Darkling Moods

Monday

• The Western European end-of-year holidays existed for a reason.  Darker, longer nights, and a need to be fortified by hope against coming winter.  But also the traditional times of warfare were suspended _ the Mediterranean too stormy to plan campaigns, deep cold and snow in northern Europe, shorter days, the need for manpower to reequip and in a few months for most of the men in armies to help plant crops.  Until recently, most such activity left winter itself as a relatively quiet and inactive period, which could truly be celebrated by the festival of returning sun.  Their year was in some ways as regulated by winter solstice as the ancient Egyptians were by the flooding of the Nile.
• On the other hand, for much of the Northern Hemisphere, winter was a grim time.  You did not need imaginary creatures to be worried about being devoured by wolves, freezing to death, or facing certain starvation.  And for most, sunset marked the effective end of each day, with little left to do.
• So this week, I do not celebrate our modern Christmas and other orgies of consumption, which are now gigantic commercial affairs or an overblown religious observances.  I consider Darkling Days, Darkling Moods, affecting us far more certainly with the depression of missing daylight than the phases of the moon.  I rejoice in having food and electricity and transportation and warmth and machines that let us ignore most old terrors, even as we invent new ones to take their place.
• The woods are cold and bare, fields fallow, but nature never quiet.  People add their constant noises even in the hush following snowfall, but birds still sing, the wind whispers, the waves break on shore.  They are as still as we probably should be, but we have too much to do, which, all in all, is probably a good thing, even in those dreary months to come. 

Tuesday

• Even at solstice, midday sun at Huntington’s latitude is blinding to stare at, and painfully glaring on snow or ice.  Plenty of sunshine to determine color of remaining leaves and berries.  Enough energy to slow the seepage of heat until spring.  Romantic or Gothic poets spin darkling tales of how the solar disk transforms into a wan ghost of former glory, but they are imagining rather than observing.
• If our descendants colonize Mars, their sun will truly become a pale darkling brightness.  I do not think those colonists _ given current advances in genetic engineering _ will be like you are me.  All the more reason for us to defend our planet ever more militantly and jealously, for it is the only home that we and those like us will ever inhabit or enjoy. 

Wednesday

• Darkest just before dawn only works (as a tautology) if dawn is defined as exact moment night becomes brighter.
• Sunrise remains hours away.

Thursday

• For some people, Druids are a glazed fantasy of bearded wise blue-woad priests who understood ancient mysteries, and of wiccan initiates who danced natural rites.  Mistletoe.  Yule logs.  Living at one with Mother Earth.  It’s just as well those dreamers won’t accept the actual bloody Neolithic world, as revealed by archaeology. 
• Similarly others have their own dreamy fantasies of Santa, Victorian courts, Medieval saints, rollicking knights, and _ of course _ all the fables, miracles, and philosophies of the ancient world.  “People just like us” we are told, “who understood the true underlying cosmic and metaphysical mysteries.”  Contradictions apparently just add to the glamor.
• We must have fantasies to survive.  “This will be the best Christmas ever;” “through the years we all will be together;” “everything will work out;” “live laugh and be happy;” “things will be better someday;” and, of course, must cherish our inner certainty that moments will continue forever, while life around and in us ages on.  What is the alternative so such hope?
• Logic laughs at darkling nightmares, and the dreams we construct to combat them.  Logic is hardly all _nor even the most important portion _ of mental balance.

Friday

• Beaches at winter have an empty feel, which because of the holidays and lack of snow cover has not yet quite set in.  It takes some work to find open expanses clear of people and dogs.  Generally, however, the sand is uncluttered, hardly marked with footprints.  Little life is evident along the shoreline, where murky summer waters have cleared and in crystalline depths rounded pebbles glow.  Even the wind feels empty and clean, containing no exhausts from pleasure boats nor perfumes and pollen from trees and flowers.
• I dress warm and enjoy a place away from everything and everyone.  Even normal annoying sounds are drowned out by the rush of the wind, cry of gulls, and especially breaking wavelets.  In this crowded area, nothing can be called loneliness, but patches of solitude can hover briefly.  For the next two months, trailing dropping temperatures will render such locales more and more inhospitable, more inaccessible to normal access.  Yet at winter solstice, touches of the previous season linger on, and sometimes pleasant memories of warm times past are easily recalled. 

Saturday

Large crowds of flocking geese _ not the usual overwintering kind _ have arrived to cover the bay, ignoring the massed swans who dislike the competition for fresh water.  A few ducks, but not so many as to be noticeably different from other times of year. 

One of the swooping seagulls cries out to a tiny white-headed duck, “Hey, Bufflehead Bob, see you’re finally back!  How did the North treat you this past year?”

“Well enough, well enough.  Boy, that cove over there gets more and more crowded each time I arrive.  Doesn’t anyone ever leave any more?”

“Nah, most of them have gotten too fat and lazy.  Easy pickin’s the last few seasons.  If we have a hard January with the harbor frozen over and icicles forming on beaks we’ll see things thin down pretty quickly.”

“Yeah, true, but that affects us to, so no evil wishes from me.”

“Where do you go, anyway, Bob?  Is it just like here.”

“Not hardly.  Lots of room, lots of quiet, lots of trees and open marsh.  It’s work to pack and work to go but Fran and I love it up there.”

“In the right season, right?”

“Oh, yeah, in the right season.  Well, got to get busy diving.  See you around.”

Sunday

Winter solstice sun sets

From our porch

Clouds permitting

Right down neighbor’s chimney

Unexpected monolith

Overloaded

Monday

• One might naively suppose that with adequate food, clothing, shelter, security, and health any human would be happy and satisfied.  Of course, such conditions might also describe a prison cell.  When we add freedom and pursuit of happiness to the mix, the actual level of contentment seems to drop precipitously.
• Never is that more evident around here than during the end of year holidays, stretching for several months, culminating near New Years.  Folks are told how lucky they are and how much they should strive to please everyone else until they are ready to puke.  From their usual overcommitted daily frenzy, no one has time to add on shopping and cleaning and decorating and planning and worrying.  But they are told, by others and themselves and ubiquitous blasting commercial media that they must.
• So no other season is quite so grim.  Drivers become maniacs.  Shoppers retreat into cold hard little shells, elbowing everyone else out of the way.  Laughter is all too uncommon _ a waste of precious moments.  And _ greatest crime of all _ moments slip away, consumed without notice by attention spans fixated on the near future and an occasional nostalgic wisp of past memory that only causes greater angst.
• Oh, I know.  Scrooge here.  Yet I am content with the season, just disappointed with its effect on others.  In fact I feel more like Tiny Tim surrounded by legions of cloned Scrooges.  Bigger, better, more, not enough, I’m more important than anybody, rich, fat but mostly _ and this is what disappoints me most _  profoundly unhappy and unaware Scrooges. 
• So Happy Holidays anyway.  But try to remember it is really really good to have food, clothing, shelter, security and health.  Throw in a dollop of freedom and pursuit of happiness, but don’t overdo that dessert.

Tuesday

• Even though true winter arrives in a few weeks, this remains a fat time for wildlife.  All seeds that will be produced are exposed in hearty abundance.  Berries load trees and like a natural buffet gaily reflect orange and red and white back through bare branches, or needles or fat greenery (like holly).  Most migrating populations have passed by, leaving residue of the feast for animals that remain.  Those are frantically fattening up for harsh weather around the corner.
• I’d say it is a fat time for local humans also, except that it is always a fat time for our particular local humans.  We live in an abundant society, and tales of destitution and hunger are basically problems of distribution and quality, rather than actual shortage.  Most of the denizens of Huntington have long ago blown through Maslow’s chart of escalating needs, into stratospheric conceptions of what is required for success and demonstration of success to others during the holidays.
• In fact, I tend to think of our overblown consumer society as somewhat akin to Darwininan selection, where a characteristic is exaggerated for sexual or domination reasons, until it becomes a handicap.   Holiday shopping can look like useless (from the point of survival) gaudy male peacock feathers.  Or apocryphal stores of saber tooth tigers with tusks so long they can no longer open their jaws and thus starve to death.  Shoppers with so many packages …. Well, you get the idea

Wednesday

Time just is.

Our knowing hours separates us from every other creature.

Thursday

• Dante cleverly built a Hell in which punishment fit the crime so absolutely that in fact punishment was simply an eternally exaggerated repetition of the sin itself.  Those tossed about in life by emotional frenzy end up in an anchorless whirlwind, perpetually rushing by those they would like to meet, torn apart by the gale.  Teams of Hoarders and Wasters scream while randomly crashing boulders.  Angry people desperately claw at each other to get ahead while wallowing in endless filth.
• His point remains valid.  Whatever our eternal destination, sin and temperament can punish us throughout life.  That allows me to smile at the impatient drivers all about, stewing in their own chaos of not getting where they must go as quickly as they think they need to.  I wonder if the circles of Hell have added specialized technological niches, maybe one for cell-phone addicts.  Glowering visages of those tramping malls in forced quests only make me smile, grateful that I do not inhabit their nasty enclosed universe.
• I suppose it is perverse to associate end of year mirth with Hell and damnation, although in that observation I simply join many others such as the Puritans.  I know that there is a fair amount of joy and happiness out there, even in the malls, even as people drive.   But most folks hate to show it, and many of them seem truly overwhelmed and miserable.  I try to step back a bit and realize how fortunate my society and I myself have been and continue to be.

Friday

• At the height of holiday madness, an escape to a local park is still possible.  Temperatures are often less than bitter, and snow cover usually does not arrive until later.  But it is in winter that the limits of these preserves are fully displayed.  Without intervening leaves and vines, bordering houses are clearly shown, sounds cut through the woods without muffling, and other visitors are visible a long ways off.  Woods and fields seem to shrink, and it becomes impossible to pretend this is a glimpse of wilderness.
• Everywhere on Long Island the presence of others is more defined.  Trees along parkways no longer screen nearby developments.  Traffic and leaf blowers and chain saws and jet engines provide constant murmurs at all hours.  Our human beehive is nakedly visible, and palpably present.  My real escape for the next few months is at a few local beaches, which are frigid, windswept, usually deserted, and still present open vistas of water, wildlife, and distant hills.  Wind and wave sounds drown out civilization, and I can still find myself happily solitary.  Perhaps even humming a carol to my inner self.

Saturday

I’d been blindfolded at the airport, and driven to this remote beach on some Caribbean island.  Also forced to leave my phone and all recording equipment behind.  My report of this interview would have to be from handwritten notes alone.  I blinked in dazzling sunlight and finally focused on the large bearded man sitting in front of me, as smallish waiters brought drinks.

“Ah, Mr. Claus?” I began.

“Ho ho ho,” he responded heartily.  “Here, have a Polar Vortex _ Bubbilo invented these just for me.”  I’m handed a white drink dusted with sugar resembling snow. 

“It seems retirement is treating you well.”

“Can’t complain.  Should have done it years ago.  But, you know, it took technology.  Couldn’t have managed it at all in the fifties …”

“What technology do you use, anyway?”

“Well, we handed the sleigh off to Norad a while back, of course, and before that I had the clones in the department stores _ before we even knew about DNA, mind you.  But now the naughty and nice list is sorted by Google on the cloud, delivery is with Amazon and UPS, and guest appearances are via hologram and Artificial Intelligence generating media events.  All me and the boys need to do is sit back and watch the show.”

“Don’t you even answer letters?”

“All done electronically _ most come in email anyway, but the rest are scanned.  Logoli fixed up a nice chatbot that handles all the responses.  Now I can just sit back and watch the sea life.” He sighed happily.  “Better than a blizzard, I’ll tell you that.  Right dear?” he asks Mrs. Claus, coming across the courtyard.

“Don’t you feel just a little guilty?”

“Why? I put in my time.”

“But how can you possibly afford all this?

“Royalties, you know.  Markak trademarked us years ago.  And anyone who doesn’t pony up gets to meet our ‘protection services’ in the form of Gremanon and her flood and fire brigade. Ho ho ho.”

“Aren’t you even going to ask me …”

“What do you want for Christmas?  Don’t be silly.  This interview is all you ever wanted.  Ho ho ho!  Have a great holiday!”

They blindfolded and led me away, but it was true.  Once again, I had to believe in Santa.

Sunday

I’m wealthy, you know, get out of my way

Don’t bother to speak, I won’t hear what you say

I’m busy and anxious and quite out of time

I need what I want without reason or rhyme

I deserve every penny, no second is free

The world as I know it revolves around me

I’m not very happy, I don’t have that skill

Just hard work and hard play and a fabulous will

Have left me quite bitter, but that is ok

As I said, I must hurry, get out of my way.

Twinkle

Monday

• We haven’t seen a starry night in Huntington since superstorm Sandy knocked out all power on the East Coast.  The moon bravely shines through the local illumination pollution, and I can still make out Polaris and Orion in winter.  The planets are often visible, although easily confused for a while with jet plane wing lights swarming Kennedy and LaGuardia.  But there is not a trace of thousands _ let alone billions _ of stars, and certainly not a hint of the Milky Way. 
• We get an awful lot of our “nature experiences” from media.  Habits of wild animals, wonders of the cosmos, terrors in jungles or icecaps are all available when I pick up a book or turn on television.  I’m sometimes shocked at the difference even with a stroll through small tamed local woodlands.  On the other hand, I’m quite content not to come face to face with a lion.
• I’d be lying to claim I miss the stars much.  I was never a night owl, never a wilderness explorer.  I like my soft warm bed when I sleep.  At most, I’d glance up now and then.  So not having countless little sparks overhead has never particularly affected my mood.
• Like many people, I suppose, I like the idea of brilliant starry nights more than the actuality.  Just as I enjoy stories of epic nature more than living the adventure.  My delights are local, calm, beautiful, constrained _ beaches and shells, dirt paths and leaves, birds and bugs.  Yet I can be saddened to contemplate that starry heavens are missing, just as that countless species enter extinction even though I would never have encountered them in person. 

Tuesday

• Once upon a time, twinkles were pretty much confined to stars overhead.  Now they are commonly artifacts of tree branches waving and temporarily blocking artificial electric lights.  But twinkles, like their daytime cousin sparkles, carry mostly benign connotations.  Evil characters rarely have a twinkle in their eye.  The few other times twinkles are glimpsed _ in a raindrop or dew for example _ they pose no menace.  A happy, flashing surprise to jolt thoughts out of whatever rut they may have fallen into.
• This time of year twinkles abound as folks put strings of small lights all over houses and trees, as darkness falls quickly and early.  Twinkles reflect on the harbor from homes outlined in white, masts of small sailboats gaudy with colored strings, and out my window as the remaining leaves momentarily obscure neighbors’ decorations.  Soon I will add my own decorations to the grand mélange.  I’m pretty sure the energy expended does not help the planet at all, but it cheers us up and I guess a few iguanas, toads, and lizards more or less are a price worth paying.   

Wednesday

• Our eyes can glance at the sun, be dazzled by sparkles on the sea, gaze at a sunset, wonder at a full moon, and be entranced by countless twinkling stars.  If we pay attention.
• Human senses are only incredible when mediated by mind.

Thursday

• Some claim to see the future through a glass darkly.  I always regard it as twinkling possibilities.  My adolescence was filled with stories of alternate incompatible futures, mostly world-ends in bangs or whimpers.  The only escape was vaulting over the near future into centuries or eons of distance.  And those grand masters of the genre of science-fiction could twinkle grandly indeed.
• Age brings its own perspective, and hammers home the true realization that for each person, the world ends at death.  So worry about climate, automation, disaster, and other global terrors subsides into “will I wake up tomorrow, and how much of me will remain if I do”.  We consider the immediate futures of our children and those closest to us, of course, and those projections (sometimes unfortunately) often prove true.  But beyond a year or so, we are as ignorant of what may happen as any German peasant about to be overrun by armies during the Thirty Years War, or any complacent mid-level nobleman in Renaissance Florence unaware that Black Plague is beginning to seep into the edge of the city.
• Nevertheless, we all peer upward into the future, see glimmers of hope and fear, and watch them blink or vanish behind clouds for a while.  Their twinkles provide a spur to our imaginations, and by doing so enrich our thoughts.  What might become of everything is a fruitful source of daydreams.
• I think I understand twinkling stars as I gaze upward.  But in spite of science, I have not experienced their essence.  The twinkles which seem to animate them are illusions of vaporous atmosphere.  That I do not really understand them should be depressing.  But I am fortunately able to still immerse myself in undying memories of space opera, uncritical examinations of nocturnal beauty, unhindered visions of marvelous futures, and to allow my own consciousness to twinkle brilliantly.

Friday

• Apocryphally, Eskimos have twenty words for snow.  That is not unusual _ English has many words for a bright light of short duration _  pop, burst, flash, blink, wink, sparkle, twinkle.  None of these can be illustrated with a still picture _ each requires ongoing time.  They are not synonyms, exactly, but all share features and can be interchanged to a certain extent.  Whether a sunset on a sea twinkles, or when sparkles turn to twinkles as dusk falls, is open to dispute.
• Words like these come so loaded with cultural and personal connotations that they are among the most difficult for non-native speakers to understand.  Santa Claus typically has twinkling _ definitely not flashing and usually not sparkling _ eyes.  I suppose that terrifies professional translators, but it can lead to the most astonishingly incongruous machine translations.   Some are ideophones _ which somehow suggest in sound the things they represent, even though those things produce no sound at all.
• I use them as I will, especially in this blog where any excuse for anything is a good one.  December for me, both in nature and not, is a season of twinkles everywhere.  

Saturday

I am in the midst of untangling wires and plastic edging when Stan and Jane hail me from the road.  I take a moment out to walk down the driveway, grateful for a break to put my hands in pockets in the frigid breeze.  “Merry Christmas,” I greet them with little enthusiasm.

“Once again, once again,” chuckles Stan.  “What, you don’t get excited that Santa will be here soon, with his sleigh and reindeer and …”

“Blizzards and ice and gloom,” I finish.

“Bah! Humbug!” laughs Jane.

“Got that right in one.  Just more chores, and here I am, seeing what works and what doesn’t.”

“Lots of blinking lights on the trees?”

“Just a few.  We gave up on blinking a long time ago.  I find the twinkle of off and on kind of monotonous, rather let the leaves and wind do the work.”

“We just saw Patty’s house _ looks like the mall or one of those neighborhood displays you see on TV. “

“Way too much work for me,” I note.

“Actually,” Sam says pensively, “we think they got it done professionally.  Anything that goes up that fast without us seeing them slaving at it is probably from some service or other.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I reply.  “Just about everything around here lately seems to be done by somebody else.  Not like when we were kids, that’s for sure.”

“Nothing is,” Jane adds.  “Anyway, we’ll let you get back to work.  We need to put in a few more steps before dinner.”

“Gee, thanks a lot,” I start back up to the garage.

“Don’t mention it, Scrooge.  God bless us every one!”

Sunday

You don’t twinkle, little star

I don’t worry what you are

If sun blinked like that, or our moon,

Everyone would scream and swoon

Life itself can twinkle so

We accept it as we go

Illusions fill the near and far

You don’t twinkle, little star.

Conventionally Brown

Monday

• Ask most residents of Huntington what the common color of nature is, this week after Thanksgiving, and most would say “brown.”  Forest floor is covered in brown, and what leaves remain on the trees have lost all other colors.  Exposed branches of the deciduous canopy are various shades of what might be called brown.  Dried weeds and exposed earth are only charitably tagged as “sienna” or “umber.”  “Brown” is the safe, conventional response.
• Brown is an odd color, not found in the rainbow.  Nature, even now, is not brown.  Tree trunks do not resemble the drawings of children with crayons _ most are more closely grey.  Cloudy skies are tinged with blue and yellow, clear skies are azure, without even mentioning sunrise and sunset.  Water echoes sky, with deeper tones.  Evergreens remain verdant, lawns are still emerald.  Looking closely other colors peek out here and there.  And it is almost impossible to miss the brilliant hues of man even in the most natural setting _ bright red jackets, or brilliant yellow cars, for example.
• Conventions help us organize our thoughts.  So it is not exactly wrong for me to think of late fall as brown, of winter as white, of spring as brilliant lime.  By contrast to each other, there is a grain of truth in categorization.  But I should never confuse that convenience for reality.
• I would extend that to our thinking about society.  Conventionally, we may see desperate times, or loss of civility, or intolerance, or downright stupidity.  And, again, although there may be a grain of truth and a bit of useful categorization in such characterization, it is hardly the whole truth and maybe not even close to reality.  Just as late fall nature is not really brown, America today is hardly as desperate as fanatics on any side of the political spectrum lazily perceive it.

Tuesday

• Appropriately, humans cast the world in human terms.  There is a clean logic to that, especially since it is hard to believe that any other species on the planet would consider alternate interpretations.  It is unlikely that a fox or willow ever wonders what it would be to experience life as a person.  Only people try to understand alternatives _ even if that is usually simply anthropomorphic casting.
• Why we have been endowed with intelligence and ability is a profound question.  Scientists point to the climatic insanity of the ice ages.  Religions claim the spark of the divine.  The true issue is not how we have become as we are, but what we do with it now that we exist.  Too often I take my conventional outlooks for granted, barely pausing to understand how wonderful they are, and how amazing that I can change them at will.
• So I stroll under “menacing” skies that are merely water vapor and gas, watch “playful” birds that are only trying to eat, contemplate “majestic” trees that “endure” harsh storms.  That is right and proper, but I must always also realize that any mood I project, however conventionally true, is nothing more than my projection.  The way I think can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help.  I strive to remain able to reset and find fresh alternatives to what I too easily accept.  

Wednesday

• Conventional truth is not reality; we merely construct useful beliefs.
• Each moment of our experience is a tangle of partial fragments and misperceptions.

Thursday

• Islamic State and White Supremacy are isomorphs.  Each is an exclusive conventional idea of superiority based on race, religion, or some other easily determined marker.  All cults transform their inner circle into presumed magicians, their followers into unquestioning parrots, and everyone else into subhuman “others.”  As tribal creatures, we are easily seduced into such groups. 
• Logic in tribal association is less important than proximity, intuition, and reinforcement.  Society can rarely break up proximity _ the Roman diaspora of the Jews notably failed _ and intuition resists anything but revelation.  But we can counter reinforcement. 
• Magicians can be proved powerless.  Adherents can discouraged by incompetence in the real world.  The most important counterweight is social civility.  Even the most isolated tribal member often feels a strong attraction to get along with others, if only to convert them.  By providing a civil society which promotes the idea that there are no true “others”, and which encourages interconnection between everyone, tribal exclusiveness is weakened.  It is no accident that the first thing cult leaders attempt to do is to restrict access to the outside world for all those who join its circle.
• When conventional tribal ideology becomes fanatically destructive, like Islamic State or Nazi Germany or the American Confederacy, the end result is usually the immolation of the tribe, although it may take many others down with it.  One of the great tasks of this century will be to understand how and when to contain such a malignancy, either with more powerful social conventions, or early use of naked force.

Friday

• Conventional understanding of any situation is always subject to change.  Standing in deep woods looking into sunbeams slicing through tree trunks presents a radically different set of images than those seen by simply turning around.  Walking beyond into a meadow is to gain a totally reoriented perspective of forest.  Flying as high as a hawk transforms terrain yet again.  And poking around with a magnifying glass or microscope supplies yet another slice of whatever “reality” may be.
• Conventionally, we are told to “think out of the box” or take a “view from twenty thousand feet.”  These admonitions are almost useless.  We are trapped not within a box, but within shapeless but generally useful tricks of survival.  A view from higher than a hawk circles _ a few hundred feet over treetops _ is of no value to anyone except real estate developers.
• Having conventional views is not the problem.  They are what we are, our primary tools of survival.  Not realizing that they are conventions is our problem, and one of the reasons art is such an important element in any culture.  Art not only focuses conventions, but by doing so also allows us to step out of them, as into a meadow, and reorient our perspective of society.

Saturday

Pinny Oak stretches her limbs away from the northern blast and yawns mightily.  Leaves cascade away, leaving her three-quarters undressed.

“Going to sleep already?” asks Sam Spruce across the yard.

“I always get tired this time of season,” she replies.  “I leave late months to you.”

“You’re missing the best part of the year,” Sam tells her.  “Hardly any pests, lots of water, fairly quiet, and those pesky humans mostly scurry away and leave us alone.”

“Not what I heard,” says Pinny.  “Your cousin Jane over in the corner says she’s lost relatives.  Just cut down and dragged into humans’ burrows for some obscene ritual or other, then tossed out when they have been sucked dry.”

“That seems to depend on where you live and how big you are,” notes Sam.  “They don’t seem to bother any of us around here, thank heaven.  Anyway, I find it a wonderful contemplative time.”

“Well, I can’t help it.  I need my hibernation or I’m a mess in the spring.  Anyway, it’s not ‘already’, I always turn in around now.”

“Pleasant dreams,” mutters Sam politely, as another strong gust rips by.

“Good winter to you as well.”

Sunday

If I could see or clearly know

I’d fill my time with what was right

Choose true paths

Ignore the strange.

What lies about is fog and mist

Scattered forms in subdued light

Which subtly shift

Or quickly change.

I think I’ve found what’s real at last

Clutch my prize to hold it tight

Then wind blows biting, clears my brain

All is formless once again.

Ingrates

Monday

• Platitudes this week are as numerous as leaves on our front lawn.  Lists of what to be thankful for are as long as they are meaningless.  Others lament “thankful for what?” still bitter at the election or some personal hurt.    Mostly, I must admit, I find our tiny corner of the world to be filled with cold ingrates, who have almost no appreciation of how lucky we are to be alive in this time and place.
• When Lincoln declared the first of these November Thanksgivings back in 1863, few from today’s world would have had much idea what he was talking about.  From over a century on, it very much seems a plea as desperate as any offered by some refugee trapped in the current Mideast violent madness.
• A war was raging, bloodshed was immense, vast numbers of men in their prime had died, and in spite of Vicksburg and Gettysburg,  the Union appeared lost.  Hordes of Irish refugees had arrived in the previous decades, fleeing the potato famine, and although they were now eating, they had made some of the slums in cities almost uninhabitable.  Millions were enslaved under the lash.  Corruption ruled politics.  Most children died before they were ten, mothers often died in childbirth, common diseases were fatal.  Life anywhere, except for a fortunate few, was harsh, filled with hunger and cold and uncertainty.  There was no electricity, not much indoor plumbing, barely heated homes, poor food storage and distribution.
• And yet, in the midst of all that, Lincoln put together an inspiring declaration.  Not surprising, maybe he was thinking of the next election.  But astonishingly a lot of people said, “Yep, fine, ok, let’s give thanks for all we have.”  And the tradition carried on from there until now.
• I will not repeat all those platitudes you are reading, I will not compose some longer list than those you are finding everywhere.  I will simply encourage you to reflect a moment on whether you would really, truly, trade for anyone else anywhere else in history _ not for their great deeds or immortal works _ but for their daily lives.  I would not.  I suspect almost anyone would be a fool to do so.

Tuesday

• In North American deciduous forests, leaf-fall recycles organic materials to the benefit of the entire ecology.  Trees are better prepared to bear the weight of snow and ice, small rodents and other animals burrow into the soft thick quilt covering the ground, nutrients seep into the soil as decay sets in.  The true owners of the planet _ bacteria and fungi _ feast and thrive.  Probably only humans enjoy the spectacle as an aesthetic masterwork.
• Suburban dwellers are perverse.   Maintaining green lawns where there ought to be woodland is a constant chore, not least when they are covered with dried foliage.  In spite of the recycling, in spite of the spectacle, I admit that I do not jump up on November mornings happily shouting “golly gee, I get to rake and bag today!”  Once outside, I am content enough at my labor until some jet pack roar of a whining leaf blower interrupts my quiet meditations. 
• At least, I tell myself, it gets the blood moving, and it is, after all, an outdoor activity.  Often mild enough not to need gloves.  Eventually, I reconcile myself with farewells to such rituals until spring arrives, and go about my day watching the hazed sky, facing the constant wind, and listening to the scrunch of organic detritus as I complete my chores.

Wednesday

• Americans seem to be raised grasping and envious.  Most ignore Thoreau, who wrote that “a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
• Own all that you can own, wish for more than you can imagine.  An exacting recipe for perfect perpetual misery.

Thursday

• Darwinistic evolution is often presented as “nature red in tooth and claw,” where the survival of the fittest means the losers are always being consumed, one way or another, by the winners.  The slowest zebra falls to the fastest lion every day, for eons, and pretty soon there are very few slow zebras.  In such a view, nature is a bloody mess, a paranoid world of constant death.
• Nevertheless, I look out my window at the bird feeder and rarely see blood.  Squirrels and birds peacefully coexist.  The trees are certainly not dripping with the ichor of ongoing conflict.  At any given moment, nature is just as peaceful and calm and serene as any Romantic poet could wish.  I have yet to see much of natural evolution, although birds are occasionally killed by the neighborhood cat, and I often see ospreys carrying a dripping fish in their talons.
• Which brings us to terror and events like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
• All my life, there have been some terrible events around me and in the world.  I was born shortly after World War II, when Hiroshima victims were still dying of radiation, populations in Europe were starving, and Stalin was enforcing the gulag.  Closer to home, friends died of leukemia or were affected by polio or simply were involved in childhood accidents.  In maturity I have been extremely fortunate personally, but could not ignore conflicts, wars, famines and other nasty fatal events in the world.  Age inevitably carried some close relatives and friends off, cancer struck others, and at slight remove car accidents always harvest more than a few.
• Why, then, does being injured or killed at a parade become such a fear?  I would be far more likely to be killed trying to get there _ there are worries enough about drunken drivers on the highways, crumbling infrastructure on the trains, homicidal lunatics in the subways _ than I would be even were some explosion to happen.  Logically, there are so few terror attacks in this country _ so few airplane incidents for that matter _ that this should be at the very bottom of our concerns list.  But it is not.
• I think it is because of manipulation.  The government, the police, the elite always want the masses to think they are doing something important, and that life would be awful without them or if they scaled back their activities.  It is in the interest of the military and the police to have us believe we are in constant danger and only live because we pay an awful lot for protection.  It is in the interest of politicians to claim that by doing nothing at all they have actually kept us safe from certain tragedy.  It is in the interest of media to fan our fears, to keep us addicted to the latest shot of fright, like teenagers flocking to midnight horror movies.
• I know that mankind red in tooth and claw can sometimes be true, as it is right now in the Mideast.  I do not pretend there is nothing to fear but fear itself.  I sympathize with victims of attacks, as I do with victims of automobile accidents or disease.  But, as in real nature out by the bird feeder, I also think that for most of us most of the time most of our moments our world are quite safe and always wonderful.

Friday

• During my daily walk, I was observing the first bufflehead duck to arrive when an osprey swooped so low overhead that I could feel its passage.  As soon gone mysteriously out of sight as the buffleheads, which vanish all summer long.  Raptors and ducks have made a nice comeback since the banning of DDT, and I am grateful for hawks circling overhead,  ospreys on their massive twig nests, and reports of eagles’ return. 
• In other times I would have rushed to learn the winter habits of ospreys, the summer dwellings of buffleheads, but no more.  I am content with mystery.  I do not seek to know everything about everything, but to fully appreciate what I find each moment.  I wish to locate balance in our real world, for those of us who do not have time, desire, nor resources to concentrate on one tiny aspect of something.
• Trying to know more than everyone else is a form of ownership, a kind of attempt to create envy in others.  It is perhaps less destructive than accumulating goods, but chasing knowledge like some modern Faust will lead to the same damnation that he endured _ a life badly spent, the eternity of moments we possess regretfully wasted.  Better to just smile as the osprey passes, grateful that we can still share our worlds. 

Saturday

• Blustery winds sweep down the harbor from dark purple-streamed clouds off to the north.  Larry seagull poises happily over a fat dead fish washed up by the receding tide on the shell-strewn sand.  Good day for a feast, he thinks.
• A shriek overhead startles him a moment until he realizes it’s just Moe, as usual, arriving late and noisy.  He waddles away calmly away from the dive bomber who is now squawking “mine mine mine” at the top of his lungs.  Of course, that display has caught the attention of Curly, circling over the far bank, and he is soon on his way getting ready to rumble.
• Moe struts around his prize, taking a peck here or there, tasting and hardly getting much because he is keeping a wary eye out for competitors.  Curly swoops in out of the sun with a ferocious display of huge wings, claws outstretched aimed directly at Moe, who angrily hops out of the way.
• The two circle each other, hurling insults and challenges.  “I got it first!” shouts Moe “wait your turn!”
• “Out of my way, you fat moron!” cries Curly, shoving his wide open yellow beak menacingly.
• “Guys, guys,” says Larry calmly.  “There’s enough for everybody.  Calm down …”  Of course he is ignored completely, and backs off to meditate on the day and the season.  What the hell, there will be lots of leftovers.
• “Stop now!” shouts Curly.  “Idiot son of a scavenger go home!” shrieks Moe.  They circle like ancient Greek wrestlers seeking the first fall, but never actually touch each other.  Running, quick winged hops, occasional near misses.  This goes on for almost five minutes, as they each jealously keep the other from getting too much, which means that by far the largest portion of the menhaden remains untouched.  Finally, breathing heavily, too tired to stand, they float warily offshore, circling.  “I’ll get you someday, you crook!” taunts Moe.  “You and what army?” mumbles Curly, but his heart is no longer in it.
• Larry, the largest brown gull around, realizes that it is his turn, and slowly wanders down and prepares to take his fill.  Moe and Curly remain too involved with each other to notice.
• Sometimes, he realizes, when there is too much at the feast, it is best to wait until the crazies are out of the way.

Sunday

More, please.

More days, more joy, more sun, more hope

More things, more stuff, more life itself

And while we’re at it

More needs, more wants,

More all

More more.

Kaleidoscope

Monday

• As happens periodically, I grow weary of current patterns, including the one I have used on this blog for the last year or so.  Like seasons, an occasional change is required. 
• New formats are in flux.  Social and philosophical commentary easily becomes tedious, even to the writer.  Reaction to current events tends to bitter shallow sloganeering.  Yet pondering the deeper course of nature and cosmos becomes a mere escape from daily reality.  Nevertheless, pondering and commentary and reaction is what I have available.  I am not about to leap into action and somehow save the world, nor even a single soul.
• Kaleidoscope represents this weekly theme of all that is swirling about, colored leaves constantly falling, turning brown, drying on the ground.  What can be isolated from that constantly changing view, what meaning should be attached?  Twist the device and suddenly all fractures again, yet with similarities.  So it is with perspectives on life and society and nature.
• Twist again.  I am not sure where, if anywhere, I should settle.  Pardon my confusions, as I seek my path into the next stage.

Tuesday

• Something seemed different the minute my Honda reached the long causeway through the marshes, Saturday after Veterans Day.  Too many cars, in both directions.  Sure enough, Caumsett which is often nearly empty at this time of year, especially on such a chill wind afternoon, looked like a rock concert.  Cars lined down the entrance road, parking lot jammed, enough people walking with strollers, bikes, and young children to fill Central Park.  Even a family of five on large unicycles,  following their mother like wheeled ducklings.
• I don’t dislike people, but I come to this state park for solitude.  Fortunately, the less known dirt roads and paths through the woods, sprinkled with leaves of all colors and shades of yellow and brown, were almost _ not entirely _ free of humanity.  Squirrels dashing about the underbrush were about the only noise rising above the gentle rush of drying branches and foliage.  Sunbeams slicing through translucent patterns like nature’s stained glass.
• The park on a day like this is a natural cathedral.  Everybody knew it, which accounts for the crowds.  And, I suppose, also to relieve some of the hysterical social tensions of the last week, and get back to understanding that the world is more than politics, more than television, more than slogans, and even more than anyone’s ambitions. 
• More than that, this cathedral remains free to all those willing to make the effort, take the time, and experience it.

Wednesday

• Walking into southerly setting sun, camera slung around my neck, trying to take pictures of the harmoniously hued majesty revealed everywhere, but the results cannot begin to recreate what I enjoy.
• Frame, focus, visualize clearly.   Success often requires ignoring wider reality.

Thursday

• This is my sixty-ninth fall to heaven, as Dylan Thomas would put it.  Long Island has experienced twenty-one thousand such cycles since its formative glaciers receded.  By geologic time, even by personal time, this is one season among many.  Nature continues its stately rhythm.  Unlike our own quickly distracted and worried minds.
• Breathless screaming media, panic in the streets, end of civility, civilization collapsing.
• I can’t help thinking this is a bit of overreaction to an election.  But maybe people are too young to remember really fearsome times:  Germany invading Poland in ’39, Cuban missile crisis, Nixon’s win in ’72, even Chernobyl melting away forever.
• We’ve survived worse.  Very little is about to change very much, which will make some people very angry, and some people very relieved, and most people just continuing about their lives.  Leaves ceaselessly drift down.  Snow will arrive soon enough.

Friday

• Autumn is more about age than death.  Another cycle of closing up and seeking shelter through difficult weather.  Not the grand newborn hope of spring, not the eternal dance of summer, but not the chill of icy endings.  Fall marks time passing, and inevitable decline to await better times.
• Like aging properly understood, autumn is a time of spectacle.  The grand survivors reveal themselves in full complexity of lives past.  Younger trees are stripped of gaudy leaves and stand slim beside massive trunks.  Undergrowth briefly becomes visible, displaying fallen giants as reminders of seasons past, decay fungus setting in.
• We gradually become aware of the bones of our natural world exposed, the fantastic twists of tree limbs, the undulations of earth.  I would lie to claim it is a happy or hopeful time.  After all, that is why we so frantically engage in our various festivals of light as the days grow short.  But it certainly is not the dead calm of waiting out a blizzard, the creeping pain of deep cold, the pure endurance of hoping for better days that we encounter in February.

Saturday

Squirrel hunches nervously seeking any small remaining seeds from the cascade that continues to fall as tiny migrant birds attack the feeder, spilling more than they eat.  Crow flaps in ostentatiously, scattering a couple of doves as it lands and struts, occupying territorial ground space.

“Hey, Sherry, what’s up?” he squawks imperiously.

“Busy, busy, busy,” answers Sherry Squirrel, barely looking up from her nearsighted endeavor.  “Have to put away as much as possible you know.  Hard times coming, hard times.”

“But,” notes Clark Crow, “There’s big fallen nuts all around the yard.  What are you wasting time here for?  This stuff is hardly worth bothering about.”

“Not enough hickories this year, not enough,” complains Sherry.  “Hardly any acorns.  I’m stopping by for a quick snack, this quick snack, before I get back to burying my future meals.  Need to get ready now.  Besides, I could ask you the same, Roadkill.  Why are you here?”

Clark is not happy with his nickname, but he endures it as pridefully as possible.  “Same thing.  I get tired of the same old diet of squash.  Squashed rats, squashed raccoons, here and there a seagull.  This stuff is like candy.”

“Wonder where it all comes from,” wonders Sherry.  Suddenly loud screeches sound all around, high up in the trees.  She lifts her tail and glances up in near panic.

“Neighborhood watch!” explains Clark, getting ready to take off.  “Either Cat or Hawk has been sighted. We take turns covering each other.”

“Great idea!” snaps Sherry, grabbing one more seed.  “I lost my friend Ralph last week over at Coindre because he was on the open lawn and not paying attention.  Must rush!”

“Yeah, Heather got gutted by Cat a while ago.  She was too fat to take off quickly, of course, her own fault really…”

“Gotta go now! Go!” shouts Sherry jumping onto a tree and scampering up into thick branches.

“Later!” Clark flaps up to the highest point in the blue spruce to see if he can figure out what is going on.

No matter how easy life seems, friends have to stay alert.  

Sunday

Gold, russet, sienna, scarlet

Just words meaningless

Unless

Your memory evoked

Cool Anticipation

Monday

• Cool days have arrived, and cold will not be far behind.  Some leaves cover the ground, but great mounds are to follow.  The days are shorter, but in a month nights will seem to last forever.  Meanwhile, anticipation for end of year holidays builds and commercial displays are beginning to blossom everywhere.
• This is a culture which thrives on anticipation.  Some people could not wait for the heat and light of summer to end.  They were either bored with it, or annoyed by the humidity, and find crisp breezes invigorating.  Soon enough they will wish for snow, and then grow tired of winter’s freeze.  I have grown out of always hoping for the next thing, and trying to enjoy this thing right here.  Today is bright, clear, cool, and only grudgingly autumn, as much remains bright green, and I celebrate it as it is.

Tuesday

Our world ever new awakes

Each day to calmly opened eyes

Before fevered brain kicks in

Firmly layers us complex

Sandwiched into heaven, hell

Unsure remembered maybe pasts

Imagined could be hopes and fears

Identical transmuted self

Wednesday

• Last week displayed mid-autumn, but felt like August.  This week the reverse.  Folks in hats, gloves, and heavy jackets vainly seeking incredible foliage.  In some ways, the contrasts are quite pleasurable, like unexpected spices on food.  On the other hand, the dissonance can be disquieting.
• I rejoice that experience is so fractured and inconstant.  Perfect serene and complementary moments, when they exist, quickly become boring.  Surprise feeds my enjoyment.  So if I rush out the door into right sunshine, only to dash back for some warm wrap, that’s fun.  Virtual reality misses that so far, which makes it very very far from true reality.

Thursday

Mission-focused streams of overly dressed people stride around Hecksher pond, bright cold and windy day, too cool too rapidly for the season.  Joan says, “well, at least they’re smart enough to be wearing hats.”

She has a point.  “Yeah, I know, when the season sneaks up there’s a tendency to not dress well at all.  Look _ even the kids on the playground have winter coats.”

“I see so many people all year just walking around with sweatshirts, no hat, nothing, like it’s summer.  I’m sure they have to get sick.  And their kids …”

“I once saw somebody running across the street in town in a snowstorm in bare feet and tee shirt,” I remark.

“Well, probably crazy drunk.  I’m talking about normal people.”

“I guess it’s easy for us to change outdoor dress.  I just move the winter stuff to the front of the closet, and when I reach in there it is.  I think we were a lot more mixed up when we were younger.”

“You might have been more mixed up,” she remarks.  “But it sure was harder when the boys were small.”

“The other thing,” I continue, ignoring her, “is that our stuff _ my stuff at least _ is much better quality now.  So I can wear the same boots, coats, gloves year after year and they hardly age.  Hats, I admit, I still wear out pretty quickly.”

“Don’t forget the lined driving gloves I have to get you almost every Christmas.”

“Right.  But even so, I’ve hardly bought anything new in years.  The good stuff just lasts and lasts.”

“But your Bean stuff costs a fortune  …” she complains.

“It works.  It almost never needs replacing.  And it is easy to find, because all I do is push it back in the closet.”

“That’s just you!” she says in a huff.  “I love to buy new things, and new things discounted are the most fun in the world.”

She matches the American consumer.  I don’t.  We continue to sit on the bench in silence, and watch the parade continue.