Grabbing Happiness

Mon-

From up close damage to leaves is apparent, on each far horizon filled with foliage there are spots of color already.  There are ripples in the water from a strong breeze, hinting that Mr. North Wind has heard the alarm go off and is starting to get up.  Even walking along, in the mid afternoon, the shadows are shockingly long and deep well before I think they should be.  And after dinner, the evening too quickly slides into full darkness.

Still, there are merry times and days as long as nights and warmth.  Everyone is grabbing what moments they can, all keenly aware of the date and not only the coming natural cycle but the sudden onset of new obligations at school and work and family.  Ah, but this week _ this week remains wonderful, no longer in timeless summer, but a perfect few days of vacation when absolutely nothing needs to be accomplished that cannot be put off.  A procrastinator’s dreamtime.
Tue-

Although I do not seem to need much more than appropriate clothing, shoes, and some trail to happily take advantage of life, there are many who find their needs more “advanced.”  Usually that involves some sort of exclusivity or expensive toys, happily merged into one with pleasure craft.  Harmless enough, I guess, compared to giant machines that do real damage to the ecology.

As noted before, most of the boats around here seem ninety percent or more for prestige display.  This is no ancient fishing village, where the beaches and docks and water are cleared by early morning and filled again as the sun sets.  Most of the vessels you see here, including the one cruising the foreground, are taken out extremely rarely and might as well be set on concrete foundations.  But this is the end of summer, and if there is going to just be one or two uses a year, this is definitely the time to do so.
Wed-

Early misty sunlight falls on the old yacht clubhouse on the hill.  For those who  can tell time with the progression of plants, this could be no other time of year.  In this case, I think the ornamentals have improved on what would be here naturally.  I know that is heretical, but I am not really a fan of naked nature wilderness _ I like civilization and its comforts, including beautiful landscaping.

These days, we are encouraged to take an extreme path in order to make a difference and have some leverage in the world.  Scream at each bit of woodland that is lost to development, passionately worry about changes to places we have never seen.  I think we rather need to be more thoughtful, more balanced, more in tune with everything _ including other people and nature.  We begin that by understanding ourselves and our true feelings about the real, the artificial, and all points inbetween.
Thu-

A “weed” on Mill Dam road accents how loosely our definitions are applied.  Especially as September arrives, any wildflower still blooming, however we normally categorize it, is special.  Well, more special.  Well, you know what I mean.

That’s the problem, of course, with trying to apply superlatives to anything.  Everything is unique and marvelous and looked at properly incredibly special.  Fractal meanings into life and unity and cosmic order and human consciousness and appreciation.  How dare I single out anything as more interesting or important than anything else?  But that is my nature as well, so I will continue to do so.
Fri-

This is the height of “snapper” season _ baby bluefish reaching a size when they can actually be usefully cooked.  Generally, at the right tide, you just throw a hook, bait, and bobber in the water and pull one out.  For serious fishermen it is less sport than mindless harvesting, but for the rest of us it is a quick and happy return to childhood for a few hours.

Goldenrod and snappers are my perpetual alarms that the weather is going to turn soon.  There will be nice days to come _ quite a few of them, quite often.  But there will be increasing bouts of rain and cold, and inevitably the few leaves now drifting down will be increased exponentially.  Romantics would say it is a bittersweet moment, but enjoying the change _ all the changes _ always knowing there is something new and different right around the corner _ is the charm of living in a temperate zone.
Sat-

 

  

Wait a minute!  This hardly looks like people taking advantage of the last hot moments of true summer.  An all but deserted beach, under a blazing sun and only one person and a lifeguard on the wide expanse of sand.

A lot of people are doing necessary shopping for school _ which they would probably be doing if this were predicted as the last day on earth, regardless of weather.  And the sad fact is that there are many, many, finer beaches on Long Island _ some only five minutes a way _ and this particular town facility is a sad relic of a bygone era when people _ like my wife _ were far less mobile and had to make do with what was within walking distance.  Few in America remember those days of single car families, with the only transportation used to take the only bread-winner to work all day long.  And yet _ it’s a lovely beach, caressed by the same sun and water as all the others, with views just as magnificent.  Anyway, at least a few people (drive here) and still enjoy the clean, uncrowded shoreline.
Sun-

A parade of boats into the outer sound, as everyone wants a last chance to swim, and relax, have a beer, just hang out on the water.  And, to be honest, it is the beginning of season for stripers and bluefish, although I doubt many of these are seeking prey except as an excuse.  In our culture, it is always important to be seen as doing something _ even fishing _ instead of just goofing off and loafing and so on.  Although to the untrained eye, all those may look pretty much the same.

I don’t mind _ the pennants on the sailboat are a touch of exotic color, I enjoy the enjoyment of others.  I don’t say my way is better, it is simply my way.  The seasons of the year and the seasons of life are coming to all of us anyway regardless of our desires and acts.  Being able to vicariously participate in what people do is one of the wonderful abilities we have to deepen and expand our experience.

  

 

 

  

Cool, Melancholic Float

Mon-

Ah, we think, on a perfect summer morning, if life were not just like this all the time.  Retired, I can stroll anytime I want, admire the views, drink in the beauty all around me.  On vacation, we wish days would continue forever.  All our happiness comes with a tinge of sadness that happiness, perfect days, beauty and life itself is impermanent and always changing.

Yet that is the glory of consciousness.  I think, sometimes, that were I a god, who knew and controlled everything, that I would seek to ditch it all in favor of being a mortal human.  To be born, to grow and be surprised and mold the world and reflect on impossibilities _ is that not more godlike than any omnipotent, omniscient being could achieve?  Bluntly, where there is no movement, there is no experience.  A cynic might ask, what is the real difference between such a god and a rock?
Tue-

Shells somehow deposited here high above the tide line.  Who and how, we ask, surely not from tide or birds, so it must be a person.  So much of the world remains so.  We are the supernatural creatures, who roam about doing inexplicable things, creating puzzles for the universe.

I am sad today, for I feel mortal.  This is a realization I try to avoid, although it is as much absolute truth as anything I have ever encountered.  Why sad, why now, why me?  Surely I have had my fill of the splendors of the world, of shells and summer and sun.  When I am gone, they will all remain.  I should embrace comfort in knowing that, yet I remain sad at the thought of the world without me.

Wed-

The dock looks solid enough, but that is apparently an illusion.  Our community has been informed that is becoming dangerous and must be (expensively) replaced.  Old pilings in ancient seaport towns can last forever _ look at Venice.

So much that seems permanent is transient.  We now believe the universe itself is hurtling toward oblivion.  People used to believe their lives were fleeting moments in eternity, but now it appears that the only eternity available is each infinite moment of our experience.
Thu-

Used to be able to “sit on the dock of the bay,” but time has relentlessly removed that from what seems an endless and unchanging green landscape.  Most of the singers I listened to in my youth are dead now, but their songs still pop up _ even more frequently now that my memories of olden days are clearer than those of yesterday.  Strange, a little sad, but of course it guarantees that my own life and times were unique to me.

Everywhere, if I look closely, there are signs of changing weather, here with one month to go to autumnal equinox.  The dogwood foliage is fading to brownish yellow, the roses are in in second bloom vigor, the annual weeds are largely done bloom and into seed and dry stalks.  A poignant time for those of us, still feeling the freshness of our late summer, knowing that our evolutionary duty is long completed and all that is required is for us to get out of the way for the next generations.

Fri-

Seems a lot of folks have suddenly discovered the summer is almost over.   More boats in the harbor than I have seen in a long while, some people in the water, others fishing, a few just looking and enjoying.  As often happens, you hardly appreciate what you have until it is being taken away.

Better late than never.  Anyway, it is impossible to take full advantage of every moment, no matter what the self-help books preach.  We soon burn out and become frustrated.  The trick is to somehow keep things fresh, but without excessive overload.  Not easy.  Anyway, good to see so many seeking rewards in being alive on the harbor.

Sat-

Maybe I should sit here several hours, or all day, watching clouds and reflections and life.  There would surely be more than enough to mediate on.  Possibly I could get closer to the meaning of it all, or at least an appreciation of how much there is to this existence I take for granted.    

But I am infected by the same contemporary disease of all those around me.  Like a Sisyphus released to run marathons instead of pushing rocks, I must always move from place to place, moving back to the same place, moving again and again.  Often seeing little of what I should, then restless to view what might be behind the tree or over the horizon.  And, although I sometimes make vows, I am pretty sure I will not change. 

Sun-

 

From this perspective it’s all perfect _ bright, cheery, sunny, green, inviting.  Well, it is, really.  But the day is late, the shadows grow long, the breeze is cool, close up those green leaves are curling and losing vitality, and other flowers have already packed it in, leaving the field to the late-bloomers.  The true curse of knowledge is the ability _ and innate necessity _ to foresee the probable future.  In the mind’s eye, the road is covered with snow and slush, the world reduced to brown and blue, and cold sweeps unceasingly from the north.

One way to look Adam and Eve is that until they ate that apple, they were immortal precisely because they did not know their fate.  They were happy and lived in a perpetual garden exactly because they could not imagine winter.  God, in that interpretation, treated them as just another animal, never knowing of death until it happened, never fearing catastrophe because they never thought.  In the unceasing quest to return to Eden, many try to achieve such a blissful state through drugs or meditation, shutting down reason, accepting these happy yellows as an eternal moment.

  

Slow Times Flying

Mon-

This does look like a shot at an aquarium or from a nature show on television.  These fish are all about a foot long, and part of a huge school of multiple thousands thick in a narrow, shallow, dead-end inlet on Mill Dam road, which I saw almost by accident as I walked to get the Sunday Times.  I suppose these are oily “bunkers,” more or less worthless to humans except as bait or fertilizer, chased in by voracious bluefish from the deeper sound waters.  I suspect many will die by tomorrow of oxygen deprivation, as often happens around here in the hottest parts of late summer.  Smells are due.

As Darwin and Malthus noted, nature is profligate, and doesn’t care how many die as long as a few live.  That is so contrary to our modern notions of morality and meaning as to almost seem blasphemous, and is certainly so cold and horrible that it is little wonder many prefer more comforting religions where each individual matters.  I sure as heck like to believe I matter and am not merely trapped and doomed as most of these fish here.
Tue-

Absolutely the right mood – beach all ready, sun sand sky, boats, obviously fantastic weather, and an intimate table and chairs just waiting for some couple to have a picnic with bread, cheese, and wine.  And, typically, nobody there to take advantage of it.  Too busy, no doubt, with more important issues.

I know how it goes, I’ve spent much of my life working on what are, after all, very important things like keeping my family fed and housed and clothed.  Our culture provides great benefits, but requires great sacrifices of our meditative and reflective inner selves.  The most unfortunate occurrence of all, however, is when people internalize the cultural requirements so that they think that work, instead of being a necessary evil, is somehow connected with meaning and purpose and experiencing the infinite wonders of the world.
Wed -

Exhibit of a changing world _ pretty much the last of the once innumerable lobster traps piled around here.  In spite of lobsters apparently thriving in great harvestable numbers everywhere else, here they have irremediably died off in the ‘90’s.  Great catches and baymen’s livelihoods are things of the (recent) past, although nobody is quite sure why or how.  Year by year, piles of old steel frames disappeared from the shore and boats and moored docking rafts.  Now as antiquated as an old whaling harpoon.

Somehow, that school of fish survive and even thrive, clams and mussels are bumping along, oysters may even be making a comeback, but local lobsters are apparently gone forever.  Mysterious.  The only moral I take from this is that the world is more complicated than any of our simple rules and understandings would indicate.  We forget that at great peril.
Thu-

Final summer flowers now making a mighty effort in a race with time.  The days grow perceptibly shorter, and the vegetable world is mostly well aware of it.  The seeds and fruits on the perennials are all completely ripe or getting there fast.  Only the cultivated annuals of man _ blossoms, vegetables, grains _ are chugging along regardless of celestial influence.

It all seems so timeless, if not as a moment at least as part of an eternal cycle of the seasons.  Yet a minute ago, in geological time, this was all ice, year round.  That’s the trouble with geological time.  It may be true in some fashion, but it is not true of my particular life, and so, like a weed, I wonder if I should concern myself with it at all.
Fri-

Bright berries almost hidden in the tall reeds.  Even ignoring the infinite quantity and form of microscopic life that we can not see, each cubic foot of roadside (or any other surface) rewards long study with thoughts and meditations, if we wish.  Of course, there is never enough time.  And we always remember that such thoughts and meditations are merely fleeting electrical signals in our brain _ the berries certainly do not care how we judge them or their meaning.

We are so used to our strange duality _ self-declared important lords of all, but ignored by everything else _ that we accept the contradiction without question, and even consider it silly to question its existence.  Of course I am meaningful, we cry.  Of course I am meaningful, I tell you.  Of course.
Sat -

Strange spiky berries on the Japanese dogwood set off the long slope to Long Island Sound, lying beyond the harbor inlet.  Somewhat cool for the season, but otherwise a perfect day, filled with sun and scents and insect calls and butterflies and swallows swooping about the lawn a foot off the grass.  Ah, if we could just bottle this to pull it out in the depths of winter, when we need it most.

Oh, wait, that’s exactly what we do with our memories, isn’t it?  If we take care to be in this moment fully, to try to experience as deeply as we can, will we not be able to recall it well even when snow falls thick and the wind howls defiance?  That’s a marvelous, almost magical, gift, and one I too often take for granted or waste remembering bad times instead of good.  Carrying happiness within does require a little discipline and training, even on a lovely morning like this.

Sun-

Spartina flowers are not very large, magnificent, or even attractive, but they seem to get the job done.  Tidal grasses are intricate habitats for the health of the littoral ecosystem, and we rightly worry that they are disappearing with rising water, global warming, and heavy pollution and development.  Still, they’ve been around a lot longer than our species has, through lots of eco-catastrophes, and in spite of what we may think of their flowers I’d tend to place more bets on their long-term survival than that of homo sapiens.

Of course, cosmic thoughts about cosmic time is as useless to me this morning as dreams of winning a lottery or being declared king.  What I have in front of me are interesting flowers and plants, beautiful scenery, and the late summer sun providing melancholy hints of winter to come.

 

 

 

  

Drift

Mon-

Joan’s (mostly) perennial garden is in full bloom in the front yard.  At least the plants are supposed to come back each year, although it seems she adds enough all the time to question the basic idea.  It is lovely, and unusual, and like all forms of gardening gives a great deal of satisfaction and contentment laced with worry and aggravation.  She is obviously partial to purple, everything else is set in a supporting role.

My function is purely supportive.  I need to do a lot of the weeding, digging holes, and dragging topsoil or mulch.  She does handle most of the watering.  It’s a fair division of labor for a nice final effect, although I often tell her I think the whole thing could be done a lot more elegantly and easily with equivalent plastic flowers.  But the birds and bees would not be happy.

Tue-

Wild grapes seem to grow just about everywhere, and hardly ever manage to get ripe since the birds get to them quickly.  These never get very large anyway.  I think the original inhabitants of the continent never managed to harvest, ferment, and store them.  That is unusual only because it seems every culture everywhere has discovered some way to make alcohol out of something _ coconuts, apples, cactus, honey, whatever happens to be lying around.  Of course, the native Americans did discover a lot of narcotic pharmacology, which is also a standard human ability.

As all the crops ripen and overwhelm in August and September it is easy to believe in a benevolent divine providence, filling our days with easily acquired bounty.  Being human, we easily forget the hard work of saving seeds, preparing soil, planting and weeding all spring, praying for rain all summer.  Besides, the hard work remains of somehow saving all this stuff for the cold and desperate days to come.  Well, anyway, that used to be the rhythm.  With supermarkets and whatnot, in these corrupt modern times few think much about it any more.

Wed-

Edible ripe berries not yet harvested by the birds and raccoons.  Hard to say if that indicates laziness or satiety on their part, or if the numbers of relevant species have been so decimated that not enough remain to clear them.  It’s unusual to find so many in the open like this, but they do add a fine dash of color to the landscape.

For almost the first time this year, the temperature is near summer normal around here.  That’s odd only because the world is heating up, incontrovertibly, and yet in this chunk of the continent we are having the coolest seasons in decades.  Such anomalies are seized on by the stupid to prove climate change is not happening.  I shouldn’t complain; the weather has been “pleasantly mild”; but I tend to not feel I have had a real July or August unless at least on a few days I’ve built up a good soaking sweat.
Thu-

Entropy rules the universe, and docks weather away pretty easily over the seasons.  Once the frenzy of preparing and launching boats is complete in the late spring, and before the rush to winterize them and pull them onto dry land in late fall, there is a space for idle marine workers to repair the supporting infrastructure.  On sunny, warm days it looks like the best kind of job anyone could ever have.

Office work is welcome in the winter _ nobody wants to be out fishing or fixing piers in ice and sub-zero temperatures and howling north winds.  It’s too bad we can’t all cycle work with the earth’s orbit,  hibernating and performing financial and other tedious operations in the colder months, doing physical outside chores as nature beckons.  But our tight machine-based culture dare not allow such flexibility.  Except of those of us who are older and useless and have happily stepped off the treadmill.
Fri-

I think this is called sea lavender, although the colors are fairly subtle and hard to catch.  More a light purple mist than actual blossoms.  But, in the interest of something a little different, here it is, with the obligatory water scene. 

Cool temperatures and shortening days are advancing the plant calendars rapidly now.  Any moment there will be a great deal of goldenrod,  every day masses of former high summer bloom go to brown seed.  Trees are heavy with seeds in various colors and shapes, ready to cascade down in any storm.  As dry weather continues, leaves show signs of discoloration, burning, and insect damage.  The world becomes, bit by bit, a bit more ragged in appearance, a bit more ready for coming weather internally.  If you are not careful, in the midst of a paradise of plenty, it is quite possible to turn melancholy over everything that is inevitably slipping away.
Sat-

Perfect little nook on a perfect summer day with all the ingredients that make being here special.  Unfortunately, I can not include a shot of the perfect summer night clambake the neighborhood held later on the beach with torches and bonfire and near fifty neighbors barely squeezing onto remaining dry sand at waxing moon high tide.

For all the problems in the world _ there are many, probably unsolvable, and they have always been there throughout history _ there are wonderful moments for most of us.  Which we should cherish, if for no other reason than as homage to whatever has allowed us to experience them and, even more than that, appreciate the experience.  Sometimes I think that might be one of our main purposes in life itself.
Sun-

I don’t know if the flags mean anything, even if they could be read, or if they are just subsidiary territory markers to old glory (e.g. state of New York, county of Suffolk, town of Huntington, Wyncoma Yacht Club.)  Anyway, at least one guy seems in a purposeful hurry under crystal blue skies with temperature threatening to climb near the nineties.

Always amazing is that these extremely expensive craft, clustered and paying incredible fees for docking rights and yearly maintenance, are stacked up nearly full.  Why own something like that if you are not going to use it?  And yet, that is typical, most days they all remain forever in port, only one or two lonely pioneers willing to venture into the rugged (that’s irony) waters of Huntington Bay.