Distant Turmoils

Monday

A brief survey of the news this morning will surely show there are many horrors happening to many people everywhere. Whether there were ever less is impossible to know, but awareness is probably greater. Trying to pay attention, or to begin to care, about everything can be irritatingly painful. Ignoring everything and crawling like Candide back into the garden also seems wrong.
We live in a cultural mythology that claims we can “do anything,” leaving us guilty if we are doing less than we think we should. But this is dangerous too, for it is easy to become overextended and empty. We have no better answers to life’s philosophical questions than any of the ancients. Yet hubris is not only rampant in our engineering, but also in our everyday thinking. Too much attention to the news, too much worry about how we should affect it, is also dangerous to our health.

Tuesday

Children starving, folks in pain

World is warming, acid rain

Open any page or screen

Then try to hide from what you’ve seen

Why should I care, what ought I know

Of Paris, Peking, Chicago?

Olden times had plague and war

Vikings, Mongols, Huns and more

Frequent famines, bitter freeze

Hungry wolves, uncured disease

Somehow humans stayed alive

At least enough to fill their tribe

Just down my street, I’ve read of crimes

At the market, hunger lines

I’m built of several trillion cells,

A few, I know, are shot to hell

And even if it all goes fine

Age claims I’m running out of time.

I’ve always managed, found a way

To reach tomorrow through today

I may not fix those distant ills

I may not guess what future wills

I can make dinner, loan a smile

And hang on happy for a while.

Wednesday

Hardly expected to find a squid washed up on Gold Star beach. Well, surely not washed up, more discarded from some disappointed dreams of a late-season fisher. Its origins were definitely not in the harbor proper _ seems even the seagulls have not recognized it yet.
This fits well with the weekly topic _ here was a (presumably) happy little sea creature, blithely squirting along, suddenly scooped up into events beyond its control. Some old religions told of gods netting people as if they were fish, for their own hidden purposes. Regardless of the scientific validity of such gods, the metaphor is spot on. And I wonder if this squid _ had it been aware of and worrying about human nets _ could have lived any better or longer a life.

Thursday

Mark was looking sullen when I stopped him by the Dairy Barn. “What’s got you so upset?”

“Oh, Ephron yelling at everyone over there,” he gestured down Gerard Street. Ephron is our local prophet of doom, always seeking ears and shoulders and wallets to carry forth his struggles against evil in the world, as he sees it, anyway.

“Free country, Mark. What’s he spouting today?”

“Oh, he’s got them all mixed, now. Global warming, of course, aggravated by the police state, wealth inequality, genetic modification, political corruption, all orchestrated by the CIA.”

“Interesting brew. But I’m sure he has proof, he always does,” I noted sarcastically.

“Sure, pamphlets, a few wet-around-the-ears junior high kids. You can disappear into any belief you dream up these days. Always find as much support as you want anywhere on the internet.”

“Harmless,” I ventured.

“Nah, I think it destroy
s civility and common sense. I’d like to sue him for child abuse and being a public nuisance.”

“He’s got friends. Even a one-trick pony has a right to be heard. He doesn’t really bother me as much as those people with weird fixes.”

“Like?” asked Mark.

“Oh you know, religions or new age junk, or silver bullets, or wishing to make it so, all the way up to killing off those who you want to blame.”

“The only thing that works, for most of us, is small local actions. Driven, I am afraid, by money rather than idealism.”

“I don’t understand.” After all, I did think a lot of the problems were important and should be addressed.

“Pittsburgh and LA only cleaned up pollution when it was destroying the economic viability _ Beijing will no doubt do the same. Here we didn’t get most of the trash off the streets until our municipality could get money for recycling and there was a return bottle deposit. And individuals like us only cooperate when we can save costs with lower electricity use or insulation, or improving our life by not wasting so many precious hours in cars.” He paused for breath.

“But” I began to protest. Too late.

“Just entertainment anyway, all this stuff, a new opiate for the masses while those in power play their little games,” he huffed in disgust.

“Oh, not that,” I finally decided to play along. “More astrology. Everyone now thinks science can be used to predict and control all futures. Like the Babylonians staring at the heavens. And you can always find an astrologer or scientist who wants to make a buck. At least if they can keep their options opaque and open enough. You know, ‘If you do this or don’t do that a mighty empire will fall.’”

“But not how, or when, or which empire,” he laughs.

“Yep!” And we, like the world, continue on our daily ways.

Friday

Following another distant workplace mass murder, Huntington’s little world is calm and quiet, seemingly unaffected by events elsewhere. Like an idyllic Pacific atoll where inhabitants remain unaware that the Japanese and American navies are steaming toward it. Perhaps the island will escape future problems, but that seems less likely by the day. Yet the natives still must fish, still must eat meals, and might as well celebrate luxurious beauty while they can.
Before routine security scanning, I once toiled alongside the cubicle of a fellow programmer _ a normal enough fellow who liked to brag about his various collections, including quasi-legal automatic weapons. Harmless enough, until I overheard him muttering to himself about “they can’t make me do that,” “I can’t stand this,” “I’ll show them.” With some trepidation, I contacted management. He was fine once HR stepped in to put him back on previously unsuspected medications. My middle-aged colleagues and I might have survived an attack from his Samurai swords (another collection) but would have done less well facing an M16 or AK47. Today I consider weaponry control similar to other collective legal responsibility, such as driving safe cars or not dumping poison into lakes.

Saturday

How to deal with large problems, especially those outside your age bracket or field of competence and influence, has been a problem since tribes became large enough for humans to specialize. Some issues have always been so overwhelming that there is little anyone can do but hunker down and hope. Today we believe we are masters of the universe, which may be more true than it ever was, but does not quite extend to really huge difficulties, nor down to individual catastrophes. Nor does it help us resolve contradictions when individuals are hurt for the presumed greater good.
Mark Twain, for example (I know, I know, just a pen name, but who cares) never fought in the Civil War, during which he was prime army material, even though he was against slavery. Would the world be better off if he had been killed at Antietam? What good would have been served by Picasso scrabbling around in the resistance, rather than painting serenely in the south of France. And those were people of influence, unlike most affected.
We like to think we can control wars and violence, but in spite of the chants of democracy, choices of leaders are limited and nobody can predict the tensions they will be under when they face hard choices. We like to think we can overcome plagues and disease, but often resources are redirected too late, and sometimes only crude blind luck saves whole populations. We dismiss hunger and famine as things of the past, but a simple breakdown in our grids and networks _ caused, perhaps, by a massive solar flare _would have civilization starving within a matter of days.
I am much better off than those who lived centuries ago. The modern industrialized world for many of us is a far more controllable and sane place than anywhere used to be, even for those in power. Random accidents still occur, of course, and the threat of disaster will be with any species until the final days when the sun dies. But day to day, mostly, is more than adequate.
We probably should worry. It’s good for the culture. All of us aware of global warming will lead to actions that may help, just as enough people getting sick of massive pollution eventually led to cleaner local water and air. But reading, knowing, talking _ well those aren’t direct and don’t feel real.
My guess is that our worries about future horrors _ whether climate or otherwise _ will be dealt with or resolved in ways we have no way of anticipating. I’m glad we are concerned _ we should always remain concerned and willing to do something together. But when we focus on one problem we lose sight of the correlations _ what happens to coal miners, or industrial production, or food supply.
I would like to believe we and our leaders are honestly trying, but I don’t think we have all the knowledge and control that we imagine.

Sunday

Tides have flowed ceaselessly for eons, but not precisely here. Huntington harbor was formed by melting glaciers _ an instant ago geologically, soon followed by people, much later by swans, and finally these houses. If high tide damages a home along the shoreline, or high wind damages one atop a hill, what responsibility do the inhabitants of each have for the other?
My consciousness is a brew of complicated urges and tensions, finely tuned by billions of years. A person with no empathy sees everything as entertainment, and becomes a psychopathic monster. One with too much feels the pain of all and falls into fatal melancholia or unsupportable innocence. We are immense, fluid, mysterious, and impermanent. Our societies must be mirrors of that complexity.

Well, Thanks

Monday

One would expect that thanks to God and the Universe would arise in fat times, when everyone is overwhelmed with the bounty of happy being, as exemplified by this marina. That would misread the perversity of the human spirit. People usually take bounty for granted, and end up complaining about the quality of their silverware, the poor habits of their servants, the evil thoughts of their neighbors, or their own victimization compared to just about everybody else.
Days of common thanksgiving, illogically, are usually declared in times of disaster. The typical exhortation no matter how bad the crisis is “think how much worse it could be!” My task has always been to reverse that scenario. I don’t mind complaining bitterly when life is awful, although I hardly ever find it so. I think it a duty to be thankful every day for everything, and I am constantly reminding myself how much worse my life and my world could have been.

Tuesday

Thanksgiving Limerick

Earthquake, drought followed by flood

Locusts, fire, war, lost our food

Diseases were gotten

Our cheeses went rotten

At least we ain’t dead yet, thank God

Wednesday

Birds should be grateful _ lots of berries and fruits still hanging on the tree, as yet undamaged by frost. The rest of nature is asleep or storing things like nuts where they can be easily found later. With all that is around, one would suspect there is easily enough for all, that provisions have been made for every tiny being on the planet. Malthus and Darwin and the rest have proved that idea to be cruelly wrong, a fact which we easily verify for ourselves.
People are different. For the first time, we have real opportunity to limit our populations, and guarantee at least food and personal security to just about every human born. That we do not _ from violence or greed or maladjustment _ is hopefully changing. Paradigm shifts occur almost by themselves, like US pop culture becoming worldwide, and perhaps the next big one will be finally that all folks on the planet are in this together and will thankfully share the overwhelming bounty being created.

Thursday

Curt was, as usual, complaining as we waited in line at the supermarket.

“So you didn’t have such a nice thanksgiving, even with all the family over?”

“Oh, it was nice enough, especially in principle _ we know we should get together once in a while. But geez, what a bunch of complainers. The adults were whining ignorant envious wimps. Their kids were worse _ vicious unappreciative grasping monsters.”

“Ah, c’mon,” I try to cheer him up. “People are always like that, always were like that, when they get together with people they trust.”

“I don’t think so. Well, maybe. I did get sick of being told how easy my life had been, the fifties were a utopian lark, the sixties were our indulgent fools’ paradise, and you know they truly believe we never had to worry about anything. But, oh them! Woe, impossible to find decent jobs, insecure about everything. Their house is huge, but someone else’s is huger, their car is nice but they want something nicer, the kitchen was done over, but it’s already starting to show its age. And horrors, Adam is not as brilliant and focused as Jennie, Heather loafed the summer and missed out on soccer camp. What garbage. They have no idea what they have.”

“Surely, we have been the same.”

“Nah,” he grumped, “Nah. I’ve always been happy and properly grateful for a wonderful life, even during harder times. Them, no matter what, they think their world is going to hell and pretty hellish to be in right now and they can’t understand what they are supposed to be so thankful about. Stupid little twits all of them.”

“So it actually was horrible time,” I finally agreed.

“No, of course it was great. We love our family. Whatever gave you that impression?”

Friday

Amazingly warm weather continues. Nice for anyone taking advantage of it outside. No doubt bad for the planet. But that is true of many things, and there is always a question how much we enjoy the moment at the expense of losing the future. We need to be thankful for each day, each minute of grace. And yet we should also be grateful that there have been pasts which we can remember, and there will presumably be futures that we can imagine.
I realize that personally there is little I can do to stop planetary warming on my own. There are en
ough shrill voices. My own contribution to climate change is miniscule _ I hardly drive, take maybe one plane trip a year, and try to be conscious of reusing materials. But that makes no difference. So I enjoy the lovely temperature, putter around my yard, and without too much guilt leave worries of the future to the future. I guess I should also be grateful I can do that.

Saturday

By any measure I have been among the most fortunate of people. I never deserved to be born, and I surely never deserved my good fortunes. I was willing to do what was necessary: to love, to work, to appreciate, to hope. Rewards tumbled all about, and all I needed to do was be willing to recognize them.

There are many unhappy people, or at least I so gather _ most of those I actually know seem content enough. For much of the world this has been a measurably better time than most of the past, and it is a well-known historic fact that after such improvements is when revolutions usually occur. Perhaps there is about to be a revolution. Maybe it will even be a good one, for a change.

Some worry about social trends, some about climate change, some about falling populations, some about overcrowding, some about things I know nothing of. The best of times, they cry, the worst of times. Don’t I realize that …. Whatever. Wake up do something.

What I do beyond the boundaries of my yard has little impact. What is one drop among seven billion identical to me? Life has always been out of control, the future has always been unknowable, and yet somehow we arrived here in these interesting times.

So I wake up and give thanks. I walk and give thanks. I fill myself with food and give thanks. I am grateful I can think, and sleep, and still do many things. The only proper reaction to being alive and conscious is to be awed. Those who give those miracles up to preach despair are, I firmly believe, simply fools.

Sunday

Sometimes, naturally, being Pollyanna all the time becomes wearing. It is a rare person indeed who never has negative feelings about their place in the world. That is especially true after trying so hard to look at the bright side of things for a week.
I suppose I have ups and downs like anyone. What have I done, where am I going, what’s the use of it all. Silly, but there it is, just as real as being happy for all I have. As day breaks, I know my task is to once more try harder to celebrate all that is. A somber close to a wonderfull week.

Shrinkage

Monday

With more indoor time enforced, with greater preparations required for wandering in the open, with occasional thoughts of ice and snow, with shorter days and longer shadows and less powerful sun _ autumn is traditionally a period of shrinking inwards. Of course there are busy tasks to prepare for harsh winter, but everything tends to contract towards home and hearth. The natural world seems much less jubilant and sensual, an evil shadow of what it once had been a month or so ago.
Technology has changed most of that. Work and home continue as always, hours and tasks unaffected now that there is electricity, commerce, and interchange. Saturnalian end-of-year festivals engage all our free time, weather is irrelevant _ even huge blizzards mostly an inconvenience if they bother to show up at all. I’d be a fool to lament this easier and happier existence. I’m willing to keep my toes in nature, try to stay in tune with the slowed rhythms, but I never lament being warm, well fed, and active.

Tuesday

Hibernation. An idea

Whose time has come again.

Wait out the cold, the freeze, the wind

Dream beyond the pain.

Safe underground, safe in our beds,

Safe behind our walls

Safely retreated from the world

Safe stuffed deep in our halls.

We all know illusion’s charm

And though that may sound sweet

Monsters lurk, if not destroyed,

Will kill us as we sleep.

Wednesday

These ruins of a pump house at Coindre Hall seem appropriate as the temperature drops. Destruction, decay, and forgetfulness play an underlying theme in late November. Winter may be the hopeless season when all seems lifeless and going outdoors is an act of defiant desperation, but autumn resembles a warning. That is seized upon by philosophers and theologians to remind people how insignificant each one is in the vast universe.
I have no idea where I fit into “the” universe, but in my universe I am the main event. Today is magnificent, life is wonderful, and I look forward to tomorrow. What I do is consequential to what will happen in my environment. Deeper thoughts of cold logical philosophy and nagging intuitive religion rarely color my underlying consciousness moment by moment. Even in autumn. Perhaps that is a fool’s happiness, but such joy is real for me.

Thursday

“Hi, Jim, finally need the gloves, eh?”

“Yeah, summer’s fled, I guess.”

“Any big plans for the holidays or afterward.”

“Oh, the usual. Family over for Christmas, of course. Then we’re off to Florida for a few weeks beginning of February. Not looking forward to it, to tell you the truth.”

“Sounds nice to me.”

“Ah, but I have everything I want at home. Books, TV, food, routines, comforts. I admit I don’t get out much, and certainly not far away, but I don’t miss it.”

“I share that. Guess we’re both getting old. When I was younger nothing seemed too big an adventure. Now it sometimes seems an effort to even go grocery shopping on Saturday.”

“Some people age with lots of energy and are always doing stuff.”

“True. Not me. I like to take my time now. Frankly, I don’t envy them. I always think they’re missing what I found.”

“Well, soon enough we’ll have spring and summer again, and more than we can handle around here.”

“Speak for yourself,” I laugh, “I’ve still got lots of leaves and other cleanup to keep me busy for weeks. Not to mention cleaning _ like you _ for holiday visitors.”

Friday

Last lingering reminders are still all around, like these roses blooming into the teeth of an approaching storm. Some days are still warm. Fine outdoor sights and weather can be appreciated more now that they are endangered. Someone who has just escaped catastrophe, or knows vacation is about to end, can easily discover fresh joy from previously mundane surroundings.
I am the luckiest of creatures, blessed with memory and means to organize it so the past lies open. That which I have experienced does not easily disappear. Even trapped in freezing snowdrifts, I can remember daffodils and autumn oaks, things I have done, people I have known. My entire lifeline lies open to my consciousness, so that even when I sink seemingly bounded into a comfortable chair, I remain the king of infinite time and space.

Saturday

I remain happiest in climates similar to that in which I grew up in Pennsylvania. Anybody can justify anything, of course, so as I reflect on how fine it is to have seasons, I must also realize that perhaps that is because they attach strongly to my own past. I like to think seasonal patterns teach us all something healthy, a perspective that we lose when we totally control all climate and always follow an identical daily routine.
Predictable seasonal patterns _ wet and dry, or cold and hot, or whatever _ are the most obvious about which to moralize, but in fact all life has cyclical patterns of some type. Even in the unchanging desert or ever-soaked rain forest there are differences between night and day. But I think where no part of a cycle lingers with some potency, there is a tendency to believe things are eternal and unchanging. Those of us enjoying _ or afflicted by _ strong contrasts as the year turns are more likely to believe ongoing gain and loss is inevitable.
We anthropomorphize even wind and rain, even length of daily sunlight. Suddenly I may believe my life has entered its autumn, as frailty strikes not only me, but all those my age that I know. This melancholy may extend to worrying about a final winter I may not survive. What is the correct reaction?
Clutch closely that all that is around me? That hardly works, like hiding under a tree in the rain, I will eventually get wet. Clutching does little more than make my worries impossible. Let go of everything and live for the moment? Unfortunately, the possibilities of my moments are somewhat curtailed compared to when I was young and strong, and in spite of my “accepting my age” most of the time there will be unwelcome consequences for paying no attention to tomorrow.
My solution is to project my inward thoughts out to the seasonal attributes. Watching trees and birds and rain and long evenings is an enjoyment always available. Understanding or fantasizing is a pleasure never fading. My physical possibilities, in this season and at this age, may indeed be shrinking, but that need not affect my mind and soul.

Sunday

An almost mad dash to the south for sunset each evening. People exclaim they can’t believe it is getting dark already. Trees have assumed their interlacing skeletal frames for the coming snows. No wonder that ancient peoples made a ritual of end of year worries that the night might become eternal. No wonder that we do the same.
A month from now the sun’s race southward slows, stops, and begins a slow return after winter solstice. Even though the heart of winter remains, that is a time of beginning hope. But these final weeks until that rebirth are psychologically difficult. The contracting constriction of everything natural strikes deep into our soul, a longer chord similar to circadian rhythm that we may ignore, but experience unconsciously nevertheless.

True Fall

Monday

Foliage dimming brown, bare branches evident, this is the week when the bulk of the drying leaves come down. Each gust of wind brings another shower of gently floating detritus. Each morning, no matter how spotless the evening before, ground is covered as if with dust or brown frost. Sometimes capricious winds will sweep one area bare, pile another corner high.
I have always considered fall named for this unavoidable shower of vegetation. Now I refuse to look up the true etymology_ sometimes it is nice to hold on to personal myths if they bother nobody else. I think, at least around here, I remain one of the few people who think a few leaves on a lawn enhances it and makes it real _ spotless is for sterile indoor malls or obsessively clean rugs, not nature. However tame we try to make it.

Tuesday

Frost rain wind cold sun, morning surprise

Annoying random waves and piles, thick or thin

Soggy leaves, or crisp.

Dappled lawn affront to neighbor’s eyes

Leather gloves, pull rake and plastic bags from bin

Hours building drifts

All undone by nightfall, next sunrise,

Many more fall down, blown to our yard by winds

“Again,” wife insists.

Wednesday

Classical European landscape artists rarely depict autumn. In backgrounds of Italian Renaissance painters, it’s always summer. The Dutch and French occasionally portray winter, but even there the greatest _ Ruisdael, Hobbema _ stick mostly to the times when green fills their worlds. On the other hand, almost the first American landscapes are of color-draped Catskills or Long Island farms after harvest.
Europe has colorful trees _ my wife and I have seen them in Paris in October, walking through Pere Lachaise. Rather the explanation is convention and opportunity. Until the 1800;s, painting had to be done in studios where paints could be prepared and mixed. Summer was for sketching outside, then the real paintings were done over the winter based on the drawings. Only with the advent of factory colors did artists venture outside, and even then most of the impressionists found working in autumn wind and rain a bit too challenging. Anyway, I enjoyed remembering all this as I strolled through the Metropolitan museum yesterday, while heavy drizzle brought down the leaves outside in Central Park.

Thursday

I’d just gotten a large stack together at the end of the driveway _ about halfway through my leaf-raking journey around the house. Jay came walking by, on his daily perambulation of the neighborhood, and waved a cheerful greeting. “Ready to burn them now?” he laughed.

“What, and have someone call the fire department?” I replied.

“Or worse, the police. I’m sure it’s illegal somehow.”

“Yeah, sure has changed,” I noted. “My dad and I always just put them in a big pile out in the back yard and had a bonfire. I mean a big pile, not like this little thing. Lots of fire, smoke, but everyone was doing it. You could smell it for weeks around our place.”

“Ah, the joys of environmental awareness,” he commented.

“I just can’t see how _ for example _ everyone in these suburbs burning a few leaves once a year comes anywhere close to the oxidation from all those forest fires out west, or in Australia, Europe, and Malaysia over the summer. Seems kind of silly.”

“Yeah, I agree,” he said. “Besides, there’s a lot more pollution of all kinds from blowers and using plastic bags and having big trucks take them to the dump. I doubt anyone has ever done a scientific study. Just one of those things that crept up on us.”

“Damn crazy regulated world.”

“Maybe. But you and certainly your wife would no doubt complain if everyone else were smoking up the place, and blackening the walls, getting soot in the house. Some smoke like poison ivy is even dangerous.”

“Didn’t bother us way back when,” I protest. “And Alders down the street always has a fireplace going smoking up everything anyway.”

“So run for town council,” he smiled. “Anyway, the exercise is good for you.”

“You sound too much like my wife,” I grumped. More leaves swirled down on a stronger gust of wind.

Friday

A few days of rain, a few nights of cold, a few more days of wind and the landscape is new. Ground spaces previously cleared are filled once more. Trees have lost at least half their canopy, some branches stripped bare. While the leaves remain wet, it’s a waiting game because dry stuff is a lot easier to clean up, blow, bag, and carry.
For me, this is the heart of autumn, past the fairy tale colors and suspicious warmth. A season has arrived for real, and there will be cold and there will be precipitation and there certainly will be increasing darkness. Our sun sets at four thirty, and even the mornings are grey and mournful. In a few weeks, all the foliage will be cleaned up, all the winter clothes on display, and soon yard lights will futilely try to add cheer to arriving solstice.

Saturday

Raking leaves, one thinks of the carbon cycle we all learned in elementary school: animals eating, breathing oxygen and churning out carbon dioxide while plants turn CO2 into food and oxygen. Visible sequestration of carbon seems to swirl all around us at this time of year, the end result of the mighty lungs of the huge forests of Eastern North America.
If we worry about climate, it tends to center on carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in prodigious quantities by industry, or perhaps by the destruction of lung forests such as those of New York or the Amazon. What will happen as our air goes increasingly out of balance?
But, like many things, these ideas are far too simplified. The leaves sequester carbon for a while, of course, but rapidly decay on forest floors, often consumed by microorganisms that release carbon dioxide more efficiently than the larger mammals. Volcanoes and forest fires can release amounts of CO2 that dwarf anything produced by human activities, at least for a while. And much of the carbon cycle is actually accomplished by things much less obvious than broadleaf deciduous trees.
We easily realize that grasses and shrubs do their part, and with a little effort will admit that algae and seaweed do the same. Perhaps we do not quite understand how much of the balance is done by those less obvious plants, but at least we respect their efforts. Even there, we may not realize how much of a part in the cycle oceans and their inhabitants play, making most of the land efforts puny by comparison.
But the truly astonishing thing is that much of the oxygen in the atmosphere is accomplished by oceanic viruses. Science still struggles to understand it all. Surely that matters a great deal to the health of the planet, but who wants to see viruses as necessary and good (especially since we cannot see them at all)?
Leaves are useful obvious metaphors for the interconnection of life on earth. Like so many of the metaphors we love they are incomplete and almost, but not quite, so misleading as to be wrong. Consider that the next time you brush one off your shoulder in November gusts.

Sunday

In less than five days this year just about everything is on the ground. Oh, the more stubborn leaves will hang on for a few months, trickling down to annoy those who prefer spotless. Only the hard freeze has held off, so there are still ragged spots of brilliant color in some gardens. Anyone outside today knows this is the end of the year.
I’ve seen roses right up until Christmas, in sheltered locations. A few trees remain green turning yellow, as if they are the last poor victims in a plague ward. But there is no doubt that this was a good week to dub the heart of fall.

Cohesive Complexity

Monday

All that is, is. Everything is connected to everything else in space and time, sometimes in unknowable ways. Even in a simple scene such as this, invisible radio and x-ray radiation surrounds all, countless neutrinos pass by, and dark matter, dark energy, and spiritual values are unknowable. To believe that any element can be an island is an illusion.
Society seems just as interconnected, and just as complex. Each of us is a complete universe, and a group of us is almost an impossibility. Our hubristic illusion, fostered by our scientific outlook, is that somehow we can break society into little elements like “government” and then control each piece in isolation. That’s a dangerous fallacy.

Tuesday

Wisdom treads fearful

Sensing complication

Waits

Universe moves on
Wednesday

Away from the water, this is one of the most spectacular autumns ever. Experts try to predict which years will be particularly colorful, but none dare try earlier than July. And even a week ago, nobody could plan a day reaching nearly seventy degrees. Times like these are when industrially scheduled jobs are the most painful for those who must remain indoors, because this special confluence of wonder cannot last long.
Walking on my way to vote, I remembered that three years ago, doing the same task, I left a frigid home which had been without power for days, and I dodged fallen trees all the way. Nobody had predicted that superstorm either. If we cannot determine such simple things, what ignorant hubris must be driving us to believe that changing a tax rate or extending a jail sentence will have a known outcome years from now.

Thursday

John’s sitting on a bench in the park, watching the swans run along the water to take off. “Got another traffic ticket for turning too soon.”

“One of those automatic cameras?” I ask.

“Yeah. Stupid things. Nanny state. Full stop on red instead of common sense when nobody is around. What can you do? Government regulation and power …”

“Just part of law and order.” I reply smiling.

“Never goes after the ones they really should catch anyway.”

“Which is everybody else, no doubt.”

“Well, yeah, I suppose,” he admits.

“What did they say _ ‘if men were angels there would be no need for government.’”

“As I recall,” he notes, “the angels in Paradise Lost didn’t do any better than people.”

“The problem is,” I remark, “that we switch roles so easily. If I’m a pedestrian crossing here at the light I curse the stupid drivers who don’t slow down. But if I’m a driver I curse the pedestrians paying absolutely no attention to me. I always think I should have the right of way, you know?”

“Cameras don’t care,” he notes glumly.

“Price of progress,” I say as I continue with my laps around the pond.

Friday

Heavy fog, unnoticed by bats, fish, trees, and probably dogs. Organisms, according to current theory, inhabit a restricted umwelt of which they are aware. Nothing else is perceived. Fog is invisible to a bat using echolocation, or to a dog primarily aware of smells. Anything outside the umwelt simply does not exist.
Science claims we extend our umwelt with technology, and although I have never experienced radio waves, neutrinos or nuclear forces in a carbon atom, I concede they are “real.” Some people claim they foresee the future, or talk to the dead, or hear meaning in the universe. I am not vouchsafed such abilities or illusions, yet I am less dogmatically sure about such things than I once was. I am too well aware of my own umwelt to swear that all the fogs I cannot perceive are someone else’s fantasy.

Saturday

This culture is afflicted with what may be called “simplistic utopianism.” If only one thing could be changed, the world would become a paradise. If only th
is swamp were drained, if only this forest were cleared, if only taxes were lowered, if only I were left alone, if only everyone could be made to work, if only all agreed on what was right. Yet doing any of those things, even successfully, has side effects and produces its own set of problems and paradise continues to slide away.
We have only recently become aware of impossibly intricate webs of ecology in nature. My favorite example is a simple one: in India, killing all the cobras menacing people tending rice fields seemed a simple “silver bullet” to make life better. But the natural prey of cobras are rats, and without predators the rats multiplied geometrically, ate the rice, and caused the dirt dikes _ the result of centuries of work _ to collapse as they burrowed freely. Dealing with cobras is awful. Getting rid of cobras has costs.
Society is even more complex than ecology, because each individual is a complete universe. Degrade poor people enough and they will either willingly die or revolt. Redistribute wealth and some things taken for granted _ parks and museums and new hospital wings _ may no longer exist.
The “Goldilocks” society in which we live has evolved just as fiercely and purposefully as any fruit fly species. Nooks and crannies that make no sense, annoyances that would seem to be easy to eliminate, idiotic and convoluted chunks of daily life _ all possess some purpose. Eliminating the wrong ones may leave us without the dikes we take for granted, and civilization may degenerate into the family and tribe Hobbesian struggle now apparent in the Mideast and parts of Africa.
I am not against draining swamps, clearing forests, or killing cobras. Ecology also informs us all is in constant flux, and change may be good, change may come no matter what we do. But I do insist that we realize nothing is simple, no “if only” will produce utopia, and we should worry more about side effects before we begin to slice our culture into something better.

Sunday

The thing about everything is that it is so unexpected, because we ignore it until we don’t. We’re so busy talking, thinking, planning, driving, or doing something requiring concentration that much of the world never exists in our perception. Like in that famous experiment where people instructed to count the number of passes in a video of a basketball game never see a gorilla that is walking casually through the scene.
I know I miss an awful lot of gorillas every moment. Even more distressingly, even the ones I take note of fade as time goes by. That’s one reason I am less certain of what I am certain of these days.

Exercising Ghosts

Monday

American Halloween has become a surprising world export. Costumed people, carved pumpkins, ghosts and tombstones and giant spider webs now appear in Europe and China. Perhaps it is because these fears are so imaginary that they banish real ones for a while. Nobody comes dressed as a crazed serial killer, drunken driver, cancer patient, religious cult maniac, or any of the other terrors truly to be feared daily, even by the most well-off.
Originally, I suppose, “hallowed eve” was a sly counterpoint to “all saints day” in the Catholic European calendar, something to make the dull saints themselves more appealing. Maybe it safely encapsulated pagan traditions of druids and ghosts and witches into one well-contained night. But it took American ingenuity and perversity (and the imagination of Washington Irving) to turn it into candy and dress-up. Since it is one of the few holidays not associated with pompous tradition _ no commentators are spouting off about “remembering the true meaning of this day” _ folks are just glad to have a chance to celebrate being alive in a slightly crazy way.

Tuesday

I don’t fear goblins, ghosts, or ghouls,

Vampire’s silent flight,

No poltergeists come haunt my dreams

I love the still of night.

Chainsaw clowns bring no alarm

Zombie hordes no dread

Nor headless horsemen swinging swords

Giant spiders prowling webs.

I have my worries _ pain and age,

Illness striking deep

Shrinking finance, loss of home,

These all disturb my sleep

But let young children trick or treat

False terrors cause shrill screams

The real world is what bothers me

As lovely as it seems.

Wednesday

This boathouse falling into ruin is probably as close as Huntington Harbor comes to a traditional haunted castle. It’s easy to imagine mad scientists, rats in the flooded basement, bats in the belfry. And a sinister lightning rod raised into roaring gales some dark and stormy night.
Modern mad scientists don’t need abandoned mansions nor liquids bubbling ominously amidst incomprehensible apparatus. They sit munching Cheetos and drinking cola in some dark room, as they peck away at computer code that will end civilization as we know it. Doesn’t make nearly so good a movie, but the story is excessively frightening just the same.

Thursday

“Hey, Jim, what’s new?” I asked, pausing outside the library.

“Grandkids scared me to death, making me take them to the movies. I didn’t even know they made stuff like ‘Prince Vlad Goes Mad At Home Depot, Part III.’”

“Sounds strange enough, I admit.”

“You have no idea what can be done with the chainsaws and other stuff from the tool section during a hurricane blackout …”

“Are the kids all right?”

“Oh, them, they laughed through the whole thing. Me, I have trouble sleeping. What ever happened to stuff like the headless horseman or witches in the forest? That, I could handle.”

“Maybe when you were younger,” I mused. “I was always unable to take any suspense.”

“What?”

“Strange, but I needed to know the ending. It was not knowing how it would turn out that I couldn’t stand.”

“Well,” he laughed, “at least that made your own life easy.”

“How so?”

“You always knew , like the rest of us, the inevitable end of that story.”

“A mean, low blow, Jim,” I managed.

“Happy Halloween!” he chortled.

Friday

Cemeteries are haunted by ghosts, which inhabit each human mind. Some ghosts are of the past, of times that are no more, of people who once meant much to us or to their worlds. Some are of futures and where we might be and how we could be remembered. Some are hopes into the vast unknown about what life really is. All these ghosts truly accompany us amidst the stones, here in the present.
Depending on your outlook, cemeteries are interesting, or meditative, or depressing. And that too is because all interpretation on Halloween, as on every other day, resides in ourselves. Our responsibility is to achieve insight from these spaces, and apply it well to what we can affect now.

Saturday

We believe other “higher” animals engage in play, but none so completely as humans. We have the capacity to encapsulate all kinds of information into metaphors, tales, riddles, dreams, and songs and somehow all that helps us survive in our world. Play is a miraculous gift, we can shape our world magically to fit our needs.
Tragic or triumphant tales of evil spirits, for example, are a playful way to put our lives into perspective. We can face ghostly danger, even allow ourselves to be terrorized by it, while nevertheless retaining some control of the narrative. Sometimes such play gets out of hand, when imaginings project balefully into our environment _ such as blaming problems on a witch or demon-possessed other . But usually we understand that the spiritual world is truly beyond our immediate reach and control.
An ability to play is a survival skill for consciousness. At Halloween, for example, we direct can pretend to be something else, to imagine a world controlled differently than our daily one, to ignore usual mundane roles.
Halloween and other holidays help us realize that what is normal may not be the only way things could be. That’s what play is all about _ imagining alternatives and sometimes using them to create a better reality.

Sunday

Foliage mellows into subdued colorations; crisp breezes slice through patches of warmer air; ducks land with splashes as geese fly noisily overhead. People either decide it’s time to return to the climate controlled gym or bundle up appropriately. Fall not yet fierce, but definitely arrived.
I feel bewitched and kick the leaf-piles along the street, an expression of the child I still think I am. Most people have now shed their costume, unfortunately I am still clad in mine which is bald and wrinkled and much more than skin deep.

Real Mysterious

Monday

Science would analyze this image as shapes, or possibly emanations of platonic mathematical interactions. Hidden forces, nucleonic stress, covalent bonding, wave interaction, and hidden bits sleeting through mostly empty space. That is reality, science claims, if only poor human senses were better attuned. Pleasure, beauty and all the rest cannot be measured by a machine, are transient and incomprehensible, cannot be detected by a supercollider.
I see water, trees, autumn; I feel my body my breath; I experience memories and fantasies; I am joyful tired; meanwhile an old tune floats unbidden through my mind. And much else, simultaneous. I do not see mostly empty space and forces. I claim all that _ and more _ including all I am each moment _ is what is real in my universe. We need to push back against a technologic age that measures all truth with electrons and pretends intelligence is the same as conscious being.

Tuesday

We’re each a universe unique

I can’t know yours, nor you know me.

Existing fully human,

Sole mystery worth knowing,

Entire the purpose of our day.

You’re just a bag of water, salts

A walking, talking, thinking sea.

Unbidden hormone magic

Keys ancient fears, joy, hope

Bids you rest, or run away.

No quark holds hope, no hidden force

Casts joy or hope or fear or glee.

No meter measures joy nor fear

No container safe stores dreams

No switch turns on love’s ray.

“A kind of farthing dip”? Oh no

Much more the lord of all I see.

Turn water blue, ride liquid wave

Paint sunrise gloried expectation

Singing on my way.

Wednesday

Warm days have everyone thinking summer again, but that will shortly change as another cold front moves in. And then, will these days have existed at all, or are they figments of memory? Everyone knows they live only in the moment, but few comprehend what that actually means.
Time and the other dimensions of space are the big elephants in the room for our logical mathematical models of the universe. There are no time particles, no width leptons, no depth atoms. These things _ just are. Isn’t that obvious? Well, no it’s not, and although faith that time is somehow real colors all we learn, we are fools indeed to think we have any true grasp of its nature.

Thursday

“I see they think they found another elusive particle,” says Bill, looking up from his paper.

“And that will solve all the world’s problems,” I answer sarcastically. “A lot of money for something nobody can see nor use. And the proof is pretty flaky, as far as I can tell.”

“Oh, you’re one of those anti-science people, like my various fruitcake relatives? They never met a spiritual idea they didn’t like and take for absolute truth, even though each vision contradicts the other and is demonstrably useless in real life.”

“Not anti-science, not anti-spiritual either. Not sure a crazy particle is much more valuable than a yoga session, is all. After all, what’s more real _ your happiness or the hormones and electric currents that presumably cause it?”

“At least the equipment and techniques use
d for science eventually yield something tangible and useful.”

“But Bill, you could say the same about philosophical insights gained from various spiritual disciplines.”

“Nutcase!”

“Frigging Geek!”

Friday

Are clouds real? Science would say yes, as areas of condensed water vapor capable of blocking or reflecting sunlight slightly more than surrounding atmosphere. Human characterizations of clouds as white, fluffy, floating, soft or threatening are purely subjective. Only imagination can project faces, animals, and other objects into such random shapes. Meanwhile, clouds form part of an experienced moment, a casual scene, and may alter mood by portending future or recalling past events.
All these characteristics are unities complete which do not sum to a greater whole. A cloud is never 10% soft, 2% threatening, 12% water vapor, and 30% looking like a puppy. Casual mathematics fails to enter this reality. For me at any time a cloud can be all these things and more, or may slip by completely unnoticed. Yet each perception is a reality in itself while part of the reality of the whole, and it’s little use to try to constrain all that with logic and mathematical models.

Saturday

Theoretical scientists continue to search for the “Theory of Everything” which will tie together all their mathematical models of the universe. Religious scholars seek to divine the meaning and purpose of life, which will explain who we are and what we should do. These are natural quests of a human mind focused on discovering patterns in its environment.
Renaissance humanists resisted the scholastic Christianity of their time, which sought to understand God through deep perusal of ancient documents and dense logic constructed on fragile intuitive foundations. I think we need some of that same refocusing now. Science is wonderful in giving us a better understanding of how to be comfortable in our physical world. Religion is useful in defining ideal personal values and social interactions. Both, however, are tools.
Each of us is an embodied Theory of Everything as well as the central meaning and purpose of our own consciousness. We each know that. It does not seem enough. Surely, we believe, we must be part of a greater pageant, something more eternal and grand than our flickering and insubstantial moments of brief existence. Besides, to fully embrace that we are nothing more important than our own being can easily lead to monstrous conclusions, from solipsistic isolation to truly horrible behavior in the pursuit of our selfish needs.
The sane path, and the one most of us eventually accept, is that on all the most important issues, not only do we not know but we cannot know. Whatever the deepest scientific construction of the cosmos, whatever the spiritual dimensions of the universe, we are middle players, incapable of knowing beyond our inherent limits. I accept science as it affects my life; I conform to philosophy (religious or otherwise) as it helps me feel and act better in society, which is a massive part of my experience.
We are individuals, and alone in our minds. You wake up yourself each morning. But in just as real a sense, you are part of your society, and without its mirror you also do not exist. My language, my behavior, my goals and triumphs are defined within that construct. Nothing is easy, except that possibly the most obvious fact of all is that each of us is absolute reality.

Sunday

“Whence cometh Jack Frost?” Dylan Thomas asked. He knew better than anyone that Jack came from stories, from people. For children and those with memories or imagination, Jack Frost is as real as white ice on grass or sparkling crystals lining leaves in mockingly brilliant dawn sun.
Our practical society exhorts us to use our imagination only to conjure technological improvements or to focus on distant monetary goals. Daydreaming is an idle waste of time, an abomination deeply etched in our puritanical book of sins. Yet I enjoy imagining impossibilities, fantasizing with no purpose at all, entertaining myself far more effectively than can most media extravaganzas. Fabled anthropomorphic characterizations are one of our most powerful tools to achieve enchantment with the world. Even though I know whence Jack Frost, I’m glad he has stopped by for a few visits.

Turnings

Monday

Weekend of extended late November weather suddenly reminded everyone of the true season. It’s been deep summer for so long that many turning points to autumn passed unnoticed. Spartina grass is almost done with seeds and beginning to shade orange-brown , for example. Some leaves have hardly had time to begin turning colors before they were ripped down by fierce winds.
We think of seasons by average _ a perfect summer day, a crisp fall afternoon _ but no day is truly average. Natural cycles are determined by far more than mere temperatures, and proceed along almost heedless of how warm or cold it may be. On the other hand, I tend to ignore everything except how warmly I must dress. A fault in my makeup, aggravated by our technological isolation from those cycles. No complaints, of course.

Tuesday

While walking woods, inspecting leaf,

Each flower, mushroom, bird, and beast

Looking up, I’m struck amazed

Fields, not forests, meet my gaze.

Strolling sandy shore in dreams

Lost in fantasy’s bright gleams

A splash of wet shocks thoughtful train

When did the sunshine turn to rain?

Toiling troubled on some task

All concentration focused fast

Hours speed in heedless flight

Suddenly long day is night

Compartments sharp, division tight

Twixt field and forest, day and night

By logic crisply boxed in mind

But nature blends, obscuring lines.
Wednesday

Not all the signs of autumn are purely natural. This boat yard was recently an empty lot, and now is quickly filling with craft wrapped against the coming weather. For each area filled thus on land, an empty space is left in the harbor, so that view becomes more open. Marinas busily scrape and wash the bottoms of each vessel as it is taken from the water, covered with an accumulation of algae and barnacles.
Besides that, all I really need to do is look at the people, including myself. I’ve been wearing long jeans instead of shorts for some time, usually with a sweatshirt, occasional light gloves, sometimes even a heavy jacket and wool cap. A few die-hards will run until snow in nothing but shorts and tee-shirt, but this time of year more and more pedestrians give in and subtly wish summer goodbye as the temperature dips and a chill north wind becomes a daily presence.

Thursday

“Water looks pretty clean today,” remarked Josh when I passed him near the head of the harbor.

“It usually does clear up this time of year,” I noted, “when the algae stop blooming, I think.”

“Surprised there aren’t more oil slicks, though, with all these boats.”

“I’ve been noticing that there seems to be a lot less junk floating around as well.”

“Maybe things are getting better.”

“They say there were whales in Long Island Sound this summer. Seals too.”

“No lobsters, though,” added Josh.

“Yeah, hard to tell. Lots of fish, but maybe that’s just cause the ocean’s so bad with all the little plastic pieces. Sometimes I do hope we’ve turned a corner.”

“You’re too much an optimist.”

“Hey, look at China. It turned into one big 1960 Pittsburgh with smog and polluted rivers, but it looks like they’ll end up cleaning it up almost as fast. The air and water is certainly better around here than it was twenty years ago. I can dream.”

“Me, I think it’s too late, like the climate scientists say. We’re travelers in the desert who suddenly start rationing water halfway across, but we should have been doing so from the beginning of the trip.”

“Today is nice, the water’s clear, the sky is blue. Enjoy the day.”

“Oh, I suppose, I suppose. See you tomorrow.”

Friday

Doesn’t take keen observation to see increasing patches of color _ some brilliant _ on scattered trees. Nor to notice that most ground plants are blending into a mélange of brittle browns. Over the next month, seasonal cues will be increasingly obvious, some almost brutal. Not only visual, of course, a fair amount of wind, rain, and temperature will get into the act. And the sun _ already rising later than most people, drifting southward at an alarming pace, and setting way too early.
I try to enjoy each day and season as it comes, so I do not live in keen expectation nor dread of winter. I can’t help hearing other people expressing relief that the cool air has finally arrived, or fear that snow and cold will soon block the highways. For us, in this time, in this place, it is far less fraught than it was for our ancestors. We don’t worry if the food supply is sufficient and has been properly preserved, we don’t measure the woodpile to be certain there are enough cords to be chopped later, we don’t anguish over the last of the fresh vegetables we will eat until next summer. Most of us have it remarkably easy, which doesn’t keep me from complaining. Human nature.

Saturday

Worries of human-induced global climate change are shrilly echoed in most media, except for anti-science purposely ignorant folks who have their own reasons for things to remain as they are. We are assured that we are reaching tipping points, statistics of melting glaciers and rising temperatures are paraded before us, and computer models show increasingly dire outcomes. Logically, it is hard to disagree that something is going on, possibly something bad.
And yet _ well there are always Cassandras and prophets of doom. Most of them slink back down from the mountain caves when their predicted end dates come and go. Computer models just don’t work with the vast chaos of large systems of weather and society. Tipping points are just dramatizations of dream visions. No computer model can give you the exact local temperature an hour from now, and it gets worse from there.
Extrapolations are horrible, scientists will claim, because of “black swan events” like meteors or varied output from the sun or whatever. But there are always such events. What would be the effect on global warming of, say, a plague carrying off eighty percent of the humans? Historic recreations of society give no clue what we might do _ no model in 1910 could have predicted the next fifty years of war; no model in 1960 could have predicted that humans would avoid nuclear war, let alone engulf everything electronically.
So, we are right to be skeptical. And sometimes humans do change. Our environmental awareness is better, pollution is less, resource usage per capita is stabilizing. Amazing things seem to happen when we recognize true dangers and concentrate on them.
But right now, who knows? Some even assert that global warming is holding off the return of an ice age. And it is hard to seriously believe that changing all my lightbulbs and lowering the thermostat will make a dent in a world of war planes dropping bombs and spewing gasses from their exhaust.

Sunday

Sometime in the last month, this old pine slipped from dying into death. For the entire summer that seemed inevitable, yet there was still some shock at its final loss. Soon it will fall, or be cut down, and another scene will be replaced.
I always enjoyed this one tree of its type, reminding me of old Chinese ink paintings. Layered in snowfall, standing firm against the north wind, glistening from rain, needles and cones framing lovely views. And now _ well I have old pictures, and memories, but they slip away. The gap between life and death spans far more than simple cessation of certain chemical processes, even for a tree clinging to the harborside.

Berry Happy

Monday

Berries are everywhere, along with fruits, nuts, seeds, even hidden tubers. Although some are stunted from lack of water, like children everywhere lives of offspring were prioritized by parents, and the crop remains far too large to be fully consumed by birds or the few remaining small ground animals. Some will hang on through winter, when finding enough to eat is a different matter entirely.
Once upon a time in much of our Northern hemisphere, this was harvest time and harvest moon, with final picking, pickling, canning, drying, salting and smoking. Busy days and nights storing bounty against the certain famine to come. Today _ well according to most media, harvest moon is just some curiosity to point out to youngsters, another irrelevant tidbit from the past like the names of months. Most of us claim to be overworked, but at least as frost approaches again, I think we are clueless as to what our ancestors accomplished.

Tuesday

Fruits promise future

Encapsulate life gone

Carry

Universe complete

Wednesday

Berries, unlike most seeds and nuts, tend to attract attention with color or scent. They sit in field or forest flashing a bright “eat me” message. Seems a peculiar way to do things, going to all that work only to have offspring begging to be consumed. Ah, but the fruit is not the seed, and the undigested seed falls wherever it is dropped by animal or bird, enclosed in a handy packet of fertilizer. Such long-term complexity is astounding.
Many berries are nutritious and delicious for humans, although others try to keep our species from bothering with them, like this hard, dry, tasteless and (for all I know) poisonous yellow variety. I came late to berry appreciation, although these days I have them on my cold cereal every morning. When I was a kid, the only way to get them year-round was as some kind of jelly or jam, since the natural harvest season for any given berry is often short indeed.

Thursday

Met Joe coming out of Been & Jerry’s on Main street, waffle cone in hand. “That looks good! What flavor?”

“Cherry Garcia,” he responded happily, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “I like cherries, especially after the pits are removed.”

“Ah, but I think the sugar helps,” I said.

“Of course, of course.”

“Tell me,” I asked, “I’ve been wondering because I read so much about it. Do you think that berries and vegetables and all tasted so much better when we were growing up?”

“Well, you know, I could taste things a lot better back then.”

“Agreed, but to read some of the reviews now, once upon a time each bite was an orgasmic sensation. I don’t find strawberries or tomatoes or _for that matter _ cherries remarkably different than I remember.”

“Well, I do know store tomatoes were pretty awful for a while.”

“Yeah, but that was true even back then. We grew our own _ I guess tomatoes might be nicer just picked from our garden, but everything else was just fruit and whatever.”

“I liked most of them better in jam or with sugar,” he admitted.

“I know nobody wrote them up. The farm stands didn’t get much beyond fresh and local. Sometimes sweet, especially for the corn. But nothing matched current fantastic descriptions of luscious heritage crops.”

“Capitalism in action,” Joe noted.

“They can get away with it,” I said, “who’s going to remember or call them out anyway?”

“The old days were always so much better,” sarcastic.

“I think it’s too many food writers with nothing real to do, and maybe too much food.”

Friday

Small fruit like this crabapple is hard to distinguish from berries, and for that matter by common scientific definition a lot of what are called berries are “really” fruit. But a berry is just one of the many sub-specifications of fruit in general. Sometimes it’s more fun to go with the
obvious and decide anything within a certain size range is a berry for all intents and purposes.
Our age has a mania for classification, for we have largely convinced ourselves (like primitives supposedly used to think about photographs) that by fully describing something in words we have captured its soul. In a nutshell, that represents the problem with all those who gabble on about artificial intelligence and how a computer “like us” will soon be constructed. The name of the thing, the description of the thing, a model of the thing, are not the thing itself, and wisdom respects that.

Saturday

Like children, we smugly believe that a workable theory explains everything, and we gain control by knowing. Thus it has been with evolution. Lots of time. Drive to reproduce. Overproduction of offspring, some of them genetically varied from parents. Survival of the fittest. Bingo, nothing more to be said. Before that the theory was just a simplistic _ a god or gods who created everything just so just for us.
Anyone who pulls themselves out of the madness of basic simplicity realizes that even if basic ideas like “survival” or “gravity” or “atoms” are “true”, their manifestations in our real world are certainly not. In a way, it is the exact opposite of Plato’s cave. Instead of the “ideals” outside the cave casting shadows which we take for real things, the real things we know cast shadows into our logic which create models we mistake for reality. Reality always is what is, our explanations are necessarily incomplete (but useful) ways to gain power over our environment.
Berries, fruits, seeds are examples of incredible complexity. Stationary plants that use insects to cross pollinate to produce enticing fruits to be eaten and spread farther than the wind could carry. Animals that eat the fruits. Insects that need the flower pollen. Environments to support everything. And sure, some smart aleck will show how any particular part of it is easily explained with a simple modification of this or that theory, until another layer of infinite onion is peeled off and yet more fantastic anomalies are revealed.
I admire science as much as anyone, and believe it is a better tool for human control than anything else. What I am not sure of is that a tool for control is necessarily the best tool for figuring out what should be done. It’s the old “use the hammer for everything because we have a hammer” problem. The need now is not to stop using science nor to limit its applications, but rather to understand that in certain areas we have better tools that we should be concentrating on.
The analogy I would close with would be cooking. Scientifically, we can more and more finely describe and tune how to make and season a given dish, such as a cheese omelet. But sometimes we want a steak, or ice cream, or salad. Understanding why we want such things, how they might make us happy or unsatisfied, how much of a role cooking should play in our lives, and our very thoughts concerning meals and memories and how each of us is totally different from each other rapidly become too complex for any equations which can be applied to our fast-moving “real” world.

Sunday

All mammals learn by observing others, as well as through their own senses. Humans add to that being able to convey information with modulated sounds or irregular marks on some surface. Poison ivy seems to be a combination of all three _ warnings by parents, experience with leaves, and unappetizing appearance of the berries themselves. Birds and other wildlife apparently enjoy these immensely.
By the time the fruit appears, even the most stubborn child has learned that shiny three lobed leaves should be left alone, which is fortunate because otherwise there might be some wicked poisonings in the fall. It takes longer for older folks to realize that even the bare vines are hazardous, and burning smoke doubly so. Yet for all its inconvenience, poison ivy is much too hard to root out entirely, and pretty enough if left alone. So we follow a live and let live philosophy, one of the few rigorously enforced by both man and nature.

Equal Times

Monday

Now night becomes longer than day, warmth is lost not only because there are extra hours to radiate into space, but also because at these upper latitudes light rays hit with diminishing force. Ancient peoples in the Northern Hemisphere mythologized that evil demons were eating the sun. Now with fire and electricity people conveniently ignore such superstitions and logically move indoors to enjoy the benefits of science.
We have our own mythologies: that an individual can control his fate, that a culture can ignore environment. Hermetically sealed people dismiss climate and relentlessly concentrate on what matters _ wealth, power, entertainment. If descendants survive our orgies of destruction, they will no doubt look back with a wiser philosophy and wonder about us _ the demons who wrecked their world.

Tuesday

All days are lovely, if I take the time

Moods generate beyond known bounds of space

Internal visions, filters finely honed

Each tame my world, force it as I wish

Cast a spell _ enchantment or dark curse

If all were gone, still I my universe

Could build, project, imagine as I dare.

When I am gone, entire this infinite

Must also vanish, swift as fragile thought

Meaningless as bubbles bursting free.

I love and care and know that this must be:

That nothing else can e’re exist as me.

Wednesday

Went to the city yesterday, and toyed with the idea of taking a picture or two. But with the Pope and UN and President all arriving later this week, there will surely be more than enough pictures to satisfy anyone. New York City is filled with people, Long Island is filled with people, Huntington is full of people. There are people everywhere around here _ it’s one of the most densely settled places on the planet _ even though this blog attempts to give some impression of solitude and lonely meditation in its pictures and thoughts.
But the question rises to mind _ how often do we consider seven billion others just like us (alive at this moment, the dead would double that number.) How many of those have I heard of, even to remember a name? A few thousand but no more, were I forced to list names. We each try to excel and be important in our little circles and tribes, but looking at the larger picture we vanish like protozoa when the microscope is no longer available. That is not to claim anyone is unimportant _ just that fame is irrelevant beyond our immediate environment. I need such humbling thoughts once in a while.

Thursday

Wayne and Joan sitting in the park after lunch in Northport. Cool breeze, warm sun on an early fall afternoon. Brilliant colors, many dogs, almost no children who are in school until a little later.

“Oh, look, there’s a cute one,” says Joan. “I wonder what type that is?”

“Smallish, brown, four legs and a tail,” answers Wayne. “That’s all I know or need to know.”

“You’re impossible. Not a Pomeranian, but,” meanwhile her thoughts wander as they often do to her poor little companion, dead these three years now. None of these as cute or nice as my little angel. Wish he were here so I could show them a perfect pet.

“Look at that beautiful boat,” he points to a colored sailboat swinging in to the large dock. Oh here we go again, on and on about the dog. Why doesn’t she just look around and enjoy the day?

“Maybe I should get a new one.” Of course he could never be like my little angel and you never know if it will turn out nasty. But at least a little dog would pay more attention to me than my husband does.

“If we got a boat it would be something like that, but of course I don’t want a boat,” continued Wayne stubbornly for the hundredth time, trying to change the subject. Well, I guess that’s what we old people do, chew the same old cuds over and over out here in the pasture.

“Like you say, though, it would limit our travels and does take some care.” But, on the other hand, we hardly ever seem to do anything exciting anyway.

“That sun and the sparkles are just perfect for paintings.” The trouble is, it never stays a dog but turns into a little child that requires all kinds of effort and can never be left alone. Well, no use creating waves. I’ll just enjoy being here with so many fine vistas.

And so it went, for an hour, two streams of conversation barely registering, two streams of consciousness in alternate universes. The trouble is, as you get on in years, you tend to stay in a comfort zone with a few people, and all those people tend to tell the same stories and topics over and over again. The advantage, of course, is that we all forget conversations almost as fast as they occur.

Friday

Scenes are distant, but near is important. Shells marking the tide line along the sand remind that although we are part of a grand vista, we are also just little fragments of flotsam washed up by endless waves.
I try to marvel at near as well as far. Closely inspect the petals of a flower, take pains to study a seed or leaf. Often I fail, in too much in a hurry to bother. The tiny as well as the large surround me with miracles, and I am the poorer for not recognizing them each moment.

Saturday

Obviously, everything changes. Yet we assume there is an underlying solidity to the universe. A rock will remain an inert rock, a tree will grow, water will stay in an ocean. That seems simple truth, and we frame our thoughts to accommodate the pattern. Such simple truth is wrong.
Matter is not solid, but a strange blend of forces in tension, leptons leaping in and out of existence, nuclear forces pushing or pulling other forces to form atoms, atoms ignoring a hurricane of neutrinos and other subatomic “particles”, once in a while interacting with a passing photon. The earth does not simply go around the sun, it is in a precarious balance of gravity pulling one way and inertia another. What seems to be equilibrium is the result of contrasting forces, each forever ready to break the current illusion of stability.
Life is even more so. Our bodies do not maintain a steady temperature _ certain processes raise heat, others carry it off, and when it goes too far wrong we die. Likewise with countless biologic “norms” that we take for granted, but which are almost magically balanced _ until they are not and we are no more. Processes build on one another to larger cycles _ hunger, sleep. Everything changes, but much changes within certain boundaries.
All these discoveries are recent and counterintuitive. Our concept of society has yet to catch up with what has been learned. Economics, government, religion still assume natural balancing states rather than uneasy and temporary accidents of countering vector forces. Yes, we know about equations for supply and demand, and checks and balances for rulers. But supply and demand, for example, are not solid in themselves, but rather composed of infinitely and indeterminately fluctuating energies.
Amazingly, we still accomplish great things, plan and deal with problems, get by with little more than our intuitive understandings. Perhaps, at this point, we should trust that intuition more than quasi-scientific logic.

Sunday

Final trio of showy wildflowers are goldenrod, asters, and Montauk daisies usually blooming last. A few stubborn blossoms remain on other plants, ragged and scattered, especially the annuals that have now mostly dried to stiff brown. Even these daisies show significant damage from the extended and deep drought this summer.
Cultivated gardens will continue to show color until the first frost, when the final performance will be given by maples and hickories and beeches. But we all know that this is just a matter of time, and pretty quickly advancing time at that. Already in the evenings I can be tempted to turn on the heat, and it’s nearly frightening how dark early mornings have become, and how quickly late afternoon shadows transmute to night.