.  The flowers are still blooming, the moon still rising, the tides still flowing, the birds still singing.  And through it all I am a year older, and all my family and friends continue to have their own trail of experiences.  Life, for all perceived problems, remains good for many of us.  We should be grateful for that every day, and pay respects to the universe, and do all we can to absorb the wonders that have been given to us.
Tue-

Whatever boats might be going out this season are pretty much prepped and ready.  This is one of the big weekends _ a kickoff when everyone is still excited about a summer stretching seemingly forever before them.   Many make the forty mile or so jaunt to New York to watch the fireworks from the water, more just go out and party on the water with friends.  The heat and warm bay are cooperating, so far, although storms are always a possibility.

Others have told me I would eventually want a boat.  I never did.  I like walking on firm ground, even if I enjoy watching happenings on sea.  That is not some admirable lack of envy of those who can afford such things, it is just a natural disposition.   Part of it, of course, is just that I’m old and set in my ways and any changes to my comfortable routine are usually more disturbing than exciting.
Wed-

Another common weed in a neglected patch of parkland.  Common is usually best applied from a distance, since close inspection of anything in our marvelously fractal world quickly reveals that nothing at all is common except our own insufficient categorization.  These flowers are just as magnificent as anything in a botanic garden, and in a way more admirable for surviving on their own where other species fail.

So our own lives, of course.  There is no “common” human.  We are all filled with glorious experiences and handle immense tragedy and go through the world thinking and judging and remembering and wishing and having an outlook on the universe that may even be superior to that of the gods themselves, condemned to know all and be consequently amazed at nothing.

Thu-

Children these days must apparently be kept busy all the time, or at least their busy parents must be freed to go about their multiply necessary duties.  So as soon as school ends, summer camp begins.  I don’t remember life being quite so frantic when I was young, but then my memory is not what it used to be.

I know for sure, however, that this group will find far less biodiversity and large interesting creatures with their searches than Joan and I did.  The waters may finally be recovering a little, but they were deeply destroyed by forty or more years of neglect.  I only hope the youngsters don’t get too discouraged about disappointing nature.

Fri-

Tree and bush fruits are maturing rapidly _ I even saw some blueberries newly planted on the roadside work at Halesite.  The early annual flowers are dying back a bit, and from here on it is fun to watch the different competing strategies of the various species.  Some find Darwin’s theories depressing and joyless, but I find that thinking of the l
ife I see in terms of evolution makes it far deeper, richer, and more meaningful than simply believing that _ plop, magic _ something shows up here or there at the whim of the gods.

As for me _ well we all have our own peculiar thoughts about our deeper relation to the universe.  No use burdening you with mine, on this fine day.  Go work out your own destiny!

Sat-

Queen Anne’s Lace _ don’t know why her clothing was so much in vogue, but many common names are a folklore mystery to me.  These days, of course, you can look anything up quickly on line.  I’m not quite sure that is a gain _ sometimes ambiguous understanding is more full than when it is complete.

I always like these flat-headed white flowers just because they are so different.  Well, many flowers, of course, are if you in inspect them, but for me these pop out even when you are driving along a roadside.  Relative of the carrot, I hear.  Maybe.  I refuse to Google it.  I am too busy and interested in other things.

Sun-

This nicely encapsulates the ambience of the fourth.  The land of liberty and flags flying, as a chained link fence protects private property from unwanted visitors.  More confusingly, the beach is community property of the landowners, but the line below high tide is by law public (although nobody would ever know it around here) and the water is open to everyone.  Well, open and free as long as you abide by increasingly strict regulations of use.

In fact, for all our blather about following the wisdom of the founding fathers, we actually live in a society like any other that has evolved and adjusted to this exact time, place, and circumstance so that a society can continue and let people get along relatively smoothly.    I admire our culture greatly, but I do not mistake its patchwork of laws and customs for a designed logical edifice build on a foundation of inalienable anything.  At least, for the moment, the sun and air are still free, and the roadside available to all who walk along it.  Good enough for me.

 

Mon-

In any case,  the area is much more visually appealing than it was a century ago, when this area was filled with gasification plants, coal dumps, oil depots, power generation facilities, and the rotting remnants of the extensive dockworks that were necessary for this to be a working port before the coming of the railroads.   Now the uses are somewhat more gentle visually, and probably even environmentally.  All modern change is not for the worse.
Tue

Sometimes I do not need to leave my front yard to be struck by wonder.  I try not to get overly into “I am an artist” now _ my photographs are purposely crude and without much artifice.  But my eyes _ well my eyes are able to see beauty everywhere.  The sun through our Japanese maple trees seemed fully as deserving of being poorly captured as any wide vista of sand and sea.

Life, of course, is a balance like that.  We are so constructed that there is a very fine line between being so entranced with our surroundings that we catatonically never budge very far, and being in an instant terminally bored by exactly the same thing.  What most advice misses is that not only are both states completely valid, even if contradictory, but both are essential components of human consciousness.  We are excited and bored (and many other things) at exactly the same place, with each change of train of thought.  The only real advice is to accept it and use the gift happily.
Wed-

This is a view from the beach at the Teddy Roosevelt park in Oyster Bay, looking back on the Lloyd Neck peninsula where Joan and I live.  The amazing thing is that the hills look almost uninhabited, even though we know that they are jammed with houses and crawling with cars and people in constant motion.  In some ways, it looks more virgin and primeval than it would have a century or two ago, when the hills were almost completely emptied of trees for crops and meadows.

I remain hopeful that, if our species can just survive another century or so, it will be able to fit into the environment more gracefully.  We have the seeds of optimistic greatness in us, for both ourselves and everything around us, if only we are not overwhelmed by mistakes carried on from the past.  In some ways, I suppose, I am lucky that I will never learn the outcome.

Thu-

The old boathouse at the Gold Coast Mansion continues to decay along with its dock _ the county has no money, and few have any use for it.  Reeds and honeysuckle add a romantic touch.  Summer is life, but also hastens decay of the unused and dead.

Probably the houses being constructed by the wealthy today will not last as long as these old ones, almost a hundred years along.  The climate is becoming more severe, the current materials are less permanent, and in this country at least we build for decades only.  Whatever comes along and is new will, we think, be much better.  For all the warnings, those that can reside near the oceans, and the oceans will soon claim this structure and all the more recent ones, leaving new expanses of shoreline for colonization.

Fri

It’s not Central Park, but Huntington’s own little Hecksher has well-maintained charm.  Totally artificial constructions _ like both those parks _ can be as beautiful, meaningful, and refreshing as wilderness.  They are, after all, expressions of human spirit working together.  They exist only because generations cooperated, and citizens contribute annually with taxes for upkeep and a few of the wealthier have dedicated some of their private money to the public good.

When it goes well, and people respect civilization, places like these are amazing.  All kinds of different humans, of different age, condition, status, and background manage to coexist not only peacefully, but joyfully.  Each in their own universe, yet each connected in beautiful relaxed happiness.  If there is a heaven, it must resemble such a park on a fine summer day, with flowers in full bloom and the sounds of children playing in the distance.  
Sat-

Common blue chicory now springing up everywhere.  Almost as common as ragweed, growing in much the same places, its large pale flowers are another of the common wonders we often ignore because they are not grand and overwhelming and mysterious.  Unless you actually look at them of course.

I marvel now at how many people seem not to see nor even look unless there is some mechanical contrivance involved.  People go about peering into cameras as if they were new eyes on the universe, suddenly aware of the beauty of dewdrops on the grass.  I suppose that is no different than artists sketching _ seeing as an artist does is an important gift to develop for oneself.  Even so, they tend to focus on what they consider appropriate for a unique vision, and manage to continue to be blind to the vast everyday beauty that surrounds us always.
Sun-

A quiet little bench in a grove along a pleasant shore, an old tree providing shade, a perfect place for meditation no matter the time and place.  You can almost imagine Socrates or Lao Tzu contemplating the universe.  Bodies of water, with their complex ever-changing fractal reflections and waves almost always evoke thoughts of the infinite.

Of course, a mere picture ignores the fact that right behind this lovely bench is a highway filled with smoking speeding SUV’s and the grinding gears of numerous yard crew rigs and boat haulers and an occasional diesel roar and shudder as a garbage or cesspool truck roars by.  Nor does it account for the roar of jets and the more annoying thwack of frequent helicopters on their way to the hospital.  And a good deal of the time there are constant child screams from the adjoining beach.  That’s the problem with any reduction of reality in an attempt to preserve it _ too much is always left out.

  

   

  

Mon-

That is really the great luxury of wealth of any kind:  that you can take the time necessary, whenever you want, to fully appreciate your life.  The poorer you are, the more you must constantly jerk around at someone else’s bidding to do whatever is required.  A wealthy person can enjoy a meal, or a sunset, or a long walk with no expectation of being paid.  Not many of them do perhaps, but at least they have the option.
Tue-

On Lloyd Neck near the beach, there is a Catholic Church seminary occupying the vast lands that used to be a jazz age estate.  The somewhat eccentric owners held festivals of stage and music in an amphitheater built high on a bluff in the woods overlooking the bay.  These ruins remain, unexpected, and appearing to a startled hiker as far older and more mysterious than they actually are.  Sometimes you wonder if many archeologists are not similarly fooled by their surprise encounters with old structures.

The church wants to sell the land, and multiple developers are slobbering to carve it into as many pieces as possible, each bulging with as huge a fake mansion as local zoning laws permit.  Then there will be no wandering, no ruins, and just more of the same paranoid wealthy owners protecting their sacred lands.  In this case I’m comforted by the fact that it will all be under the sea in another century, amphitheater and all.

Wed-

Two for one today _ as a point of observation.  A catalpa tree in flower high on a hill is magnificent in its own right, white blossoms against the green, huge and overwhelming.  But we glance at it and think _ oh, how nice, that tree is in bloom.  It takes an effort to get really close and view each individual flower as a perfect little fractal masterpiece.  What could be more rewarding?

Yet, if we were to tire of the purely visual study, we can be amazed at the vast biological web of time and space and connections around this single blossom, one of countless others, on countless trees.  There is a whole support system of roots and branches and trunks and leaves.  There are necessary soils and trace elements and carbon in the air and sunlight and water in the proper amounts, for years and years and years until the tree reaches maturity.  There are necessary insects and birds and pollen and winds for decades before, to assure fertilization of this tree’s parents and propagation of the plant itself.  Finally there are untold eons of time and simultaneous evolution of an ecology to arrive at this one particular moment.  Ah, you may say, only God could have done that _ but for God, time is simply another dimension, as easy to use as your walking over to be awed by the result.

Thu-

 

Cereals and grains are ripening now, some wild, some domestics left over from centuries of farming before the land was coated with suburbs and asphalt in the last fifty years.  There are no working farms here anymore, just a few preserved patches of open ground, most of which are quickly reverting to forest as they are no longer worked and head for a new climax ecology.   

I find grasses and their seeds almost as beautiful as flowers.  An entire meadow of waving, ripening tall wheat and weeds is magnificent.  On closer inspection the individual seed heads have their own aesthetics.  And all around them flit the insects and birds that can gorge on the feast from what local humans no longer need (since local humans get all their food from huge insecticide and herbicide drenched killing vistas far to the west, but that’s another thought for another day.)  You can only, sometimes, accept what you find.
Fri-

Another lie this morning.  I present this fine picture of honeysuckle blooming sweetly on the fence along the roadside.  You may think it is a true sharing representation of a moment of my walk.  But, of course, it is not.  You cannot smell the sweet fragrance, feel the moist cool breeze from the left, squint into the surprising luminosity of the air, hear the approaching pickup truck from the right and the faint roar of a jet overhead.  Not to mention all that I see that this particular framed view crops out and ignores.

But it is worse than that.  Even were you here beside me, experiencing all those things simultaneously, we would both still be in different universes.  My worries about the future are not yours.  Your remembrances of the past are not mine.  The logical trains of thoughts and body kinesthesia of each of us are impossible to know or communicate.  And so on.  This is a nice picture.  That may be far less than it seems.

Sat-

Solstice!  Longest day of the year!  From now on, we are slowly but surely marching closer and closer to another winter.  It has been so cold this spring that summer hardly seems to have arrived even now, we all have sweatshirts and long pants still, and the beaches are like refrigerators.  Of course, that hasn’t slowed people from wanting their boats _ this is the last one of the throng that were walled side by side here on the marina lot for months.

All of the midsummer annuals are reaching blooming stage, and another certainty is that the meadows will soon fill with seeds and drying pods.  For some reason, insects have seemed scarce _ of course that may just be my perception.  Lately, we are all primed to watch for portents of global disaster in each fall of any sparrow.
Sun-

A man, a boy, a dog wandering the shore and exploring what might be found.  Except for their clothes (and the trees, and the boats, and everything else) they might as well be native Americans before the overseas invasion.  It’s nice that some activities remain almost unchanged over the eons.  It is good to remember that we are pretty much identical in composition and consciousness to anyone ten or more thousand years ago.

“Futurologists” are excited about pouring the human spirit into eternal circuits, with senses enhanced fractally to infinite huge and unimaginable tiny.  They claim it will be a wonderful, better utopia for thinking beings.  I think they are wrong in mind, body, spirit, and hopes.  Regard these folks along the shore, look into yourself this very moment.  I rest my case.