Words can be like balloons. They might float through the air, taking one’s mood higher with them, or they may stumble along the pavement, bouncing into brambles alongside the road.
Swallow: graceful, swift-flying bird or draw into the throat and esophagus.
Tender: delicate and soft in quality or to present formally for acceptance, as a resignation.
Challenges build character. Challenges shape personalities. Challenges prepare us to fight against the forces that would have us give up and admit defeat.
I am facing a first-world challenge at the moment; a dead HVAC system in the house we bought a month ago. The repair team who came by today said the system is shot and should be replaced. We have a home owners’ warranty policy, but the guy leading the team said it would be 10 days before they would know whether the insurance company would pay for a new system. They might patch the existing system together, piece-meal, but that is NOT recommended. So we wait. The weather thus far has been cooperative; nice breezes, open windows, clouds. But next week the temperatures should rise into the 90s during the day.
We will cope. We will face the challenges. I am happy to have a roof over my head. I am pleased to be able to afford food. I have the world’s most wonderful wife. I am a lucky man.
My root canal yesterday was not what I would have hoped for in my first month in my new home. But it went without a hitch. I am a lucky man.
But now I must accept whatever it is behind the curtain. What is it that could wreck my world? We all have challenges. Sometimes, they build character. Sometimes, they are insurmountable, defining our limits in ways that humble us.
If I prayed (but I don’t…and to whom/what?), I would wish good things for us. But I am confident things just happen, according to a haphazard arrangement.
Creating matter from light is just around the corner. Well, maybe. I found this program fascinating.
I do not want to get a root canal today. But I will, nonetheless.
“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.”
Writers…fiction, nonfiction, and science fiction…have an exceptional history of talking and writing about things that, at the time, sound implausible…the stuff of fiction…but later become reality. Some examples:
| Person | Prediction |
| H.G. Wells | Atomic bombs |
| Arthur C. Clarke | Online newspapers |
| Aldous Huxley | Prediction |
| Jules Verne | Lunar modules, earth to moon and back |
| George Orwell | Government spying |
| Robert Heinlein | Waterbeds; the Cold War |
| Roger Ebert | Movie screening; HDTV |
With no denigration of physical and social scientists intended, it seems to me the spark for much of the creativity necessary to advance humankind (or, depending on your perspective, hasten its demise) arises not from scientists but from creative minds whose minds are not limited by observed reality. Scientists and technologists, of course, translate these creative visions into reality, but the impetus may grow from wildly imaginative minds who can envision what science and society and political minds are capable of doing.
I do not claim to have a wildly imaginative mind, but I believe I may be just a tad more creative than the average guy on the street. If, 100 years from now, something about which I have written as if it were reality has come to pass, there will be no need to thank me, or even to acknowledge me, because I will be dead.
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever.
Leonard Cohen’s poem, Suzanne, later to become a song, was written about Suzanne Verdal. I once wrote about someone I knew long ago. Will it ever become a poem, or a song?
Even if behind altruism there is a motive of recognition and self-respect, altruism is a good thing. The reward is intangible, but warranted.
In the distance, I see a small private lake next to a huge hill covered with what appears to be freshly-mown grass. Looking through my binoculars, I see that atop the hill is a very large house with four or five white columns along its front side. Above the columns, protruding from the roof, are three dormer windows. The sheer size of the place…and the lake, the pristine grass-covered hill, and the position of the house as if it were the overlord of a manor…suggest massive amounts of money are available to the people who own and maintain the place. It looks impressive, though architecturally out of step with my tastes. But the impressiveness of its appearance evaporates in an instance when I look slightly left and above the house. There, in the sky above the distant hills, I see a mass of white clouds, tinted pink by the afternoon sun, turning grey and rolling as if they were within a cauldron. It seems to be the early stages of a thunderstorm. The size of the clouds and, indeed, the sky in general, suddenly make the huge house look tiny and fragile and inconsequential. It’s all a matter of perspective.
Our house is near the southern end of the village. Looking out from our decks and from the windows of my study, I can see that the land just south of here is heavily wooded and hilly, but not so steep and mountainous as where we live. There are a few pastures in the distance and I can see outbuildings of what I assume are farms beyond the borders of the village. Early in the morning, the valleys between the rises and ridges are washed in light fog that burns off quickly not long after the sun heats the air.
Out of the blue-grey haze each morning, the sound of the birds in the trees surrounding our house begins early. The loud, shrill whistles of cardinals begin first, followed by the chatter of blue jays and the songs of a host of other birds, large and small. The sounds build into a frenzied rush of noise, growing louder and louder within just a few minutes.
The wild birds’ songs begin the chorus, but the clicking of squirrels in the surrounding trees and the crowing of roosters and the lowing of cattle in the farms below soon add to the cacophony. The cattle and the roosters are in the valley below us and are a considerable distance away, a mile or more I think, but their sounds are clear and strong.
This mish-mash of sounds, some piercingly loud, would in another setting be unsettling. The sounds would be chaotic and stress-inducing. But here, at least in the early light of dawn, they give me an odd sense of serenity.
Just a little later, the muffled voices of the people next door, out on their deck to enjoy the same peace I’m enjoying, interrupt my solitude. I cannot see them through the dense leaves on the trees between us, but I hear them. And for a moment I realize why I’ve always dreamed of living in relative isolation on a farm. The sound of human voices can erase, in an instant, the serenity that nature visits upon me. Not always, of course, but in the early morning, I prefer my own company and I like hearing the sounds of creatures utterly unlike me.
Look closely at the least impressive flowers and you will see magic on a stem. What does it take to remind ourselves of the exceptional beauty all around us? I think it takes just this: pay attention and think about what is before us. That, alone, will give us the opportunities we too often fail to take.
As I sit in my study with the windows open, listening to the cardinals and mockingbirds and wrens and who knows what else, the thought running through my mind is this: if everyone else in the world were as fortunate as I, there would be everlasting peace. And then I wonder what I am doing, enjoying this magic alone? Therein lies the problem; we’re not sharing the majesty the way we should. But how can we? We live isolated lives.
I find polygamy distasteful. But should I, and should society at large, have the right to forbid its practice among consenting adults?
There are so many other laws, social and legal, that impose the social preferences of one group of people on every individual. Think of nudity, extramarital relationships, profanity, alcohol, marijuana, Sunday liquor sales…the list could go on.
I find it offensive that society can impose its collective will on so many things that are, to the extent they cause no harm to society at large, personal matters. The trick, of course, is to define that line of demarcation at which personal liberties infringe on the social order. But, often, that line of demarcation is ignored entirely. Too little attention is paid to the concept of freedom and too much is paid to what a large or influential group of people find disagreeable. The result is the imposition of unreasonable restrictions on personal freedom.
Only when you notice it’s missing does it matter. If it’s gone and you didn’t notice, it never made enough of a difference to matter. Think of people you didn’t notice until they were gone. They didn’t matter to you. That might be why they’re gone. We can change, though, can’t we? So, the next one missing can matter.
It was Fall again, and there was blood on the pumpkin. Not that there was blood on the pumpkin every Fall, but there was this time. It seemed natural. It seemed like a tractor accident in October was a normal occurrence. And it was. But this time, it was a little more normal than usual. It was an outsider who caused blood on the pumpkin. Not a member of the family, not a friend who helped with the harvest, but a stranger who had paid an entry fee to visit, with his family, to pick any pumpkin he wished.
He pretended to have experience with tractors. And his demeanor suggested complete comfort with them. So when he asked to use a tractor with a front-loader so he could select a lot of pumpkins, there were no questions asked. Lindsay insisted the “pumpkin master” sign a waiver of liability, like he would ask anyone to do, but he felt silly doing it. The guy obviously knew his way around a farm. He knew tractors, he knew crops, he knew refraining for asking for help was appreciated more than the fees collected at entrance.
Lindsay died when the front-loader spun around and clipped him at eye-level. The “pumpkin master” didn’t notice Lindsay standing there. It wasn’t intentional, but it was permanent. It was fatal. Lindsay never knew it was coming. He never saw it. His life ended in a fraction of a second.
It was Lindsay’s blood on the pumpkin that Fall morning. The “pumpkin master” offered his apologies and his deep-felt condolences, but something seemed amiss, though nobody noticed until later, after he had gone. A month passed before the sheriff learned that a man matching the description of the “pumpkin master” had been present when spinning tractors took the lives of five people in the surrounding counties.
That was a year ago. This Fall, just when people had begun to remember the incident and try to push it deep into their subconscious, there was blood on the pumpkin again. And the same guy was here.
I tried to stop him, but there wasn’t time.
Serenity is temporary. Chaos is temporary. Everything is temporary. There must be a lesson in that realization; it was here a moment ago, but it’s gone.
When dreams fade and one believes the future holds no promise, the process of decay begins. But dreams, alone, cannot stifle the process. One must strive to make those dreams into reality, lest dreams become meaningless fantasies. Taking action, however plodding, toward achieving a dream is the key.
Living with pain is not the solution. I have had a toothache for days. Today, I hope to be able to convince a dentist to see me ASAP.
Some days, I find myself plotting the overthrow of humankind. Other days, I consider all the good people and just know they outnumber the sub-human primal ooze that populate the places in which I interact with people who ostensibly provide a product or service.
Today is shaping up to be a plotting kind of day.
The concept of preemptive humanitarian euthanasia (also known as murder, as in “he needed killing”), wherein society is put out of its misery through the elimination of pond-scum masquerading as people, takes on an almost spiritual aura on plotting days.
Small pleasantries can go a long way toward mending broken relationships. All it takes is time and intent. And a willingness to acknowledge one’s faults. And a willingness to believe time heals all wounds.
I can’t quite comprehend the physics of glass. It is hard and brittle and dense, but it is essentially invisible. How can that be?
I know people who are like glass. Do not be one of them.
The moment you know something to be true, the instant you are certain of anything, become skeptical of your ability to distinguish fact from fiction. There is a lie hidden somewhere in almost every truth. Certainty closes minds and repels real knowledge.
This morning, I viewed, online, a series of pieces of art designed to illustrate words in other languages for which there is no word in English. I fell in love with some of the words:
Gökotta: A Swedish word meaning “to wake up early in the morning with the purpose of going outside to hear the first birds sing.”
Backpfeifengesicht: A German word for “a face badly in need of a fist.”
Komorebi: A Japanese word meaning “the sort of scattered, dappled light effect that happens when sunlight shines in through trees.”
There are more, thirty in all. The artist, a New Zealand based designer named Anjana Iyer, created the illustrations as part of the “Found in Translation” series.
I am intrigued by language. There should be English equivalents of these words. And, perhaps, there will be. One day.
The next person you meet might be the one who will make every mistake, every error, every embarrassment, a prelude to perfection. Really, it’s possible. Let yourself live in a world of possibilities.
Temptation is not a passing thing. It lasts a lifetime. It arises with you every morning and sleeps with you every night. It’s there, right beside you, when you think you’re alone on a desolate highway. And it sits on your shoulder as you thread through the throngs of a crowded downtown street. You’d kill it if you could, but that would be murder, or suicide.
Speak softly to a blade of grass and then listen. The messages you hear will be close to the truth, if only you’ll allow yourself time to consider. There is honor in listening when there is no point, and no solution. Just listen. You will hear.
