Greenleaves

Monday

• Suddenly the great vegetal switch has been thrown.  Following warm spring rains, all is instantly green and becoming more so.  Early trees which flowered before foliation fade as blossoms hide behind newly developing leaves.  Ground perennials and annuals explode early spurts of stalk and shadow, competing for increasing sunlight before bothering with flower and fruit.  After all, just over a month to solstice.  A few beauties , such as dogwood and azaleas, break the pattern, but they provide bright accents, rather than the show itself.
• I admire these miraculous temperate zone cycles.  The constant equilibrium of more equatorial regions seems boring.  Spring around here is an athletic contest, a race for life, a display of hope and ambition by every species.  Even evergreens break their staid majesty to push out bright buds of cute soft miniscule needles.  A fine time to lounge around and enjoy _ except, perhaps, for ongoing warm spring rains.

Tuesday

So many synonyms for green

All strung together can’t describe

Exactly what I see
Wednesday

• Even a casual glance at the newly verdant horizon reveals an astonishing assortment of hues, textures, shine, patterns, and transparency.  In another month,  things will dry and settle into a darker, duller, generality.  In May, however, both long views and close up inspections of anything yield pure amazement.  So much variety and so much effort that is usually just taken for granted as folks rush on their busy way.
• I try to compose pictures, sometimes with a theme in mind, sometimes hoping the theme will leap from the photograph later.  I have to admit that often I repeat almost exactly _ my brain may be infinitely adaptable, but my thoughts travel well-worn paths.  The freedom is in the “almost.”  After all, this spring itself, this fine cool day, is almost like the season last year, almost like yesterday, almost like tomorrow.   And you and I are almost identical.   But from our restricted perspectives, almost is an infinite universe of its own.

Thursday

Winding through dirt paths snaking in copses of trees around the pond at Coindre Hall, I almost literally run into Kevin who is staring up in concentration at a large maple.  “Oops, sorry,” I stumble to a halt.

“No problem,” he laughs.  After all he’s nearly twice my size. 

“What are you so excited about?  Some unusual bird up there somewhere?”

“No, no, I was just amazed at how high these things are, how heavy the branches get, and how they ever manage to stay together through rain, wind, and snow.”

“Some don’t,” I gesture at broken limbs back up the trail, the main reason I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was going.  “I tend to be more astonished that we get so much out of such a tiny little layer of biosphere.”

“What, you don’t think this guy is large and magnificent.”

“From one perspective, sure.  But think of how big the Earth is, and how short the height from deepest roots to topmost leaf.  We take it all for granted.  I find it humbling and a little scary.”

“Well, my friend,” he responds, “then I won’t scare you even more by mentioning that three quarters of that little space is water, and an awful lot more of it is covered in sand or rock.”

“Somehow, it all works.  But I am always humbled by how tiny our realm is compared to the universe.”

“Be as humble as you want, but you still need to respect each individual specimen, especially one like this.”

“A secret woods-worshipper, are you?”

“Maybe,” he chuckles.

“I don’t think you were looking at branches at all.  I think you were trying to find a dryad or nymph.”

“Even if I found one, why would I tell you?”

“Ok, be that way.  Give her my best.  I’m going down to the shore to see if any mermaids have stopped by.”

Friday

• With herculean effort, the entire arboreal canopy has been regenerated for another season, thick and all but impenetrable.  From the air, Long Island now looks more like virgin forest than one of the most densely populated places on Earth.  The colors, like the leaves, are sharp and clean and clear, with no insect, drought, nor wind damage marring their newborn outlines and vein structures.
• Like ourselves from age twenty on, it’s all downhill from here.  Each tiny chlorophyll factory is put to work mercilessly, with barely a rest because solstice nights are short.  Should a worker leaf falter or become sick, it is abandoned and dropped.  And the grand reward at the end of a long summer’s job well done is brutal recycling into the forest floor.  But right now _ ah all is hope and magnificence and wonder.   Why I should concentrate on today.

Saturday

• It’s easy for us to get too caught up in cycles.  Already there are signs of coming winter, summer weeds like dock are in full bloom, we say “Oh, June already?” and dread next November.  Most of the permanent leaves are fully grown, degradation and decay have set in on a few, there are brown masses indicating flowers gone already.  Trees may regenerate crowns even now, for example if defoliated by caterpillars, but that costs so much that many die over the next year or so.
• It’s easy for us to get too caught up in the arrow of entropy.  The seas will rise, the glaciers may come, the sun shall dim, in a few tens of billions of years the universe itself will be gone.  Today is useless, what we do has little value, and in the end everything is dead.   Or we shorten our view slightly and decide we can always make things better, or things will always get worse, or things will over the long run stay the same _ why fix a leaky roof when tomorrow may bring sun?
• It’s easy for us to get too caught up in the moment.  Carpe Diem.  Have another glass of beer.  It’s all the greatest highs or the deepest lows.  We can’t predict the future, so why worry. 
• Trees, we assume, have none of these problems.  They are driven by local genetics, with no central control.  Animals can be trained, but they have little conception of the long run beyond a season or year or possibly decade.  Only humans face such delicate balances of perspective, which unlike leaves, can spring up instantly and occasionally cripple our thoughts.
• Some of this is intellect, some of this is hormones.  The wonder is that wonder can be provoked.  The miracle is that most of us, most of the time, do not slide into a pit of viewpoint, and that we can always regain perspectives on cycle, entropy, and moment.

Sunday

• Branch of Japanese maple glows crisply in fresh morning sun, as the desk calendars would put it.  This small example contains almost uncountable individual leafs, each working to provide food to the rest of the organism.  Yet were it torn by wind or pruning, the tree would recover, because there are so many more.  Imagine the not-quite-infinite number in Huntington, Long Island, North America, or the world!  Yet in some ways the whole assemblage is as fragile as this branch itself.  
• “Normal” appearance for me tends to be around arm’s length.  My binocular vision is working at that point, yet I still have the advantages of perspective.  Anything further away tends to become part of masses and shadows and other elements of landscape.  Anything closer is extravagantly weird right down to the sub-microscopic level.  Except in certain odd religions or scientific philosophies, my observational point has little to do with “objective reality,” in which the “actual” size is fixed at some defined measurement.  But truly my reality has little to do with that “objective” fantasy.

Luscious

Monday

• Wind rips clouds revealing sun reflecting from whitecaps.  Clarity melts into confusion as senses merge and stray.  Sounds waft pure scents, fresh growth glistens like marketplace fruit.  Immense desire to grasp, engulf, and drink this luscious moment.  A drunken mixed feast of experience, perhaps soon forgotten as giddiness later fades into memories of just another marvelous spring day.
• English has a word for everything.  Mixing of senses is “synesthesia,” famous in literature and psychology and physiology.  Knowing a word is not experience, but it can focus an unusual perspective.  So I can apply it to how I felt while walking along a happy carnival of so infinite an array of brilliantly mixed sensations that I could never separate nor adequately describe their elements.  

Tuesday

Like Rimbaud’s off-cast boat I drift

Propelled by currents uncontrolled

Enmeshed adventures, swept swirled confused,

Dreams mixed and fade pure haunting songs

.

Not quite so drunken, on this day

An older self _ less wild more free

Joints rebelling force a pause

Aching eyes ask ears relief

.

Sweet suns, rot tide scent, life and death

Velvet clamors, neon breeze

Same as back then, as everywhere, I hope

Same as tomorrow evermore

.

There’s more as much in one square mile

Than on this world’s vast seven seas

Swift single sparrow foretells falls

Completely as far shores, soft moon

.

It’s not bright sight, pure sound, bleak touch

Encompass full what I exist

In observation consciousness

Alone, engulfed, becalmed, amazed

Wednesday

• Surely this scene would provide marvelous lunch _ azaleas are worth five stars in anyone’s rating.  Humans themselves may or may not be primarily visually oriented, but this culture certainly is.  Even the most pungent images of Rimbaud _ whale rotting in salt marsh, snake falling putrid from tree as insects devour it _ remain as pictures rather than scents in memory.  Normally, to establish even a glimmer of synesthesia seems to begin with eyes leaking beyond sight.
• With effort, I can often synthesize my moment _ a full experience of ear, nose, taste, skin, muscles, organs, mind, and _ hardly ever least _ eyes.  But recalling that unity proves difficult or impossible.  Only in dreams does everything return, mixed and tenuous, but overwhelming.  Nevertheless I continue to make attempts at being totality, only rarely succeeding even a little.

Thursday

Joan Barbara and I sit gazing, aligned with other human relics, at the sparkling azure carpet spread before us at Northport Harbor.  Behind dogs frolic in soft grass, children scream happily from the playground.  Along the walk in front of our bench, uncounted young couples stroll hand in hand, all but oblivious to surroundings.  Heavy winter garments have been discarded,  revealing attire as gaudy as spring itself.

“Ah, hormones of youth,” sighs Barbara.  “Rose-colored glasses on everything.”

“There’s some older people too,” Joan asserts defensively.  “It’s springtime after all.  Time for love.”

“Well, I do think we tend to see the world more though our hormones than our senses,” I venture.  “When you’re happy and content the weather doesn’t matter much.”

“The weather matters to me!” states Joan.

Barbara enjoys a bit of a tweak.  “Maybe you’re just not in love anymore…”

“I don’t think she ever had a pair of those special glasses, Barbara.  Family trait to remain steady and rational.”

“I like flowers and spring a lot,” Joan glances at us in annoyance.  “I love flowers.  And when the sun is out, I’m always happier than when it’s raining.  I can’t help it, weather affects my mood.”

“Well, I think those two there,” Barbara subtly points to a particularly demonstrative pair, “wouldn’t notice a hurricane right now.”

We all grow silent for a while, probably each thinking that it doesn’t much matter why you enjoy being who and where you are, as long as you do enjoy it.

Friday

• Surely nothing mixes senses as much as water.  Memories scramble neuron connections so associations surface of hot, flavors,cold, thirst, drowning,  rocking, wet, dry, rain, mist, surf, wavelets, sparkles, leaden depth, seen breath and more.  Fear of high whitecapped waves, perhaps, soft meditations in calm reflections.  Tremendous mixtures of everything _ for life is mostly water, and echoes it closely.  Personal experience layers onto primal reaction.  No mistake why Rimbaud picked a boat _ a wagon would just not do.
• I swim in this harbor, although some tremble at the thought.  I have even tasted it, a few times as water cascaded from a cooled wet head in blazing sun, although salt prevents me from drinking much.  Sometimes I swam to shore from a dock that became more distant as I felt myself growing tired, even as I floated without effort in the buoyancy.  At times, we have watched a red sun set hypnotically in double distorted image as gnats flit annoyingly.  Storms have battered the shoreline, ice floes have caked the surface, hard sleet and soft snow have poured from overhead.  And that is without the recalled distant memories of ocean, lake, and pond.  Water is my nature, and how I experience it remains as mercurial as the chemical itself.

Saturday

• Computers are digital apparatus, constructed of hard dry immovable materials, controlling electrons in a flow that imitates water.  They are not life, which is water entire.  Their inputs are not senses, even though our aqueous cells utilize electricity on occasion.  It is almost impossible to imagine synesthesia occurring in artificial intelligence.
• I fear AI only because I distrust those who build it.  Those who try to develop vast grasping rationality, who claim that someday our minds will be poured into waiting crystalline structures and we will continue indefinitely as before, no, I think that most deeply they do not understand our reality.
• Can a computer score beauty?  Perhaps, properly programmed and equipped, it can pass judgement and say this or that.  Can it make unexpected leaps between a work of art and remembrances of an afternoon lunch at a Parisian café?  Can it randomly spin an uncertain feeling that somehow a scene causes the viewer to be slightly disoriented, happy, or troubled. 
• If builders allow such spontaneous connectivity, how to prevent insane association?  We are delicate balances and tensions.  We know when hard rationality shades into daydream, when happiness flips to nightmare, and we react and automatically control and bring our consciousness back to an almost rational calm center.  That has been the outcome of billions of years of trial and error.  What passes for such in the mechanical workshops of today’s Morlocks?
• Our culture, driven by science and pseudo-science, has perhaps traveled way too far along the various branching paths of detailed narrowing specialization.  Focus too much on sight, on hearing, on taste, on feeling and we become less human.  We should allow ourselves to once in a while glory in being confused, in tasting irrationality, and in seeing hot and cold scrambles within our immense knowing and being.

Sunday

• Birches hang out here and there in odd corners of vacant spaces along the waterfront.  Anywhere wetlands exist these trees remain abundant, but local marshes were long ago drained, paved, or flooded.  All for good reason, reducing mosquitoes, providing power, growing salt hay.  In spring, petite long green seed stacks look a lot like early fruit, crisp and ready for snacking.
• Of course people plant ornamental peeling-bark white birches everywhere, a lovely accent to yards in all seasons.  No doubt somebody somewhere is trying to make them fragrant or edible or _ given the speed with which genetic advances are occurring these days _ intelligent or talkative (as we know from our current politics, the latter two traits do not necessarily go together. )  I’m just happy to find this specimen where it was last  year, still making its way this spring, when so much else in this park and along the waterfront has succumbed to one mortal blow or another.

Sweet Melodies

Monday

• Birdsong is now full throated, sweet, rounded, continuous and incredibly beautiful.  Fragments of melodies float randomly from anywhere and everywhere, surrounding with incredible music, even in densely populated areas.  This, like more subtle perfumes wafting about, is missed by everyone driving by in cars or on bikes, rushing through towns or malls, even walking with earbuds blasting some predictable human tune.  A cosmic gift, unappreciated, although avian artists hardly care.
• Lilting phrases coming in and overriding one another resemble jazz soloists, each on their own interpretive tangent, somehow coalescing into a magical harmony.  Of course, there is no beat.  Of course, what music I hear is my own brain’s creation, feverishly weaving phantom patterns in its own artistic frenzy.  True or false is irrelevant,  what I experience is a perfectly enchanting wild symphony.

Tuesday

Unheard melodies are never sweetest

Keats was wrong.

Random birdsong fills May’s fragrant breeze

Evoking music

Finer than imagination could provide

From my poor mind

What reality have art and beauty 

Except to me

Wednesday

• Porsches blast seventy on curves marked thirty,  yard garbage construction trucks roar, tires whine and growl, pickups rattle, each contributing not only noise but stench.  Arboreal chanteurs and chanteuses fortunately live in an umwelt that filters and erases all this just as we cannot hear background magnetics and radio waves screaming all around.  Once in a while human noise ebbs, and a natural beauty rises to the skies.
• My umwelt cannot ignore these unpleasant intrusions _ in fact forces me to pay more attention to a garbage truck roaring towards me than to the blackbird in the reeds.  I can only try to tune and focus as possible to hear what else may echo above our constant din.  Often I am rewarded, more often than not I fail to try hard enough.

Thursday

Karen, Dave and I ran into each other at Caumsett one grey afternoon, then sat on a bench watching the parade of folks out for jogs, walks, and children’s outings on bicycles with training wheels.  A silent reverie, until Karen noted “It’s really a shame, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?” asked Dave.

“All those people ignoring everything, too busy to notice.  Look at that one glued texting on a cellphone, that one talking on another, and _ yeah those kids with headphones dancing along.  All of them in some other imaginary world, ignoring this one.”

“Problem of the times,” agreed Dave.  “Too much to do, too much they think they are missing.  In the old days….”

“Nah,” I broke in, “in the old days most people were just as bad.  Go read Thoreau or Aristotle.  Humans mostly ignore things except when it suits them.  The distractions may change, but not the behavior.”

“It’s a shame, though,” continued Karen.  “I think they’re missing so much.”

“What I think,” Dave looked around slowly, “is that a big part of the meaning of life is to just appreciate things.  Maybe that’s one of our main purposes.”

“Oh, sure,” I responded sarcastically, “somewhere somehow somewhen something is paying attention and enjoying the sensations of its avatars.”

“Don’t laugh.  Why not?  Besides, I think of it more as fine crystals or hand-crafted exquisite perfume bottles on display on a mantle or in a curio cabinet …”

“Or stored in the garage, maybe knocked over and broken by a kid or pet-dog equivalent.”

“Anyway, it’s a nice fantasy for at least experiencing the moments fully and imagining maybe they are more than they seem.”

“Well, that’s true,” I admitted grudgingly.  “Experiencing the moment fully does appear to be what the rest of these guys are frantically trying to avoid.”

We sat quietly, listening to birds and an occasional child’s laugh as the wind swept across the meadows.  Absorbed in our own thoughts, which, come to think of it, were probably just as distracting as anything anyone else out there that day was doing.

Friday

• Best days to hear birds or any other natural sound is heavy mist, when suspended water drops act like snow to muffle distant noises.  It also seems to be a spur to the birds themselves, who respond with hearty bravado and fill each copse of trees and brush with loud and continuous notes.  Here at Upland Farms, the trees are cycling close to normal, but ground cover, even ragweed, is weeks behind because of extended wet cold. 
• I also appreciate that at such times, humans tend to hibernate in vast enclosed emporiums or hidden nests.  Dog walkers at the park thin to a hardy few, awaiting better times.  So I often get vast stretches of public lands to myself.  All I need is a poncho, heavier coat than I would normally use at this time of year, and the will to leave my comforts to find unexpected treasure.

Saturday

• As I watched a baby yellow finch fumbling in nearby branches, I realized how much more I appreciate now, as well as how little desire I have to learn extended conventional expertise.  My badge of becoming an expert once was to memorize common and Latin names, to be able to recognize tiny differences in plumage, to confidently search for a given species by recognizing its song.  Same with weeds and trees, arrogantly identified.
• Now I am more skeptical that such helped my joy.  Was it really more important to identify the species by subtle feathers than it was to glory in its miraculous appearance set against leaves and branches?  Can’t I simply rejoice in what is, and how happy and open it makes me feel?  Doesn’t conventional expertise, to some extent, diminish that naïve enthusiasm?
• Our ancestors had to intimately learn which cohabiting lifeforms were dangerous, or destructive, or tasty.  To control them for safety or food, they had to understand locations and habits, when to shoot on sight, where to stretch nets, which plants to encourage and which to destroy.  I do not live as my ancestors.  My needs are different.  My expertise probably should adjust as well.
• Now, I do not claim it is wrong to know anything.  I enjoy knowing a hawk from an osprey, a finch from a robin.  Yet I will no longer interrupt my natural reveries and observation with frantic searches on the internet, quick photographs for later study, or opening a field guide.  Not only are those all distractions to experiencing the moment fully, I have also learned to my chagrin that age frequently clears my memory.  I once learned for all time, now I am lucky to remember what I thought I memorized a week ago.
• In particular, these days as birds sing I am clueless.  I can recognize crows or seagulls by sound alone and that’s about it _  those are hardly the most melodious.  That once bothered me.  Now I just let unexpected music echo from nowhere to nowhere, and I love it as a sweet unassociated immersion in nature. 

Sunday

• Been a great week for focus on listening.  Wet and slow growth kept many of whining blowers and mowers in storage.  Heavy air damped normal industrial soundscape background.  Mating, nesting, incubation hunger kept avian activity high, no bird remaining silent for long.  Lots to see, but with effort that could be subsumed as well.
• This tiny patch of woods displays skunk cabbage in a bog surrounding a tiny remnant outlet into what were once wetlands, now bounded by centuries of various dikings, embankments, and dams.  Already an adventure to get to, because poison ivy is springing up everywhere on the forest floor, delicate tiny red leaves and vines not yet impenetrable, but dangerous to those with allergies nonetheless.  I’ll have to be careful about touching the cuffs on my jeans for a while.

Adaptation

Monday

• About a decade ago, this patch of waterside land was cleared and carefully replanted.  Signs boldly proclaimed a “Native Vegetation Restoration Zone.”  Keeping it such proved a Sisyphean task, effort and money ran out, and it has reverted to being a typical vacant lot.  The only native species remaining are beach roses and poison ivy, and the beach roses are succumbing rapidly to salt intrusion from higher tides and frequent floods.
• Few local plants adapt well to the disturbances of human civilization.  Fewer still can compete with rugged global imports.  Our landscape changes much too quickly for any to evolve.  It is doubtful that we can preserve many plants or animals which require specialized niches over the next decades or centuries.  A few zoos or botanic reserves may somehow keep going, but I fear most will end up exactly like this impoverished _ but still beautiful _  bit of ground. 

Tuesday

Invasive species thrive and spread

In upturned soil exotic flowers

Are pampered yielding massive show

We care not that such flower beds

Displace what once received the showers

Dried, and died, nowhere to go.

A few lament, with glossy views

In thick-bound books safe on our shelves

What now is missing, wild and free

As once it was before the crews

Destroyed it all to please ourselves

With artificial harmony.

I do admit I’d fear the wolf

Or cougar should they both return

There’s limit to what I dare face

Yet I’d allow plants to engulf

My labors, even if they turn

Out to be plain, they have their place.

I’ll never recreate what was

Ecologies are simply whole

With parts replaced, the rest adjust,

Or not, but something new with flaws

A different unit fills the role

As true as any, less robust

Wednesday

• There is nothing quite so ecologically devastating as a farm, but close second is a large lawn.  Land is leveled, one species of grass is encouraged to grow, and everything is constantly cut and trimmed to a low height.  It has been said that nothing an individual can plant is quite as eternal as a lawn _ even completely untended, remnants of it will last for centuries, if only in woodland glades.  Designed by humans, but adapting to the wild.
• Yet I love large lawns such as this, with sweeping vistas.  Close inspection reveals that many species of grass have crept in, some of them undoubtedly native.  Worms, birds, rabbits, raccoons, deer, and in more remote areas, foxes wander across as they wish.  As a person who tries to love nature dearly, I suppose I should be ashamed to enjoy this space, but such are the contradictions of modern life which I have learned to accept.  A fanatic may condemn, but emotionally I just cannot regard this green expanse as vast evil even as my mind recoils at the destruction of original habitat.  I guess I also must adapt.

Thursday

Joe and Linda were arguing about something or other, as I passed them up near the Civil War Memorial statue at the end of town.  I was just in time to hear Joe somewhat sheepishly admit “Well, I’ve evolved on that issue, you know.”

That stopped me in my tracks.  I have a stupid habit of lecturing when I should keep quiet, but this is a personal vendetta.  “Individuals don’t evolve,” I stated, startling them.

“What?” asked Joe, confused by the change in conversational direction.

“Individuals don’t evolve.  Species evolve.  Individuals adapt.”

“Everybody else says they evolve,” argued Linda.  “It’s common usage, after all.”

“I know,” I responded, now a little sorry I’d started anything.  “But the theory of evolution is so clean and precise _ descent with modification.  No evolution without offspring.  Genetically modified offspring at that.  Individuals cannot evolve.  I just don’t like the term, it implies _ well more than that.”

“Like what,” Joe asked curiously.

“Especially like you just used it,” I reply.  “As if you are arriving at a better and higher and more perfect place.  I never hear anyone evolve into something they think is socially incorrect.”

“Well, life does get more complex …”

“Not necessarily.  Life can get more simple, lose limbs, fit a niche by being less demanding and precise.  Evolution is complicated, not a march toward some platonic ideal.”

“My ideas however,” said Joe sternly, “do have offspring, and do evolve, and do turn into different creatures altogether.  An evolving meme species, as it were, ideas dying into entirely new directions.”

He was right, I guess.  I shrugged and smiled, and continued on down the street a trifle embarrassed.  I guess I could use some evolution of social skills myself.

Friday

• Grass matts have moved, somewhat diminished, and are once again sprouting up and rooting downward.  Under natural conditions, there would be plenty of open space for marshlands to gradually occupy upslope as water rose, adapting to changing sea level.  However, humans like to live near the shore, so above the actual littoral there are wide bulldozed beaches, rocky berms, concrete walls, and wooden or steel bulkheads.  There is no place left for the grass to adapt to.
• I have no power in all this.  If I worry about each sparrow falling or marsh grass failing I will simply be sad all day long, and miss all the wondrous beauty that remains.  I dutifully send off my dues to organizations like the Nature Conservancy and desperately hope that somewhere, somehow, things will turn out well.  Today, I must content myself by being grateful that I have been privileged to know this world that is and what not long ago was.  Accepting powerlessness is no doubt a necessary adaptation of my mind.

Saturday

• Not long ago, all biologic thinking revolved around nature and nurture _ genetic makeup versus learning and training.  Only higher vertebrates could be taught much of anything, all the other species were trapped by their genes.  Adaptation to conditions was limited to being stunted, misshapen, or hungry.  Recent discoveries and observations have proved such a limited view quite wrong.  Not only is there vast variation in genetic genotypes for a particular species (height, size, whatever) but epigenetics prove that genes function by being turned off and on at crucial times, and that these triggers are often triggered by environmental conditions.
• So even within a given species, individuals can often be born pre-adapted to conditions.  Hunger, warmth, and various other stresses on the mother or egg can affect the development of the embryo, and even organisms born with completely identical genes, such as twins, could theoretically grow to be different sizes and certainly non-identical later minds.  The more complicated the organic system, the more likely epigenetics will alter it.  The human brain, of course, is the most complicated organic system of all.
• Adaptation after youth in all species, especially human, is well documented and much discussed, but hardly understood.  Why do some people, regardless of upbringing, become antisocial failures?  Why are others superstars?  What is the magic key that socializes human beings?  Why do some adapt to poor or wonderful conditions with increased vigor and success, while others fall into ruin and, for example, addiction?  None of this is known, and constant new studies seem to indicate that what is known is wrong.
• I wake each morning, as I suppose we all do, preadapted to my immediate world.  If it has changed unrecognizably due to some disaster, I would be lost, but such is not usually the case.  Within that adaptation, I go about my limited daily routine, fitting quite well into the grooves of my life.  I accept my limitations, and strive with my ambitions.  I have been that way, it seems, for most of my life.  That is a long, ongoing, adaptation, founded on my genetics and modified by my environmental and social situation.
• All this and more is strikingly obvious by observing not only other people, but especially the rest of nature, in which we have invested no envy nor internal competition.  Birds and trees, fish and weeds, can teach us a lot about ourselves, if we just open our minds to full contemplation of their world.  Life remains an open book for us to examine.  Unfortunately, at least for the hubris that we should know everything, that book contains infinite pages.

Sunday

• Today is the Huntington Harbor festival, and the tulips have cooperated.  Booths and music and various events have been planned for the extravaganza.  Unfortunately, this picture was taken several days before.  Right now is one of the most miserable mornings we have had in a while _ very below normal temperature, nasty drizzling showers, raw wind sucking away warmth, and a grey cast to every color.
• Spring makes every plan for outdoor activity an anxious adventure.  The day may be too hot, cold, windy, rainy, overcast, soggy, or combinations of any and all of the above.  In a society that loves schedules, that leads to some frustration.  I have escaped anxiety of good weather on days off, but I remember how annoying it could be to have a lovely spell followed by a nasty weekend.  Our culture still has not learned how to adapt to circumstance except by ignoring it by moving events indoors.  I will take my poncho and make the best of it.