Harvest Equinox

Monday

• Nights have turned chilly.  No danger of frost yet, but crops are either ripe already or heading into the final stages of harvest.  Tomatoes, for example, may still ripen, but nothing is going to grow much.  Apparently the local drought has produced apples half the normal size, and deeply shrunken pumpkins.  On the other hand, farmers in the Midwest are cursing their third year of spectacular returns _ their income drops as quantities overflow storage.
• Full moon, or close enough, with crickets and other night creatures chirping merrily.  Lightning bugs few and far between.  Odd mists in odd places here and there, sometimes a haunted feeling in the cool breeze with patches of warmth.  I try to force myself out once in a while after dark, for I find somehow being in the night calms me and eases the nervous artificial energy of reading or watching television.

Tuesday

Dark and light exact the same

Like good and evil some would claim

A useful cosmic metaphor.

As for me, I’m not so sure

I sleep the night, use daytime more,

My memories are most of day

Regardless, I could never say

Cosmos is like me anyway

I am unique, imbalanced, pure.

Wednesday

• At least on this apple tree this year there are no apples at all, even half-size or shriveled.  Everything else happily received an inch of slow rain yesterday and most of the landscape seems pretty normal for the time of year.  Immature acorns are beginning to scatter the ground along with dogwood pips.  Dogwood leaves are halfway to desiccated descent showing orange and sickly greenish-yellow.  Crickets sound even by day, a harsh insistent chorus at night.
• I’m grateful for the showers, even though in practical terms it means I must once again mow the lawn.  Each day presents a challenge in dressing correctly _ rain or wind or heat or humidity or cold and how much of each.  Almost impossible to guess until I am out walking, and then it is basically too late to change.  Ah, that all my complaints may remain so inconsequential.

Thursday

Joan and I are strolling the busy sidewalks of Northport on a perfect late September afternoon.  A cooling breeze sweeps up from the bay at the end of the street, as sun warms everyone benignly.  We run into Linda outside Artisans, while Joan is window shopping the various displayed craft items.

“Happy equinox!” I greet her.

“Huh?” she manages to project confusion through her huge mirrored sunglasses.

“He means Fall,” says Joan.  “Happy Fall.  He gets a little crazy about this stuff.”

“I just think we should celebrate the natural seasonal events, that’s all,” I get a little defensive.

“Do you paint yourself blue and run around the woods naked?” queries Linda with an ironic smile.

“Only when he was younger,” mutters Joan.

“I did not!  Anyway, solar events are important.  The days, the night, the tides …”
“Do you go out every month and howl at the full moon, too?” asks Linda maliciously.

“Only when he was younger,” repeats Joan.

“But our holidays are so artificial,” I protest.  “July 4, Labor Day, Valentines, Christmas …”

“Right,” Joan turns to Linda, “Exactly why we are here.  Time to start shopping for presents, isn’t it.”

“Right you are.”

They turn and march into the store, leaving me with my own inner contemplations and a nagging sense that maybe I am wrong after all.

Friday

• Hot days linger a while, making thoughts of autumn more a concept than a reality.  The usual casual apparel remains shorts and T-shirts, cafes do a brisk business on the sidewalks, children queue up for ice cream.  More boats than normal stream through the waters on weekends, now that leisure mariners realize each warm sunny day is precious and will soon be unavailable for at least another half year.  Landscapes are green, birds sing, flowers continue to bloom.
• Huntington is as lovely as anywhere else this time of year.  Parks are tranquil, beaches open to contemplation, busy sidewalks filled with shreds of global civilization.  I keep reminding myself that I have been privileged to live through and amazing and wonderful period of our world.  I continue to be awed by what still remains of nature, and also of what civilizations have built.  My years on Earth have been during a pretty amazing balancing act, and my main fear for the future (not so much mine as a half century or so from now) is that the balance will be lost and all I have enjoyed become either vanished or reserved for a privileged few.  But _ well I only have this moment _ and this moment, today, hot and beautiful is as miraculous as any I have ever experienced.

Saturday

• Like most people, I suppose, I tend to consider where I live as “normal.”  So I expect longer days in summer, and shorter days in winter.  If I lived on the equator, I would find no daylight differences by season, although precipitation might vary greatly.  Near the poles the sun barely rises or sets at appropriate equinox.  That would seem strange at first, then I would adjust to the new normality, and wander happily along.
• Yet even here at home, where I know changes are occurring each day, by minutes or clumps of minutes,  I fail to pay attention until some sudden jolt.  Perhaps I realize that I must turn on a light to read sooner, or that it is already dark when I put out the garbage.  Weeks go by, and all is the same, until suddenly it is not.  I am shocked, but soon fail to observe, once again, that such trends continue.
• Probably I should remark that we are caught in this trap with climate change.  The temperature is changing, but gradually.  The storms are bigger, but only once in a while.  Suddenly, we will certainly notice weather and climate are not what they used to be.  I hope we adjust as well as we do to seasons.
• Most of that lack of awareness is, of course, because we filter it out.  Daylight hardly matters when we can turn on lights any time, and too often our entire days are spent one way or another under artificial illumination.  We hardly care what may be happening around us because most of our basic needs are taken care of elsewhere, presumably with better weather for crops than the local fields.  We might never notice until there are few “elsewheres” left.
• Only by making an effort to enjoy the outdoors do I ever retain a sense of place in the universe.  Being inside all the time has always been a personal torture.  I do not have to be outside for hours and hours each day, but a full hour is perhaps minimum.  And when I do so, I seek to embrace it with as little baggage as possible _ no electronic doodads to distract my meditations and observances.
• So I see the sun rise a bit later, the shadows weave a bit more northernly, the sun sets magnificently much more to the left over the neighbor’s property.  I pay attention to equinox because it marks the big final turn when this area of Earth begins to radiate more heat back into space than it receives.  Cosmic consequences from gigantic events, while I scurry like any busy ant only paying attention to the trail I think I must follow.

Sunday

• Cool air swept in with an overnight cold front, a tangible reminder that one season has gone, another takes its place.  Here at Caumsett park, fields are filled with drying brown annuals and masses of goldenrod, while butterflies and grasshoppers frolic about heedlessly.  Sighting a last lonely monarch butterfly has the bittersweet aura of encountering a lingering passenger pigeon.  
• Heedless of warnings of ticks which effectively seem to frighten everyone else into staying on paved roads, I roam meadows and dappled forest dirt trails all alone.  Quiet mostly prevails, only an occasional airplane breaks into the rush of gentle breeze, rustling leaves, insect murmur.  High blue sky with accented white clouds seems artificial.  A few hours and I am refreshed in soul, tired in legs, happy in mind.  I ask myself why I do not do this more often, and myself replies there is no good answer. 

Biologic Imperative

Monday

• Gusty winds rushed a line of ink-dark ominous clouds across the sky, ripping leaves, whipping whitecaps, threatening rain which never fell.  In minutes, weather cleared.  A portent such as ancient astronomers would perceive in comets staining their heavens. 
• Our first grandchild is to be born today.  Coincidentally, we are also to attend the wake of one of our most long-term neighbors.  There are no stronger symbols than birth and death, except that birth and death render all symbolism trivial.

Tuesday

A baby is born

A cute little gem

Hard to believe

I was once just like them

How could I teach him

Of hassles and strife

All the decades it took me

To understand life

A child of our child

On that same crazy slope

Exactly that cycle

Of worries and hope

And will he remember

Or reflect, moving on

Of pasts or of ancestors

Once we gone

A baby is born

Such a common event

Such a miracle moment

Such a wishful advent

Wednesday

• Half a century ago, everything was simple.  The body was a machine to be disassembled and repaired.  Evolution proved the “fittest” survived.  Genes were all that mattered, and once they were reproduced in the next generation, any individual’s biologic function was complete.  Neat, complete, and totally wrong.
• Our body is a community organism.  Humans are a social species _ like bees _ where the genetics of individual fitness hardly matter compared to what an organism can contribute to group survival.  We are only gradually realizing that, to some extent, what all our ancestors knew _ before the rise of prim and hubris-laden mathematical science _ is in some ways far more relevant to our actual lives and meaning than any grand recent discoveries.  Such as understanding that another human consciousness in this universe should always begin with celebration.

Thursday

John sits morosely staring into space when I intrude into his vision and shake his hand.  Big smile on my face.

“You on drugs or something?” he asks sarcastically.

“Beautiful day,” I reply.  “And our first grandchild arrived this week.”

“Oh,” he shrugs.  “Well, guess that could make you happy.”

“Me a little,” I admit.  “The parents a lot.  My wife ecstatic.  Happy wife, happy me.”

“Well me, I wouldn’t want to be born today,” he rumbles along.  “Too much falling apart, too many bad things happening, the future looks pretty awful from what I see. Crazy nasty times.”

“Always like that,” I challenge.  “Always.  For every bad thing you could pick out I could find something grand.  Matching until we were hoarse.  Half full, half empty.  Me, I’m the optimist.”

“I know,” he answers.  “Usually annoyingly so.  Congratulations, I guess.  I reserve the right to my dim perspective.  Cold realism.”

“Cold, for sure.” I fake a shiver.  “I’ve always thought of life as an adventure.  I think challenges remain opportunities.  Life now is the same as always.  I admit, however, that the challenges are worldwide and immense.”

“Glad you retain a little sanity after all ….”

“But so are the opportunities.  Anyway, I’m not sure that vast picture matters anyway.”

“Sounds stupid.  Why?”

“All our lives are localized.  Anything beyond our immediate control and perception is in some sense not real.  Being born here today is still pretty good compared to any other time in history.”

“Would you trade your life?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Nah, I’ve been really happy with how mine worked out.  I just don’t think the next generation will be as grim as you think.”

“We’ll see,” he mutters.

“No, we won’t.  But that’s ok.  See you around.”  Refusing to be deflated, I continue my idiotically happy mood and smile my way down the sunlit sidewalk grateful for the times and the morning.

Friday

• Flush times for birds.  Lots of weeds, lots of fish.  Time to stock up and put on some fat for the coming seasons.  They are surely unaware of why they are hungrier, but that does not matter.  Were they able to think, they might reason that their increased consumption is because of shorter nights or the cooler days.  Reason often rushes to answer questions with any explanation it finds convenient.
• I like to feel superior, but I am no different.  I like to think I know why I feel as I do, on any given day, for any given feeling.  But in fact I often do not.  The usual cure for me is, curiously, simply to find something _ anything _ to laugh or smile about.  Not unlike locating those tiny little fishes in the shallows, or delicious roots easily pulled from the mud.

Saturday

• As I watched my son holding his day-old son gently and protectively, as I saw the joy my wife felt also cradling the child, later as I sat outside in the warm September sun, I realized anew how much closer we are to other mammals than we are to machines.  Only recently has consciousness been scientifically explored in dogs and elephants and apes.  I have certain reservations on exactly what consciousness may be among other species _ humans are unique in so very many qualitative and quantitative ways that we are practically supernatural _ but I am sure of one thing:  it would be much easier to transfer whatever is “me” to some being based on a dolphin or giraffe than it would ever be to do so into infinite transistors.
• Reason is an extremely useful tool of our consciousness.  But it is by no means most of our consciousness, and the logic woven by our brains is well-separated even from reason itself.  We are complex, and that complexity resides in body and tissue and hormone and symbiont and trillions of non-neuronic cells as fully as it does in our magnificently wired, rewired, and overwired brains.  Whatever comes from artificial intelligence of machines may well be dangerous, might destroy us all, but can never replace or replicate the incredible illuminated wonders that we provide to our cold and forlorn universes.
• Part of our being is that we need to consider ourselves immortal and important _ part of some grander purpose, able to further a perceived design.  Our reason coldly informs us we should know better _ and we respect our reason.  To an extent.  Then we have another bite of dinner, or feel a soft breeze, or catch the eyes of a lover, and reason flees back to its tool shed.  The cause of that is simple _ without such innate beliefs and drives _ and in fact there must have been many failures extinguished for lack of them over billions of years of life evolution _ an organism cannot struggle on, and contribute to the continuation of its species.  Those beliefs are not merely built in, they are necessary.
• Babies should remind us of that.  Babies are hardly tiny little computers, but they are fully wondrous consciousnesses.  Our technologic scientific intellectuals should spend more time contemplating that.

Sunday

• Earth continued its busy way all week, humans adding mischief.   Typhoons, hurricanes, huge fires, floods around the world.  Nuclear testing, ongoing war, civil strife, political chaos.  Everybody has reason to be cosmically worried about just about everything.  Although, to be honest, for many all these usually distant disasters are more entertainment than impact.
• Meanwhile people like us discovered how quickly focus can shift from the far to the near.  Some folks received unhappy news, or endured loss or sickness.  We were most fortunate in welcoming a healthy new baby, which will undoubtedly shake up our routines for a while.   We are told to keep perspective, but perspective is actually an ever-shifting reality, depending on what our mercurial minds decide is the central factor.  

Back Too

Monday

• This weekend is North America’s signal for “back to.”  Back to class, back to school, back to work, back to getting ready for winter, back to thinking about end of year holidays.  Back to pulling boats out of the water for storage.  “Back to” always has a tinge of resentment _ nobody on Memorial Day in the spring sighs deeply and mutters “Oh, it’s back to summer vacations.”
• We have conquered the worst impacts of the cycle of seasons.  But perhaps humans enjoy cycles, and if they are not provided by nature we can invent our own.  Industry and advertising, of course, are all for it.  Ironically, “Labor Day” is supposed to be a celebration of the liberation of workers, when it has really come to mostly signal a return to our socially regimented shackles.

Tuesday

Tensions extensions

Dark matter, dark energy, dark time

Incandescent consciousness

Meet my moments

Wednesday

• Cruise control.  Leaves keep pumping out oxygen, birds constantly flock for food, flowers bloom, squirrels rush about.  Too early for the most dramatic changes in behavior or appearance, but beyond the frantic struggle to get ahead.  As things wind down, so will everything else.  Drought now will defoliate branches without green replacement,  inevitable colder evenings will tinge meadows with yellow and red.  In a month or so gardens will be just a memory.
• Nice metaphor for retirement.  Cruise control as we finally get a chance to do all day whatever we always wanted to.  But not pushing too hard, not really frantic, just mellowing along.  Anyway, for the lucky ones.  I know some folks regardless of age remain hassled and fritzy.  Being fortunate, I just sit back and enjoy the free entertainment.

Thursday

Jean, Joan, and I are down on the dock, watching seagulls swoop in the steady breeze.  A loud backfire startles us into glancing at the road, where a yellow school bus is just lurching off, having discharged a few youngsters at the bottom of the hill.

“Ah, that brings back memories,” I say.  All those days up and down my hill at home, all kinds of weather,  books and lunchbox.  Boy, did I hate September.”

“What?” asks Joan.  “I thought you were good at school.”

“Yeah, but just like now I’d rather be outside.”

“I was glad to get back with more friends,” remarks Jean.  “Summer got a little boring at the end.”

We all stare into the distance for a while, remembering.

“Well, then of course I worked as a teacher for a while.  I kinda dreaded going back too,” Joan finally says.

“Oh, you loved that.  You were ready with lesson plans and all.  I was the one that hated when work geared up again every year.”

“Me too,” says Jean.  “Right up until the end a few years ago.  September was never any fun, in any way.”

“Now, of course, it’s different,” I remark.  “We’re lucky enough to keep doing what we want without alarm clocks and schedules and demands.”

“Just like the seagulls,” puts in Jean poetically.

“Well, I have things to do!”

“Sure, Joan, but the difference is now you can do them when you want to, not when you are told.”

The wind keeps  blowing and the gulls continue their acrobatics as life goes on from all perspectives at once.

Friday

• After days of cool clouds and brief sprinkles, heat and sun have returned.  Summer flowers are actively blooming, boatyards are still empty, weeds choke every available space with greenery.  Summer continues its merry way.  Only the lack of people outside on this fine weekday betrays the idea that the social world continues as it was, say, two weeks ago.
• I admit that my problem is that I actively notice changes, rather than continuity.  I see the browning leaves.  I observe that swimming floats have been taken in, that lifeguard stands are put away.  A boat used to remove moorings is now cruising the harbor.  I force myself to rejoice at the wonderful weather, but the crucial and sad fact is that I must force myself to do so.

Saturday

• For over a week, a hurricane recently meandered around.  In spite of supercomputers and massive reams of data, nobody could predict where it would go when, nor what it would do.  Weather is a chaotic system, which means that even if you know everything, you cannot tell exactly what might happen.  The illustration often used is that a butterfly flapping its wings in China may affect a hurricane in the Atlantic.  But chaos theory really states that it may not.  Like quantum jumps, you just can’t predict.
• Weather is simple compared to society.  Butterflies may flap wings, but each person is a complete chaotic system unto themselves, and each individual’s acts (or lack of acts) may affect a society profoundly or not at all or in some obscure unexpected way.  The sooner we accept that social studies are not sciences _ except in vaguely and often useless statistical trends _ the better.
• Most thinking people _ I try to be one _ realize, for example, that grouping and generalization of people is generally futile.  To say most folks are “back to” something ignores the fact that a technological culture grinds on relentlessly without cessation.  Electricity is being generated, goods are being delivered, sales are being made.  Nothing stops.  There is nothing to go back to, because nobody ever left.  Oh, statistics will try to prove that indeed students are back in class, indeed most vacations are over.  But none of that really counts for much.
• That’s part of why politics is so maddening.  Everyone involved is frantically trying to split the world into groups and factions, and then generalize about what each group and faction is doing or desires.  And, for any given moment, a crowd may agree.  But the minute individuals leave such a crowd, they go their own unpredictable and unique ways, and all bets are off. 
• Sometimes I prefer the hurricane.

Sunday

• Nature is also briefly back to summer with a near heat wave of high temperature and humidity.  Only quickly descending earlier darkness provides awareness of the march of the season.  Seeds are ripening quickly now, nuts on the trees swelling to their final dimensions, birds beginning to pass through on migration.  Fish in the harbor endure the final stages of feeding frenzy _ there are frequent disturbed jumps and flashes in the water as rapidly growing bluefish snappers devour smaller ones.  Sunsets turn spectacular.
• I try to get back to my normal cheerful optimism, but for some reason I am stuck in the melancholy contemplation of what is to come, rather than what is here.  The heat feels too hot, life seems to drag.  My inner soul sometimes fails to heed my reason.  That is a great fault, but I also realize it is part of my humanity.  There are, after all, things wrong with our world, as well as miracles everywhere.  But real life always beckons, and I remain sure that a nice long walk, a quiet natural meditation, will put me back to the normally cheerful spot I desperately try to retain.

Closer Inspections

Monday

• Among other waning-season signs are the profuse blooms of rose of Sharon, now showing off in yards everywhere.  But even were those absent,  crowns of trees have taken on distinct reddish or yellowish tinges, and close inspection of the leaves finds bits of rust, areas of brown, gangrenous insect-caused holes.  This is all caused not simply by heat and drought, but also by the ever-lowering angle of the sun and shortening evenings.  Schools of snappers now agitate the water as they seek to escape larger predators.  Even the mix of outside birds has begun to include early migrants.
• So I vow to look a little more closely at the small picture.  Not the microscopic, which is fascinating in its own right, but the visible bits of which reality is composed.  A single branch or leaf, one bloom, a stalk of grass.  In the loveliness of summer I have sometimes become too enamored of wide distant scenes, waves and shores, clouds over hills.  Time to return to the scale of reality at which I actually exist.

Tuesday

Seeing worlds in a grain of sand

Perhaps a little too abstract

Too hard to focus with these eyes

I need some slightly larger facts

“If there were world enough and time …”

Torn wisdom fragments from my youth

I question from my greater age

What such young poets knew of truth

And yet I know I once knew more

Of sandgrains, stars, and even time

Now just today is what I crave

To stare at any leaf I find.

Wednesday

• This thistle has terminated its destiny of sprouting, growing, flowering, seeding, and sending forth the next generation.  Most of its offspring are doomed, a few will thrive next year.  Even those that fail will enrich the planet with oxygen and food.  Such cycles of all plants and animals create Earth’s incredible biosphere.
• People always accepted that we were related to animals.   Darwin’s great sin was to show we are just like them.   Beauty, meaning, purpose are in that sense unnecessary.  Humankind has now spent over a hundred years trying to replace the certainty that there was “more to it” with other systems: religion, political movements, social crusades, science, technology, art, individual lifestyle.  Nothing has healed the damage.

Thursday

Enjoying the feel of a dusty road at Caumsett, I ran into Stan and Myra coming up the hill the other way.  We were all soaked in sweat, so the natural greeting was “Hot enough?”

“Sure is,” panted Myra, seizing on the chance for a hiking break.  “Summer won’t give up this year.”

“But we were noticing,” added Stan, “that there are lots of signs of it reaching an end _ look at those brown fields…”

“Well,” I exclaimed cheerfully, “After all, tempus fugit.”

“Wayne!” scolded Myra, “watch your language!”

“I think he means tem-pus foo-jit,” Stan said.  “Time flies.”

“Everything in nature except people seems to be getting that message,” I ignored the correction.

“Everything in nature has to endure this heat, drought, freezing cold, snow, and predators all the time,” pointed out Myra.

“Yeah,” Stan remarked, “but the only cycles we really notice are those of work and politics.”

“I can only agree,” I sighed.

“And aging,” chimed in Myra.

“Depressing thought.”  I waved around.  “Contemplating nature is supposed to be uplifting.”

“But, even so,” she continued stubbornly, “we are, in the end, as impermanent as everything around us here.”

“Take her away!” I laughed.  “I still have a ways to go here.  See you around …”

We parted happily, our thoughts perhaps a little more profound, as hawks circled overhead.

Friday

• Hooray!  Something does eat this plant!  At this time of year, bindweed is the scourge of any gardener, who discovers that overnight beautiful beds of phlox and roses have been strangled in a thick mat of nearly impenetrable vines and leaves.  And if not cleared immediately, it goes to flower and seed.  Then that space may be nearly unusable for a few years, even with diligent care.
• Our world hurtles on.  Pessimists wail it is hell-bent for destruction.  Optimists dream it is rocketing towards paradise.  Most likely, as always, contradictory bits of heaven and hell will intertwine.  But no matter what, like weeds and the world itself, we all hurtle on.

Saturday

• There’s great satisfaction in discovering signs and assigning patterns.  I watch a changing leaf here and a browning seedpod there and suddenly the world of autumn unfolds before me.  I immediately imagine what will come, and seek confirmation of expectations.  That is essential human (and animal) mental behavior.  It is, after all, the basis of training anything.
• Such information is useful.  Properly leveraged, it can make some people rich.  More importantly, having the foresight of possible and probable future problems is one basis of civilization.  Knowing there will be a winter is why we sow and grow and harvest crops.  Knowing there would be a dangerous night with predators active is why our ancestors built camps and utilized fire.  Knowing the Nile will flood … well of course the list is endless and ongoing.
• One problem I have already discussed.  In concentrating on signals about what may come, I may forget the thing in itself.  It is well to guess what the future may hold, but the present is already full and I should try to take advantage of it.  Besides that, I can easily lose myself in the game itself, rather than the actual reality that game is trying to reference.
• The other problem is that my connections may be wrong.  Since I, like any other human, am the center of my universe, I assume unconsciously that the universe is all about me.  I become certain that if I wear a lucky sock my team will win, if I pray to the right gods it will rain.  Most of those me-centered predictions tend to be incorrect.  That doesn’t stop my brain from happily constructing them from gossamer patterns of invisible connectivity. 
• Summer is ending.  Fall arrives soon.  The signs are all about me.  So what?  I need to take out the fiddle and play up a storm, for until summer does end, it still remains.

Sunday

• Until a few hundred years ago, things seemed remarkably simple.  Not systems, of course, nor life itself; but those objects which constituted reality.  A bird was a bird, a tree a tree.  Thunder was mysterious, but nevertheless a certain event.  There might or might not be gods.  A solid framework was resolutely present.   Since then, of course, everything has been revealed as infinitely complicated, no matter how closely examined.  A bird, its components, its atoms, those atoms, their subatomic structure _ nothing ever really clarifies except at its proper level.  There is always more to it.
• The wonder is that there is no end of wonder.  No matter how deeply we peer, how closely we examine, how devotedly we concentrate, there is even more to amaze.  And yet, as we move up to broader view, outward, there remains enchantment.  A night horizon with moon, sky and stars is as amazing as any set of chemical bonds.  Beyond and out into the vast universe, continually astonishing.  And yet _ being human _ I can sometimes become blasé and bored with it all anyway.  That in itself is worthy of wonder.