Transitions

Monday

• Our long-time neighbor from across the street died suddenly and unexpectedly over the last two weeks.  Someone who had retired, walked and exercised himself into seemingly the best shape of his life.  A minor pain, a simple operation, unexpected complications.  Shock. 
• We were not close, but our lives moved in parallel.   And suddenly we are forced to realize that the great cycles, such as what this spring represents, are in some ways illusions.  This was also to be another typical spring leading into summer for him and his family.  Our world sometimes appears robust, but occasionally it takes unexpected tragedy to force us to understand how fragile and transitory everything actually is.

Tuesday

Living through entropic spirals

We imagine cycles

Each day like last and next, each year, each spring

Sometimes, even, each life.

Our universe, harshly rushes in mysterious time

Ignores our pattern making, our silly mathematical fantasies.

No day, year, spring, or person like another.

No cycles.

Only moments.

Wednesday

• Another great aged tree in the neighborhood begins to die.  This giant purple umbrella canopy stood here since Beachcroft was declared a neighborhood in 1924.  My wife sheltered under it while awaiting her school bus in the fifties.  It’s the second immense beech in the last few years to be affected, and _ for a while _ it leaves a tremendous void, until our eyes and memories adjust to new reality.
• We have a huge old fir in the front yard, almost as large as those carted to Rockefeller Center every year for Christmas.  It has become infected with insects that eventually destroy such species around here.  Now it is a year-to-year thing. Suddenly it will dry up and be cut away.  More permanence gone.  We expect trees to go on forever, part of our dreams, like rocks in the landscape, only felled by hurricanes or other accidents.  More transitory illusion.

Thursday

I plop myself down next to Mike and Annie at Mill Dam Park.  Boats launched down the ramps now at a pretty steady rate, mooring locations out on the water beginning to fill.  “Nice day,” I wave vaguely at the clear blue sky.  “Nice spot.”

“Liked it better before they fixed it up,” grumps Mike.  “No shade trees, no charm.  Not nearly as nice as it was.”

“Nothing is,” chimes in Annie.  “Too many cars, boats, lights, traffic, overhead jets.”

“Trash on the side of the road,” adds Mike.

“Leaf blowers,” I huff.  Everyone nods agreement.

“All better when we grew up,” says Annie.  “I’ve lived here my whole life, and you wouldn’t believe what a paradise it once was.”

“Yeah, my wife says that all the time,” I note.  “But then, she does like the shopping these days.”

“I think we did grow up in the best of times,” muses Mike.  “Overseas places were still exotic, land was open, globalization hadn’t killed off local stores.”

“People lived better, more rationally, more secure in family and tradition,” Annie scowls. “Neighbors were neighbors.”

“O tempora o mores!” I moan sarcastically. 

“You’ll have to translate that for Annie, I’m afraid,” Mike watches a gull swoop down on a discarded wrapper.

“Don’t be silly.  I went to a good high school _ education was better back then too.  But I definitely think we had golden age that nobody else will ever get,” Annie finishes as we all lapse into meditative silence.

No matter what, I decide that like any adventure it has been fun.  Wouldn’t trade.

Friday

• Weddings in the good old days _ at least in myth _ were some of the most transitional moments of life.  Single life over, a family to start and grow, financial and emotional responsibilities.  A true moment of complete adulthood to enter the ongoing and enduring community.  Forever, supposedly.  At least by statistical measurement a lot of that, if ever true, is long gone. 
• We head off to a wedding near Washington this weekend.  Fortunately, our niece is not one of those self-centered young things who expects everybody to jaunt to some remote island at their own expense and pick up all the checks.  It is also still planned that this marriage is to be the start of children, a forever family, a life together through whatever.  At least at the time of the ceremony, this will continue to symbolize significant transition.  Another era moves forward.

Saturday

I tried to never be a selective observer of fortune.  Good times are always intermixed with bad.  Wanting to live in a different time _ past or future _ always involves collecting its best aspects and ignoring everything else.  Much the same is true of envy of other people’s lives.

I like to believe that these last sixty years have been some of the best, for most people, in most places.  Sure everyone faced nuclear destruction, pollution disasters, runaway population, and loss of confidence in what the future holds.  I will not list marvels, which are many.  I will ignore the fragility of lives _ being in control until suddenly some horrible disaster arrives.  That is the lot of humanity and always has been.  Does not matter if death is by earthquake, black plague, Mongol hordes, or ISIS.

I also think the world is less rich in being.  Too much crowding ruins destinations, too much everything makes not only species but also entire experiences _ including certain types of lives _ extinct.  Places become subtly identical _ which I hate.  Everywhere is common, dirty, and annoyed.  Not at all as it was a short time past.

Everything is melting into one massive stew.  I was privileged to taste some of the different flavors while they lasted.  No less than that, I was able to believe varied and delicious meals would be served each tomorrow.  Now _ well the meals are there _ the varied cultural lifestyles that made them memorable are not.

Perhaps I am wrong.  I hope so.  Transitions have always happened and will for as long as people survive.  I’m just happy I enjoyed mine.  If I want to proclaim it as a great time to have lived through _ taking no claim or blame _ I feel free to do so.  

Sunday

• Curtains roll up on spectacle.  Days of warmth following rain transform the landscape.  Very little in spring weather is impossible, but by now around here snowfall has become very unlikely, hard frost only a little less so.  Insects are everywhere, less noticed than the massive showpiece blossoms.  Horticultural prima donnas dance on stage one after another, sometimes colliding.
• A week of transitions.  One of the few certainties in the world is that more will follow.  Fortunately, for a while, there is a great deal of yardwork to do, and grand vistas to appreciate, and new little miracles pushing up each morning.

Transitions

Monday

• Suddenly seasonal signals are far less subtle.  Many yellows and a few reds creeping into any views, the southward slant of the sun accents its later arrival and earlier departure.  Unexpected chills sweep in on shadow or breeze, and settle in during the evenings. 
• In my suburbs, it is a quiet time of year.  Yard crews _ which still appear like mechanical clock figures tolling the day of the week _ give a perfunctory dusting to grass that does not need to be mowed and rush off.  Leaves do not yet require incessant blowing.  Families have grown tired of barbeques and mosquitoes, or are simply overwhelmed with work and school, and remain quietly indoors.  I roam about our yard, happily recalling the good old days when my auditory world seemed like this all the time.

Tuesday

Sharp sparkles glaze smooth ebbing tide

Salt scent thick as breeze blows by

I watch some seagulls seem to play

I’ve risen late, swift sun shines high

Though no one cares, nowhere to go

No chores, no tasks will fill this day

I should feel guilty, lax and slow

Creating naught from all I know

Obsessive drives have died away.

I wish our universe might show

What it expects before we die

What deeds or thoughts are right to pray

How praise should rise, what I must say,

No answers come, to my dismay.

Wednesday

• Overnight low in the fifties, coupled with a morning gusting wind pushing low sixties is enough to require a sweatshirt even as the daylight world warms.  Just a punctuation mark on what is known already.  No matter how fine it all looks,  limits on summer activities have appeared and will begin to be enforced. 
• Many folks welcome the break from constant heat and humidity.  Others fall into pre-depression, making of each fallen degree a march towards frigid cabin fever.  Eventually, we all regain our equilibrium and go back to taking each day as it comes, and restricting our plans only to the extent that common sense dictates.  There are a lot of wonderful events around here in fall, natural and cultural, and the carnival can with luck be extended right into the end of the year holidays (which merchants are already putting on display.)

Thursday

Bill trotted over, sweating from his jog around the outer paved trail, to join us at the benches overlooking the Sound on the bluff at Caumsett.  His mind was apparently lathered as much as his sweatshirt, because he panted, “I see one candidate is promising to unleash four per cent growth.”

Toni snorted “More like unleashing 10% annual misery.  Crap luxuries for those who don’t need any more, thinner coats and gruel for those hurting the most.”

“Ah,” I said, “but economists can’t measure misery, so it doesn’t count.  Luxuries, on the other hand, show up on their biblical GDP.”

“Oh, c’mon,” gasps Bill, “we’re all better off than we used to be …”

“Maybe not all,” Toni responds.

“You know that thing in Plato about people in a cave, trying to make sense of shadows projected from reality outside?” I ask, looking up at Bill.  He nods.  “Well, economists are like that, trying to make sense of economic numbers while not paying any attention to the human factors that create them.  They make a lot of irrational medieval assumptions about human nature, and then go play around with the quantity and price of apples and stuff over time.  Besides,”  I added before he could interrupt, “even the assumptions about production are wrong now.  Classical economics deals with scarcity and unsatiated demand.  We live in an era of overabundance.”

Toni adds, “Maybe for us, and some people, but there are others …”

“They aren’t the ones being promised four percent growth, though,” I point out.   

Bill remains adamant.  “Economists have given us wonders for hundreds of years, the industrial revolution, mass production, scientific growth.”

“Wrong,” I state.  “Economists have gone through the numbers of what happened as other people did all that, and interpreted everything in light of their holy capitalist texts and dogma.  Even you admit they can explain anything and predict nothing.”

“You’re both fools,” laughs Bill, “but nice fools.  I have lots to do.  Enjoy the day…”

Friday

• Eating on the dock at Crabby Jerry’s out in Greenport.  The North Fork of Long Island still has farms and enough open space to occasionally convince that it is open countryside, although that is rapidly changing with the growth in vineyards and wineries.  While it is taking on a Disneyland kind of character along the main thoroughfares, some places such as this remain remote enough from the city to retain a hint of bucolic centuries.  That evolves too, as more and more folks think the same thing and move out here permanently, connected tenuously to jobs through instant communication links and relatively easy transportation.
• We like to get out of our town occasionally, and I guess it is only fair to comment on it when we do so.  One of the reasons many people continue to pay high prices to live around here is the oddly eclectic mix of possible activities on any given day.  We were only here, for example, because the train to New York was having big problems and we decided to find an alternative to eating on Mulberry Street for the feast of San Gennaro.  So we ended up in a place that resembled Capri more than Rome.

Saturday

• To this old curmudgeon, current politics consists of fanatic “born again” hordes whipped into a frenzy by sleazy hypocrites controlled by plutocrats.  Sleazy hypocrites and plutocrats are always with us, but the ranks of the reformed get on my nerves.
• I charitably grant that such souls were lost and are now found.  Many have written about their various descents into darkness of drink, crime, atrocity, or immorality in general, and I wish them well in their bright new lives.  But for those of us who have not thus descended, the preaching is no balm.  For example, I’ve always eaten relatively carefully, I dread the onslaught of gluten-free, organic, local, fad-driven TV fare as the standard offering everywhere I go.
• Even if those cheerleaders sometimes have a valid point, it’s not that I need to be forced to follow them immediately.  Like St. Augustine, I am a perpetual teenager realizing that I probably should be chaste and temperate _ just not quite yet, not all the time, not to the exclusion of all pleasure except that of self-sacrifice and smug superiority.  Besides, I’m not at all convinced that the hordes are always right or superior to my own instincts and behaviors, which I have also acquired and honed over a lifetime.
• Life with all its manifestations including society and government is infinitely complicated, a treacherous balance of competing tensions.  Militant simplistic absolute certainty is always the enemy of true human good.  I’ll tolerate even the most radical reformer if they entertain an element of doubt, at least concerning the requirements of others.  That leaves me free to call down brimstone on those who would do the same to me.  Toleration has limits.

Sunday

• This weekend will mark the end of string of temperatures running ten to fifteen degrees above normal _ if such concepts have meaning any more.  A mini-sailboat mini-race grabs a vanishing opportunity near the yacht club.  A bit further on, activity on a long bulkhead may indicate another house is about to be constructed to obscure the open view.  Change meteorological and human is the rule of the week.
• Once upon a time I felt betrayed as the past became lost.  Now I am reconciled to the past as mostly my own internal illusion.  The universe is what it is _ the moon is never in exactly the same place, for the entire solar system hurtles through the cosmos at fantastic speeds.  The sun never shines identically, for at a quantum level each micro second of its elemental burning is done with different quarks and leptons in different ways.  Stability, which our consciousness constructs as some framework for truth, is not reality.  I never knew the world as I thought I did, and I cannot understand this moment in totality.  That is both disturbing and comforting.