September Seeds

Monday

Milkweed puffs ready to take flight over the ripening goldenrod fields at Upland Farms.

In September all the fruits and seeds finally ripen and begin their hopeful dormancies for seasons to come. Fields are filled with floating white silk milkweed rising into clouds of dragonflies, while thistle weeds begin their journey through the bowels of yellow finches which will spread them about. Wild grapes await harvest, although many birds prefer abundant poison ivy berries.
The last flowers are rushing to climax. Goldenrod and asters join the late parade of pigweed and grasses of all kinds. There are only a few weeks until equinox, a scant two months until first frost.
I have known that intellectually for some time. But did I not, the bounteous climax of the natural world would inform me that vast changes are soon to occur.

Tuesday

If smartweed were not so invasive, it would probably be cultivated for its late, bright, vigorous display.

Few songs and poems are composed to our native hickory trees. Oaks are mighty and strong in song and story, willows weep for poets, and stately beeches inspire young lovers to carve initials. But hickories are frankly dirty nuisances to suburban homeowners.
Their tannic acids poison the ground around them, making it all but impossible to grow things underneath. Branches sprout at right angles, tempting breaks in snowfall and wind, forcing expensive trimming. Compound leaves get caught in gutters and ornamental bushes as they fall. And the nuts.
Oh, the nuts. If they were only easily opened and sweetly edible they would provide a vast wonderful harvest. They are neither. Instead the huge green fruits dent cars as they fall, bruise the unwary head beneath when the wind blows. And fall by countless pounds to be swept painfully into barrels.
Of course, this was once their climax forest. Sometimes I think they know it, and are screaming their resentment of our intrusion all year long.

Wednesday

Hickory nuts ripening and ready to be knocked down by autumnal storms or scampering squirrels.

Great oaks from little acorns grow.
The very concept of seeds is an incomprehensible miracle.

Thursday

Dandelion puffs are clichés of literature and photography _ for very good reasons.

Autumn harvests are the grand reinforcement of temperate zone natural cycles. In the tropics monsoons come and go, dry periods arrive periodically, but September in the Northern Hemisphere signals a need to get crops in, to save seeds for next year, possibly to sow overwintering cereal crops for early harvest.
Daily cycles are easy to understand. Tides are much more difficult. Weather is impossible. But anticipation of winter arrival in most of the northern hemisphere was once a matter of life and death. Until our ancestors were intelligent and culturally wise enough to prepare half a year in advance of their quotidian needs, they could not struggle onto the vast panoramas of Europe and Asia.

Friday

Lovely purple bunches of ripe pokeweed rarely survive bird appetites for very long.

Fruits now have become huge and heavy, hard or rotting, depending on evolved natural strategies which are always fascinating. These plants depend on attracting animals to eat their seeds and spread them about. An alternate poetic method of vegetation mobility is flight on the winds.
Dandelions are almost done, but the autumn air is filled with white motes of milkweed, thistle, and vast variations such as asters. These depend on fluff to ride stronger breezes and gales. By necessity, such seeds are minuscule, and it is hard to believe they can pack in enough genetic material to begin anew on some appropriate soil after a harsh winter.

Saturday

Graceful plumes feather against blue skies as summer slides away as quietly and inevitably as the tide.

“Whee! What a ride!” cries tiny Alda, floating along a blue breeze.

“The golden hours, just as they told us,” laughs Janice, “What a view!”

“And to think they taught us genes are all work and no fun …”

Tiny milkweed parachutes in the immensity of early autumn, fragile, eternal, wonderful.

Sunday

Grasses flicker in constant breeze, blurring meadows, seascapes, path sides, and edges of ponds.

Gigantic firs, stupendous fungi

Start as tiny invisible spores

Impossible but true

Throughout lives we worship nature

For all our science

Life as ineffable as ever was

Locally Grown

Monday

Sumac ripens along field borders, all but unnoticed in our daily rush.

Cool wet weather all summer long delayed the usual local harvest of zucchini, tomatoes, and corn. Besides, most of the farms on Long Island are being eliminated by suburban sprawl, and by the simple fact that the farmers have decided there are better ways to live. But finally, most have arrived.
We hardly notice. A few people try to be locavores, and I appreciate getting things at least from nearby upstate or New Jersey, but the fact is transportation and the selection of traits has made almost everything local. New Zealand lamb, Brazilian beef, Nicaraguan bananas, Mexican tomatoes _ I expect to get these and more any time all year round. More than that, the varieties of local zucchini or cucumbers or apples I search out will most likely be identical to those from global sources.
This does not distress me. In olden days, only fortunate countries like France were able to have the culinary resources now available to everyone every day. I am grateful that in deepest winter I can feast on strawberries at breakfast, or fresh green beans at night. And still enjoy very expensive Long Island tomatoes from a few farms out east.

Tuesday

The solitary apple tree on the harbor is having a hard year, with dying lower branches and only a few fruits.

An accidental apple tree at water’s edge illustrates the dilemma of organic farming. With no use of fertilizer or pesticides the fruits are small, mottled, hard, and riddled with worm holes. Some years there is no crop at all.
Many of us do not realize how much effort goes into apple culture. Trees must be kept reasonably high, trimmed constantly much like grape vines or apples are almost impossible to harvest. In spring, efforts are necessary _ sometimes unsuccessful _ to protect delicate blossoms from late frost. If native bees are in short supply, professional hive-keepers must arrive at the proper time for pollination. And even organic fruit must use at least “natural” bug sprays like Bt. Finally, even with machine help, there is considerable manual work getting all the apples picked and packed at the right time and sent off, often across the continent, to reach our supermarkets where we take their availability for granted.
This apple tree might supply a few families around here, if we were careful and lucky and spent a lot of time working with it. But it is already way too big for effective use, I’m not sure there are enough bees around, and the constant air pollution from the nearby road _ not to mention what might be in the groundwater _ might not be good for us anyway.

Wednesday

Beans and tomatoes from a friend’s garden are organically flawed but delicious.

Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Overly complicated recipes spoil our palates

Thursday

End of season finds boats cramming docks as clouds thicken.

Some people have perfect pitch, and for them much of the amateur music the rest of us enjoy is a painfully untuned torture. Some experts can identify one beer from another, but blind tastes also show that most folks cannot tell the difference, especially after the first drink. Our senses are marvelous and quite perfected for our daily needs, but not as highly tuned as those of animals.
That is why I look with suspicion on current food snobbery. To be honest, I think a lot of the current diners who rave over specialized heritage or rare foods are engaged in what has been called “food pornography.” Written descriptions of what they are eating overwhelm the actual experience. I doubt most of these experts could tell the difference between types of tomatoes if blindfolded.
That goes double for “organic” food. I understand we should minimize use of fertilizer and pesticide, I fully support being very careful with genetic modification. But minimizing and being careful is not the same as pretending we can avoid them altogether. And, again, with very few able to taste the difference nor to prove there is any kind of scientific effect on our bodies, this is just another snobbish way to claim you are somehow better and more in tune with the universe than someone else.

Friday

Wild grapes encapsulate the difference that domestication has made in our food supply.

Locally grown tomatoes have arrived in stores, and I enjoy them more than those raised in greenhouses the rest of the year. On the other hand, these commercial tomatoes are indistinguishable from those from
backyards and given to me by happy neighbors. Same for zucchini and cucumbers, which I accept gratefully.
We have become a bit impoverished by monoculture, and have perhaps gone too far to select the sweetest corn and best-keeping tomato. Seeds and plants nurtured by amateurs are much the same as those on industrial farms. I’m happy someone is trying to bring back heritage species, although I myself cannot taste the difference.

Saturday

Clams remain about the only truly local commercial harvest, a vestige of abundance long departed.

Two tomatoes presenting themselves from overflowing bins at a farmer’s market. Each tries to outshine the other, as busy hands are picking up fruit around them.

“I’m bigger than you are, you know,” says one.

“Yeah, but I look bright and shiny and ripe,” claims the other.

“But I’m the real deal,” insists the first. “Completely organic, heritage, traditional.”

“Pooh, pooh. I’ve just as many genes and carbon atoms as you do,” scoffs the second. “Pesticides carefully washed off, fertilizers completely integrated into my superior presentation. You’re a loser.”

“But I am real, honest, natural.”

“So what do I look like, chopped liver? Your whole presentation is a hoax.”

“At least I am more expensive,” shouts the first, turning a bit redder in the blazing sun.

“Which means I am going first,” exults the second, as it is plucked into a bag and carried off.

Sunday

Kansas (the sunflower state) grows these as a crop, but here they are purely ornamental for the birds.

Frantic finish

Fruit fulfilled

Fitful fun

Summer’s done

Hard Labor

Monday

Idle tugboat anchored near the harbor channel is used to jockey various work barges into position.

Ten thousand years ago, the invention of agriculture created successful human societies (what we call civilization) based on masses of food-producing slaves supporting an elite aristocracy. Several hundred years ago, this transformed into wage slavery as the industrial revolution made peasant farmers obsolete.
Aristocracy for all those eons has come up with various justifications for its existence. Communal protection, the will of the gods, human nature itself. Almost everyone always admitted there needed to be an aristocracy, the question was only who should be in it and why.
But, like economics and other artifacts of a certain period of history, all was based on the idea of scarcity and the simple fact that only humans could make a modest surplus of goods from scarce resources. As automation progresses, those paradigms may be as obsolete as old medical theories of bad air creating disease. What happens in human society without scarcity?
The elite today desperately claim meritocracy for themselves, and the joy of purpose for everyone else. These claims will probably ring more and more hollow as machines start doing everything. This labor day is not a bad time to wonder what may replace massive work for stable and happy civilizations to come.

Tuesday

Mowing outdoors seems a relatively pleasant chore as long as somebody else is doing it.

We are not sure exactly how long it took to domesticate wild grains and animals. Basic biology seems to indicate it was less time than we might expect. Corn, for example, hardly resembles its ancient predecessors, but was only bred in the last five thousand years.
During ten thousand years of agriculture, we should also recognize that humans have been domesticating themselves. In spite of wars and other horrors, the simple fact is that civilized humans _ those that could cooperate to form extended societies _ conquered the planet. If we could study ancient pre-agricultural cultures and people, we would no doubt find significant differences from ourselves.
With good reason. That is why stupidities like the paleo-diet and other cults trying to “get back to our roots” are useless. We left our roots a long time ago, and we are as self-domesticated as any of our useful animals and plants. Like good little corn stalks, we mostly happily fit into whatever laboring niches our societies provide.

Wednesday

No paddleboard rentals when dark skies threaten and a stiff sixty-odd degree wind sweeps the waves.

Load sixteen tons, and whaddaya get ….
Ah, but doesn’t the thought of accomplishing so much set a purposeful tingle in your brain?

Thursday

Already end of summer tasks like cleaning boats for storage are in full swing.

Nobody can predict the future, but sometimes it is reasonable to project certain possibilities. Right now, most philosophers seem to be throwing their hands up at the impossibility of understanding how people would live in a fully automated society. A few science fiction writers have given that a try, now and again, but even they seem to find it hard to figure out what most people to do if nothing has to be done.
Regardless of ultimate outcome, we are already encountering issues which call for completely different perspectives. Economics of scarcity are obsolete in an affluent society. Hierarchical politics are dangerously irrelevant in an ecologically interconnected technological world. Universally recognized individual accomplishment is vanishing as instant communications fragment social networks back to small tribes.
Some problems solve themselves. But we should be aware of how such massive shifts in how we regard the universe _ the largest change in human organization since agriculture _ play out locally and in our own outlook and daily life.

Friday

This deli under various names has served a few generations of boaters and ball-players and, lately, cyclists.

A current fad is to claim humans are a social species, like bees or ants. Society is our hive. Evolution has worked through our intertwined culture, rather than individuals, for at least the last hundred thousand years. A strange thought _ New York and Beijing filled with busy workers and drones.
For the last ten thousand years, especially in the northern hemisphere, agricultural societies have eventually crushed the competition. In these cultures, eighty percent or more of the males, almost all of the females, were basically slaves, serfs, or peasants. That is what used to be called “the march of civilization,” from the golden crescent through Egypt, Greece, Rome and Europe, not excepting China and India, with a side glance at Maya, Aztec, and Inca.
For the last couple of hundred, almost all that muscle and brain and desire rushed off the farms and exchanged plows and butter churns for industrial jobs. That is still true, although the jobs have mutated greatly and are themselves fading into meaninglessness as machines do the real work.
But how is society itself mutating, as this happens? I sometimes wish I could hang around to see how it all turns out. Being part of it, I suppose, is privilege enough.

Saturday

September is bobber fishing time for snappers grown large and impossibly hungry on incoming high tide.

As I wander through crowded Union Square in late August, I notice a group of demonstrators who are apparently just wrapping up. The speaker has climbed down from his improvised soapbox and is putting away his loudspeaker. As the crowd thins, I am intrigued by the signs they carry and hasten over to speak to one.

“Workers of the World, Relax!? Don’t you mean ‘Unite’?” I ask.

“Who wants to unite?” responds the middle-aged brunette. “Unite with whom? No, we don’t want to unite with anybody, just to change the old boss for the new boss.”

“But …”

“What we want is for work to become more fun, less of a hassle and not so important to just staying alive. Give everyone a secure place in the world, and then pay them on top of that for whatever needs to be done.”

“But …”

“Life is too precious to waste working. Well, it always has been. But now we have machines to do all the big stuff and it’s time for us to take it easy.”

“But …”

“The rich lately have just been freeloading. I want to get up when they do, take time off like they do, and have the chance to focus on what I think is important like they do.

“But …”

“Relax,” she smiles. “It’s going to happen anyway. We just want to put some thought into it.”

Sunday

Boats, sand, seeding grass on a lazy morning while the rest of the world goes crazy.

I’ve been working on my purpose, all the live long day

I’ve been working on my purpose, doing what the rich folk say

I would be so sad and lonely, not rising early in the morn

Wouldn’t know how to be happy, if no factory horn

Boss Man won’t you blow

Boss Man won’t you blow that ho or orn.

Boss Man won’t you blow

Boss Man won’t you blow your horn

Someone’s in the office with Boss Man

Someone’s in that office I say ay ay ay

Someone’s in that office with Boss Man

Scheming how to steal our pay

And chanting

We’ve got more than you

Hazy Horizons

Monday

Clouds float over nearby distance, watercraft shrink with perspective, vapor blends multiple blues.

Any window with a glimpse of sky offers a horizon, although some are building roofs only a few yards away. More traditional horizons are those from a mountaintop or on the beach, where the world ends in unachievable distance. Often in August humidity is high, pollution prevalent, and horizons become lost or blurred beyond a dim bluish line.
Horizons naturally lead our thoughts to infinity and limits. We perceive an immediate barrier beyond which we cannot see, but we also understand an implied universe of more beyond. This is an interesting contradiction, contraction, tension, or summary of existence itself _ a line between known and unknown, a statement of where our normal world ends.
For most of us, horizons are of little more than aesthetic value. We empty our thoughts and stare at pretty colors, perhaps picking out shapes in clouds. We vaguely appreciate extensions beyond the vanishing points, but it is too removed to worry about. If we are on the beach, we turn to more exciting local sights, and more immediately demanding concerns like shade and beverage and how much time is left for this particular interlude.

Tuesday

No photograph fully captures what we see; I can hardly recognize this harbor horizon as shown.

I’m not a bird watcher, so my normal repertoire of waterfowl recognition is gulls, egrets, cormorants, crows, ducks, geese, and an occasional hawk or osprey. Gulls are the least intimidated of the set and often dive-bomb unsuspecting beachgoers trying to snatch a bit of food. Sometimes they act as if they are about to become militant singly or in groups _ a minor version of Hitchcock’s classic.
What I enjoy as I sit is partially the unpredictable entertainment. However the most entrancing element is demonstration of perspective. A tiny bird down the beach or out on the waves heads towards me and magnifies immensely, suddenly looming huge. Then diminishes quickly to a dot as it swoops away. Reflections on how I regard my own problems _ tiny in the distance, giant when nearby _ is inevitable.
Then I come to my senses, stop thinking, and simply enjoy the view, all the way to the infinitely far horizon.

Wednesday

Canoes have become rarer than paddleboards and kayaks, all welcome alternatives to powerboats.

Somewhere, beyond the sea somewhere …
Romantics experience the unknown as hope.

Thursday

Reeds fully grown now, preparing grain seeds for next year, beautiful even though invasive in this area.

Thinking people have long realized the Earth is round, but everyone experiences it as flat. The horizon is the demarcation, in this case, between logic and senses. We may know there is something out beyond the farthest we can see of ground or water, but what is real is all about us, to be touched or smelled or used in some way.
Unconsciously, I think we carry this over to our perception of time. There is an almost invisible line between now and whatever may be in past and future. Yet we know the past contained more, and assume the future _ whatever future _ will as well.

Friday

Late yellow flowers grab their moment and rush to seed as the frantic pace of people during summer ebbs.

I look across the wide water and see nothing. Below atomic structure, immense eternal energies seethe, in tensions that eventually create the world of molecules we know. I remain ignorant of this infinite battleground all about me.
I likewise fail to notice the molecules themselves _ gases and water vapor and tiny chunks of every element known to man _ drifting on the wind. I cannot see the miniscule detritus of life such as skin flakes and bits of feather. My eyes fail to record viruses, bacteria, pollen and tiny seeds, arachnids, and insects.
I stare through the soup and all that registers is that the horizon is clear or fuzzy. All I decide is that the air is clear or somehow stained with vapor or pollution to impede my view. My ignorance of true reality is complete, but nevertheless the horizon I do notice and the effects of the air in between are all I really need to fully exist.

Saturday

Silver Lace Vine begins to shroud fences and neglected shrubs with a blanket of delicate white blossoms.

“Look at that beautiful sailboat,” my wife exclaims. The sun sparkles brilliantly on crisscrossed waves stirred by an inconstant breeze.

“Sorry,” I say, looking up, “don’t have my glasses on.”

“So you can’t see it at all? Has the horizon vanished?”

“Oh, I see a blur. I know something is there. I just can’t quite make it out.”

“Very peculiar,” she says.

“Not so much. It’s like your problem with reading.”

“I don’t see how that could be the same.”

“You know there are words on a page, for example, you just can’t quite make out the letters.”

“Oh, OK. Well, put your glasses on.”

“I’m looking for them now,” I say. I slip them on and the distant world jumps into focus once more.

Sunday

Glaring brightness blurs far and near, perhaps a metaphor for mindless meditation.

Perfect Shangri La I think

More lazy crazy hazy days

Far from all the madding crowd

While swarms surround me nearly naked

Contradictions fill my mind

I try escaping into breeze

And for this while, a fleeting calm

Allows ignoring outside worlds.

Isolated introspection

August Beauty

Monday

Spicebush at Caumsett smells infinitely better than it looks, and it looks pretty good.

In August, I wallow in mature beauty. Spring is crystalline promise, but late summer provides perfect culmination. We can enjoy all possible masterpieces completed. Early flowers may be gone, but their fruits continue to be displayed. Leaves do not yet show inevitable decay. Animal young flourish as they rapidly grow to prepare for winter.
It seems a good time to just sit back in appreciative sloth. Of course, most times are like that for an old guy like me, but August has its own relaxing potion filled with slow flavor. The world just is, marvelous and amazing. A time to almost forget what it was, what it will be, what might happen. Existence on most August afternoons simply could not be improved.

Tuesday

Centerport children’s summer camp echoes with laughter beyond the tidal flats as life goes on.

Painting landscapes has never paid well. Before photographs and movies, artists were paid to either capture portraits or to provide entertaining drama (like the Sistine Chapel.) Seascapes were either backgrounds, or thrilling illustrations of dangerous moments.
Perhaps that is because it is so easy to appreciate open natural magnificence. It hardly requires specialized training to be entranced by mountains, plains, or rolling ocean breakers. Nature helps by allowing each of thousands of viewers at a given location to focus on a thousand different things, something for everyone.
At the beach I happily gaze at sailboats along far shores, or sparkles on the wave. My wife watches children nearby frolic in sand and tide. When I was young, I eagerly scanned young women against the spotless sky. Tomorrow, should I return, it will all be different. But just as common, just as normal, just as rewarding, just as spectacular.

Wednesday

Grasses ripen almost invisibly in various nooks along a high stone seawall.

A rose is a rose…
A rose is also several trillion cells working together to impress my several trillion cells and trillions of companion bacteria.

Thursday

St. Anne’s Lace begins the ongoing parade of late flowers which murmur summer’s passing.

We rush about, doing almost anything to prove we have existed. Take a photo, talk to someone else, build or wreck something around us. Industrial culture is a culture of doing. Dig a ditch, fill it in. Prove your day has been well used.
I’m not completely sold on frantically merchandised varieties of meditation, but anything which slows us down is a good idea. Just as important are attitudes which allow us to feel accomplishment without affecting an external artifact.
I spend more time sitting and looking deeply, pause for a moment to engage with a bee or flower or cloud. Stop in the middle of a meal or a walk to appreciate my exact point in being. The young laugh and claim I am making a virtue of necessity. Perhaps that is so.

Friday

Perennial Hibiscus amazes us each year with such grand reward for so little garden effort.

There are many kinds of snobbism, as varied as people’s beliefs. Some, for example, dismiss cultivated flowers as less impressive than native ones, no matter how they look. Others refuse to enjoy anything which is too common, or too easy to enjoy. “Oh,” they exclaim, “that’s just a cheap variety of red rose.”
A newspaper story recently queried some “floral professionals” on flowers they claim to hate, and as might be expected, the answers were always common flowers that everyone else loves most. How otherwise could they maintain that their own expertise is valuable?
But I love whatever blooms I can find this month, after the midsummer annuals have gone to seed. If the hibiscus and rose of Sharon and geraniums march on in brilliant beauty only with human help, I am content. It is just as much a mistake to pretend people are not part of the environment as it is to ignore our environment entirely.

Saturday

Marigolds compete with kayaks on our misty public beach, a scene which will probably vanish within twenty years.

Shadow from a hulking twitchy young man falls on a woman lounging back in a beach chair. Gulls fight for bread which small children throw at them. “Hey Mom, doing nothing again, I see,” he laughs roughly.

“Ah, Justin, this is just so beautiful and perfect. You should try it sometime …”

“Waste of time, beauty, What good is it? What is beauty anyway?”

“Deep questions from you? I guess college has broadened your mind more than I thought. You guys get into heated discussions like this over beer at the bar?”

“Not hardly!” he exclaims. “But we have one teacher … Anyway, I’m sure you can’t answer the question.”

She thinks a moment. “Well, whatever it is, I think it requires variety and change. And people. You’ll never convince me a bird or dog experiences beauty.”

“Is that all?” he snarks.

“Enough. Anything more just gets muddy. But this, right now, is beautiful. Now, Justin, you sit down right here and tell me everything that is happing with you.”

“Aw, Mom.” In resignation, he flops on the towel next to her and begins his story.

The gulls flop off to panhandle further down the sand.

Sunday

Fish clustering in thousands at head of harbor presumably trying to advance up streams that have been dammed.

August moon fills harvest songs

But now we harvest all year long

Summer sand and beach once rare

We visit year round through the air

I take for granted all my days

Hardly note late summer haze

My mind as emptied as the sky

August simply rushes by

Firmly Middle

Monday

Ho hum, just another pleasant view on another normal day, nothing to be excited about, unless I am alive.

“Jack of all trades, master of none” is the pejorative version of “renaissance man” who is, presumably, master of everything. A renaissance person is now conceptually impossible even for an immortal _ who could possibly know nor use all the knowledge that has accumulated over time? We could, of course, select categories _ a master flute player who is also a Nobel physicist and industrial tycoon _ but even the most outrageous of such fantasies ignore all the rest of human possibility.
So the common wisdom is to give up breadth and simply be the best at some specialization and let everything else fall as it will. I think this is a disease of our culture, not merely in careers but also in daily life. Folks who narrow themselves into pure categories to fully enjoy the essence of perfection are giving up a large part of the simple joy of being. It is possible, for example, to enjoy wine or food without becoming a connoisseur of vintage and cuisine.
Perhaps time spent in carefully cultivating nuance could be better utilized for modest appreciation of other worldly miracles. We resist this thought because then we would simply be one of the crowd, like everyone else, and this culture pushes hard to terrorize us about not being uniquely worthwhile.

Tuesday

Rose of Sharon, like goldenrod, is an early reminder that summer is slipping away quickly.

Darwinism has been twisted into all kinds of pretzels to explain and justify almost anything. “Survival of the fittest,” which is a perversion of “natural selection” attains the status of holy writ. We automatically think of “biggest” “best” “most agile” “best adapted.” Of course, most of the really specialized magnificently focused species are evolutionary dead ends, and die when their environment changes. Like some job categories these days.
Consider our most successful evolved companions _ mosquitoes, cockroaches, rats, bacteria, fungi. Hardly specialized. Mosquitoes are pretty pesky things and seem not to care too much about which blood they feast on. If a particular bird species dies out, mosquitoes don’t starve. We should recognize that like them, we are happy generalists, and it is our lack of specialization _ not our ability to focus narrowly on problems _ that provides us true freedom.

Wednesday

Under billowing overcast skies, water grasses dance delicately amidst reflections and shadows.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
But perhaps “well” should be defined as “just good enough.”

Thursday

Abstract light and dark form phantom compositions only my mind might notice.

Everybody wants to be special, we are told. It’s a pillar of social control. Blue bloods always preach that they are in charge for a reason, even if that reason is simply that god or fate has been on their side. Lately they claim they are smarter. It’s always a justification for why they have more and everyone else has less. Once upon a time their needs were insatiable, but now there is a bit a trouble as all needs have generally been overfilled.
At this point, elites sprouting ever more plumage look like sickly extremes of a genetic bell curve. How many pretty (expensive) tail feathers can they display? How does that make them more fit?
Humans do not generate peacock feathers or saber-tooth fangs. Our singular adaptability for survival is our individual mind and our social skills, which we can adjust internally. Being happy with what we have, at least in an affluent society, may be a better survival strategy than frantically and neurotically racing to be at the head of the pack.

Friday

Vegetation reaches its peak, in this greenest summer in memory.

Seagulls seem to be among the least specialized birds, or perhaps they are simply the best adapted to human environments. When other avian species that none of us ever encounter vanish, seagulls will still be around. Like most animals that exist near humans, their specialization is that they have none.
As our current culture evolves, I believe our current high-strung never-sleep desperate patterns will self-destruct in either chaos or burnout. As machines replace all the necessary slavery of the agricultural age, the apparatus of that era _ which has now run amok _ becomes useless.
I like to believe that our descendants, if any, will be more like sea
gulls than cockroaches. Flying free, always finding enough, enjoying mock crises, and strutting independently or riding tides peacefully however and whenever they wish.

Saturday

Colors hinting at autumn are beginning to creep into leaves here and there.

“Lurk, you’re looking a bit thin these days.”

“Yeah, Vlad, I know. The trouble is I think I’ve developed a bit too fine a palate.”

“Not sure what you mean,” whines Vlad, hovering as he scents the air for stray carbon dioxide trails.

“Suckella dragged me into a fine blood tasting event, last week, and I discovered I was able to tell the difference between various samples. Fish, for example, is awful, and bird’s just cheap. Humans vary an awful lot but a few are simply delicious.”

“Ok, but what …”

Lurk holds up a few of his six legs. “Hear me out … The fact is the only food I can stand right now belongs to that sweet littlest child that comes out only once in a while. I’ve been waiting for days now, but I’m still not hungry enough to go back to _ ycch _ bird.”

“But there’s a big guy now!” yells Vlad, whirring in excitement. “He won’t even notice me under his knee until I’ve finished the feast. Why don’t you try his forehead?”

“No, no,” sniffs Lurk, pretentiously. “Common sour stuff. I’ve tried it before. No, I will just wait and hope.”

“Suit yourself,” says Vlad, zipping off, as Lurk alights on a nearby hemlock needle.

Neither could comprehend the big human when he called to his mate “I hope little Sue Ellen has a great vacation upstate.” It’s doubtful Lurk will survive the week.

Sunday

Flooded marshes gradually recover from centuries of being channeled, drained, and harvested.

Middle is infinite.

Around, below, above, within, without

Extend endlessly.

The farthest is too far.

Deepest is too deep.

All directions are pursued futilely.

Middle is perfect.

Liquid Trance

Monday

Low tide quietly lapping on exposed spartina grass.

This time of year, depending on tide tables clouds and heat, we often grab towels and head for a local beach on Long Island Sound. Retirees doing nothing at all to help the planet. On the other hand, we are not aggravating it nor anyone else. The waves roll in, sparkles fill the wide bay to dark trees on the far shore as randomly placed boats glide or race about.
Waves flow hypnotically. All identical, each unique, close to eternal. They have rolled onto similar sand and pebbles and rocks since the oceans formed, billions of years ago. Well before life, they were cresting and swishing. No matter what happens to life from here on they will continue until Earth itself ends in barren cold or fire depending on the type of death of the sun.
Watching them easily fills an hour or more. Pure mindless meditation, no possible meaning, no logic, simply being. It looks like there is a pattern, but that too is illusion. Blink eyes and everything might appear totally different. I accept this pleasant trance and feel my soul being restored.

Tuesday

Almost dizzy just trying to make sense of this.

If mosquitoes are not too thick, chased by moderate sunset breezes, we sometimes sit and watch the sun _ the bloody sun in most travel literature _ slowly drop below the horizon, outlining trees on hills rising above puppy cove. Rather than becoming blinded by staring at the direct spectacle, I concentrate on the constantly moving abstract spectacle of reflections and colors on the water’s surface.
We could claim there is no art here, for there is no human creation. But I am involved, so I represent the human element, the artist who chooses what to see as well as the audience who appreciates what the artist has shown. Perhaps it illustrates how complicated the idea of art may be … but then I am drawn back in, watching distortions and sparkles and sudden patterns that mean everything and nothing. The dominant colors change with the minutes, and finally the glow dies and we scamper back as tiny thirsty creatures of the night regain their territory.

Wednesday

Just back from Rochester, where the high falls are full following months of plentiful rain.

What a day for a daydream.
What a moment to consciously appreciate

Thursday

Canandaigua, one of the finger lakes, provides a slightly different aspect of water meditation.

I wish to praise stages in life, which is hardly in fashion any more. Infants are preplanned into trajectories before they leave the womb, children are prepped to be adults by hovering parents, adolescents fear permanent failure if they stumble. And then each individual fights a long slog of conflicts while trying to pretend they are growing better and not older until the day they die.
Perhaps it is better to try to accept the wonders of our changing condition. An infant is potential glory, but also a miracle as itself. Childhood should if possible be a time of play and joy and lack of responsibility, adolescence should be carefully matured with grandiose dreams, young adulthood should be a time of excess and exuberance, later adulthood through middle age a time of mastery and accomplishment. And finally accept later years to retire to a life of contemplation and providing advice.
Once upon a time such a route was a worthy goal, for those fortunate enough to live past forty or fifty. One of the aggravations of our current culture is the belief that each unique individual must freeze identity from year 0 to 100.

Friday

As temperatures climb into humid high nineties, an excursion to open water more inviting than a woodland hike.

Classic movies show the bows of majestic sailing ships cleaving water smoothly and quietly, perhaps encouraged by surfing dolphins, while wakes roll out from ponderous sterns. Such wave actions are less prevalent along our shores, more likely to catch high chops from racing cigarette boats, all sizes of pleasure cruisers, and speeding jet skis. The tiny perturbations of small sailboats are lost in wind crests. And the gigantic swell of tankers or freighters passing along the sound vanish into tidal rhythms.
Even the momentary surface appearance of such bodies of water is so comple
x as to be frightening. And that ignores what really happens beneath and around _ huge volumes and actions nobody can truly appreciate. But the surface is what I see _ spray and sparkle, roll and whitecap, infinite, eternal, transient, momentary, and only meaningful this second because I happen to be looking at it.

Saturday

Reflection perception presents multiple puzzles to be solved by how we focus.

Water, Air, Sand and Rock are discussing permanence with the Sun.

“What are you talking about, Water,” asks Sand. “I keep my shapes a lot longer than you do.”

“That makes me laugh,” snorts Rock. “I’m here millions of years, you know.”

“I’m around forever,” claims Air.

“Nobody sees you, you don’t do anything, wind lasts less than Water here,” replies Sand.

“Well, so have I, in that sense,” says Water.

“Children, Children,” calls out Sun. “We all have our own times and moments, all the same, all the time.”

“What?” they chorus.

“It’s only those pesky humans who notice time,” Sun tells them. “My billions of years, Rock’s millions, Sand’s minutes, Water’s seconds, Air’s moments _ all the same thing to our way of being. It’s only those foolish people who live in time. We just are, forever.”

Unknowing.

Sunday

Amazingly we can easily separate reflections from objects to make sense of our jumbled visions.

Swish in, flow out, ripple, reflect, lie still

Immerse myself in great floods outside

Conscious of larger ones within

Attempt full awareness

Calmly accept

Impossibility

Sultry Apathy

Monday

Still waters and my own mind almost as tranquilly empty as the calm moist air following overnight showers.

Each day brings tales of the aspirations of important cultural players. People who are elected, appointed, anointed, or who make more than the average Mr. and Ms. Jones. They have rigid ideas about what you and I should be doing, and how they will force us to do it, to make us more like them. Except of course they do not want us ever to be actually elected, anointed, etc. etc.
I never could quite work up envy. I believe those minds are closed to the truly finer aspects of existence. Summer happiness has fortunately soaked away even minor irritation _ I sit on a beach or walk the woods immersed in beauty and meaning and constant joy. Apathetic, I wantonly ignore where such self-declared leaders imagine they are steering society.

Tuesday

Deadly nightshade tangles along the road, glistening with imagined malevolence based only on its name.

What better place to contemplate reality than a warm sandy beach on a hot summer day? I riffle through a thick book, periodically glance up at boat traffic piloted by those too juiced to relax, listen to laughter and screams of children, watch a few others just like me. Almost all of us, surprisingly, fully untethered from the electronic web which tries to make our lives so insistently worried.
This lethargy does not help our GDP. I’m using public space, spending no money, directing nobody else to do some chore for which I will pay them. I might as well be an ancient ancestor lazily contemplating our universe in between chipping stone hand axes. I guess I should feel shame while shirking the necessity of constant intrusive progress.

Wednesday

Chicory lovely blue blossoms before noon, brightening a chill moist stroll.

The busy bear went over the mountain …
Maybe he should have spent more time examining his own.

Thursday

Quasi-professional clam bayman gets ready to try his luck beyond the inlet.

There is a dawning realization driven by current economic conditions that the United States in the 1950s was in many ways a golden era never likely to happen again anywhere. At the time and in decades of later mythology it was seen as the normalized dawn of utopia. Science could cure all ills. Jobs would constantly become better and higher paying. There would be time for recreation, second homes, infinite wealth. And people would become good and make the world perfect.
It all felt that way, of course, because at the time the US was a uniquely undamaged industrial state, and moreover had just gone through a few traumatically unifying events (the depression and WWII). Theorists and leaders have sought to maintain or recreate that for years.
For me and my boomer peers, such was normal life. What happened, we keep asking. Where is utopia now? High taxes? Government deficit? We easily forget that in the 50s taxes were extremely high, especially on the wealthy, and industry grew anyway. The government spent money like water on the interstate highway system, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, and countless other projects and the boom went on with no end.
The dream of the 50s has turned into the curse of our times, and has broken society into brittle little pieces absolutely certain that everything has gone wrong, and somebody must be to blame.

Friday

Summer blues surround pale bindweed blossoms, pretty enough here, an alarming menace in my garden.

Summer has returned as I melt here on the patio. High humidity, lots of insects including mosquitoes but mostly during the day just various harmless insects. Birds visiting the birdbath and feeder. Flowers wilting, and me happily dripping as I read some interesting new work from the library.
We have been visited by frequent intense storms, so many and so often that we wonder if global warming is part of the reason. Birds and flowers don’t seem to mind, but we worry. There have been storms before, high heat before, but …

Saturday

High eighties, burning sun, no breeze, a fine day for fishing even if nothing bites.

Two older folks set up chairs on pebbly beach, inhale deeply of salty breeze, stretch in hot sun. One turns a radio low volume to an oldies station. The other looks around, surprised.

“Eddie?” asks the woman. “Is that you? My God, haven’t seen you in …”

“What?” He squints and blinks. “Oh, hey, Brender. Yeah, been a while.”

“Where you been, anyway? Surely we should have …”

“Well, been living on the West Coast since forever. Just visiting a trade fair in Melville. Thought I’d look in on some of the old places, see what’s changed.”

“A lot and not much, same as everywhere, I guess,” Brenda smiles.

“You certainly seem to be doing well,” laughs Eddy. “Still looking pretty damn good.”

“Why, thank you, sir. And you as well. What you been up to? Jeez, what is it _ 40 years on?”

“Yeah, I think … summer of 75? Me, I’m just killing time until retirement, a few years from now. Selling pools, actually, at my father-in-law’s place. I hate it, but college for the kids you know.”

“Ah, how many?”

“Two girls. And you?”

“Good, good. Stopped work when I had my knee replaced last year. Jack still covers everything, and I have Heather living down the street with her kids, so I babysit a lot.”

“A lot happened after those highs and lows back then, eh?” smiles Eddie.

“What we didn’t know …” replies Brenda. “I remember thinking it was the end of the road.”

“Both found a way to survive, though,” he notes.

“Survive hell, I’ve had a blast. Still enjoying myself.”

“I see, I see. Yeah, me too.”

They sit back carefully and begin to stare out at constantly sparkling waves as white sails outline against the far dark hills. The radio tune has run its course, tale frozen in time, but life continues to unroll and complicate and surprise everyone.

Sunday

Except for crowded boats in distant marina, this could be a scene from sixty or more years ago.

Molasses summer, vast and free

I rest unbodied, drift in time

While insects flit, some bother me

Break concentration on this rhyme

Where should I go, what must I do

Or simply sit as life spins by

Quite content my lassitude

Let others preen or sell or buy

My years are flowing rapid gone

I’ve loved each one, and still admire

Achievements, memories, every one

Wish little more, from this retire.

True Olds

Monday

Egrets enjoy a light meal on tidal flats in rising heat.

“News” should be naturally opposed to “Olds.” The sun came up today, I am still alive, the world is full of marvels _ these are not news. When the sun remains dark, if my arm aches, any unusual event anywhere _ these are supposed to grab our attention as curious primates.
Fake news is the current meme, which some call lies. But it really stands for irrelevant entertainment that has no bearing on our daily life. Can I affect a dying sea otter population on the far side of the world, what does it mean to my daily action today, how does it help me survive better? Honestly, most news from our vast media sources is useless to how each of us lives.
The olds are good and bad. The climate degenerates slowly, but the environment temporarily at least remains vibrant. My trillions and trillions of cells are still miraculously working well to support a consciousness, although perhaps less vibrantly than forty years ago. I am now spending a lot of time trying to appreciate the olds and to be less concerned with superficial novelty.

Tuesday

Intimations of late summer as dock shines reddish brown in shimmering heat.

This morning’s olds is that there are lots of chipmunks in our area. News is that we have two in the back yard taking advantage of sunflower seeds falling from the bird feeder. Cute little things, and probably this year’s crop since they show too little concern for big creatures like us lurking about. Fun to watch, even though we are quite aware that they carry ticks that spread lyme disease.
If our chipmunks vanished, the olds would not change at all, although the news might distress us. If all the chipmunks in our area disappeared, or if, like that bats, all of those on the North American continent were threatened, it might be a different story. But it is so hard to tell which is which, and most of the time the news we are aware of is of our purely backyard type, from which no conclusions are possible nor valid.

Wednesday

Some public beaches in Huntington can occasionally resemble deserted Caribbean isles in travel brochures.

A bell clangs in the night: “2017 and all’s well.”
Not quite.

Thursday

Smog, beauty, bright leaves, shining water, and artifacts of our civilization everywhere.

We like to believe that our culture is changing more rapidly than any other in history. The jury on that is out, I have seen studies claiming the 14^th century in Europe was even quicker. Certainly the “long static unchanging lives” which some people tell us happened long ago have never been true in “civilized” places for the last two thousand years. In all that turmoil, survivors mostly contended with “olds” _ getting food, shelter, clothing, and following the routines of normal life.
What has been true, and continues to be so, is that our local lives are affected by distant events over which we have no control at all. It might be technology, or war, or plague, or simple bad luck, but something we dread may be coming over the horizon every morning when we wake up. Such news is too often bad.
That jars our explorer and pioneer myth. Explorers and pioneers, by definition, left the cozy confines of routine old life and set out into a wilderness where they controlled everything that happened to them. They ignored everything else and took care of everything that came along. Each moment became a form of “news.” We wish to retain a spark of such rebellion.
Each morning, like molasses, we are embedded in the “olds”, which is a good thing. As soon as we power up our electronic devices, shrill salespeople try to convince us that mostly irrelevant “news” is somehow important to what we do next and how we will think this moment. Most of the time it is wise to ignore such chatter, and deal with normal local reality.

Friday

Forgotten except by birds, entangled deep in poison ivy and thorns, wild berries ripen with hidden beauty.

Weeds are particularly good examples of the news cycle. Normally, we never notice them. They are just roadside greenery, or more leaves in the garden, or once in a while an unexpected flower. Sometimes we even take notice, for a moment, that they help define the landscape, such as when ragweed looms waist high where there used to be hard-caked dirt. Who cares about the growth of weeds, anyway _ they just take care of themselves.
But once in a while I wander around our
flower gardens in July, and suddenly I am amazed to find that weeds have been overtaking the carefully cultivated displays. Bindweed strangling the taller plants, pigweed carpeting the ground, the tentacles of crabgrass grasping everywhere, and all kinds of unknown interlopers grabbing nutrients, water, and sunshine. On that day, at that hour, weeds are news, and I become consumed by pulling them out and clearing what should be a nice civilized space.
For a few days I watch vigilantly, and tug something else here or there. And then time passes, the flowers are pleasant, and once again I notice nothing until some other morning ….

Saturday

Early light, quiet breeze, an almost false tranquility as birds chorus loudly.

Old Man River and Father Time recline on a crimson cloudbank, casually contemplating a possible game of checkers as they sip their craft beers. Athena bounds in, glowing with enthusiastic happiness.

“Hey, you guys should get out in the sunshine. Dianna and I just saw the most amazing deer racing by, and all the summer flower fields are too beautiful to believe.”

“Seen it all,” says River, slowly.

“Every year,” adds Time with a slight croak.

“But you’re missing it all. Why the butterflies alone are …

“Been there, done that,” replies River.

“Year after year,” grunts Time.

“Old news,” they chorus together. “We just want to sit back and relax.”

“Stupid lazy old men. I think you have entirely wrong approach to the miracles of the day.”

“Moments are just moments, we hang out for eternity.”

“So do rocks. Lot of good it does them.” Athena flips around and bounces out and over a billowing cumulus, dwindling as she slowly falls.

“Silly whippersnapper.”

“No sense at all.”

Sunday

Last willow standing along our harbor road shimmers in early misty sunbeams.

North wind cools, south brings warmth,

East wind chills, west drives rain

Big thunderstorm always unexpected.

Born, live, die, each constant fate

isolate, enmeshed as well

Not to know deep what nor why

(unless escaped to insane dream.)

Each moment new, each memory old,

Unbalanced hopes and fears

Constantly surprised

Northeastern Lights

Monday

Humidity dims distance, as usual heat clouds pile up along Long Island Sound over the far shore.

Surprisingly, as twilight lingers into short nights and late darkness, I become more aware of the moon, stars, and lights in the heavens. Milder temperatures encourage me to pause a while when I take out the trash, and to look overhead.
Of course, there are few stars to be seen, around here. When the night is absolutely clear there is the moon in its constantly changing phase, if it happens to be overhead in its complicated journey. And a few of the brighter stars from the few constellations I remember. Then it is almost a game to pick out Venus, Mars and Jupiter from hordes of approaching and departing jet aircraft.
Writers use terms like velvet black. Huntington skies are always an orange glow. Town and increasing suburban electric illumination reflects back from clouds and vapor, so much that no night is truly dark. There used to be only dim porch bulbs on houses, but now harsh security beacons either blind constantly, or switch on at every momentary sound and motion. Cars blaze along each few minutes, actinic blue in front, trailing flaring crimson. More and more, annoyingly tiny twinkles of solar-powered junk line walks and driveways.
All of this, all the time, and only I seem to notice, for nobody else is usually outside. The final rays breaking charm of dark evenings are multicolored flares emanating from windows where huge screens provide something to look at which is more interesting than moons, planets, and stars.

Tuesday

Clear air all the way to low satellite orbit, too early for much smog.

Volcanoes, pollution and _ presumably _ massive asteroid strikes create spectacular sunsets. Turner’s exotically flamboyant paintings, once thought the product of an overactive imagination and exaggerated romantic senses, were recently reevaluated and declared quite realistic based on the documented effects of the massive 1815 Tambora eruption (which also caused the “year with no summer” in New England.)
Huntington is graced with marvelous sunsets lacing and luminescing through the soot, gasses and general industrial activity of New York City immediately to our west. Once in a while an inversion will extend contaminated air all the way to our part of the island, but mostly we know it by its evening sky signature. As with all such phenomena _ oil sheens or explosions come to mind _ awful causes can have beautiful effects.
I would be foolish not to enjoy them. “Taking time to watch a sunset” is a cultural meme. But I would be amiss not to realize that they are the result of a high price we are paying to allow our civilization to continue its ways.

Wednesday

Beach roses are infallible markers of warmer days when a dip in salt water is a perfect experience.

Hey diddle diddle …
If the cow tried to jump over the moon these days, it would probably bump its head on a communications satellite.

Thursday

Last evening’s thundershowers are boiling off to form interesting patterns soon cleared away by sunshine.

For the last two centuries, it has been almost impossible to take a panoramic photograph without catching at least a few of the poles and wires on the horizon or nearby overhead. Poles and wires are a definitive marker of this culture, which future archeologists can probably use to identify this particular layer of civilization in their digs. They are so common that we unconsciously filter them out of sight, so that we are frequently disappointed when our carefully composed pictures end up being spoiled by lines and blockages we didn’t really notice at the time.
I can’t claim that such ruin the skyline. They are just there, and frequently have a complement of birds sitting high up, and don’t block much of what I want to see. But surprisingly often they put the lie to some composition that tried to capture nature at its raw best.
In the future, solar and other local technologies will probably make them obsolete. Already, many thick cables and their supporting structures are dinosaurs. Massive imposing beasts, soon to be vanquished by off-the-grid solar power and invisible airwaves. Undoubtedly in some future parkland or designated city area they will be as carefully recreated for historic nostalgia as gas lamps and cobblestones are now.

Friday

Pollution welds sky to sea as Connecticut shoreline vanishes.

Dawns are different, for me at least, than sunsets. For one thing in the summer I’m rarely awake in
time for them, certainly not dressed and outside. For another, leafy trees to our east hide direct beams until around nine or so. By then, if the weather is warm and dry, I can ditch this computer and eat out on the patio dressed in pajamas while waiting for my wife to wake up.
Morning sunlight is usually clearer than that of the evening. Eastern Long Island has less factories than exist to our west, and local pollutants have temporarily settled down. Bright sunbeams set off brilliant blue sky, while birds proclaim their supposed mastery of the air.
Mornings are another part of Northeastern Lights, even when we have fog and mist. Dew often sparkles back fractal reflections. Cobwebs trace amazing patterns. Sharp shadows cut around me. Maybe it is all only so surreal because this time of day I am fully awake and aware.

Saturday

Deceptively tranquil puppy cove, like everything connected to troubles of our wide world by wind and tides.

Somewhere, physicists maintain, in impossibly infinite mathematical spacetimes, Prometheus and Orion are arguing about our night time skies.

“It’s all your fault, Prometheus,” Orion complains bitterly.

“What have I done now,” Prometheus sighs.

“Nobody pays attention to me any more. They can’t see me,” replies the constellation.

“And that’s my fault? Why?”

“Gift of fire, remember.”

“They don’t use fire much, and certainly not overhead.”

“Yeah, but it led to technology and now look at this place. They can’t see anything any more except their own nocturnal pollution.”

“Not fair, that. You might as well blame Vulcan for letting them learn to chip rocks to make stone-age tools and expand their brains.”

“Well, yeah, but you owed me after I rescued you from that stupid boulder you were chained to.”

“OK, I’m sorry. I admit it was a mistake. The rest of the planetary ecology has been raking me over the coals as well. Guess the Gods knew what they were doing when they punished me.”

“Ah, it’s all right, I guess,” says Orion. “After all, humans took care of the Gods themselves some time ago.”

Sunday

Solitary clammer tries his luck on Oyster Bay, hard work in hot conditions with a beautiful view.

Bright light night, such easy rhyme

Freely used by poet scan

Always a part of each day’s time

They think that all will understand.

But night is gone from human ken

Banished by electric flares

What was once feared is now ignored

Day or nighttime, no one cares.

Most ignore Northeastern lights

There’s better things to see

I’d cast aspersions on my peers

Except they’re just like me.