Heart

Monday

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

Tuesday

“A heart once lost is never found”

Meaningless, yet seems profound.

“Be still my heart” a silly phrase

Remains in use, at least in plays

Language poorly mirrors more

One dimension, never four

Yet magically, with hiss and tone

Can make us feel much less alone.

Wednesday

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

Thursday

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

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

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

“Ah, those were the days,” he smiles.

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

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

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

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

“No idea. Do you really care?”

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

Friday

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

Saturday

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

Sunday

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

Renovation

Monday

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

Tuesday

Fresh coats of paint, deep winter snows

Refocus what we see

For better, worse, or much the same

May never be agreed.

Fine beginnings may require

The loss of what once was

That is progress, we are told,

Conformed to natural laws

But new’s soon old, and in the way

Our racing lives move on

Fresh moments fill our circumstance

Each day unique at dawn.

Wednesday

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

Thursday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday

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

Saturday

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

Sunday

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

Instability

Monday

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

Tuesday

Inconstant illusions enliven dreams

But when awake

Foster madness

Wednesday

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

Thursday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday

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

Saturday

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

Sunday

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

Off Season

Monday

Properly speaking, Huntington is not a resort community. However, the harbor itself is a resort-type recreation area, filled with beaches, moorings, and artifacts which support summer leisure activities. Those are largely abandoned and ignored in the heart of winter each year, although depending on the actual weather some hardy souls continue to use boats when possible. Furthermore, as the temperatures continue colder, many of the older residents migrate south for a while, to be joined by families in a month when recently culturally iconic “winter break” arrives.
My own happiness with such a fallow period is limited to enjoying silence _ leaf blowers have been stored for a month or so. Once in a while I will head for an empty town beach, or _ if snow cover is limited as it is this year _ to empty fields and woods in other parks. Pedestrians have also been culled to the hardy few, hardly recognizable in heavy attire even though I have seen the regulars almost every day for a long time now.

Tuesday

I love to go where crowds avoid

Beach in winter, woods in rain

Meditate or just enjoy

Nature singing pure again

Romantic poets felt the same

Artists wandered empty hills

Mountains, seacoasts, blasted plains

Freed of shallow cultured ills.

Alone so happy, yet compelled

To soon return where I belong

I seek companionship as well

Madness balanced by the throng.

Wednesday

Restrooms locked. Picnic area cleared. Lifeguard chair removed, toll booth vacant. Mostly, sand and playground are devoid of people as well. On nice days, or if cabin fever has built too high, small children very bundled run around the open beach. Every day _ rain, shine, sleet, snow, bitter wind, or raging storm _ someone will be in the parking lot, often not leaving warm dry car, letting their dog or dogs experience the outdoors.
Off season even in truly seasonal places has permanent residents. I may fantasize that they are even more deserted than here, but actually recreation areas are all equivalent. Better outerwear has made outdoors year-round activity accessible to everyone. I know that is a good thing. I wish more folks would take advantage of it for our collective mental sanity even as I gripe about how there is nowhere to be alone except in my own house.

Thursday

“I wish we were going away again this year,” grouses Joan, for the millionth time.

“I’m perfectly happy to stay here,” I reply. “Besides, it’s been mild. Certainly better than last winter.”

“I can’t stand the cold.”

“Dress warmer.”

“I miss flowers growing.”

“Get some more indoor plants.”

“It gets dark too soon.”

“No different than anywhere we would go on vacation in the Northern Hemisphere.”

“I can’t believe all the people who are still here.”

“Me neither.”

“I hate winter.”

“I kind of enjoy it.”

Irreconcilable differences.

Friday

In spite of modern materials and paints, marine life such as barnacles still manages to cling to or thrive on submerged hulls, cutting efficiency. High tech engines need service and recalibration. Birds and dirt manage to coat exposed surfaces. An expensive annual off-season ritual involves hauling craft out of water, power washing everything, wrapping tightly in shrink wrap, and stashing them somewhere safe until spring. This reduces shoreline land, but waterfowl probably approve more open water and flyways.
I know Iapprove more open water. Summer harbor can resemble a junkyard, filled with odd detritus that people convince themselves they might want to
use sometime, but rarely do. Winter’s crowded storage lots are an inch from actually being junkyards, sometimes literally if anxious owners who have finally had enough are unable to unload their “investments.”

Saturday

Greatly simplified, until a few centuries ago, Northern Hemisphere civilization was organized by season. Agricultural production forced sowing, growth, harvest, and fallow at certain times of year. That other favorite activity _ war _ was generally bounded by when the peasants were available and when the ground was dry _ which usually meant it was only waged in summer. Washington, after all, went into “winter quarters” at Valley Forge, as did the British at Philadelphia and New York.
Less than a hundred years later, with mechanized agriculture providing possibility, the American Civil War inaugurated our current era of any battle any time _ today from climate-controlled machines. Rural populations the world over have migrated to cities that know no season at all. There is no universally valid cycle of planting or harvest, nor on-season, nor off-season for anything else. Tropical bananas, or tomatoes and strawberries grown in greenhouses almost anytime anywhere, are harbingers of what will come.
My wife, for one, would not care. She’d love to live in a spaceship or mall at a constant 72 degrees exposed to exactly 12 hours of sunlight each day. Humans evolved in relatively climate-steady Africa, so any yearning for seasons is hardly instinctual.
I wonder, though, whether our 24×365 world is corrosive to civility. Until civilization itself adapts, I think many people miss enforced down time. Being constantly needed and always on call is possibly necessary and rewarding for parents of young children. It is hardly a benefit when working for a faceless corporation.
I’m not trying to bring back a golden past. Good riddance to days of slaves and peasants chained to land and sun! But I do not believe our individuals and institutions have yet come up with the right replacement for us to live relatively happy and balanced lives.

Sunday

Hecksher Park also has its off-season, although this winter it may seem more like off-weather. This playground being deserted probably has more to do with wet and clouds on this relatively mild day. In any case, at almost every park, people have decided they will be happier and healthier if they get out and jog or run or walk or ride. It remains a rare day indeed when there are no people in any given open space.
People driven by media fads are as much fun to watch as any ducks responding to instinct. While I recognize that I am just one of the herd, I always manage to maintain some spirit of detached observer. I mean, I may make gentle mock of obsessed overweight seniors grimly striding their triple rounds of the pond, but here I am obsessively taking pictures and writing obscurely. The duality of being in and out at the same time _ whether as part of a crowd or as part of nature _ is one of the grand joys of the game of life.

January Frost

Monday

Last year, rosebuds had been blasted black by mid-October, permanent snow-cover settled in shortly thereafter, and by now everyone was fervently awaiting a January thaw that never arrived. In contrast, Huntington Harbor’s first hard freeze is predicted in the next few days. Roses, weeds, birds and squirrels take it in stride. People worry.
Averages, like the Equator and hope, are useful imaginary mental tools that help us make sense of and survive in a chaotic universe. But meteorologists, mathematicians, physicists, and digital wizards who mistake their equations and models for reality are as dangerous to our mental health as any other completely certain religious fanatics. We need to live as squirrels or birds, not as models. We ought not waste too much time (although some time may be useful) worrying about temperature and rainfall variations or limited projections of possible futures.

Tuesday

We dream first flakes, white whisper, settle soft

Instead sleet sting, cold chop, deep drift

Incongruous

Wisdom’s beauty simmers slow

Reconciliation

Wednesday

Even at twelve degrees, underlying ground remains warm. Only a skim of newly-formed ice coats the sweetwater pond. Tender green weeds and leaf buds have been flash frozen but so far show little damage. As with many fatal trauma victims, the full effects of injury will only show up later, either when plants wilt and shrivel in the first thaw, or later in spring when blossoms and leaves fail to develop.
I admit that although I enjoy seasons, this unusual late onset of winter suits me. Although there is still plenty of time for cold and snow, days are already notably longer as spring rushes closer. Both artificial calendars and solar activity increasingly signal more benevolent weather in the future. I snuggle into my parka, content with the way things are going.

Thursday

Joan and I watch bandit pigeons and more desirable cardinals, bluejays, and woodpeckers diving, strutting, and chasing each other for a chance at the birdfeeder. “There were a lot more birds when I was young,” she remarks.

I groan sarcastically. “Oh, yeah, and the winters were harsh, the summers long , and spring filled with fresh flowers and no showers.”

“Well, I remember deep snows.”

“But that’s the trouble with the past,” I note. “Since we have sixty-odd years of seasons, we select out the few that made an impression. And that’s before we begin exaggerating.”

“I guess. But winters were colder, I know the snow was intolerable even to my parents when I was little.”

“I’m sure you remember it that way. But the last two years just now have been no picnics. Our kids will surely remember them as being as bad as anything you can think up.”

“With global warming, that may be the only snows they remember anyway.”

“There you go again. Why does everyone always want immediate apocalypse? I doubt our immediate descendants will live through either an ice age or a fire age. Things change a bit more slowly than we expect.”

“I don’t know,” Joan says stubbornly, “last year to this year is a pretty drastic change. And the storms around the world seem to be getting a lot worse.”

“I’ll agree with you there,” I admit. “Who knows?”

We turn back as the birds suddenly scatter, frightened away by the neighbor’s prowling old yellow cat, which seems not to notice the cold at all.

Friday

Each season has nearly unique lighting effects. Winter light is affected by dry atmosphere, ice particles in high transparent cloud layers , and low sun angle. The lovely pastels which result are easily contrasted with stark bare branches. Real photographers capture it better, but anyone can observe just as well by simply taking some time.
We each choose how we wish to focus our spare moments. Some try to connect with the electronic networks, being aware of sparrows falling in far off lands and wondering what it may mean. I prefer to force myself into the cold, enjoying solitary moments at a deserted beach with only gulls for company. Well, it is true that there is a scattering of cars back in the parking lot where people eat lunch or talk on their phones _ Long Island is a crowded place. But I had the sands, the shells and the sky to myself for a few delicious moments.

Saturday

No day is absolutely average, no season repeats exactly. We think our perception of time is reality, and our lives are the measure of normal. But nature moves more slowly than any of us. Except, of course, for its occasional massive demonstrations.
From the standpoint of seasons, and years, and centuries, humankind is like those speeded pictures of scurrying ants, rushing about building mud mounds, fighting, and moving on. Once in a while the mound is flattened by buffalo, or flooded, or attacked by an anteater, but generally it comes and goes regardless of monsoon, snow, and chill.
We consider our works as mighty and potentially eternal. We proudly point to the Pyramids or to the ruins of the Colosseum as proof. Yet we could as easily remember drowned Alexandria, volcano-choked Pompeii, and the vine-covered ruins of the Mayan peninsula. All destroyed, all deserted, all irrelevant to the humans that came afterward.
That is why most scenarios _ especially psychological scenarios _ of the future are wrong. People may or may not fight to preserve Venice, Shanghai, or New York. They may simply move inland a bit as the seas rise. They might even move undersea as the temperature and winds rise. They will look back at the ruins and think it applies to them as little as the Pyramids do to you or me.
We are aware finally that the climate itself changes faster than our ancestors thought, even though they lived through such events as the Little Ice Age. Only the perception of average stability is completely false. A big volcanic outburst will chill the world for a while, unusual sun activity may heat it, and a flip of the magnetic field would wreak merry hell on our comfortable illusions.
So enjoy the media comparisons of today to the average, worry about lack of rain or too much wind if you will, but none of it really is as it seems. And the future is as unknown as ever it was.

Sunday

Short sharp January freeze thawed already. Seems strange to see the harbor so empty, prepared for bad weather that seems perpetually predicted next week. People are equally confused, some in heavy coats, others jogging in shorts. Plants as uncertain as humans, but ducks are probably just happy to have so much open water.
Weather announcers try to scare everyone, particularly with wind chill factor. Since there is always some kind of breeze along the shoreline, I mostly ignore everything except a howling gale, and base my outerwear protocol on absolute temperature at the house. I find that dressing properly, no matter what the season, is required for maximum enjoyment of my daily stroll.

Resolutions

Monday

Reality simply exists, without volition nor plans. Perhaps “simply” is a poor choice of wording for something so infinitely variable. Sky, clouds, water, all things on above and below this thin shell of habitat which confines life. Another day, another year, another bit of imagination applied.
Resolutions are traditionally made once a year. Usually one vows to be better (never worse) in some way. And sometimes that intention is kept for almost a week. Our lives are momentary and constructed of complete instants one after another. If I am to be better, I must be so each second. The sky, clouds, and water may not care, but I should.

Tuesday

Resolutions seem so strong

Don’t last long

A wish is just a wish

To really change

We must exchange

Instant soul for soul

Become another

But why bother

What should matter

Is more laughter

Joy creating joy

Love inflation

Appreciation

Day to better day

Strive and cope

Live with hope

Wednesday

There are people who cannot figure how to enjoy a “nasty” day. Fog and drizzle following sleet with about the first average temperature of December. Ducks don’t need resolutions to handle weather. Most waterfowl have already followed instinct to migrate to appropriate locations. Others _ not this little bufflehead _ have further retreated to some leeward cove to escape misty wind.
My resolutions no longer follow years, or even seasons, and are more limited to each day. Mine was “get out of the house, take a walk, snap some pictures, and think about what to write tomorrow.” If I am lucky my resolutions may harden into a schedule that is nearly instinctual. Then, hopefully, I can be more like this tiny creature and apparently frolic about no matter the clouds and temperature.

Thursday

Joan and I out with friends, finishing up salads, nibbling bread. “Any resolutions?” asks Janet.

“More exercise.” “Better Diet.” “Spend time with kids.” “Travel somewhere.” And, to laughter, “Make it to another year!”

“But that’s what it does come down to, isn’t it?” I ask. “Our resolutions get a little shorter and more precise as we get older. More personal, less idealistic.”

“Sure, I’m not about to change the world,” smiles Joe. “I doubt I’m even about to change myself.”

“Agree with that,” I add, “sometimes just getting out of bed and doing something is about all the resolution I can actually do any given day.”

“None of us are that bad, yet,” protests Joan. “We still stay active. I have projects and I know Janet has some as well. There’s gardens and dinners and …”

“Yep,” agrees Joe, “Lots and lots of chores. Don’t sound much like resolutions to me.”

“Well, I guess people who made it this far are pretty much in the groove they want to be in,” notes Janet.

“Or have to be in,” adds Joe darkly.

“Well, I don’t care much,” Joan insists. “There’s lots to do, that’s the point.”

“Don’t you want to change anything?” Janet inquires.

“Nah, not much,” say Joe and I almost simultaneously.

“Well, you should.”

“Maybe, but we’ve put in our time. No guilt. Just enjoy the year and hope we get a few more.”

“Yeah, exactly,” I say as the entrees arrive, “Carpe diem because we sure don’t know how many more diems we’re gonna get to carpe.”

Friday

Shiny new year, bright with promise, filled with hope, casting off old fears… But tides roll as always, sunset and sunrise cycle as before, darkling season remains. Individuals and entire species do what they must to survive, one day at a time. Plants and animals know nothing of new year, or promise, or hope.
Real magic is not in artificial calendar resets, but in the very fact that there is continuity. Life rolls on through tides, days and nights, seasons without end. We alone perceive the connection, and assign imaginary demarcations of years or eras or eons. Our magic is in creating intertwined stories all the way back to an imagined beginning of the universe, or, for that matter, to this same calendar day, exactly one arbitrary human year ago.

Saturday

God and the universe need no resolutions _ what was, was; what is, is; what will be, will be. Only a sense of alternative futures leads to plans, fears, hopes. Some life may dimly sense choice, but most is blind existence, instinct, or training. No rock, tree or bacteria resolves to change for the better or worse. Only in human imagination do rabbits swear to outwit hunters.
We are deeply identical to all life in chemical composition, genes, attributes. Objectively, our differences are trivial or nonexistent. Yet we are quantitatively and qualitatively removed from nature, in infinite ways. “Higher” animals may know fear, but I do not believe they are aware of beauty. A mighty list of such anomalies would include art, writing, engineering, good, and evil.
So I study the natural world, but what should I learn, what should I apply? I am so like and so unlike a blade of grass, an insect, a clam, you. What does a gypsy moth _ fighting for survival against terrible odds, decimating forests, threatening its own species by destroying its necessary ecology _ teach me? Is such doomed behavior inevitable? What could one moth do? How much do I resemble that moth?
My contemplations realize that no answers exist, for answers, like choices, are human constructs. There is only tension, resolution, outcome. Preserving balance is a game of which only we are aware. Does that make it less real? I think not. Appreciating the game may be one of the higher goals of our consciousness.
I am most unnatural. In all the universes that ever are or might be, I am unique. In my self-absorbed being, I feel important. I may understand that feeling to be wrong, but just by understanding it is wrong, I prove it is true. A lovely, illogical game rolling in syncopation with our magnificent perception of time’s tapestry.

Sunday

Nature continues brimming with infinite wonders. Sun rises unnoticed, winds blow evoking only wishes that they become more mild. Crows flap from branch to branch with raucous calls, above squirrels chasing each other ceaselessly. Only the scents of the activities of people remain. Thus it seems it was always and will always be. Yet this entire world is a fragile slice of time with nature and people appearing briefly on a tiny stage.
I dare not resolve to spend more time in wonder. Part of the mystery is that I cannot. There are practical things to do, limits to meditation. I am a microscopic part of the moving pageant, and if I stand still regarding how magnificent the show appears I will only be trampled by the passing parade. But once in a while, each day, I must try to find a quiet space and continue to marvel at all there is, and be grateful I can continue to do so.

Birthday!

Monday

Bedecked tree in deep woods on the Nature Conservancy’s Upland Farms. Winter Solstice the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, appropriate time for a new year via the Romans, Druids, Christianity, and Western European colonialism. In about a week it will be “2016 CE,” a world standard ferociously enforced by computers.
We are one, at least in aging digitally together. Not long ago, hardly anyone knew how old they were, or when their birth date might be. If you survived childhood, you became an adult. If surviving thirty or so years of adulthood you became an ancient. Years were measured in passage of the season and collection of taxes, and otherwise left everyone unaffected. Now, we calculate our calendar age to the microsecond, tie our “secret equivalent age” to biometrics, and have a grand vision of what must be done in each annual cycle. Sure, we each have our own birthdays, but Earth, as always, provides the real downbeat.

Tuesday

Ok, folks, all together, one, two, three:

Happy solstice to you

Happy solstice dear Terra

Happy solstice to you.

How old are you now?

We just can’t believe that!

Happy Solstice to you!

Now everybody make a wish while Terra tries to blow out all our emissions ….

Wednesday

Last winter this day freezing and snow, this winter nearly sixty and fog. The land does not know date nor season nor weather. The land did not know trilobites nor dinosaurs nor people. Most inhabitants of the land just recognize it is daytime and survive until darkness. Only humans compare one year to another.
Ancient Greeks _ and most other religions _ assigned no birthdate to their gods because that would be certain blasphemy. Prophets, on the other hand, are often dated by year _ which is difficult because true prophets are often not recognized until they are well along in years, and even in literate cultures born vaguely “in the fifth year of the reign of good king Maniac.” Assigning a specific birthday is impossible, and generally evolves by convenient convention. Yet, here we are, celebrating one “birthday” after another, and happy for doing so.

Thursday

Joan was once again trying to fit our celebration of Greg’s birthday into the complicated holiday schedules of everyone involved. “He always did get cheated, you know,” she says. “Only five days before Christmas, everyone forgets and merges them together.”

“Oh, I know. My grandmother was an actual Christmas baby. One party and, of course, the presents all jumbled up. Much better to be born on the other end of the calendar, June or July.”

“Too hard to plan,” she laughs.

“In a few years, I’m sure that everyone will actually be timing things exactly. Maybe they are now, for all I know.”

“What I hated were the cutoffs for school _ that you had to be so many years old by, say, January 1.”

“That’s the real problem. Years in general. How old you are _ especially at 5 or six _ should really be measured in months or days by the calendar. Not to mention that everyone develops differently. Still, I thought that someone nearer a year older always had a big advantage in sports and maybe in achievement.”

“You’re awful yourself, these days,” she accuses. “You always round up. You say you’re 69 when you’re still 68. Nobody does that.”

“I round up everything, expenses and years. I’ve consistently found that more useful.”

“Let’s see now,” she returns to the calendar. “What about Wednesday, after he’s done work?”

Friday

Warm fog and showers unable to satisfy eccentric cultural longing for white coating on the ground. ‘Tis the season of extravagant expectations _ family, love, bonuses, gifts, myths, anything at all. Now that all other needs and whims are more or less instantly satisfied, what remains are holidays on steroids.
I’ll spare you the “I was happy with a yo-yo” stories; we were not deprived, but major kid stuff was reserved for Christmas,
and there was a lot less of it. Our parents did not treat a car or new appliance as a gift _ those were major expenses that involved planning and penny-pinching. I see people infinitely more goods, but none happier than we were back in “the good old days.”

Saturday

The natural cycle for life on the surface is the sun. Hawks and squirrels roam the day, Owls and raccoons the night. We are advised of our natural circadian rhythm, and most of us are forcibly reminded to sleep periodically each twenty four hours. Day and night are probably most of what many animals are aware of.
On the other hand, bacteria, which own the earth. presumably don’t much care if there is light or not. Fish and shellfish are probably far more affected by tides. Inhabitants of the deep sea never notice sunlight at all. An insect cycle may be complete in less than an afternoon, the prototypical active time of a mayfly.
Humans have invented measurement. Days pass into numbers and the moon waxes and wanes and the seasons warm and chill down or dry up and rain. We plop them into proper places on a calendar, find how close we are to solstices or arbitrary year end. We annotate our own place in these records, when we have precisely checked off another three hundred sixty five.
Even more intriguing, people have fashioned metaphors. One of the most complex, at least in European-influenced cultures, is that a year is like our lives. Like the year we are born helpless and nearly dormant, then thrust and blossom into grand and beautiful virility, then slowly dry and finally disappear. A folklore version of Ontology recapitulating Philology.
Yet all that is false. Years don’t exist, except in our minds. Our lives and growth and achievements are not at all at the same pace or with the same attributes as the environments of the northern hemisphere. We know that our consciousness exists in the moment, but we always seek some deeper pattern.

Sunday

After the excitement of a wonderful holiday, the slight let-down and then a final remaining glow. After much work and worry, the house is all decorated, the lights cheering the foggy air, the presents exchanged and (mostly) properly appreciated. Then everyone goes home, another year older, another set of memories layered on the old ones.
So one of our religions has had yet another birthday, the sun has passed solstice, soon the calendars will change to recognize the facts, and we all feel, somehow, a little more aged than we did a few weeks ago. Even the mild weather has been unable to hide that winter is ready to swoop in at any moment. I’m not a person who ever hated the holidays, but I did get more keyed up in the past than I do now. Much to be grateful for, of course, but that has fortunately been true every day of the last year for me.

Seasons Sonatas

Monday

Nature always appears harmonious. After all, people have evolved attuned over tens of thousands of years. Yet there is also a marked flexibility that somehow makes desert, swamp, ocean, jungle, savannah, woods, and whatever else beautiful to properly adjusted outlooks. Art may attempt to capture that harmony, or may challenge it, or (in the best work) somehow do both at the same time.
Our musical tastes are formed early, and I hardly appreciate classical. Yet even in the early jazz music I love, I miss a great deal because I am not a musician. My greatest fault, as in many things, is in not paying adequate attention. I know the beginning of Chopin’s moonlight sonata quite well, but no matter how many times I listen, the rest just blurs into one long piano relaxation. Not unlike how I often experience scenery and other important environments in my life.

Tuesday

Sonata ought to be a song

That murmurs, glistens soft along

Shouts demanding in our ear

Concentrate on what we hear

–

Winter swirls some icy ways

Snow can’t brighten shorter days

Disaster looms a constant dread

Disruptions whisper stay in bed

–

Some will brace for bitter cold

March forth challenged to be bold

Others dream of sweeter times

Wish to wake in warmer climes

–

Me, I’m torn, I like to go

Examine purity of snow

But other hours I like best

To just accept my enforced rest

Wednesday

Cable provides a music channel called “Songs of the Seasons.” Unsurprisingly, these are mostly pop tunes with lots of words to clue the audience. Classical music suffers from only providing titles. Nobody would associate “March of the Wooden Soldiers” with Christmas except for its use in a few movies, and Nutcracker would be just a sequence of pretty melodies without the ballet costumes and handy program guide.
I sit here and enjoy the ways colors blend together, or subtly contrast, always in a different kaleidoscopic way depending on where I look or how I vary my focus. In such magical stillness, I may recall one seasonal tune or another, which are irrelevant to this moment. I would insist that this overall experience is very much like that of closely listening to a sonata or symphony. Abstract, harmonious, challenging, soothing and much more, all at the same time, all constructed by the marvelous trillions of neurons that provide me with my being.

Thursday

Standard carols echo around crowds here at the mall. I’m sitting in a little alcove of chairs, waiting for Joan to finish up at Macys. Conversations of others doing the same thing rise around, as I pick out fragments.

“These songs sure bring back memories, don’t they?”

“Some of them, I guess. I can’t stand some of the cynical newer ones they keep putting on.”

“Yeah, I’m more partial to Bing Crosby and Sinatra myself. But I guess they have to move with the times.”

“Why? They don’t care about the times anywhere else. This is all just nostalgia to make old people feel like spending money for grandkids.”

“My grandkids sure don’t know them like I did. I think they’re more familiar with car and beer ad jingles.”

“Oh, yeah, and forget hymns. Why, when I was their age we had them every Sunday, right out of the hymnal, had to memorize them all.”

“Well, we believed. It meant something back then.”

“Should mean something now. Damn political correctness. Why can’t we just be happy that we took over the planet and let it at that.”

“Not much Christmas spirit, there?”

“Humbug yourself. It’s true, though.

Friday

Crows cawing only birdsong, but steady wind whispers through trees, dead grasses rustle, waves slap shore. Human sounds accrete all around _ whistling of boat rigging, low rumble of jets low overhead heading for landing at JFK, tires and rasping engines of trucks making last-minute holiday deliveries, and incessant whine of leaf blowers. Humans are, sometimes unfortunately, part of nature too.
Any true seasonal sonata would include that. Probably we wouldn’t go to the lengths that Spike Jones gleefully pasted over tunes, but time of year is infallibly marked aurally by our own sounds. A really brilliant artist might be able to weave it all pleasingly. Or maybe not _ we tend to be more abrasive and raucous than even those annoying big black birds.

Saturday

Transforming experience to art is odd. Movies require narrative, drawings composition, paintings color, photographs unique immediacy, writing translating existence into meaningful words. But how to use sitting on a hill or walking through the woods or gasping against the wind to compose a song?
First and greatest question is why bother. The world provides it all, what exactly does an artist have to contribute? Capture the moment, perhaps, as much as any aspect of it can be. Recall memories. Distill some common feeling. All of those are difficult in any medium, but to try to capture, recall, or distill while limited to musical notes is almost inconceivable.
Oh, I can imagine a shepherd playing a flute easily enough, or even a folk singer strumming on a guitar, creating something that might catch the public fancy. But I cannot, for the life of me, put Chopin on a park lawn to come up with a Coindre Hall Autumn Sonata that would ever have more evocation of a particular place than its title. Is that my own musical incapacity?
Yet, second question is why can I imagine that sonata, rising from the waving of bare branches, harmonizing with blended browns of the rushes around the stilled pond, counterpointed by occasional calls of geese and ducks over the water? If I am centered I can almost hear it in my mind, a song of nature, yet inexpressible in the sense that anyone else would ever understand what I am trying to do. Even the most accomplished evocation, such as “Appalachian Spring” only becomes meaningful when I am aware of its name.
Music, I suspect, is our most abstract gift to the universe, and a gift to which only other humans or our gods themselves can ever respond completely. But it is also one of our must perfect expressions of pure love of being, whatever the occasion of its origin.

Sunday

Open harbor should provide silent refuge, but unless wind blows strongly any given car or motorcycle is apt to be bellowing a Christmas tune, any given homeowner may be blasting outside speakers with the same. Holiday music has been increasingly insistent for over three months now. But this week it is ubiquitous _ on radio and TV, in stores, along the street. If newspapers could talk they’d be playing jingle bells. Suddenly at the end of next week it drop by half, a week after that will be banished for another year. The proverbial man from Mars would be quite puzzled, particularly at constant references to “sleighs” which haven’t been used for a century, and never ever used in places like Florida.
Music on my mind because many of these ditties are in the form of “earbugs,” those annoying snatches of song that keep playing through my background thoughts even though I desperately try to send them away. Certainly not sonatas. With crude but effective hooks and structures, they get triggered and reinforced at every snatch of melody, and sometimes by other stimuli as well. My particular seasonal concert.

North Pole

Monday

All place names are collective fictions, even though the modern world likes to believe that naming magically makes real. No bird or fish recognizes “Huntington”. Imaginary lines outline legal jurisdictions, but a guide is needed to locate “downtown.” The North Pole is a dimensionless dot over drifting ice with no boundaries at all.
When I was a kid, the North Pole was both magical and real. Santa worked there. Now, I suppose, children realize he has been displaced by eminent domain and natural disaster, his outmoded factory dismantled, his elfin workforce _ unable to use iphones let alone make them_ laid off. He’s probably lounging on a beach somewhere in Costa Rica, while Mrs. Claus reminisces over old photographs of the polar domain.

Tuesday

People strode their dimpled flat world thoughtlessly,

Then Thales conjured up his sphere

Which Newton with Copernicus cutely placed,

Circling sun, spinning on a handy stick

Jammed through North and South poles.

My childhood knew exactly what was what.

North Pole on top, just like us.

Cold icy remote as hell

Unreachable, forbidden

Finest place for Santa Claus to work.

Now, science claims it isn’t where it was

North switches sometimes south, like magic

Overhead each day fly jets, subs lurk underneath

Someday soon dark prophets scream

The few surviving kids might row right by on rafts

All “truth” is conscious mystery:

No real North Pole exists at all

Never did, just in our minds,

Our many models, maps and maths,

And, on occasion, myths

Wednesday

Various names were applied to this hill by native American tribes, by colonists grazing sheep on the South Down, by wealthy Mr. Brown who never got to use his gold coast estate, and by priests remembering Father Coindre. Nobody pausing here to enjoy the view cares. Come a few hundred years, this may well become Huntington Reef in the Gulf of Connecticut. By then, the North Pole too may be long forgotten.
All is transient and personal. My Huntington, my North Pole, is not yours. Whatever we may share of the conception of each is further restricted to our time and place. This scene changes, its name also changes, and we are brief but important visitors. Yet somehow I also think it natural that Coindre Hall, like the North Pole, like I myself, has always been and always will be as it is this moment.

Thursday

Little wreaths sparkling white lights hang from each street lamp in the middle of the day. By the soldiers and sailors memorial at east end of town I find Ed disconsolate on a bench. “Oh, come on,” I kid him, “get some Christmas spirit.”

“Sure ain’t what it used to be,” he complains.

“Nothing is,” I smile. “Weather’s good.”

He ignores me, “Back when, we didn’t get any toys from at least June on, ‘Wait for Christmas.’ That was a big thing. We all believed in the season.”

“It’s festive now,” I argue. “People believe in the season, if nothing else.”

“Well, when I grew up kids at least bought into the whole thing, Santa, toys, life always working out for the best.”

So that’s what’s got into him. “We had our share of cultural chauvinism. All kids do. We thought what was around us was around everybody, obviously all the same.”

“Oh, you’re right about that,” he says. “Santa was a visible manifestation of God _ omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and good.”

“He’s still pretty omnipresent, at least ….” I could see five pictures of him from where I stood.

“I liked the innocence of the old days,” he almost whines. “Now everything is relative this and r
elative that and nothing is simple any more. I want simple again.”

“I think it was just as complicated back then,” I tell him. “Everybody didn’t get presents, lots of people didn’t celebrate Christmas at all. We just ignored them.”

“So what. I liked it better. It was more fun for the kids.”

“Grump, grump, grump,” I tease. “Merry Christmas anyway.”

“Happy whatever to you, too,” he growls.

“Bah, Humbug!” I move on towards the dimly sounding traditional songs echoing tinnily from speakers, ignored by everyone.

Friday

No touch of North Pole around here. It might as well be May, roses still blooming, the migratory ducks somewhat confused by the unnatural heat. Most seniors quite happy for the delay of snow and ice _ all the romance went out of white Christmas with the blizzards of last year. Some no doubt regret putting their boats away, but the buoys are safely stored as always. Hard to tell if it is climate change or just a nice unusual December.
I’d lay bets on climate change. I appreciate the warmth and the chance to stroll in light jacket without heavy hat and gloves, but I keep looking behind my back. I feel like one of those naïve folks rushing out onto the newly-exposed glistening sea bottom to gather treasures, ignoring the ominous murmur of the distant but onrushing tidal wave.

Saturday

Our world expands as we grow, sometimes too much. The certainty of the North Pole and all it implies, complete with Santa Claus, gives way to provable knowledge or a willingness to accept lack of knowledge. We find, along with that, that others do not share our legends, backgrounds, hopes, and goals.
Nostalgia is in some ways a desire to become once again as certain in knowledge and belief as a child. Everything was much easier when things were clear. We may not recognize that the changes are in us, in how we perceive. I wonder why everybody cannot be just like me.
Some claim we have, as a culture, become too sensitive, too aware, too relative for our own good. That is certainly the fundamentalist creed in any religion or politics. Traditionalists shout that hanging on to the myth of the North Pole, objectively true or not, has social value. Such myths help bind tribes together, and make us civilized, at least within our tribe itself.
Unfortunately, leaving childhood is exactly like leaving Eden. Colorations and differences in the world and its peoples are real, whether we choose to be aware of them or not. Ignoring our differences is not useful to survival, but trying to understand and accept everything and everyone is equally destructive.
Once upon a time I knew, as surely as I visualized Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, what was the right way to live and how to be. Now, I am less certain, and even less sure I will ever find any certainty at all.

Sunday

This sleigh at the Halesite fire department looks like it may have trouble getting out of the rapidly growing grass. The real one up at the North Pole is probably facing slush, pothole puddles, and crevasses into the arctic sea. If any of them do get airborne, they will surely be stuck the first place they land, dry roof or muddy field. Unless of course _ always possible _ a polar express wind whips in by month end.
I’ve had a lot of fun with the North Pole this week, probably because it and Santa Claus are some of the least controversial of subjects. For or against, few seem to believe anything striking at the core of their being and beliefs. It’s too bad we do not have more neutral topics like that _ sometimes every conversation seems a potential minefield. I guess irritation just goes along with being fat and happy.

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.