Serenity

Mon-

Queen Anne’s Lace weaving baskets along the roadside, as clouds suggest welcome moisture arriving soon.  For those who like to worry, there is always something to worry about _ too much rain, too little, too hot, too cold, too many insects, too few, and if all the external world does not provide enough conflict “am I doing the right thing,” and “what should I do next.”  Some of them even worry that they are worrying.  The flower genus has been through it all before, and manages the days substantially well.

Older people like me are fortunate.  We have enough of our lives in the bank that we do not have to concern ourselves with how we will change the world (rather we can waste such thoughts convincing ourselves and each other that in fact we have adequately done so already.)  The wisest of us sit back and finally enjoy all the wonders of this grand universe in a season of serenity and lassitude.

Tue -

Near clear morning after storms.  Sometimes nature is so dramatic _ of course we see it all the time in sunsets and sunrises _ that if we weren’t experiencing it, we’d assume it was fake.  The thing that always strikes me is how different the types of ambient lighting are when the air is saturated with water or, like this morning, from a heavy mistiness that once in a while condenses out into light drizzle.

People in hermetically sealed environments and minds _ inhabiting cars, offices, malls, and sports stadiums, for example, or possibly buried or submerged arcologies in the future _ will miss all of this.  They may claim that their own spectacular effects make up for the loss.  I simply pity them.

Wed-

  

The big hoist at the boat yard is as quiet as it ever gets.  All the yachts that are going in the water this year are already there, and none that are in the water are nearly ready to come out.  The marina staff is all busily engaged keeping the folks tied up at the floating docks happy.  Or at least willing to keep paying the high fees.

It is when you see incredible huge machinery like this sitting idly by at an obscure marina, one of countless others around the world, that you appreciate the massive ubiquity of industrial civilization.  One device like this would have been a wonder of the ancient world, even a wonder in the relatively recent high point of the Venetian Arsenal boatyards.  Yet this is a trivial bit of flotsam among our mighty machinery.  I am never sure whether to be proud, or scared, or both.

Thu-

It’s easy enough to understand why we try to beautify bleak surroundings like city courtyards with colorful flowers and other ornaments.  Yet our desire to add interest extends to views that are fully magnificent on their own.  Lonely cabins looking over endless mountain vistas often have a patch of flowers nearby, and here on a beach with all the ingredients needed for an endless visual feast are beds of marigolds adding brilliance.

I think it is wonderful that we do this.  I refuse to be a purist and claim there is anything so perfect that it might not be enhanced with a flower border or a fountain or even a small shrine.  Maybe I am just a Philistine unable to cope with the natural world.  But I sure have a lot of companions.

Fri-

I’ve walked over here every week for over twenty years now, and never noticed that the tree next to the harbor produced apples.  It was kind of a shock to suddenly see them hanging there.  Another example of how we never fully know even what we think we know, because the world is just too intricate for us to fully comprehend.

Perhaps I should throw in some clever biblical reference to the tree of knowledge, but even as a metaphor I have always found that story particularly ignorant and in its own way evil.  If we have been blessed with senses and brains and all the many wonders of thought, wasting them following dry words by rote instead of exploring and experiencing and enjoying all the miracles about us is one of the greatest sins against god and nature of which I can conceive.
Sat-

 

The hard-to-make-out starfish in the lower foreground here were probably dumped on this sand by some fisherman beaching his dingy.  Starfish, eating the clams still harvested in these waters, are not welcomed by the local commercial baymen.  Children delight in them, of course, and they intrigue us all being so different from everything we find familiar, but that does not prevent them from being pests.  After all, mosquitoes are quite uniquely fascinating as well, in the abstract.

Like many other bottom dwellers, starfish are rarely in our thoughts unless hauled out and shoved under our noses.  We assume the water under the surface is somehow still and clear, very like a big tank of tap water, with maybe a cute goldfish swimming here or there.  Instead, of course, it is a dense soup of every organism imaginable, from the smallest to the largest, and the fiercest of nature’s ongoing laboratories.  None of us lords of creation could live down there, naked, very long.  Such thoughts should probably humble us, but we are lords of creation precisely because nothing can.
Sun-

Verdant green leaves with just a glimpse of promised shoreline beyond.  Unwary children would plunge right through.  But we quickly learn that nature has teeth, and poison ivy is something best left alone when possible.  Pretty, shiny, lovely, but …  Not quite a trap, I am sure, but certainly a possible bad surprise.

You wonder, if humanity grows up and manages to survive and control their world, whether pests such as mosquitoes and poison ivy _ to say nothing of smallpox and flu viruses _ will be granted a place in it.  I would not miss mosquitoes ruining my outdoor evenings, and my memories of horrible bouts with poison ivy on extremities could be abandoned without a second thought.  And yet, those are all part of what is, and surely even their permanent loss or exile would diminish our experience of existence.  Glad that it is not to be my decision.

  

  

Shangri La

Mon-

Throughout the ice ages, the northern hemisphere local climates have apparently vacillated incredibly quickly, which is one reason that its flora and fauna are so quickly adaptable.  Some claim those rapid variations are responsible for human culture and our present civilization _ all forced on us because one year and decade and century was often totally different from the last and the next.  When I listen to the news, that seems to be playing out everywhere except around here right now.

There are droughts, floods, storms, tornadoes, damaging winds, hail, fire, whatever.  Except here, where it has been a little cool but otherwise fair with adequate rainfall.  That all calls into question how accurate the reporting is _ the Earth is vast and news by definition concentrates on the tiny.  For the moment, we seem to be in a protected little bubble of normality, with flowers blooming and insects humming as the have _ or seem to have _ since time immemorial.  A lovely illusion, which I shall inhabit while I can.
Tue-

Berries for the birds in Mill Dam park.  Not all that long ago, our ancestors would happily gather these for lunch and dinner, preserving what they could.  Now, I suppose, my children hardly know where their produce comes from.  Supermarkets are a convenience, but perhaps something is lost by having them easily accessible.

On the other hand, it’s obvious that there was always keen competition as they ripened.  Strawberries get attacked by birds as soon as they ripen, and most of these fruits have already fed birds, raccoons, and who knows what else in this little corner.  We think of nature as a big open bonanza, but it’s a sometime bonanza, you may have to work hard for your food, and a bunch of creatures are rushing around at all times of day and night to beat you to it.

Wed-

Seems like the week for bindweed.  Another ordinary picture of another ordinary day in a strange, infinite, miraculous universe. 

Sometimes it is best to just let the mind go blank, and simply appreciate existence.

Thu-

  

Quiet pond at Hechsher, with geese and swans and leafy reflections and even the algae starting to scum the surface, is also part of summertime here.  In the evenings there are free music concerts.  In the days, when it is not too hot, children cavort in the new playground.  All year, old people in various happy or grim moods stride and stroll on the path going around. 

A park like this is one reason I am not happy with those who believe we should be totally back to nature.  I enjoy manicured grounds, cultivated flowers, and the company of fellow citizens quite as much as I do vast woodlands or even wide expanses of water.  We are people, after all, and pretending we are deer is just as ridiculous as claiming that deer have no place in our world.
Fri-

Around the world temperatures are at record highs, but here it’s been one of the coolest years I can remember, from a blustery blizzard winter to a wet miserable spring to a summer that has only really arrived a few days at a time, and then in a kind of half-hearted way.  The weather forecasters keep using words like “delightful” but I find it too out of whack _ I like my heat when it should be hot.

None of the vegetation or animals seem to care in the least.  Oh, the ducklings just hatched last week, which is a bit late, and the flowers seem to be trailing a bit as well, but not my much, and in full power like these when they arrive.  Everywhere is beautiful now, fully green or fully flowered or almost brightly fruited.  If there ever is a benign moment in the relentless selective pressure of nature, surely these brilliant days contain it.

Sat-

As explained, I normally don’t bother to capture wildlife with my old digital camera, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t all around, nor that I am not interested.  There are always hawks and gulls and crows and warblers and cardinals, always at this time of summer fish jumping and swimming, sometimes turtles, never snakes. Not counting the other animate species _ rats, raccoons, dogs, cats, people.  But usually, I prefer the imagined solitude of reflections and vistas.

Anyway, here are a couple of swans preening, as they so often do.  When they want solitude they simply demand it of everything else, chasing away anything up to and including people.  Children are often quite frightened when they are in an aggressive mood.  No question however, that although they are imported and possibly invasive, swans add elements of grace and beauty to aquatic scenes.  I suppose there are lessons in there somewhere, I leave them to you “as an exercise …”

Sun-

 

Marsh grasses making their best effort against the encroachments of a highly populated modern environment.  Nothing wrong, really, with docks and boats, and beautiful houses along the shore.  It’s the transportation and support such as sewage disposal that civilization requires that causes most of the problems.  Pollution was a lot worse locally decades ago, when people took everything more or less for granted.

Now attention has shifted, responsibly, to the global environment, for which amelioration may unfortunately be too late.  But at least for a while, localities can fight the good fight and seek to save what makes them special for a while as forces beyond their control raise the water level and increase the damage of the more frequent storms.  Perhaps we should be sad, but there is, after all, today, and nature in the raw with its ice ages and asteroids is hardly a benign force.

 

 

  

Good Old Summertime

Mon-

Our lilies this year are an advertisement for the bulb company from whom we purchase them.  I’m a sucker during bad winter weather for the lovely color catalogs of impossible floral magnificence.  But in this case, at least, my efforts and money are well rewarded.  Right now, especially in gardens, there is a lot of magnificence to choose from.

Elsewhere in the world it is Bastille Day.  The only fireworks here will be strong thunderstorms, but they have their own seasonal charm.  This is one of the finest times of the year, when the trimming and weeding are pretty much under control, the annuals are planted and thriving (or not), and everything is doing what it must do regardless of my intervention.  A good time to sit back and simply enjoy being alive, which is what everyone tries to do.
Tue=

Just relaxed summertime beauty.  Wonderful moments occur in all seasons, but in this climate in mid-July it is easy to feel one with a benevolent world, and to meditate on how right everything is.  There seems to be little reason to worry about the future, nor to dwell on the past.  Except for an occasional mosquito, nothing breaks our reverie.  Even a storm rain-drop can be welcome, just for the change of pace.

Purists would argue that if this harbor were wilderness still it would be more intense and profound.  There should be no place for docks and boats and roses.  What nature and god provided is always better than anything blighted by the hand of humanity.  I obviously do not agree.  I think our conscious interaction with the universe, our appreciation of being, our unique happiness is the great gift we bring to the cosmos, and we are right to cultivate it and to manipulate the environment _ at least somewhat _ to make it more accessible.
Wed-

View across the lawn of a long-time neighbor at the bottom of our hill.  Like Joan, he grew up in the house he now owns _ in fact a lot of the homes around here tend to be kept in the family.  It is easy to see why, with views like this (although his is probably the best.)

The huge beech tree in the front yard seems immortal, but it requires constant attention and we worry about it during every increasingly violent storm, blizzard, and hurricane.  I suppose he worries a lot more.  The trouble is, of course, that nothing is as permanent as it seems.  Up here near us, an equivalent beech dating from the time of the Revolution suddenly up and died for no apparent reason over a few seasons.  Probably old age, which reminds us of our own mortality in what seems to be our infinite daily existence.

Thu-

Classic.  Pine needles sweeping down, tranquil water, empty mind.  Anywhere with such possibilities seems more open to contemplation than, say, a bus stop on a busy street.  Of course, after about five or ten minutes, most of us modern Americans might start to prefer the bus stop.  We are hardly culturally adapted to sit still with “nothing to do” for very long.

I find I must always force myself to pause.  Much of life must be passed nearly unconscious of local surroundings, as we are concerned with plans and worries and where we are going and what must be done.  It is impossible to survive without spending most of your time doing that, unless you are very fortunate or unfortunate in life with no need to strive and do other’s bidding.  Even now, in retirement, I am too concerned with what I am thinking or what’s next.  So I try to pause and count slowly to twenty, and take a little while to appreciate the glory of the world which can always be found around us.

Fri-

 

Now is the heyday of the “old reliable weeds” that pop up all over where people don’t want them.  The various members of the compositae family.  One would think that it would be easier to change our aesthetic judgments than to change the world, but people don’t think like that.  A plant like this in a garden is an invasive pest.

A perfect part of summer, on a gorgeous day, with little to do.  I am free as any eleven year old used to be, with a world to enjoy and explore and endless opportunities for self-discovered entertainment.  At such times, I often believe I have been the most fortunate person who ever existed.

Sat-

Field bindweed is the bane of gardeners around here.  It is impossible to eradicate, once it gets a hold in any corner it will, if unchecked, rapidly cover everything else in a thick mat of vines, and no matter how often you weed it out, it pops back in strength within days.  It is not only an invader, but an entire occupation force at the same time.  It is only slightly compensated for by having flowers that are quite pretty, in their morning-glory way.

I guess here I should throw in some analogy to human affairs.  Like the biblical “wheat and tares together sown.”  But this morning, I think it is enough to just regard what “is.”  Everything need not be a signature, omen, example, nor trigger to greater truth.  More profoundly than all the interrelations we may construct in our fertile minds, everything in our universe just “is,” and we should also appreciate that fact. 

Sun-

 

  

Like some relic of an antediluvian age, this little pocket park sits quietly squeezed between commercial buildings, not exactly neglected but in need of repairs along the waterfront.  Having nothing exotic and special about it, the space is extremely underutilized.  Undoubtedly eventually an enterprising town manager will “improve” it tremendously with a children’s playground or some other grand gesture, and thereby ruin the current ambience.

There are those who fight updating and modernization in any form fiercely, seeking to preserve patrimony.  Others are ripping into the future, leaving behind the blighted past.  Balance is impossible, because the one thing that cannot be achieved is some kind of rule-bound tension concerning past and future.  That is, after all, reserved for the actual present, which obeys no rules and simply is what it is.

 

  

Interlude

Mon-

Our older son married this weekend, which has meant no time for other activities.  Only now are minutes creeping back as we gradually reduce a pile of accumulated chores.  But as our human happinesses and activities filled all our experience for a while, the wind continued to blow and the sun to shine, the tides surged, the birds went about their necessities.  See _ this is proof.

Since a hurricane narrowly avoided us, the wind has been whipping a gale.  That is welcome in this humid heat, unless you are trying to swim in the ocean or control a bridal gown on the lawn during picture sessions.  And with the arrival of evening lightning bugs in force, I am strongly reminded that the days are now growing shorter, and in another few months we will be anticipating more seasons.

Tue-

Spartina _ what is left after the ravages of last winter _ is thick now, welcoming the flushing high waters each tidal cycle.  Horseshoe crabs almost reach it at high water, digging shallow pits in the sand to lay eggs.  Pretty soon the surface of the bay will be roiled by the splashes of as-yet-too-tiny minnows and snappers.  One lonely white tern is out ceaselessly swooping low around the pilings offshore.

Beyond the grass, children play in the muddy water at the town beach, their cries of freedom from class echoing charmingly (as an older person mostly charming because distant, I admit.)  It all seems so perfect and timeless.  My logic tells me that is not so, to worry about the future, to understand disaster is everywhere.  My inner child has also left the classroom this day, and says to forget all I want, smile and shout my own gladness at these moments, which are, after all, reality.
Wed-

The dune grass is also well on its way to summer peak, presiding over the sand drifts above the calm water.  There is such an infinite of interplay in the visual world around us _ even ignoring everything else which is just as infinite _ that I could shoot a picture from here every day and hardly become repetitious.  Each hour, each weather pattern, each season _ each fleeting moment of focused consciousness and attention _ is unique.

It is too easy at my age to wake in the morning and be bored.  There is a constant wash of memories and a lethargic pull that whispers “you have already done all that already.”  One response is to try to push harder and harder for the novel and new by finding totally new experiences such as travel.  I have found for my own peace of mind it is better to make the effort to understand why I feel that way in the face of overwhelming evidence that my universe is untarnished, fresh, and unexplored each day.
Thu-

Don’t get too many birds in these photos _ nor for that matter special sky and water effects.  I have a cheap old camera, by design, no fancy lenses or filters, don’t even use the standard options and doodads available on everything electronic these days.  I’m not a photographic artist and have no desire to be.  These pictures are taken to encourage me to see more, and the next day to formulate a few minor observations on myself and the world.

The important thing about any beauty _ created by art or otherwise _ is not that we can analyze its components nor basis nor creator.  Beauty is a gift to allow us to appreciate each moment, to feel that all the patterns around us are in balance and that we belong.  Beauty is the full sensory equivalent of an intellectual “religious impulse,” identical except for our need to create artificial categories in all we perceive.
Fri-

I like to think this scene on East Shore Road has not changed much since the mid-nineteenth century.  The houses were there, perhaps almost as big, and the harbor filled with sailing craft.  Of course we have none of the animal smells, the roads are paved, and in the biggest change the hills all around are forested instead of being used as pasture and meadows.  The way we imagine the past is rarely how it was, even visually, and certainly not emotionally nor in terms of human experience.

The world constantly changes and evolves, in spite of the conceit of each generation that what it knows happens to be what is normal and eternal.  Stability is illusion.  Old people worry about what is lost, but they are soon gone, and the tribes move on with only occasional reminders and fantasies of what must have been in the old days.
Sat-

Old fat guy lurking in the bushes like an aged panther waiting for prey.  At least, I guess he imagines prey.  I’ve never seen anybody catch anything this far inside the harbor and discussions I’ve caught mostly spoke of imaginary flounder (not in this season) or inedible spider crabs.  At this point, he is just a picturesque part of the scenery, like some ancient Italian peasant in a fishing village.

I like to think that my life is more purposeful, what I do filled with meaning, more important than merely sitting all day, smoking a cigar, watching a futile line stretch off beneath reflecting waters.  Of course, I am wrong.  Cosmically wrong always, from the standpoint of the mechanical universe.  Socially wrong in that nothing I do will result in financial rewards at this point.  Personally wrong in that walking and thinking is not really more elegant than sitting and meditating.  Still, we all like our little points of better-than –you comparisons in our competitive society.
Sun-

Yep, nothing but green.  No focus, no break, no composition.  That’s the point.  A short time ago, this tiny roadside meadow was filled with flowers.  Already many of the annuals have finished flowering and are busily storing energy in seeds for the coming year.  Most of the leaves on the trees and other perennials have already reached full extent, the new growth is beginning to halt and the nutrients sent back to the roots.  Basically, this is as green as it is going to get.

We think of timeless nature and its great cycles, as if it were some quiet library or majestic swells on the ocean.  But the ocean is not alive.  Life is roiled by constant disasters, plans, adjustments, chaos, and only survives by getting what it can when it can.  And that is just the plant world!  This quiet boring verdant patch is seething with tension and energy and competition.  Me, I just enjoy the lush ambience.