May Mix

By average statistics, May _ not April _ is the rainiest month for Long Island.

• Spring can be frustrating on Long Island. Ocean waters which moderate summers and extend fall overlay fog and chill even as inland areas warm quickly.  For residents, the season brings hyperbolic hopes and overwrought disappointments.

No need for abstract paintings when wet flagstones shine through overlaid maple spinners sown by strong thunderstorm winds.

• By mid-May, the visual tease has climaxed.  Early floral bulbs have popped and vanished.  Most trees are in full leaf.  Shrubs are violently displaying colors, birds have aggressively nested, grass demands to be mown.  Human cycles require a return of noisy yard crews and extensive beginning building renovation.  Birdsong fills perfumed air, chipmunks are out of hibernation, bumblebees lurch overhead.  And yet _ each morning is often clammy and dark, some noons never rise above fifty degrees, and rain arrives more frequently than trains to the city.  Meanwhile, summer visions sparkle in all imaginations.

Geese aggressively defensive with newly hatched goslings and they do not care if you are big or not.

• Each day delivers impossible, beautiful, affirming change.  Animals _ including humans _ are in love and ready for love.  Ducks have paired off, swans have hatched grey cygnets, squirrels chase mates around the yard.  Fish begin their annual cycles, while osprey swoop overhead determined to find food for their families.  Turtles at Hecksher pond climb into a warming sun on island banks.  A season of saturated hormones, as life continues its primary business of continuation.  A stroll through parks and malls reveals people young and old holding hands or enviously looking at those who do.

Abundant wisteria drapes trees everywhere, an unusual purple in landscape filled with red, pink, green, and white.

• More practical inhabitants begin chores and check off chore lists.  Maritime areas are frenzied with boats splashing into water, docks and pilings undergoing repair, buoys anchored in place after onshore winter storage.  Garden centers stack fertilizer and soil conditioners, while at home remaining layers of leaves are removed from flower beds.  Tree trimmers frantically chainsaw old branches before heavy new foliage makes such tasks much harder.  And there are always the repairs to buildings and roads after harsh snowy winter.

Bleeding hearts have been appropriate on nasty wet mornings, but will soon depart as the warm weather arrives for good.

• On relatively mild days, children are sprung loose as if a dam burst.  The playground is filled with noise and rushing small bodies.  But it is all so new, so welcome, that even the oldest grumps are not complaining at all the commotion. 

May is an active working month for our maritime industries; barges and floating cranes are a common sight.

• Spring in Huntington.  Not Paris, perhaps _ well, not Paris, certainly _ but magical enough to cause even the most depressed misanthrope to smile in spite of himself.

Azaleas in full glory, unfortunately cut short by a week of cold drizzle and thunderous downpours.

Intuition and Logic

Spring arrived suddenly riding four very hot days, a blink from nearly brown bare landscapes to nearly subtropical lush brilliant colors.  Then metrological reality returned.

Complex humans create marvels, make mistakes, socialize wonderfully, and act badly.  Autonomous humans judge each other nearly randomly _ friends and neighbors dispute our own crystal clear rationalizations and conclusions.

Azaleas near our front porch have survived and thrived for more than half a century _ suddenly I feel pretty old.

Western tradition formulated binary division between soul and mind.  Man’s (sic) soul ruled by ineffable God, evil devils, unknown impulses, preordained instincts.  Mind carefully controlled with reason, based on facts and logic.  Soul and Mind in constant strife, the defining line between saint and sinner.  Freud invented a “more scientific” subconscious to replace the soul; others followed with differing constructions of how consciousness worked.  Today we are awash with popular explanations centering on body balance, instinct, genetics, gut feel, intuition, logic, fact and strange weird fantasies of all sorts. “Sober Intellectuals” claim we must follow fact and logic.   Political discourse proves we do not.  The devils are still in the details of mundane life.

Ferns are usually among the last perennials to unfold from winter hibernation, but this year they compete vigorously with everything else.

Technology seems to promise fully rational lives and societies just around the corner.  Like religious millennia, “just around the corner” recedes constantly.  I find myself irrationally happy, angry, sad, depressed or elated and entertained _ sometimes all of them nearly simultaneously _ throughout the many moments of each day.  Trying to be rational rarely helps.  I am, of course, grateful for my mind with its logic and facts.  More of my daily existence seems concerned with emotions and visions and illogical streams of consciousness.  As for facts, whatever I may believe is quite frequently challenged by the opinions of others who think differently _ and by myself as time passes.

Massive fir trees rerobe in heavy new green each year, somehow surviving impossibly strong winds.

Our universe and umwelt are fractally complex.  Even “solid” facts arrive with exceptions and challenges, resulting from environment and situation.   As for humans and their society _ well, infinity is just plain infinity.  That we can agree about anything _ let alone most things _ is a true miracle.  That we can get along pretty well even without agreeing on many things is an even greater one.

Modes of thought can be overcome with determination.  Monks learn to ignore hunger as warriors ignore pain.  Instinctive behaviors can be reworked.  Intuition is constantly modified to allow us to get along together.  Reason becomes rationalization _ nor is that necessarily a mistake.

Lilac festivals are nearly as numerous as lilacs themselves.  The few blooms on our backyard specimen are all that are needed for heady perfume as we walk by.

A half century ago, when I thought as a child, reason appeared ascendant.  Conclusions logically based on scientific fact would automatically match intuition; truth was a zero-sum game with one winner.  As I aged, gut feelings often override cold logic.  Now I construct rationalizations to support intuitive decisions.  I treasure my intuition as an amalgamation of experience into quasi-instinct.  My “fight or flight” reaction when I see a tiger is well underway before I logically  enumerate “this is big animal.  With teeth.  Claws.  Run!”

Leaves are even more miraculous _ and sometimes more beautiful _ than blooms.  Because they are so numerous we sometimes take them much too much for granted.

Intuition is often correct.  Pretending that all we need is more education, more facts, more logic _ and then agreement will descend as manna from heaven is just another utopian fantasy.  I don’t claim to know an answer.   However, I will say that lately I am more likely to trust my “gut” than pure logic.  Rather, I view both as equally fallible.  Whether I make a snap moral judgement or follow a thread of thought to a logical conclusion, I know I must recheck conclusions in the other mode.  Even when both sides of my reasoning agree, I mistrust myself.  Perhaps that paralyzes my actions at times.  Or, perhaps, that feeling itself is only a rationalization of aging .

Breathless displays of dogwood float everywhere to convince us how inadequate we are compared to the expansive beauty of this season.

Discontinuous Prediction

Better late than never, I suppose.  An essay from a month ago, with its prepared pictures.  Back to current photographs next week.

April seemed a little more fickle than I remember or hope for

Ubiquitous computers have allowed crackpot ideas to be presented as convincingly as normal truth.  It is a trivial task to find supporting documentation for any notion at all on the internet.  Spell and grammar checking programs screen away what used to be telltale illiteracy.  Social media allows wide dissemination _ and sometimes viral acceptance _ of idiotic rumors throughout the world.

Forsythia finally blossomed despite the challenges, welcome addition of gold to the landscape

Worse than that, computer programs allow experts to distort even scientifically valid data into dubious projections.  Any selected statistical points can be stitched into a convincing graph or two to illustrate a pet theory.  I am sure I could come up with a chart showing how phases of the moon affect the results of coin flips, if I were able to cherry pick the time period or carefully ignore conflicting results.

Mist settled on Oyster Bay, where already clam boats are plying their trade.

Scientifically-oriented twentieth-century historians debated fiercely whether civilization was driven by great men or the inevitable sweep of circumstance.  They assumed that if we just knew everything at some point, our predictions as to what would happen next would be logically infallible.  Aware now of subatomic uncertainty and chaos theory, we no longer trust that notion.  Next year’s weather cannot be predicted accurately except as averages _ maybe.

Hardly the view one would expect as Easter passed by and May loomed nearer.

“Black Swan Events” such as individual assassinations or accidents have always been recognized as disrupters.  There are longer-term cultural disrupters as well.  No one surveying 13th century France could anticipate the effects of the Black Death, or of the end of the “medieval warm period.”  It remains hard to understand how a small chunk of Europe _ enduring brutal fratricidal religious clashes in the 16^th century _ could within 400 years come to dominate the world politically, economically, and culturally.

Never sure if I am feeding feathered friends, falcons, or furry feral cats.  Or all of them.

Unexpected massive social upset caused by gas-powered automobiles has been extensively documented.  In the future, equivalent theses will be promulgated concerning a ten year period during which both information and disinformation became instantly accessible to everyone in the world via smart phone.  Now I wonder what happens when supermarkets and private transportation vanish, when privacy is eliminated, when gene-editing roils the very meaning of life.

Roses inched towards blooming spectaculars, but emerging leaves were lovely accents.

I distrust cherry-picked statistics. I do not believe fancy graphs projecting future “likelihoods.”  I assume there will be Black Swan events and shocks of which I can know nothing at all.  I do not think I can predict anything that is likely to occur within the next 20 years.

Snow glories, originally planted elsewhere, transferred by squirrels in seasons past

Others quaintly seek to retain the past. Saving even the present is impossible. Knowing what is good or what is better outside of what we do today or tomorrow (and I mean only the real day after today) is much more complex than words and graphs can tell.

View down our hill in dormancy could be anytime in the last four months.

Patch of woodland daffodils on a south-facing hill at Caumsett

Here and there a burst of green brought hope for the coming weeks