Easterly Wind

Dry wind blows now out of the west today.  Warm, warm air with only maybe just the tiniest hint of any moisture rustles the leaves of the trees.  Green grass waves but even with an untrained eye you can see the brown underneath.  Recently it has been too dry for the growing things.

 

Dry weather isn’t what caught my attention today.  Looking up I saw the trees bending to the east.  Bent branches on trees leaning east stood out against the blue, blue sky.  

 

Michigan gets its weather from the west.  Snow, rain and tornados almost invariably track east to west.  We don’t really get nor’easters.  

 

In past years driving “up north” I would always notice the windbreaks planted along the edge of older farm fields.  When I was in horticulture class in the 1970s the professor still argued for planting windbreaks to stop erosion and protect the soil.  North of Saint Johns, Michigan there are a couple of fields where the trees in the windbreak are permanently bent from west to east.  A row of trees out in the midst of brown tilled soil tipped fifteen to twenty degrees off perpendicular leaning eastward stands out visually.

 

We think of ourselves as the Midwest here but people just west of us think of Michigan as part of the east.  Maybe the wind and the barrier that Lake Michigan presents make us seem more tied to the east coast that the middle of America.  I don’t know.

 

Today the wind blew a butterfly my way.  A bit of beauty made the day all the more wonderful, east or west, beauty lifts us up.

Words for the Dying

I hide under a dusky orange/red umbrella. Today is a 90F day. The sun beats down. Rays of late afternoon sun filter to the ground in dry gold.  Green, green trees on this very end of Spring day are catching the most direct beams of light. 

My phone sits beside me playing a song called Through the Dark by Helen Jane Long.  Around me and this table at which I sit birds sing in their varied bird voices.  Sat in trees from here all the way down the block each avian is part of today’s choral presentation. A squirrel chitters and a crow calls adding rhythm to the concerto.  The piano tune lifts in deceptively simply notes that seem to pause with hopeful anticipation.  

Inexplicably my computer refuses to put a desktop icon for Word on the desktop. I have asked for the shortcut several times but it has been to no avail.  So each time I begin to compose a piece of prose I have to type in the first few letters of the program’s name in the search box.  The search box brings me up alternatives and today one of them was Words for the Dying. Odd I don’t remember ever putting anything on my computer that contains that phrase. As I looked at the screen a tune called “Embraced Memories” played.  Hmmh, does that mean something?  

Faced with the end when there is no hope and we cannot find the spirit in our heart to exhort that a better life lies ahead, a pure land or a heaven, do we fall back on embraced memories?  Do we talk about that time the waves kept crashing in because the hurricane was far off the coast and we body surfed until we could body surf no more?  Do we talk about that vet assistant student who puked all over everything on our walk home from the bars and her roommate who shed her jeans as easily as peeling off the wrapper of a candy bar? Do we lie and say tomorrow will be better?

What are to be our words for the dying?  Do we mutter Jesus loves you and place a cross in their hand?  

Maybe we talk of grace and of beauty.  Maybe the conversation should be as simple as saying either you have been my friend or I love you. I don’t know the answer to these questions.  I don’t want to answer them from either side of the equation any time soon. This particular music streaming channel seems to be filled with titles that tie into these questions.  Right now the song is called A Thousand Years.  But as you and I know a thousand years is nothing in the realm of the universe and the universal.  Worlds have risen and fallen several times in a thousand years. How many souls have had to be comforted in that span?

Again the hopeful notes slow from a piano and a violin and the piece and this meditation draws to a close.

Wake of the Flood, Laughing Waters

 

Twilight. Fading light. Another day is closing out.  I can hear the birds, they chirp and trill. The light is warm but the air is not. It is neutral and for tonight that is okay. Too much cold and too much ambiguity over whether to march onto into spring or hold on dearly to winters cloak have made the months of April and May irritating.  Save resilient daffodils these months have not shown the spark of joy the changing of the seasons should bring.

I read a chapter on acceptance and mercy written by a psychologist. Lying in my hammock the words made so much sense.  The author talked about a poisonous tree.  When we such a tree thought is to cut it down, to burn it or to otherwise dispatch it.  But the tree might have some other value in the ecosystem that we don’t yet understand.  Perhaps fencing the tree and labeling it so as to warn others might be the way to go.  Acceptance and mercy.  It doesn’t mean that we let the poison take us, it means that we try and act with growing understanding and compassion.

Having read that section, I rousted myself from my comfortable hammock and walked.  As I stepped outside my house the light on a budding tree caught my eye.  Quickly I snapped a number of shots.  One was easier than the other’s to frame.  One taken I adjusted the color.  Funny thing was that one of the filters made the tree look the shade of an old Grateful Dead recording, Wake of the Flood. As I looked at the end result it made me smile.  I remember so much of my life that the songs on that album were the soundtrack for. 

Ah the light grows dim.  I will stop my writing now.

Friday, May 06, 2016

Sun and light haze today. The air is not yet warm.  Breakfast was out because I had forgotten to make oatmeal last night.  If you don’t plan you pay. Some time was spent cleaning up the kitchen before the trip off to the place for the morning meal. If you don’t act you pay.

Breakfast was as breakfast mostly is oatmeal.  Dried apples garnished it.  A pinch of brown sugar sweetened it.  A couple of pecans made it savory.  Coffee washed it down.  

The short walk from the breakfast place to my office showed me two things.  First humankind always seems to have a plan for anything in nature that seems unused or under used.  Maybe builders have a mantra, “build higher, build denser, reduce the cost per square foot and maximize the profit of rental units”. Cranes are popping up a nine story building where there used to be a couple of pole barns and a large parking lot. The construction I saw going on is a striking change to a landscape that has remained relatively stable for 40 years.

Second nature always puts on a show.  I took a photograph of a tree covered with white blossoms last Friday.  Today all the white blossoms are on the ground browning in decay.  However the tree’s canopy now appears golden from all the little stems apparently covered with pollen (or some kind of residue) that remain from the points where the blossoms had previously been.  Life is a parade of change.

The final thing I notice today is that our leaders are weak and rely on their biases and our fears to rule.  One headline after another in a paper abandoned at the table I sat at focused on punishments being enacted against marginalized groups. Why because the people we elected don’t like the color of their skin or the cadence of their voices. You could almost hear the terms lazy and shiftless hidden in the rhetoric. There was no problem solving, no statesmanship. All that was there was retribution for perceived wrongs of 40 years past.

God if you are ever oppressed and economically abused don’t ever riot.  Fifty years later and tired old white people are still trying to exact revenge.

What Is Beyond These Trees?

 

In the course of a day I make two or maybe three trips to the nearby coffee shop.  To get there a follow a path that takes me through a parking lot. At the end of the lot there is a berm that is comprised of spread stone on one side, a divider of 8 foot tall scrubby trees, pine or yew or some other ornamental and then on the other side a strip of mulch. 

 You cannot see the coffee shop through the natural fence as it were.  You can however see the opening in the shrubs.

Each time I walk through that green canopy I wonder about the other times I have approached a copse of trees or a woodlot and have seen a clear path worked through the natural arches formed by the tree’s branches.  

The first time I see a path like that I wonder what lies inside the wood, what lies beyond the wood.  Maybe some people just see the path and dismiss it. Me, I am always intrigued.

I guess some of my intrigue comes from a youthful experience when I went with my parents to pick up my siblings from a church camp.  At the camp there was a stand of scrubby pine.  As a young lad I wandered off into those fragrant pines. In a clearing in the middle there was a tiny chapel hardly bigger that a tool shed.  It was painted white inside and out and had a door that was ajar.  Looking inside there in a space that was six by six there was red carpet on the floor. A small cross was nailed to the wall opposite the door and standing before it was a kneeler for prayer.  I had never seen anything like it.  It was a holy place hidden away deep in the trees. God lived in a small hut in the woods.

After that I frequently followed the trails I saw running under the verdant foliage. As the years have gone on I have found party spots with empty beer cans and used rubbers near a large puddle deep inside the trees.  I have found honest to goodness Zen gardens. I have found a path that led to the wire fence that prohibited me from wandering onto the freeway as a pedestrian.  Sometimes I have simply walked through the woods and come out the other side at the edge of green fields or flowering fields or at the back of tract housing. On one walk through the woods I came upon five waters falls.  I later learned that there are seven if I had only just kept going the extra mile or so.  

Maybe the path through the trees is a metaphor for life.  Maybe I am just looking for the mystery at the center of all that surrounds me. As long I keep walking I will keep following these paths.

  Oh and there was that one time when the bear sat blocking the path. Another metaphor for life.

 

Writing Prompt

April 27, 2016

 

A small outdoor table with four chairs sits on my brick patio. All these many red-purple bricks are being overrun with grasses and weeds.  A metal fire pit sits off to the side, quietly rusting. On my left at the far edge of my yard rests a vine covered canoe that has not be used in years.  Closer in is a hammock with two comfy looking green pillows.  Seeing the yard one would note it is a bit of a disaster.  Some purple border plant is making like Sherman across the center of the greening grass like Sherman heading for the sea.  A Rubbermaid shed needs reassembling a windstorm having laid it low.  Not tonight.

 

Last night when I was at a bookstore I saw for the price of a mere $9.99 a book of writing prompts.  For a second I was tempted.  I picked it up, per the cover the bound volume contained over a thousand first lines and/or suggestions like “It is you first night on the cruise. What is the most surprising thing you have seen?” Didn’t float my boat.  If there had been a sense of even the tiniest bit of imagination in these opening lines I might have picked it up.  Yes I hit road blocks when I write.  Sometimes a simple prompt will get the worlds flowing, sometimes not. There are simply days when I wonder if I haven’t used up all my good stories.  Still I find a way back to the keyboard.

 

Sitting at this pale blue table I think I have created my own writing prompt.  I will try to answer the question of who should fill one of the three empty chairs with me.  I will try to do it in my favorite style, ala one, two, fiver. In that style you start with one word, then two, then five, then ten, then well you get the idea. What follows next is my self-initiated writing prompt.

 

Who should take this seat next to me?

 

You. Of course.  Nobody else needs ask.  Too long has passed since you and I have talked, really talked. Tonight the evening is filled with cool air and above lays a clouded sky. This night would be the perfect time for the two of use to go one on one.  As I think about my role as your host I am sure I have a bottle or at least a few shots from a near empty bottle of your favorite scotch tucked away.  You know the one, an aged whiskey with a smoky peaty taste but mellowed because this liquor was aged a second time in rose soaked wine barrels. 

 

We can sit here for the next hour or so wearing just light jackets and sipping the scotch whiskey for warmth.  Things forgotten can come to light, for surely you will remind me of this and that like the day the old judge just started bellowing about the idiocy of the attorney up before him. And I will remind you of the talks and conversations we used to have about the Lemonheads and G. Love and whoever the band de jour was.  As we finish our first drams our talk may to turn to those now gone for good or just gone from our worlds.

 

As the scotch settles into our systems barriers should drop and the conversation will range far afield.  From the philosophy of what constitutes a real person or entity to those political views what seemed to have recently gotten some tractions.  Our era might be a time of xenophobia or imperialism.  Maybe we will eventually get around to things like the nastiest personal sex stories we have. I always win when I talk about that lass who horked up one very expensive steak dinner on my rod when her gag reflex kicked in. Or maybe we will talk about the one great love that was lost. 

 

I well excuse myself to see if I can scrounge up a little more of the good scotch.  I think there might be the remnant of another single malt and maybe two.  Time has long passed since I drank regularly.  Time has long past since company stopped over on a regular basis.   The fact that you are here has cheered me, it means I am not forgotten.  Oh I know my family still depends on me but my social circle is very small these days.  On a rare Friday night I will sneak out for a solitary beer with a friend or three.  Half the time those outings turn into situations where people are plumbing the depths of my knowledge for free advice.

 

We talk some more about the choices we made.  Did we really marry for love or did we marry out of expectation. Have we achieved what we ought to have achieved.  If I were twenty five years younger it would be at this point I would light up a small bowl of hashish.  But those days are so long ago.  Funny I asked my cardiologist about whether a toke off a joint would kill me.  He didn’t seem to think so.  However he said it was a bit of a mixed bag.  The learned man opined that t was an even odds chance that I would become the most relaxed person in the world or the most paranoid. Methinks he is right, the odds at 50/50 are not something I am willing to roll the dice on these days.

 

The scotch is now gone and the sky has gone full black.  There is some odd light from the city reflecting down from the cloud cover but mostly this pace has gone black.  We have talked and talked and talked and we have been open and honest and there is a connection that remains real and vibrant between us.  Let us not let so much time slip away before we meet again my old friend. Life is too short.  Our hearts last only the length of a song.  Understand I am not just talking about that muscle in our chests and pushes blood to every vein and artery it can reach.  I am talking about our spiritual hearts.  Eventually we run out of tears and laughter of lust and love of hatred and passion.  I want to see you again before the darkness really falls.

 

Yes you should be in the chair next to me right now. How is that for a fucking writing prompt?

April 26th

April 26, 2016

 

It is good to seek inner peace and a simply undisturbed life.  

 

For a day to go well the first thing I must do after I get to my office is to pull out the mat.  I unroll it and at roughly the same time I put on soft ancient music.  Sitting for five minutes I try to push all conscious thought from my mind. During that short span it isn’t easy not to fixate on laundry lists of things to do.  It isn’t easy not to dwell on regrets and unfulfilled dreams.  But for five minutes I really try and detach from myself. Call it meditation, call it prayer, it is a special time.

 

Most times when I stand up I am refreshed.  Most time I feel more balanced after such a session.  The trick is that it is so easy to walk away from this practice.  It is five minutes that I am not typing an Order.  It is five minutes I am not paying a bill.  It is five minutes that I am not being useful. We are driven to be doing something all of our waking moments.  Being still isn’t considered productive in our culture.

 

The Orders can wait.  I am paying a bill to myself, to my soul.  I am being useful because a “me” with a clearer mind is more productive over the course of a day. Surely I get more out of a calm focused set of thoughts that from a jangled cognitive center. In seeking quietude I am seeking clarity.  In pushing things out of my conscious mind I can see sometimes quite clearly what is junk. Knowing what spiritual junk is lets me begin the process of growth and awareness. Reflection helps me pick a path that leads me out of the spiritual debris. 

 

The key is that after reflection we must be willing to set aside the inertia in our lives.  We have to push ourselves after contemplation to move beyond the foolishness encumbering our mental and spiritual lives.  We need to look for clarity. We need to seek out the source of clarity. Then, we must act with awareness.