Equal Times

Monday

• Now night becomes longer than day, warmth is lost not only because there are extra hours to radiate into space, but also because at these upper latitudes light rays hit with diminishing force.  Ancient peoples in the Northern Hemisphere mythologized that evil demons were eating the sun. Now with fire and electricity people conveniently ignore such superstitions and logically move indoors to enjoy the benefits of science.
• We have our own mythologies: that an individual can control his fate, that a culture can ignore environment.  Hermetically sealed people dismiss climate and relentlessly concentrate on what matters  _ wealth, power, entertainment.  If descendants survive our orgies of destruction, they will no doubt look back with a wiser philosophy and wonder about us _ the demons who wrecked their world.

Tuesday

All days are lovely, if I take the time

Moods generate beyond known bounds of space

Internal visions, filters finely honed

Each tame my world, force it as I wish

Cast a spell _ enchantment or dark curse

If all were gone, still I my universe

Could build, project, imagine as I dare.

When I am gone, entire this infinite

Must also vanish, swift as fragile thought

Meaningless as bubbles bursting free.

I love and care and know that this must be:

That nothing else can e’re exist as me.

Wednesday

• Went to the city yesterday, and toyed with the idea of taking a picture or two.  But with the Pope and UN and President all arriving later this week, there will surely be more than enough pictures to satisfy anyone.  New York City is filled with people, Long Island is filled with people, Huntington is full of people.  There are people everywhere around here _ it’s one of the most densely settled places on the planet _ even though this blog attempts to give some impression of solitude and lonely meditation in its pictures and thoughts.
• But the question rises to mind _ how often do we consider seven billion others just like us (alive at this moment, the dead would double that number.)  How many of those have I heard of, even to remember a name?  A few thousand but no more, were I forced to list names.  We each try to excel and be important in our little circles and tribes, but looking at the larger picture we vanish like protozoa when the microscope is no longer available.  That is not to claim anyone is unimportant _ just that fame is irrelevant beyond our immediate environment.  I need such humbling thoughts once in a while. 

Thursday

Wayne and Joan sitting in the park after lunch in Northport.  Cool breeze, warm sun on an early fall afternoon.  Brilliant colors, many dogs, almost no children who are in school until a little later.

“Oh, look, there’s a cute one,” says Joan.  “I wonder what type that is?”

“Smallish, brown, four legs and a tail,” answers Wayne.  “That’s all I know or need to know.”

“You’re impossible.   Not a Pomeranian, but,”  meanwhile her thoughts wander as they often do to her poor little companion, dead these three years now.  None of these as cute or nice as my little angel.  Wish he were here so I could show them a perfect pet.

“Look at that beautiful boat,” he points to a colored sailboat swinging in to the large dock.  Oh here we go again, on and on about the dog.  Why doesn’t she just look around and enjoy the day?

“Maybe I should get a new one.”  Of course he could never be like my little angel and you never know if it will turn out nasty.  But at least a little dog would pay more attention to me than my husband does.

“If we got a boat it would be something like that, but of course I don’t want a boat,” continued Wayne stubbornly for the hundredth time, trying to change the subject.  Well, I guess that’s what we old people do, chew the same old cuds over and over out here in the pasture.

“Like you say, though, it would limit our travels and does take some care.”  But, on the other hand, we hardly ever seem to do anything exciting anyway.

“That sun and the sparkles are just perfect for paintings.”  The trouble is, it never stays a dog but turns into a little child that requires all kinds of effort and can never be left alone.  Well, no use creating waves.  I’ll just enjoy being here with so many fine vistas.

And so it went, for an hour, two streams of conversation barely registering, two streams of consciousness in alternate universes.  The trouble is, as you get on in years, you tend to stay in a comfort zone with a few people, and all those people tend to tell the same stories and topics over and over again.  The advantage, of course, is that we all forget conversations almost as fast as they occur.

Friday

• Scenes are distant, but near is important.  Shells marking the tide line along the sand remind that although we are part of a grand vista, we are also just little fragments of flotsam washed up by endless waves.
• I try to marvel at near as well as far.  Closely inspect the petals of a flower, take pains to study a seed or leaf.  Often I fail, in too much in a hurry to bother.  The tiny as well as the large surround me with miracles, and I am the poorer for not recognizing them each moment.

Saturday

• Obviously, everything changes.  Yet we assume there is an underlying solidity to the universe.  A rock will remain an inert rock, a tree will grow, water will stay in an ocean.  That seems simple truth, and we frame our thoughts to accommodate the pattern.  Such simple truth is wrong.
• Matter is not solid, but a strange blend of forces in tension, leptons leaping in and out of existence, nuclear forces pushing or pulling other forces to form atoms, atoms ignoring a hurricane of neutrinos and other subatomic “particles”, once in a while interacting with a passing photon.  The earth does not simply go around the sun, it is in a precarious balance of gravity pulling one way and inertia another.  What seems to be equilibrium is the result of contrasting forces, each forever ready to break the current illusion of stability.
• Life is even more so.  Our bodies do not maintain a steady temperature  _ certain processes raise heat, others carry it off, and when it goes too far wrong we die.  Likewise with countless biologic “norms” that we take for granted, but which are almost magically balanced _ until they are not and we are no more.  Processes build on one another to larger cycles _ hunger, sleep.  Everything changes, but much changes within certain boundaries.
• All these discoveries are recent and counterintuitive.  Our concept of society has yet to catch up with what has been learned.  Economics, government, religion still assume natural balancing states rather than uneasy and temporary accidents of countering vector forces.  Yes, we know about equations for supply and demand, and checks and balances for rulers.  But supply and demand, for example, are not solid in themselves, but rather composed of infinitely and indeterminately fluctuating energies.
• Amazingly, we still accomplish great things, plan and deal with problems, get by with little more than our intuitive understandings.  Perhaps, at this point, we should trust that intuition more than quasi-scientific logic. 

Sunday

• Final trio of showy wildflowers are goldenrod, asters, and Montauk daisies usually blooming last.  A few stubborn blossoms remain on other plants, ragged and scattered, especially the annuals that have now mostly dried to stiff brown.  Even these daisies show significant damage from the extended and deep drought this summer.
• Cultivated gardens will continue to show color until the first frost, when the final performance will be given by maples and hickories and beeches.  But we all know that this is just a matter of time, and pretty quickly advancing time at that.  Already in the evenings I can be tempted to turn on the heat, and it’s nearly frightening how dark early mornings have become, and how quickly late afternoon shadows transmute to night. 

Transitions

Monday

• Suddenly seasonal signals are far less subtle.  Many yellows and a few reds creeping into any views, the southward slant of the sun accents its later arrival and earlier departure.  Unexpected chills sweep in on shadow or breeze, and settle in during the evenings. 
• In my suburbs, it is a quiet time of year.  Yard crews _ which still appear like mechanical clock figures tolling the day of the week _ give a perfunctory dusting to grass that does not need to be mowed and rush off.  Leaves do not yet require incessant blowing.  Families have grown tired of barbeques and mosquitoes, or are simply overwhelmed with work and school, and remain quietly indoors.  I roam about our yard, happily recalling the good old days when my auditory world seemed like this all the time.

Tuesday

Sharp sparkles glaze smooth ebbing tide

Salt scent thick as breeze blows by

I watch some seagulls seem to play

I’ve risen late, swift sun shines high

Though no one cares, nowhere to go

No chores, no tasks will fill this day

I should feel guilty, lax and slow

Creating naught from all I know

Obsessive drives have died away.

I wish our universe might show

What it expects before we die

What deeds or thoughts are right to pray

How praise should rise, what I must say,

No answers come, to my dismay.

Wednesday

• Overnight low in the fifties, coupled with a morning gusting wind pushing low sixties is enough to require a sweatshirt even as the daylight world warms.  Just a punctuation mark on what is known already.  No matter how fine it all looks,  limits on summer activities have appeared and will begin to be enforced. 
• Many folks welcome the break from constant heat and humidity.  Others fall into pre-depression, making of each fallen degree a march towards frigid cabin fever.  Eventually, we all regain our equilibrium and go back to taking each day as it comes, and restricting our plans only to the extent that common sense dictates.  There are a lot of wonderful events around here in fall, natural and cultural, and the carnival can with luck be extended right into the end of the year holidays (which merchants are already putting on display.)

Thursday

Bill trotted over, sweating from his jog around the outer paved trail, to join us at the benches overlooking the Sound on the bluff at Caumsett.  His mind was apparently lathered as much as his sweatshirt, because he panted, “I see one candidate is promising to unleash four per cent growth.”

Toni snorted “More like unleashing 10% annual misery.  Crap luxuries for those who don’t need any more, thinner coats and gruel for those hurting the most.”

“Ah,” I said, “but economists can’t measure misery, so it doesn’t count.  Luxuries, on the other hand, show up on their biblical GDP.”

“Oh, c’mon,” gasps Bill, “we’re all better off than we used to be …”

“Maybe not all,” Toni responds.

“You know that thing in Plato about people in a cave, trying to make sense of shadows projected from reality outside?” I ask, looking up at Bill.  He nods.  “Well, economists are like that, trying to make sense of economic numbers while not paying any attention to the human factors that create them.  They make a lot of irrational medieval assumptions about human nature, and then go play around with the quantity and price of apples and stuff over time.  Besides,”  I added before he could interrupt, “even the assumptions about production are wrong now.  Classical economics deals with scarcity and unsatiated demand.  We live in an era of overabundance.”

Toni adds, “Maybe for us, and some people, but there are others …”

“They aren’t the ones being promised four percent growth, though,” I point out.   

Bill remains adamant.  “Economists have given us wonders for hundreds of years, the industrial revolution, mass production, scientific growth.”

“Wrong,” I state.  “Economists have gone through the numbers of what happened as other people did all that, and interpreted everything in light of their holy capitalist texts and dogma.  Even you admit they can explain anything and predict nothing.”

“You’re both fools,” laughs Bill, “but nice fools.  I have lots to do.  Enjoy the day…”

Friday

• Eating on the dock at Crabby Jerry’s out in Greenport.  The North Fork of Long Island still has farms and enough open space to occasionally convince that it is open countryside, although that is rapidly changing with the growth in vineyards and wineries.  While it is taking on a Disneyland kind of character along the main thoroughfares, some places such as this remain remote enough from the city to retain a hint of bucolic centuries.  That evolves too, as more and more folks think the same thing and move out here permanently, connected tenuously to jobs through instant communication links and relatively easy transportation.
• We like to get out of our town occasionally, and I guess it is only fair to comment on it when we do so.  One of the reasons many people continue to pay high prices to live around here is the oddly eclectic mix of possible activities on any given day.  We were only here, for example, because the train to New York was having big problems and we decided to find an alternative to eating on Mulberry Street for the feast of San Gennaro.  So we ended up in a place that resembled Capri more than Rome.

Saturday

• To this old curmudgeon, current politics consists of fanatic “born again” hordes whipped into a frenzy by sleazy hypocrites controlled by plutocrats.  Sleazy hypocrites and plutocrats are always with us, but the ranks of the reformed get on my nerves.
• I charitably grant that such souls were lost and are now found.  Many have written about their various descents into darkness of drink, crime, atrocity, or immorality in general, and I wish them well in their bright new lives.  But for those of us who have not thus descended, the preaching is no balm.  For example, I’ve always eaten relatively carefully, I dread the onslaught of gluten-free, organic, local, fad-driven TV fare as the standard offering everywhere I go.
• Even if those cheerleaders sometimes have a valid point, it’s not that I need to be forced to follow them immediately.  Like St. Augustine, I am a perpetual teenager realizing that I probably should be chaste and temperate _ just not quite yet, not all the time, not to the exclusion of all pleasure except that of self-sacrifice and smug superiority.  Besides, I’m not at all convinced that the hordes are always right or superior to my own instincts and behaviors, which I have also acquired and honed over a lifetime.
• Life with all its manifestations including society and government is infinitely complicated, a treacherous balance of competing tensions.  Militant simplistic absolute certainty is always the enemy of true human good.  I’ll tolerate even the most radical reformer if they entertain an element of doubt, at least concerning the requirements of others.  That leaves me free to call down brimstone on those who would do the same to me.  Toleration has limits.

Sunday

• This weekend will mark the end of string of temperatures running ten to fifteen degrees above normal _ if such concepts have meaning any more.  A mini-sailboat mini-race grabs a vanishing opportunity near the yacht club.  A bit further on, activity on a long bulkhead may indicate another house is about to be constructed to obscure the open view.  Change meteorological and human is the rule of the week.
• Once upon a time I felt betrayed as the past became lost.  Now I am reconciled to the past as mostly my own internal illusion.  The universe is what it is _ the moon is never in exactly the same place, for the entire solar system hurtles through the cosmos at fantastic speeds.  The sun never shines identically, for at a quantum level each micro second of its elemental burning is done with different quarks and leptons in different ways.  Stability, which our consciousness constructs as some framework for truth, is not reality.  I never knew the world as I thought I did, and I cannot understand this moment in totality.  That is both disturbing and comforting.

Ragged Edges

Monday

• Days quite warm, evenings may require a sweater.  Trees lush full green, yellow orange red tinges peeking here or there.  Half the annual wildflowers and weeds are brown, ragged, and dry while the rest are showing signs of becoming the same.  Harvest is producing more than anyone can eat, but already production is falling and soon crops will be complete.
• Alone amidst life on earth (and possibly anywhere) humans are blessed and cursed by being able to imagine the future, doubly so by being able to communicate those visions to others.  That results in our grandest triumphs and most despicable disasters.  As we project and plan what might be, we crowd the beaches and waterways today, imagining the harsh weather to come.  I worry about food, shelter, age, children, civilization, my house and a thousand other notions great and small.  But my anchor of sanity remains this particular, and most glorious, today.

Tuesday

Old man sits alone

Feeding flocks of pigeons,

Dreams

He is Emperor

Wednesday

• Hard to tell exactly what these are, but they demonstrate the principal of the season.  Fluffy carriers bearing seeds have almost all been dispersed by the wind.  Parent plant has done its duty and now simply awaits rain and other elements to recycle it back whence it came.  There are more and more of these remnants every day, contradicting the humid heat and brilliant sunlight which seem to claim nothing happening
• As in spring, each hard look at anything is a revelation.  Trees that appear green actually are yellowing _ the very hues of entire landscapes have changed.  We tend to focus on dramatic foliage of fall, but that has begun already, even in deepening greens of evergreens.  I seek not to rush the seasons, but to notice the more subtle marvels that keep me more interested than hurried glances would provide.     

Thursday

September afternoon nearing ninety, even here along the beach, smoggy trees on the shoreline opposite as powerboats race and sailboats add notes of grace.  We’re just cooled off from a dip, dripping in old cloth chairs.  Children speaking all languages laugh and screech, adults yell and jabber, a polyglot happy crowd.

“Don’t see why they can’t control their kids,” complains Joan, as she does frequently.  “We knew how to teach our own how to behave.”

“Too many lower classes, all over,” adds Marge.  “Too many, too poor, nothing like when we grew up.”  Another constant refrain.

“Well, when we grew up it was _ what _ 2 billion or so.  Now at 7 and climbing.  Problems to be expected,” says Jim.

“Our son,” I note, “expects a plague to wipe out just about everyone.  And my investment counselor is constantly worried about global worldwide collapse.”

“No wonder, with younger generations like these coming along to try to take over.” Marge slaps at a greenhead fly.

“Born again expect the rapture, a lot of nut religions expect the final apocalypse any moment.”

“But Bill,” I reply, “almost everyone everywhere has expected some immanent end of everything at any given moment.  For at least a few thousand years.”

“And some of them were right!” exclaims Marge.

“Of course,” I gesture around at numerous clumps of aged beachgoers, “we elders could solve a lot of the problem by just dying off like we used to.”

“Don’t know about all that,” Joan adjusts her sunglasses.  “All I know is I can’t stand the yelling.”

Friday

• Hard to call rain a “ragged edge”, especially when this island is running a ten inch annual deficit.  Besides, everyone is back at school or work or shopping, all safely indoors, so who cares?  Somehow, there remains a strange distaste for people to get wet from rain, even though they happily take a shower each morning and swim whenever they please.
• I care less, especially if it is warm.  These days, I just throw on a poncho and walk in my own little shell, like one of those hermit crabs down on the tidal sands.  Heavy rain, mist and clouds form a welcome variation sometimes on clear hot skies unending.  Unless this weather should overstay its welcome, of course.

Saturday

• Many claim the American Empire, like that of the Romans, is in decline and fall.  Intellectuals cite Edward Gibbon,  common folks center on movies of bread and circuses and lonely last legions.  People seem to think that we may lapse into dictatorship overnight, that within twenty years all that we are and have stood for will have disappeared, that lonely peasants will pass ignorant days fearing the howls of wolves in the encroaching forest.
• Like the American Empire, Rome took centuries to rise.  The Republic had already conquered the Mediterranean and most of Western Europe.  The century before Augustus was filled with bloody slave revolts (Spartacus) and bloody “temporary” dictators (Sulla, Pompey) and bloody Senate infighting.  All Caesar and Augustus (both from Patrician families) did was formalize the changes that had already happened and make the government manageable again.  But the change from Republic to Empire was not instantaneous, not at all like, for example, Hitler.
• The Roman Empire also took its time falling.  It lasted 450 years in almost full vigor in the West, over a thousand while shrinking in Constantinople in the East.  Pax Romana was mostly welcome, with relatively light 5% effective taxes, cohesion that encouraged trading wealth, and secure stability for its citizens (not so much for its huge slave population, of course.)
• Those causes of the fall?   There were bread and circuses, to be sure, although the bread was more part of the salary of the lower level bureaucracy and merchants, while the circuses were often exemplary executions of condemned criminals and war prisoners.  What ended up really hurting (in addition to trying to control so vast an area with Roman numeral arithmetic and horse-speed communications) were incursions of barbarians who had learned Roman tactics and technology, driven by drying climate change.  A plague that may have killed a quarter of the Empire’s population in the early 400’s didn’t help.  And after the fall, much of the basic culture hung around, preserved in small feudal kingdoms and the increasing networks of the church.  
• Gibbon himself blamed a different prime cause: the fundamentalist superstitious Christian religion, which made people concentrate on their spiritual future rather than secular present.
• Certainly, America will decline and fall.  How, when, over how much time, for what reason, and what its legacy will be must be left to future historians, not to silly shallow authors peddling dark fantasies or ignorant immoral politicians who would claim the Earth is flat if that delivers a few more votes. 

Sunday

• Rain has finally arrived, psychologically terminating deep summer with clouds and a major drop in temperatures, especially at night.  Already boats flee the water, beaches are emptied, tasks of preparation (like getting out snow blowers, cleaning gutters, checking heating systems) are being contemplated.  Soon enough there will be leaves to rake and outdoor furniture to protect.  Yet, for all that, it is still summer, still warm, and when the sun returns there will be sufficient days to visit parks and enjoy long walks in cooler air.
• For those who truly love seasonal change, and do not pay lip service to it because such changes must be endured, these transitional times are perhaps even more beautiful than the heart of each quarter year.  I find this helps me mark and remember what I have done, place my life and experience into a moving context, and resist the temptation for each day to just be like the last and the next.  With modern convenience, of course, everywhere we live is truly potentially a static meteorological paradise, conditioned by heat and air conditioning in transportation, work, housing, and shopping.  I am an old reactionary, and wander about in my poncho as rain falls and wind blows, a madman among civilized multitudes.

Summer Swansong

Monday

• Planned to lead with a picture of a swan, but no shorebirds around this morning except a few crows and a solitary cormorant.  Perhaps all on vacation, perhaps scared off by frantic vibes of impossibly numerous shell-shocked humans rushing about in panic.  “Where did the summer go?”  “Oh, crap, its back to school/work/daily grind.”  Even retired people, who have seeming escaped that seasonal wheel of sorrow, are mostly planning how to get through the coming winter or (more philosophically) how to engage in meaningful projects to add purpose to their self-perceived irrelevant lives.
• I’ve always like the romantic concept of a swansong _ a brief glorious act immediately before death.  A curious term _ and I won’t spoil it by looking up the origin.  Etymology is much more easily determined on the internet than political “truth” or historic fact.  I think it well fits this last week of freedom, as everyone tries to cram a last bit of relaxed happiness which becomes impossible knowing what will immediately follow.

Tuesday

Summer going, sun drifts south,

Through days of humid hot

All this green, hard to believe,

Soon turns to brown and rot.

Cycles come and cycles go,

Cycles flow again.

Massive change, except that I,

Alone remain the same

And yet I know, remembering back,

I’m not as in my past.

A larger cycle, once ignored,

Now looms to close at last.

Wednesday

• If summer end is a tragic opera, goldenrod is the messenger bearing irrefutable proof in its long solo that the final act is nearing.  A few other flowers dot the woods and fields, but none so overwhelmingly turning entire hillsides and shorelines yellow.  No matter what it may feel like outside, goldenrod’s sign is September.
• I rush seasons as much as anyone.  There are still many fine times, spells of heat, lovely sunsets, relatively long days, and a hoped-for final Indian summer.  But worse weather is immanent, not infinitely far off as it seemed in June.   Nature has adapted to all this, and so should I, but sometimes there remains a hint of sadness not simply at this summer gone, but at all summers I so well remember.

Thursday

Old people nursing beers at Finley’s, late afternoon, grumbling as usual.
“Too bad old King Canute is dead,” says Dan.  “He could run for president.  Holding back the tides would save billions or trillions, and it’s no more impossible than what the other candidates are promising.”
“When did kids get so stupid?” asks Jean.
“Magic,” mutters Bill.  Everyone looks at him in expectation.  “We boomers are the last generation to understand the world.  Everything now is magic _ nobody knows how technology, global trade, society, anything really works.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Allen agrees.  “Politicians are all shamans _ do the right spell and poof.”
“Right,” replies Bill.  “The republicans think all the problems are caused by little devils that can be exorcised with the right slogans or talismans like a four thousand mile long fence.  The democrats claim they can tame Lady Fortuna and force her to distribute her fickle favors more equitably.”
“I blame the schools,” states Flora.  “They teach anything is possible.  We all know anything is not possible.  You can’t turn lead into gold.  When people think anything is possible, nothing is possible, and nothing gets done.”
Jean responds “So the kids aren’t stupid?”
“Sure they are,” Dan looks around.  “The masses are stupid and willfully ignorant.  The educated elite have them wrapped around their little fingers.”
“I wonder,” Bill continues darkly as he finishes his beer, “I wonder what will happen when the magic goes away?”

Friday

• This is the first extended hot and very dry period this year, although rain has been below average.  Some vegetation is beginning to show effects, although the trees remain relatively untouched since there is abundant ground water.  But all the plants are now being triggered into survival and shut-down mode as the days grow shorter.  There will be no compensating new growth on these branches as there would be in the spring.
• I bask in the late summer glow, going swimming, enjoying sweaty walks in nothing but tee shirt and shorts, marveling at nature.  But there is a small part of me like the trees, getting ready to slow down and hibernate, concentrate on indoor and internal mental activities, develop my own resources and projects.  It’s silly to worry about the coming winter, which after all lasts two months at most.  Right now I look forward to rain, and brilliant foliage, and the first snowfall.  By then, of course, I will much lament the loss of these final weeks of the season.

Saturday

• We pride ourselves on being reasonable and scientific, always believing in cause and effect, unlike primitive peoples.  But cause and effect in itself is not scientific _ any human who ever lived knows that eating will ease hunger and getting cut will bleed.  It’s just that before science, it was easier to take shortcuts and assign most causes to spirits or gods.  As far as I can tell, there are many primitive thinkers among us now, many running for president.   I propose a few causes (and solutions) that I expect to hear any time soon:
• Climate change is not caused by human activity.  God intervened to create modern man using the highly unusual ice ages.  Now that the God of humans has died, the planet is reverting to its natural paradise-for-dinosaurs equilibrium.
• The Mideast is populated by crazy fanatics.  Obviously living in a desert drives anyone mad.  We should remove everyone from deserts, possibly by seeding the sand with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants (thus solving two problems at once.)
• Our government is a mess, all branches, all levels, from top to bottom.  Our government is 99% composed of lawyers.  Thus lawyers, in addition to being naturally sleazy and evil, are totally incapable of ruling a country.  There should be a constitutional amendment banning anyone holding a law degree from ever running for elective office.

Sunday

• Ragweed rules triumphantly,  pollinated and seeding for next year.  As far as it is concerned, everywhere is as fertile as Indiana,  each climate as welcoming as the Amazon basin.  Perfectly adapted for the modern world, which humans colonize and disturb and ignore each year.  Some say it is an ugly and ungainly plant, but it fills all the peripherally noticed borders of our views in solid green, contributing subtly but strongly to what seems natural and right.
• If the meek are to inherit the Earth, ragweed will no doubt be among them.  If I am a weed, I could do worse than to emulate this survivor.  Were I such, I would not complain of destiny, or poor soil, or adverse growing conditions, or lack of rain, nor envy the cushy situations of other plants and prettier flowers, all well-tended in gardens.  I would just accept my space and flourish.  My meditations are unexpectedly enriched.