Instability

Monday

• Weather predictions are often wrong, seasons disappoint expectations.  The whole world beyond a narrow local environment seems out of control.  Some seek stability in scientific certainty, some in spiritual foundations, some in calm infinite vistas of eternal nature.  But science revises conclusions, religions reinterpret revelations, and nature itself mutates and shifts.
• A rock is stable.  People are not, and probably should not try to be.  A perfect couch potato is a poor example of human possibility, though it has achieved a state as still and certain as death.  We were probably born from thunder to ride the storm, and whatever we may do will involve change and catastrophic lightning. That is the truly inconvenient truth.

Tuesday

Inconstant illusions enliven dreams

But when awake

Foster madness

Wednesday

• Unstable life on Earth is based on water, which is weirdly unstable in its own way.  Within our “normal” temperature ranges, it can be solid, liquid, and gas at the same time.  As a vapor, it surrounds us at all times, mostly invisible except when condensing to form clouds, but can congeal to magically fall as liquid or solid.  As a solid it floats _ oddly compared to many other substances _ and can when thick enough deform, flow, and carve channels through rocks.  As a liquid its weird properties _ such as ionization, ability to dissolve almost anything, tendency to deconstitute into its elements under certain conditions _ are too numerous to mention.  Nothing lives without it.
• We just take it for granted.  Hey, it’s water, all over the place.  Maybe it will snow soon.  I need to drink a glass.  On and on, just thinking it is one of the more normal eternal things we can possibly encounter in the universe.  As stable as we may wish our chaotic lives would be.  But if water were an inert substance, we would not exist.  I should learn a lesson from that regarding what I am and ought to be. 

Thursday

“Ah, this is so nice,” exclaims Joan, sinking into a bench at the Arboretum greenhouse.  Flowers are in bloom, the warm air is filled with semi-jungle scents, we have yet to explore the wondrous rooms of orchids.  “Too bad everywhere can’t be like this.”

“It takes a lot of work,” I note.  “All of this could get destroyed in a day or two if the heat failed.  And somebody has to trim and water and keep the insects down.  It’s beautiful, but not natural. “

“This time of year,” she continues, “I don’t really care for the natural.”  She gestures at the bare trees beyond the glass windows.  “Unless, of course, we were in Florida.”

“Oh, they have their issues too.  The whole world does.  It’s one unstable, inch-away-from-disaster, beautiful mess.”

“I guess,” she looks more closely at the bird-of-paradise next too us.

“That’s what I don’t like about the political slogans this year,” I continue, ignoring the fact that she is ignoring me.  “Make America great again implies some kind of golden age.  This is the golden age.  Make America greater I might be able to support.”

“Oh, relax and look around, this is wonderful.  What’s that?” she points at a tree.  I read the label, but she does too.  “Ah, coffee.  Interesting.”

‘We’re all hothouse flowers now,” I grumble.  “If our heat, water, food, electricity, police, social services, or anything else we expect fail, we will be dry and dead as quickly as anything here.”

“Stop it,” she commands.  “Unstable or not, we are having a perfectly wonderful time, and at least this afternoon the flowers seem just as happy as we should be.”  As usual, she has the last word.

Friday

• Long Island is probably no older than modern humans _ it was underwater when North America’s crust was pushed down by weighty glaciers not much more than fifty thousand years ago.   It’s composed of all that is left from those frozen bulldozers.  Mostly just sand mixed with clay _ which is just sand ground finer.  In such a short time were inland mountains worn away.  A hundred years from now, parts of this land may still remain, for a while, above water after Florida submerges in the rising seas.  The way things are going, it may outlast people.
• Soil is even more recent.  I sometimes contemplate the long view and mistakenly think the natural world stays quiet and stable as our lives flicker briefly and vanish.  But that is not so, not for rocks, nor mountains, nor entire large islands.  For that matter, most of these mudflats themselves are composed of the decaying remains of not-so-ancient trees, fish, and birds.  I may regard my existence as brief, but everything else that I love also has a surprisingly short role in this world.

Saturday

• Human intelligence and consciousness is probably rare or unique in the universe.  I’m sure life exists in many places, but the peculiar circumstances that led to homo sapiens and the extinction of other hominid lines are unlikely even at gazillion to one odds.  Nothing else on earth _ not anything ever in the sea over billions of years, not dinosaurs who roamed and fought for hundreds of millions of years, not even other mammals and primates,  have more than a glimmer of the toolmaking,  learning, logic, and multigenerational culture that people possess.  And it is all based on climate instability.
• Dinosaurs, like sea creatures, lived in unchanging and almost static environments.  Land mass configuration led to stable climates just about everywhere _ what changed, changed slowly.  Specialization led to dominance, but also to extreme niche sensitivity.  It remains an open question what might have evolved from dinosaurs were they not wiped out by a meteor, but even the next age of mammals was rather sluggish until the ice ages began.
• Then, suddenly, came a time of ongoing slow-motion catastrophes.  Rising or falling oceans, extensive floods, extreme extended droughts, periods of freezing cold, areas of tremendous heat.  Over and over, never exactly the same way in the same place twice.  Hominids began to despecialize, out of desperate necessity, but nevertheless were ruthlessly slaughtered by unexpected climatic anomalies.  Many lines failed, our own branch survived by the skin of its teeth, apparently at one time reduced to a tribe with only a few thousand individuals, if that many.  And it did so only because of a set of genetic accidents which allowed the development of _ yes, exactly _ toolmaking, learning, logic, and multigenerational culture.
• Our core being remains animalistic, our drives are ruled by hormones and sensation.  We can apply logic and learning to our situation.  We are conscious of the contradictions.  Nothing else we know of comes close _ not whales or dolphins, or dogs, or cats, or rats, or parrots or anything at all.  We are unique on this planet, now, because we handle instability.  We actually enjoy instability and are bored without it.  When deprived of change, we retreat into dreams and entertainment to keep us happy.
• So _ what are the chances that life anywhere else went through _ and survived _ such a phase?  The Goldilocks and Anthropocentric view of the universe _ our universe _ seems more and more likely.  I’m kind of sorry we won’t get to meet space monsters and their foes.  But that just seems incredibly unlikely.  And, never forget, we ourselves have not yet survived the ice ages.

Sunday

• Speaking of ice ages ….  A blizzard yesterday has left almost two feet of snow everywhere.  There could hardly be a greater difference between two days ago and this morning, when leaving the house is difficult if not impossible.  So fragile is the equilibrium taken for granted that a shift of ten degrees one way or another determines if precipitation will be relatively harmless water, or annoying and sometimes dangerous snow. 
• We fortunately live in the electricity age, when such vast storms are almost inconsequential novelties.  We stay warm, we watch news, we have light, we cook, we even drive and push snow where we want.  No other civilization has had such benefits.  If we conquer instability, at least to make it a harmless relic like the cheap thrills of an amusement park ride, it will be because we adjust fully to the use of limitless electricity.  The word power is often thrown about as if it is synonymous with our “industrial age,” but none of it goes to the heart of our being like our casual use of all that is electric _ a harnessing of the unstable shells of electrons in atoms _ to gain control over a completely unstable world.

Off Season

Monday

• Properly speaking, Huntington is not a resort community.  However, the harbor itself is a resort-type recreation area, filled with beaches, moorings, and artifacts which support summer leisure activities.  Those are largely abandoned and ignored in the heart of winter each year, although depending on the actual weather some hardy souls continue to use boats when possible.  Furthermore, as the temperatures continue colder, many of the older residents migrate south for a while, to be joined by families in a month when recently culturally iconic “winter break” arrives.
• My own happiness with such a fallow period is limited to enjoying silence _ leaf blowers have been stored for a month or so.  Once in a while I will head for an empty town beach, or _ if snow cover is limited as it is this year _ to empty fields and woods in other parks.  Pedestrians have also been culled to the hardy few, hardly recognizable in heavy attire even though I have seen the regulars almost every day for a long time now.

Tuesday

I love to go where crowds avoid

Beach in winter, woods in rain

Meditate or just enjoy

Nature singing pure again

Romantic poets felt the same

Artists wandered empty hills

Mountains, seacoasts, blasted plains

Freed of shallow cultured ills.

Alone so happy, yet compelled

To soon return where I belong

I seek companionship as well

Madness balanced by the throng.

Wednesday

• Restrooms locked.  Picnic area cleared.  Lifeguard chair removed, toll booth vacant.  Mostly, sand and playground are devoid of people as well.  On nice days, or if cabin fever has built too high, small children very bundled run around the open beach.  Every day _ rain, shine, sleet, snow, bitter wind, or raging storm _ someone will be in the parking lot, often not leaving warm dry car, letting their dog or dogs experience the outdoors.
• Off season even in truly seasonal places has permanent residents.  I may fantasize that they are even more deserted than here, but actually recreation areas are all equivalent.  Better outerwear has made outdoors year-round activity accessible to everyone.  I know that is a good thing. I wish more folks would take advantage of it for our collective mental sanity even as I gripe about how there is nowhere to be alone except in my own house.

Thursday

“I wish we were going away again this year,” grouses Joan, for the millionth time.

“I’m perfectly happy to stay here,” I reply.  “Besides, it’s been mild.  Certainly better than last winter.”

“I can’t stand the cold.”

“Dress warmer.”

“I miss flowers growing.”

“Get some more indoor plants.”

“It gets dark too soon.”

“No different than anywhere we would go on vacation in the Northern Hemisphere.”

“I can’t believe all the people who are still here.”

“Me neither.”

“I hate winter.”

“I kind of enjoy it.”

Irreconcilable differences.

Friday

• In spite of modern materials and paints, marine life such as barnacles still manages to cling to or thrive on submerged hulls, cutting efficiency.  High tech engines need service and recalibration.  Birds and dirt manage to coat exposed surfaces.  An expensive annual off-season ritual involves hauling craft out of water, power washing everything, wrapping tightly in shrink wrap, and stashing them somewhere safe until spring.  This reduces shoreline land, but waterfowl probably approve more open water and flyways. 
• I know I approve more open water.  Summer harbor can resemble a junkyard, filled with odd detritus that people convince themselves they might want to use sometime, but rarely do.  Winter’s crowded storage lots are an inch from actually being junkyards, sometimes literally if anxious owners who have finally had enough are unable to unload their “investments.”  

Saturday

• Greatly simplified, until a few centuries ago, Northern Hemisphere civilization was organized by season.  Agricultural production forced sowing, growth, harvest, and fallow at certain times of year.  That other favorite activity _ war _ was generally bounded by when the peasants were available and when the ground was dry _ which usually meant it was only waged in summer.  Washington, after all, went into “winter quarters” at Valley Forge, as did the British at Philadelphia and New York.
• Less than a hundred years later, with mechanized agriculture providing possibility, the American Civil War inaugurated our current era of any battle any time _ today from climate-controlled machines.   Rural populations the world over have migrated to cities that know no season at all.  There is no universally valid cycle of planting or harvest, nor on-season, nor off-season for anything else. Tropical bananas, or tomatoes and strawberries grown in greenhouses almost anytime anywhere, are harbingers of what will come.
• My wife, for one, would not care.  She’d love to live in a spaceship or mall at a constant 72 degrees exposed to exactly 12 hours of sunlight each day.  Humans evolved in relatively climate-steady Africa, so any yearning for seasons is hardly instinctual.
• I wonder, though, whether our 24x365 world is corrosive to civility.  Until civilization itself adapts, I think many people miss enforced down time.  Being constantly needed and always on call is possibly necessary and rewarding for parents of young children.  It is hardly a benefit when working for a faceless corporation.
• I’m not trying to bring back a golden past.  Good riddance to days of slaves and peasants chained to land and sun!  But I do not believe our individuals and institutions have yet come up with the right replacement for us to live relatively happy and balanced lives.  

Sunday

• Hecksher Park also has its off-season, although this winter it may seem more like off-weather.  This playground being deserted probably has more to do with wet and clouds on this relatively mild day.  In any case, at almost every park, people have decided they will be happier and healthier if they get out and jog or run or walk or ride.  It remains a rare day indeed when there are no people in any given open space.
• People driven by media fads are as much fun to watch as any ducks responding to instinct.  While I recognize that I am just one of the herd, I always manage to maintain some spirit of detached observer.  I mean, I may make gentle mock of obsessed overweight seniors grimly striding their triple rounds of the pond, but here I am obsessively taking pictures and writing obscurely.  The duality of being in and out at the same time _ whether as part of a crowd or as part of nature _ is one of the grand joys of the game of life.

January Frost

Monday

• Last year, rosebuds had been blasted black by mid-October, permanent snow-cover settled in shortly thereafter, and by now everyone was fervently awaiting a January thaw that never arrived.  In contrast, Huntington Harbor’s first hard freeze is predicted in the next few days.  Roses, weeds, birds and squirrels take it in stride.  People worry.
• Averages, like the Equator and hope, are useful imaginary mental tools that help us make sense of and survive in a chaotic universe.   But meteorologists, mathematicians, physicists, and digital wizards who mistake their equations and models for reality are as dangerous to our mental health as any other completely certain religious fanatics.  We need to live as squirrels or birds, not as models.  We ought not waste too much time (although some time may be useful) worrying about  temperature and rainfall variations or limited projections of possible futures.   

Tuesday

We dream first flakes, white whisper, settle soft

Instead sleet sting, cold chop, deep drift

Incongruous

Wisdom’s beauty simmers slow

Reconciliation

Wednesday

• Even at twelve degrees, underlying ground remains warm.  Only a skim of newly-formed ice coats the sweetwater pond. Tender green weeds and leaf buds have been flash frozen but so far show little damage.  As with many fatal trauma victims, the full effects of injury will only show up later, either when plants wilt and shrivel in the first thaw, or later in spring when blossoms and leaves fail to develop.
• I admit that although I enjoy seasons, this unusual late onset of winter suits me.  Although there is still plenty of time for cold and snow, days are already notably longer as spring rushes closer.   Both artificial calendars and solar activity increasingly signal more benevolent weather in the future.  I snuggle into my parka, content with the way things are going.

Thursday

Joan and I watch bandit pigeons and more desirable cardinals, bluejays, and woodpeckers diving, strutting, and chasing each other for a chance at the birdfeeder.  “There were a lot more birds when I was young,” she remarks.

I groan sarcastically.  “Oh, yeah, and the winters were harsh, the summers long , and spring filled with fresh flowers and no showers.”

“Well, I remember deep snows.”

“But that’s the trouble with the past,” I note.  “Since we have sixty-odd years of seasons, we select out the few that made an impression.  And that’s before we begin exaggerating.”

“I guess.  But winters were colder, I know the snow was intolerable even to my parents when I was little.”

“I’m sure you remember it that way.  But the last two years just now have been no picnics.  Our kids will surely remember them as being as bad as anything you can think up.”

“With global warming, that may be the only snows they remember anyway.”

“There you go again.  Why does everyone always want immediate apocalypse?  I doubt our immediate descendants will live through either an ice age or a fire age.  Things change a bit more slowly than we expect.”

“I don’t know,” Joan says stubbornly, “last year to this year is a pretty drastic change.  And the storms around the world seem to be getting a lot worse.”

“I’ll agree with you there,” I admit.  “Who knows?”

We turn back as the birds suddenly scatter, frightened away by the neighbor’s prowling old yellow cat, which seems not to notice the cold at all.

Friday

• Each season has nearly unique lighting effects.  Winter light is affected by dry atmosphere, ice particles in high transparent cloud layers , and low sun angle.  The lovely pastels which result are easily contrasted with stark bare branches.  Real photographers capture it better, but anyone can observe just as well by simply taking some time.
• We each choose how we wish to focus our spare moments.  Some try to connect with the electronic networks, being aware of sparrows falling in far off lands and wondering what it may mean.  I prefer to force myself into the cold, enjoying solitary moments at a deserted beach with only gulls for company.  Well, it is true that there is a scattering of cars back in the parking lot where people eat lunch or talk on their phones _ Long Island is a crowded place.  But I had the sands, the shells and the sky to myself for a few delicious moments.

Saturday

• No day is absolutely average, no season repeats exactly.   We think our perception of time is reality, and our lives are the measure of normal.  But nature moves more slowly than any of us.  Except, of course, for its occasional massive demonstrations.
• From the standpoint of seasons, and years, and centuries, humankind is like those speeded pictures of scurrying ants, rushing about building mud mounds, fighting, and moving on.  Once in a while the mound is flattened by buffalo, or flooded, or attacked by an anteater, but generally it comes and goes regardless of monsoon, snow, and chill.
• We consider our works as mighty and potentially eternal.  We proudly point to the Pyramids or to the ruins of the Colosseum as proof.  Yet we could as easily remember drowned Alexandria, volcano-choked Pompeii, and the vine-covered ruins of the Mayan peninsula.  All destroyed, all deserted, all irrelevant to the humans that came afterward.
• That is why most scenarios _ especially psychological scenarios _ of the future are wrong.  People may or may not fight to preserve Venice, Shanghai, or New York.  They may simply move inland a bit as the seas rise.  They might even move undersea as the temperature and winds rise.  They will look back at the ruins and think it applies to them as little as the Pyramids do to you or me.
• We are aware finally that the climate itself changes faster than our ancestors thought, even though they lived through such events as the Little Ice Age.  Only the perception of average stability is completely false.  A big volcanic outburst will chill the world for a while, unusual sun activity may heat it, and a flip of the magnetic field would wreak merry hell on our comfortable illusions.
• So enjoy the media comparisons of today to the average, worry about lack of rain or too much wind if you will, but none of it really is as it seems.  And the future is as unknown as ever it was.

Sunday

• Short sharp January freeze thawed already.  Seems strange to see the harbor so empty, prepared for bad weather that seems perpetually predicted next week.  People are equally confused, some in heavy coats, others jogging in shorts.  Plants as uncertain as humans, but ducks are probably just happy to have so much open water.
• Weather announcers try to scare everyone, particularly with wind chill factor.  Since there is always some kind of breeze along the shoreline, I mostly ignore everything except a howling gale, and base my outerwear protocol on absolute temperature at the house.  I find that dressing properly, no matter what the season, is required for maximum enjoyment of my daily stroll.

Resolutions

Monday

• Reality simply exists, without volition nor plans.  Perhaps “simply” is a poor choice of wording for something so infinitely variable.  Sky, clouds, water, all things on above and below this thin shell of habitat which confines life.  Another day, another year, another bit of imagination applied. 
• Resolutions are traditionally made once a year.  Usually one vows to be better (never worse) in some way.  And sometimes that intention is kept for almost a week.  Our lives are momentary and constructed of complete instants one after another.  If I am to be better, I must be so each second.  The sky, clouds, and water may not care, but I should.

Tuesday

Resolutions seem so strong

Don’t last long

A wish is just a wish

To really change

We must exchange

Instant soul for soul

Become another

But why bother

What should matter

Is more laughter

Joy creating joy

Love inflation

Appreciation

Day to better day

Strive and cope

Live with hope

Wednesday

• There are people who cannot figure how to enjoy a “nasty” day.  Fog and drizzle following sleet with about the first average temperature of December.  Ducks don’t need resolutions to handle weather.  Most waterfowl have already followed instinct to migrate to appropriate locations.  Others _ not this little bufflehead _ have further retreated to some leeward cove to escape misty wind.
• My resolutions no longer follow years, or even seasons, and are more limited to each day.  Mine was “get out of the house, take a walk, snap some pictures, and think about what to write tomorrow.”  If I am lucky my resolutions may harden into a schedule that is nearly instinctual.  Then, hopefully, I can be more like this tiny creature and apparently frolic about no matter the clouds and temperature.

Thursday

Joan and I out with friends, finishing up salads, nibbling bread.  “Any resolutions?” asks Janet.

“More exercise.” “Better Diet.”  “Spend time with kids.”  “Travel somewhere.”  And, to laughter, “Make it to another year!”

“But that’s what it does come down to, isn’t it?”  I ask.  “Our resolutions get a little shorter and more precise as we get older.  More personal, less idealistic.”

“Sure, I’m not about to change the world,” smiles Joe.  “I doubt I’m even about to change myself.”

“Agree with that,” I add, “sometimes just getting out of bed and doing something is about all the resolution I can actually do any given day.”

“None of us are that bad, yet,” protests Joan.  “We still stay active.  I have projects and I know Janet has some as well.  There’s gardens and dinners and …”

“Yep,” agrees Joe, “Lots and lots of chores.  Don’t sound much like resolutions to me.”

“Well, I guess people who made it this far are pretty much in the groove they want to be in,” notes Janet.

“Or have to be in,” adds Joe darkly.

“Well, I don’t care much,” Joan insists.  “There’s lots to do, that’s the point.”

“Don’t you want to change anything?”  Janet inquires.

“Nah, not much,” say Joe and I almost simultaneously.

“Well, you should.”

“Maybe, but we’ve put in our time.  No guilt.  Just enjoy the year and hope we get a few more.”

“Yeah, exactly,” I say as the entrees arrive, “Carpe diem because we sure don’t know how many more diems we’re gonna get to carpe.”

Friday

• Shiny new year, bright with promise, filled with hope, casting off old fears…  But tides roll as always, sunset and sunrise cycle as before,  darkling season remains.  Individuals and entire species do what they must to survive, one day at a time. Plants and animals know nothing of new year, or promise, or hope.
• Real magic is not in artificial calendar resets, but in the very fact that there is continuity.  Life rolls on through tides, days and nights, seasons without end.  We alone perceive the connection, and assign imaginary demarcations of years or eras or eons.  Our magic is in creating intertwined stories all the way back to an imagined beginning of the universe, or, for that matter, to this same calendar day,  exactly one arbitrary human year ago.

Saturday

• God and the universe need no resolutions _ what was, was; what is, is; what will be, will be.  Only a sense of alternative futures leads to plans, fears, hopes.  Some life may dimly sense choice, but most is blind existence, instinct, or training.  No rock, tree or bacteria resolves to change for the better or worse.  Only in human imagination do rabbits swear to outwit hunters.
• We are deeply identical to all life in chemical composition, genes, attributes.  Objectively, our differences are trivial or nonexistent.  Yet we are quantitatively and qualitatively removed from nature, in infinite ways.  “Higher” animals may know fear, but I do not believe they are aware of beauty.  A mighty list of such anomalies would include art, writing, engineering,  good, and evil.
• So I study the natural world, but what should I learn, what should I apply?  I am so like and  so unlike a blade of grass, an insect, a clam, you.  What does a gypsy moth _ fighting for survival against terrible odds, decimating forests, threatening its own species by destroying its necessary ecology _ teach me?  Is such doomed behavior inevitable?  What could one moth do?  How much do I resemble that moth?
• My contemplations realize that no answers exist, for answers, like choices, are human constructs.  There is only tension, resolution, outcome.  Preserving balance is a game of which only we are aware.  Does that make it less real?  I think not.  Appreciating the game may be one of the higher goals of our consciousness.
• I am most unnatural.  In all the universes that ever are or might be, I am unique.  In my self-absorbed being, I feel important.  I may understand that feeling to be wrong, but just by understanding it is wrong, I prove it is true.  A lovely, illogical game rolling in syncopation with our magnificent perception of time’s tapestry.

Sunday

• Nature continues brimming with infinite wonders.  Sun rises unnoticed, winds blow evoking only wishes that they become more mild.  Crows flap from branch to branch with raucous calls, above squirrels chasing each other ceaselessly.  Only the scents of the activities of people remain.  Thus it seems it was always and will always be.  Yet this entire world is a fragile slice of time with nature and people appearing briefly on a tiny stage.
• I dare not resolve to spend more time in wonder.  Part of the mystery is that I cannot.  There are practical things to do, limits to meditation.  I am a microscopic part of the moving pageant, and if I stand still regarding how magnificent the show appears I will only be trampled by the passing parade.  But once in a while, each day, I must try to find a quiet space and continue to marvel at all there is, and be grateful I can continue to do so.

Birthday!

Monday

• Bedecked tree in deep woods on the Nature Conservancy’s Upland Farms.  Winter Solstice the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere,  appropriate time for a new year via the Romans, Druids, Christianity, and Western European colonialism.  In about a week it will be “2016 CE,” a world standard ferociously enforced by computers. 
• We are one, at least in aging digitally together.  Not long ago, hardly anyone knew how old they were, or when their birth date might be.  If you survived childhood, you became an adult.  If surviving thirty or so years of adulthood you became an ancient.  Years were measured in passage of the season and collection of taxes, and otherwise left everyone unaffected.  Now, we calculate our calendar age to the microsecond, tie our “secret equivalent age” to biometrics, and have a grand vision of what must be done in each annual cycle.  Sure, we each have our own birthdays, but Earth, as always, provides the real downbeat.   

Tuesday

Ok, folks, all together, one, two, three:

Happy solstice to you

Happy solstice to you

Happy solstice dear Terra

Happy solstice to you.

How old are you now?

How old are you now?

We just can’t believe that!

Happy Solstice to you!

Now everybody make a wish while Terra tries to blow out all our emissions ….

Wednesday

• Last winter this day freezing and snow, this winter nearly sixty and fog.  The land does not know date nor season nor weather.  The land did not know trilobites nor dinosaurs nor people.  Most inhabitants of the land just recognize it is daytime and survive until darkness.  Only humans compare one year to another.
• Ancient Greeks _ and most other religions _ assigned no birthdate to their gods because that would be certain blasphemy.  Prophets, on the other hand, are often dated by year _ which is difficult because true prophets are often not recognized until they are well along in years, and even in literate cultures born vaguely “in the fifth year of the reign of good king Maniac.” Assigning a specific birthday is impossible, and generally evolves by convenient convention.  Yet, here we are, celebrating one “birthday” after another, and happy for doing so.

Thursday

Joan was once again trying to fit our celebration of Greg’s birthday into the complicated holiday schedules of everyone involved.  “He always did get cheated, you know,” she says.  “Only five days before Christmas, everyone forgets and merges them together.”

“Oh, I know.  My grandmother was an actual Christmas baby.  One party and, of course, the presents all jumbled up.  Much better to be born on the other end of the calendar,  June or July.”

“Too hard to plan,” she laughs.

“In a few years, I’m sure that everyone will actually be timing things exactly.  Maybe they are now, for all I know.”

“What I hated were the cutoffs for school _ that you had to be so many years old by, say, January 1.”

“That’s the real problem.  Years in general.  How old you are _ especially at 5 or six _ should really be measured in months or days by the calendar.  Not to mention that everyone develops differently.  Still, I thought that someone nearer a year older always had a big advantage in sports and maybe in achievement.”

“You’re awful yourself, these days,” she accuses.  “You always round up.  You say you’re 69 when you’re still 68.  Nobody does that.”

“I round up everything, expenses and years.  I’ve consistently found that more useful.”

“Let’s see now,” she returns to the calendar.  “What about Wednesday, after he’s done work?”

Friday

• Warm fog and showers unable to satisfy eccentric cultural longing for white coating on the ground.  ‘Tis the season of extravagant expectations _ family, love, bonuses, gifts, myths, anything at all.  Now that all other needs and whims are more or less instantly satisfied,  what remains are holidays on steroids.
• I’ll spare you the “I was happy with a yo-yo” stories; we were not deprived, but  major kid stuff was reserved for Christmas, and there was a lot less of it.  Our parents did not treat a car or new appliance  as a gift _ those were major expenses that involved planning and penny-pinching.  I see people infinitely more goods, but none happier than we were back in “the good old days.”

Saturday

• The natural cycle for life on the surface is the sun.  Hawks and squirrels roam the day, Owls and raccoons the night.  We are advised of our natural circadian rhythm,  and most of us are forcibly reminded to sleep periodically each twenty four hours.  Day and night are probably most of what many animals are aware of.
• On the other hand, bacteria, which own the earth. presumably don’t much care if there is light or not.  Fish and shellfish are probably far more affected by tides.  Inhabitants of the deep sea never notice sunlight at all.  An insect cycle may be complete in less than an afternoon, the prototypical active time of a mayfly.
• Humans have invented measurement.  Days pass into numbers and the moon waxes and wanes and the seasons warm and chill down or dry up and rain.  We plop them into proper places on a calendar, find how close we are to solstices or arbitrary year end.  We annotate our own place in these records, when we have precisely checked off another three hundred sixty five.
• Even more intriguing, people have fashioned metaphors.  One of the most complex, at least in European-influenced cultures, is that a year is like our lives.  Like the year we are born helpless and nearly dormant, then thrust and blossom into grand and beautiful virility, then slowly dry and finally disappear.  A folklore version of Ontology recapitulating Philology.
• Yet all that is false.  Years don’t exist, except in our minds.  Our lives and growth and achievements are not at all at the same pace or with the same attributes  as the environments of the northern hemisphere.  We know that our consciousness exists in the moment, but we always seek some deeper pattern.

Sunday

• After the excitement of a wonderful holiday, the slight let-down and then a final remaining glow.   After much work and worry, the house is all decorated, the lights cheering the foggy air, the presents exchanged and (mostly) properly appreciated.  Then everyone goes home, another year older, another set of memories layered on the old ones.
• So one of our religions has had yet another birthday, the sun has passed solstice, soon the calendars will change to recognize the facts, and we all feel, somehow, a little more aged than we did a few weeks ago.  Even the mild weather has been unable to hide that winter is ready to swoop in at any moment.  I’m not a person who ever hated the holidays, but I did get more keyed up in the past than I do now.  Much to be grateful for, of course, but that has fortunately been true every day of the last year for me.

Seasons Sonatas

Monday

• Nature always appears harmonious.  After all, people have evolved attuned over tens of thousands of years.  Yet there is also a marked flexibility that somehow makes desert, swamp, ocean, jungle, savannah, woods, and whatever else beautiful to properly adjusted outlooks.  Art may attempt to capture that harmony, or may challenge it, or (in the best work) somehow do both at the same time.
• Our musical tastes are formed early, and I hardly appreciate classical.  Yet even in the early jazz music I love,  I miss a great deal because I am not a musician.  My greatest fault, as in many things, is in not paying adequate attention.  I know the beginning of Chopin’s moonlight sonata quite well, but no matter how many times I listen, the rest just blurs into one long piano relaxation.  Not unlike how I often experience scenery and other important environments in my life.

Tuesday

Sonata ought to be a song

That murmurs, glistens soft along

Shouts demanding in our ear

Concentrate on what we hear

-

Winter swirls some icy ways

Snow can’t brighten shorter days

Disaster looms a constant dread

Disruptions whisper stay in bed

-

Some will brace for bitter cold

March forth challenged to be bold

Others dream of sweeter times

Wish to wake in warmer climes

-

Me, I’m torn, I like to go

Examine purity of snow

But other hours I like best

To just accept my enforced rest

Wednesday

• Cable provides a music channel called “Songs of the Seasons.”  Unsurprisingly, these are mostly pop tunes with lots of words to clue the audience.  Classical music suffers from only providing titles.  Nobody would associate “March of the Wooden Soldiers” with Christmas except for its use in a few movies, and Nutcracker would be just a sequence of pretty melodies without the ballet costumes and handy program guide.
• I sit here and enjoy the ways colors blend together, or subtly contrast, always in a different kaleidoscopic way depending on where I look or how I vary my focus.  In such magical stillness, I may recall one seasonal tune or another, which are irrelevant to this moment.  I would insist that this overall experience is very much like that of closely listening to a sonata or symphony.  Abstract, harmonious, challenging, soothing and much more, all at the same time, all constructed by the marvelous trillions of neurons that provide me with my being.

Thursday

Standard carols echo around crowds here at the mall.  I’m sitting in a little alcove of chairs, waiting for Joan to finish up at Macys.  Conversations of others doing the same thing rise around,  as I pick out fragments.

“These songs sure bring back memories, don’t they?”

“Some of them, I guess.  I can’t stand some of the cynical newer ones they keep putting on.”

“Yeah, I’m more partial to Bing Crosby and Sinatra myself.  But I guess they have to move with the times.”

“Why?  They don’t care about the times anywhere else.  This is all just nostalgia to make old people feel like spending money for grandkids.”

“My grandkids sure don’t know them like I did.  I think they’re more familiar with car and beer ad jingles.”

“Oh, yeah, and forget hymns.  Why, when I was their age we had them every Sunday, right out of the hymnal, had to memorize them all.”

“Well, we believed.  It meant something back then.”

“Should mean something now.  Damn political correctness.  Why can’t we just be happy that we took over the planet and let it at that.”

“Not much Christmas spirit, there?”

“Humbug yourself.  It’s true, though.

Friday

• Crows cawing only birdsong, but steady wind whispers through trees, dead grasses rustle, waves slap shore.  Human sounds accrete all around _ whistling of boat rigging, low rumble of jets low overhead heading for landing at JFK, tires and rasping engines of trucks making last-minute holiday deliveries, and incessant whine of leaf blowers.  Humans are, sometimes unfortunately, part of nature too.
• Any true seasonal sonata would include that.  Probably we wouldn’t go to the lengths that Spike Jones gleefully pasted over tunes, but time of year is infallibly marked aurally by our own sounds.  A really brilliant artist might be able to weave it all pleasingly.  Or maybe not _ we tend to be more abrasive and raucous than even those annoying big black birds.

Saturday

• Transforming experience to art is odd.  Movies require narrative, drawings composition, paintings color, photographs  unique immediacy, writing translating existence into meaningful words.  But how to use sitting on a hill or walking through the woods or gasping against the wind to compose a song?
• First and greatest question is why bother.  The world provides it all, what exactly does an artist have to contribute?  Capture the moment, perhaps, as much as any aspect of it can be.  Recall memories.  Distill some common feeling.  All of those are difficult in any medium, but to try to capture, recall, or distill while limited to musical notes is almost inconceivable.
• Oh, I can imagine a shepherd playing a flute easily enough, or even a folk singer strumming on a guitar, creating something that might catch the public fancy.  But I cannot, for the life of me, put Chopin on a park lawn to come up with a Coindre Hall Autumn Sonata that would ever have more evocation of a particular place than its title.  Is that my own musical incapacity?
• Yet, second question is why can I imagine that sonata, rising from the waving of bare branches, harmonizing with blended browns of the rushes around the stilled pond, counterpointed by occasional calls of geese and ducks over the water?  If I am centered I can almost hear it in my mind, a song of nature, yet inexpressible in the sense that anyone else would ever understand what I am trying to do.  Even the most accomplished evocation, such as “Appalachian Spring” only becomes meaningful when I am aware of its name.
• Music, I suspect, is our most abstract gift to the universe, and a gift to which only other humans or our gods themselves can ever respond completely.  But it is also one of our must perfect expressions of pure love of being, whatever the occasion of its origin.  

Sunday

• Open harbor should provide silent refuge, but unless wind blows strongly any given car or motorcycle is apt to be bellowing a Christmas tune, any given homeowner may be blasting outside speakers with the same. Holiday music has been increasingly insistent for over three months now.  But this week it is ubiquitous _ on radio and TV, in stores, along the street.  If newspapers could talk they’d be playing jingle bells.  Suddenly at the end of next week it drop by half, a week after that will be banished for another year.  The proverbial man from Mars would be quite puzzled, particularly at  constant references to “sleighs” which haven’t been used for a century, and never ever used in places like Florida. 
• Music on my mind because many of these ditties are in the form of “earbugs,” those annoying snatches of song that keep playing through my background thoughts even though I desperately try to send them away.  Certainly not sonatas.  With crude but effective hooks and structures, they get triggered and reinforced at every snatch of melody, and sometimes by other stimuli as well.   My particular seasonal concert.  

North Pole

Monday

• All place names are collective fictions, even though the modern world likes to believe that naming magically makes real.  No bird or fish recognizes “Huntington”.  Imaginary lines outline legal jurisdictions, but a guide is needed to locate “downtown.”  The North Pole is a dimensionless dot over drifting ice with no boundaries at all. 
• When I was a kid, the North Pole was both magical and real.  Santa worked there.  Now, I suppose, children realize he has been displaced by eminent domain and natural disaster, his outmoded factory dismantled, his elfin workforce _ unable to use iphones let alone make them_ laid off.  He’s probably lounging on a beach somewhere in Costa Rica, while Mrs. Claus reminisces over old photographs of the polar domain.

Tuesday

People strode their dimpled flat world thoughtlessly,

Then Thales conjured up his sphere

Which Newton with Copernicus cutely placed,

Circling sun, spinning on a handy stick

Jammed through North and South poles.

My childhood knew exactly what was what.

North Pole on top, just like us.

Cold icy remote as hell

Unreachable, forbidden

Finest place for Santa Claus to work.

Now, science claims it isn’t where it was

North switches sometimes south, like magic

Overhead each day fly jets, subs lurk underneath

Someday soon dark prophets scream

The few surviving kids might row right by on rafts

All “truth” is conscious mystery:

No real North Pole exists at all

Never did, just in our minds,

Our many models, maps and maths,

And, on occasion, myths

Wednesday

• Various names were applied to this hill by native American tribes, by colonists grazing sheep on the South Down, by wealthy Mr. Brown who never got to use his gold coast estate, and by priests remembering Father Coindre.  Nobody pausing here to enjoy the view cares. Come a few hundred years, this may well become Huntington Reef in the Gulf of Connecticut.  By then, the North Pole too may be long forgotten. 
• All is transient and personal.  My Huntington, my North Pole, is not yours.  Whatever we may share of the conception of each is further restricted to our time and place.  This scene changes, its name also changes, and we are brief but important visitors.  Yet somehow I also think it natural that Coindre Hall, like the North Pole, like I myself, has always been and always will be as it is this moment.

Thursday

Little wreaths sparkling white lights hang from each street lamp in the middle of the day.  By the soldiers and sailors memorial at east end of town I find Ed disconsolate on a bench.  “Oh, come on,” I kid him, “get some Christmas spirit.”

“Sure ain’t what it used to be,” he complains.

“Nothing is,” I smile.  “Weather’s good.”

He ignores me, “Back when, we didn’t get any toys from at least June on, ‘Wait for Christmas.’  That was a big thing.  We all believed in the season.”

“It’s festive now,” I argue.  “People believe in the season, if nothing else.”

“Well, when I grew up kids at least bought into the whole thing, Santa, toys, life always working out for the best.”

So that’s what’s got into him.  “We had our share of cultural chauvinism.  All kids do.  We thought what was around us was around everybody, obviously all the same.”

“Oh, you’re right about that,” he says.  “Santa was a visible manifestation of God _ omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and good.”

“He’s still pretty omnipresent, at least ….” I could see five pictures of him from where I stood.

“I liked the innocence of the old days,” he almost whines.  “Now everything is relative this and relative that and nothing is simple any more.  I want simple again.”

“I think it was just as complicated back then,” I tell him.  “Everybody didn’t get presents, lots of people didn’t celebrate Christmas at all.  We just ignored them.”

“So what.  I liked it better.  It was more fun for the kids.”

“Grump, grump, grump,” I tease.  “Merry Christmas anyway.”

“Happy whatever to you, too,” he growls.

“Bah, Humbug!” I move on towards the dimly sounding traditional songs echoing tinnily from speakers, ignored by everyone.

Friday

• No touch of North Pole around here.  It might as well be May, roses still blooming, the migratory ducks somewhat confused by the unnatural heat.  Most seniors quite happy for the delay of snow and ice _ all the romance went out of white Christmas with the blizzards of last year.  Some no doubt regret putting their boats away, but the buoys are safely stored as always.  Hard to tell if it is climate change or just a nice unusual December.
• I’d lay bets on climate change.  I appreciate the warmth and the chance to stroll in light jacket without heavy hat and gloves, but I keep looking behind my back.  I feel like one of those naïve folks rushing out onto the newly-exposed glistening sea bottom to gather treasures, ignoring the ominous murmur of the distant but onrushing tidal wave.

Saturday

• Our world expands as we grow, sometimes too much.  The certainty of the North Pole and all it implies, complete with Santa Claus, gives way to provable knowledge or a willingness to accept lack of knowledge.  We find, along with that, that others do not share our legends, backgrounds, hopes, and goals.
• Nostalgia is in some ways a desire to become once again as certain in knowledge and belief as a child.   Everything was much easier when things were clear.  We may not recognize that the changes are in us, in how we perceive.  I wonder why everybody cannot be just like me. 
• Some claim we have, as a culture, become too sensitive, too aware, too relative for our own good.  That is certainly the fundamentalist creed in any religion or politics.  Traditionalists shout that hanging on to the myth of the North Pole, objectively true or not, has social value. Such myths help bind tribes together, and make us civilized, at least within our tribe itself. 
• Unfortunately, leaving childhood is exactly like leaving Eden.  Colorations and differences in the world and its peoples are real, whether we choose to be aware of them or not.  Ignoring our differences is not useful to survival, but trying to understand and accept everything and everyone is equally destructive.
• Once upon a time I knew, as surely as I visualized Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, what was the right way to live and how to be.  Now, I am less certain, and even less sure I will ever find any certainty at all. 

Sunday

• This sleigh at the Halesite fire department looks like it may have trouble getting out of the rapidly growing grass.  The real one up at the North Pole is probably facing slush, pothole puddles, and crevasses into the arctic sea.  If any of them do get airborne, they will surely be stuck the first place they land, dry roof or muddy field.  Unless of course _ always possible _ a polar express wind whips in by month end.
• I’ve had a lot of fun with the North Pole this week, probably because it and Santa Claus are some of the least controversial of subjects.  For or against, few seem to believe anything striking at the core of their being and beliefs.  It’s too bad we do not have more neutral topics like that  _ sometimes every conversation seems a potential minefield.  I guess irritation just goes along with being fat and happy.