Ode on a Plastic Urn

Serves its purpose nicely, but will never be in a museum.

• As my wife carefully tends patio pots filled with treasured annuals, I am reminded of the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) by John Keats.  In the course of a relatively long meditation about the decorations on an ancient vase, he provides the famous lines:

… Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

…  'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'—that is all

    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

• Over the course of a long life, I have discovered that my idea of truth constantly changes.  I resist the word “evolves” because that seems to imply the idea of progress or at least increased complexity.  I find that sometimes I agree with philosophic or religious points of various types, and later I do not, and then I may change my mind again.  Beauty is a fine concept, but exactly how would it ever relate to Truth?  When truth is, for example, being swamped at sea in a hurricane or attacked by a grizzly bear, it would be had to appreciate the beauty of the situation.  And I have heard many melodies much finer than any I could imagine on my own. 

Patio arranged with almost Mediterranean sensibility.

• Part of the charm of this poem, of course, is its focus on a rare ancient product of Classical Greece, an admired culture.   Youths, surrounded by flowery fields, chase each other without a care in the world playing flutes.  Captured in artistically painted ceramic, they will never know pain nor grow old nor have to work for a living.  Utopia in a nutshell.
• Such esoteric fancies would probably not arise from plastic containers in the back yard.  As it turns out, none of ours are painted with delicate thoughts, but even if they were, they would be disregarded as common, trashy products of mass production.  No plastic urn will survive millennia.  Besides, I suspect that Grecian urns were pretty common in Greece at the time.  It is only the ravages of centuries that have made them rare and thus worthy of contemplation.
• I do happen to agree (at the moment) that life is beautiful.  At least for me, right now.  But I also am aware that there is a lot of ugliness around, and a lot of “just so” that is hardly worthy of assigning some aesthetic judgement.  Truth, on the other hand, turns out to be complicated, fractal, and contradictory.  I can always manipulate my judgement to appreciate beauty, but no matter how carefully examined, truth remains elusive and almost never fully welcome.

Is this beautiful?  Depends, like all aesthetics, on who you ask.

• Beauty is quite enough, sometimes.  Flowers provoke reflections on nature and time and meaning, as well as being simply marvelous in themselves.  Colors are magic, patterns are enchanting, bees hum harmonies of ecology.  Blossoms constantly fade as others promise bloom.  Once in a while perfume lingers in sultry wisps.  Birds chirp anthropomorphic happiness, squirrels playfully dash everywhere.
• Joan has provided the human touch, selecting and arranging perennials, pots, hanging baskets, and plastic urns to display what she considers the most perfect arrangement.  She shapes high and low, red and blue and orange, small leaves and large, other infinitely complex internal judgements of aesthetics, until she considers it as right as can be.  Or at least as right as it can be on our budget.  I simply sit and marvel, and pretend the plastic is ceramic, the molded decorations done by some master craftsman, and even project a ghostly image of a goatherd and his sweetheart racing through verdant meadows.

• 

  A nice niche to provoke minor thoughts, all I ask in summer.

• No Keats, I, but revised:

… Heard melodies are sweet, all those unheard

  Are nothing; whatever plays, I listen;

…  'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'—that is one

    Of many lovely thoughts, each contradicts the last

Thunderstorm

Storm clouds over stores, actual weather and metaphor combined.

• Formulating complaints is a specialty of elders.  Sometimes we claim the past was better, sometimes we lament  things did not turn out as we wished, but mostly we are certain things now are never as they should be.  Weatherwise, not long ago it was too cold, then too dry _ now it is much too hot, and a deluge arrives way too often.  July is often a month of thunderstorms.
• Frequency and severity of storms does seem to be increasing, a feature of climate change.  As oceans warm and wind patterns shift, scientists predict extreme events much more likely.  Long dry spells may be followed by huge water events.  Common localized storms will increase in intensity as heat speeds up gusts of wind and delivers more moisture from saturated atmosphere.   Trees that have stood for hundreds of years are toppling everywhere.   Computerized weather prediction models seem to be failing drastically.

Lovely lilies survive downpours, but are will be killed by tiny red invasive beetles.

• People hardly care.  We are no longer farmers.  We are no longer barbarians paying attention to the gods and spirits of nature.  If it floods, we stay home.  If it is hot, we turn on the air conditioning.  If one crop fails in the Midwest, we import food from somewhere else.  We think we are civilized, technologically secure, safe from harm.  Science will save us, even as badly applied science causes most of the troubles.  We’ve banished the gods, eliminated the spirits, and we say we rely on cold logic and facts.  But, of course, we ignore facts when we do not like them, and logic is easily twisted any which way by clever argument.

Dark purpling skies in the northwest herald approaching lightning and thunder.

• This year, powerful thunderstorms seem to underline the equivalent social unrest.  Distant rumbles and flickering flashes on the horizon warn that danger approaches.  Media warns of problems far away, but far away is growing closer all the time.  “Those people” are becoming “these people” and eventually ourselves.  A few folks remain oblivious sitting on the beach until the last minute, walking under threatening clouds, ignoring all on the chance that it will miss this area.  And, anyway, they know there is little they can do to affect whatever outcome occurs.
• There is also a social feeling in the air, not unlike the ionization one can sense when lightning is immanent.  Hair stands on end as electrical opposites charge.  Social polarization is evident on all sides, on all politics, in every conversation.  People shout and grumble and condense internal gripes.  Everyone is unhappy, and everyone senses that something big, potentially catastrophic, is about to happen.
• Sometimes, as huge thunderheads draw near, it seems I live in the twilight of the gods.  Soon this world with all its problems and glories will be washed away into myth.  Lightning will crack, thunder will boom, rain will cascade, wind will howl, trees will split and fall, roads will wash away, crops will be flattened, homes will be destroyed.  Afterwards there may be a new landscape, even with a rainbow, but it will never quite be the same.

Before and after the rain passes, beauty remains transcendent.

• Then again, I recognize an old man’s pessimism.  Most storms do no such damage, nature recovers from even major disasters like earthquakes and volcanos, people are well insulated and we believe we can overcome anything. 
• So, the complaint for the day, as once again humidity suffocates each breath as heat blooms in blasting sunlight.  Surely there will be more storms this afternoon.  Just as surely, tomorrow will dawn with birds and vibrant colors, clouds or not.  Anything else would lead to annoying boredom.

Daylilies

One day open per bud, thick clusters of sword-leaves, almost a wildflower.

• Daylilies remind me of that Biblical phrase: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.”  Those hardy flowers seem to effortlessly take over spaces which other plants ignore.  A shimmering patch can choke out surrounding weeds and seem almost a beautiful mirage on a barren hillside.  Yet the darker side is that each bloom, as the name declares, is on display for only 24 hours before it shrivels and gives way to another.
• For years, hedonists have seized on that saying to explain why work is not necessary.  Let life flow, and there will be enough for everyone.  Of course, this flies in the face of daily evidence _ sitting around like a dumb plant does not create a happy human.  We have wants and needs and even satisfactions from accomplishing things.  Work is a valuable part of social humanity.

 Less hardy varieties show differing looks.

• Industrialization arrived with memes of Spenserian Darwinism.  Nature red in tooth and claw, life brutal nasty and short.  An early hardworking bird gets the worm, the rest starve.  Evolution constantly drives out the weak and badly-fitted, hardworking folks are just like top predators.  Most must be sacrificed so that the few can lead the species forward into some imagined wonderful future.  And, by selfish extension, the wealthy and powerful can rest happily assured that they are the most fit, the smartest laborers, and the spearhead of nature’s ascent.
• Daylilies, like everything alive, are an endpoint of evolutionary “struggle.”  I suppose the species got tough as the weak shriveled.  Yet, as the example of the dinosaurs prove, some survival is dumb luck.  Some of the dumb luck enjoyed by daylilies (and many invasive species) is the massive ecological engineering done by people, including planting them.  And although flowers and trees are (we are assured) always engaged in a competition for scarce resources, day by day and hour by hour the life of a giant oak or a daylily patch hardly seems as terrifying or exhausting as Hobbesian  theory predicts.  Maybe our own jobs should reflect that observation.

Brilliant sparks out of a dark background always cause me to smile

• Which brings me to the evangelistic American religion of work.  Social Darwinists neatly summarize that as society becomes perfect, capitalism will assure that the worthy become wealthy, the poor deserve their poverty, action leads to improvement, and, in short, a working job is the stigmata of our revealed holiness.  When people refuse to work, society crumbles.  When people fail to recognize the legitimacy of wealth as held by the current elite, civilization will collapse.  No medieval kings nor Assyrian priests ever expressed basic conservatism better.
• I did what I consider my share of socially approved work, and was adequately rewarded.  I put in a lot of hard labor, but I also recognize I benefited from a big mixture of dumb luck, including my basic genetic mixture and birth situation.  Since I retired I continue to pursue projects and localized unpaid tasks, which give me personal reward.  I remain open-minded about the current American system.

Metaphors or anthropomorphic triggers _ but daylilies are mostly just beautiful fun.

• What is individual purpose, how is a life judged?  That is the proper function of any religion, including obsessive capitalism.  Sometimes, meditating on flowers, beauty seems enough.  Other times, watching an osprey snag a fish, beauty alone seems strained.  I have no answers, and in lovely summer I often even stop asking questions.  My mind becomes just another short-lived flower of the moment.

Frantic

A touch of July Fourth patriotism amidst the neighbor’s coleus.

• Madness reigns throughout nature as midsummer passes.  Everything not yet hatched is racing to do so.  Annuals are greedily sucking moisture from the ground, handicapped this year by a pretty nasty drought.  Trees are already in full foliage glory, building limbs and roots to survive for years to come.  A glance each cool morning, a stroll each sultry afternoon, a reflection each evening shows ongoing activity.  Once in a while huge storms shake the soul.
• As always, it is easy to run everything through our amazing anthropomorphic filters.  Sun and thunderstorm perform like gods to amaze us.  Weeds invade carefully cultivated flower beds.  Insects display resilient determination, butterflies float happily, bees work industriously.  Children and even aged adults invent entire mythologies which interpret and explain complex behaviors and interactions.

Bucolic suburban street scene seems mostly nature

• On the ground grass has already browned here and there.  Summer flowers bloom cascading crescendos, each niche attracting particular pollinators.  Fruits begin to ripen on berry bushes and apple trees.  Cultivated perennials like hibiscus and roses are everywhere, uncultivated invaders like ragweed and bamboo carpet vacant lots.  From one week to another views transform completely as if the world is one a giant stage set.
• Robins hop randomly for worms.  Swallows swoop ceaselessly over meadows.  Dragonflies are beginning to show, lightning bugs arrived a few weeks ago, bees wonder what all the fuss is about.  Dreaded mosquitoes and ticks are about to become real nuisances, and in deep woods or late evening on the beach gnats crazily seem to aim for our eyes and ears.  “No See Ums,” native Americans supposedly named them, very appropriately.
• Harbor waters have begun to turn murky with algae; seaweed arrives in increasing abundance with each high tide.  Horseshoe crabs are almost done annual rituals, but still ply shallow waters.  A few tiny schools of tiny fish flash about, safe from bigger fish so far, but easy prey for egrets and diving terns.  Fortunately, no stinging jelly fish pulsating almost invisibly.  And tremendous events underwater, where none of us can see.

 Backyard gardeners create niches resembling corners of Versailles

• People are part of nature too, of course, and desperately try to retain their own seasonal rituals.  But this year has been difficult, with pandemic fears and “social distancing” even in parks and beaches, more crowded than usual.  Everyone adapts more or less, but fondly remembered last year seems as distantly alien as the last days of the Roman Empire.  Yet children play in the water, run on the sand, yell in the back yard, stare at ladybugs or caterpillars on a leaf, flinch from a huge spider.  Much remains the same.  A big change is that adults, usually worn down from work and just wanting to relax a little by doing nothing while on vacation, are more bored and restless and search for something interesting to do.
• Lazy hazy crazy days are genuinely here.  Summer has begun, fireworks light the sky, and we regretfully begin the long slide to autumn.  Already nights descend sooner, foliage darkens, birds have finished nesting.  Over two months of glorious days to go, yet already a melancholic undertone becomes perceptible.