Adaptation

Monday

• About a decade ago, this patch of waterside land was cleared and carefully replanted.  Signs boldly proclaimed a “Native Vegetation Restoration Zone.”  Keeping it such proved a Sisyphean task, effort and money ran out, and it has reverted to being a typical vacant lot.  The only native species remaining are beach roses and poison ivy, and the beach roses are succumbing rapidly to salt intrusion from higher tides and frequent floods.
• Few local plants adapt well to the disturbances of human civilization.  Fewer still can compete with rugged global imports.  Our landscape changes much too quickly for any to evolve.  It is doubtful that we can preserve many plants or animals which require specialized niches over the next decades or centuries.  A few zoos or botanic reserves may somehow keep going, but I fear most will end up exactly like this impoverished _ but still beautiful _  bit of ground. 

Tuesday

Invasive species thrive and spread

In upturned soil exotic flowers

Are pampered yielding massive show

We care not that such flower beds

Displace what once received the showers

Dried, and died, nowhere to go.

A few lament, with glossy views

In thick-bound books safe on our shelves

What now is missing, wild and free

As once it was before the crews

Destroyed it all to please ourselves

With artificial harmony.

I do admit I’d fear the wolf

Or cougar should they both return

There’s limit to what I dare face

Yet I’d allow plants to engulf

My labors, even if they turn

Out to be plain, they have their place.

I’ll never recreate what was

Ecologies are simply whole

With parts replaced, the rest adjust,

Or not, but something new with flaws

A different unit fills the role

As true as any, less robust

Wednesday

• There is nothing quite so ecologically devastating as a farm, but close second is a large lawn.  Land is leveled, one species of grass is encouraged to grow, and everything is constantly cut and trimmed to a low height.  It has been said that nothing an individual can plant is quite as eternal as a lawn _ even completely untended, remnants of it will last for centuries, if only in woodland glades.  Designed by humans, but adapting to the wild.
• Yet I love large lawns such as this, with sweeping vistas.  Close inspection reveals that many species of grass have crept in, some of them undoubtedly native.  Worms, birds, rabbits, raccoons, deer, and in more remote areas, foxes wander across as they wish.  As a person who tries to love nature dearly, I suppose I should be ashamed to enjoy this space, but such are the contradictions of modern life which I have learned to accept.  A fanatic may condemn, but emotionally I just cannot regard this green expanse as vast evil even as my mind recoils at the destruction of original habitat.  I guess I also must adapt.

Thursday

Joe and Linda were arguing about something or other, as I passed them up near the Civil War Memorial statue at the end of town.  I was just in time to hear Joe somewhat sheepishly admit “Well, I’ve evolved on that issue, you know.”

That stopped me in my tracks.  I have a stupid habit of lecturing when I should keep quiet, but this is a personal vendetta.  “Individuals don’t evolve,” I stated, startling them.

“What?” asked Joe, confused by the change in conversational direction.

“Individuals don’t evolve.  Species evolve.  Individuals adapt.”

“Everybody else says they evolve,” argued Linda.  “It’s common usage, after all.”

“I know,” I responded, now a little sorry I’d started anything.  “But the theory of evolution is so clean and precise _ descent with modification.  No evolution without offspring.  Genetically modified offspring at that.  Individuals cannot evolve.  I just don’t like the term, it implies _ well more than that.”

“Like what,” Joe asked curiously.

“Especially like you just used it,” I reply.  “As if you are arriving at a better and higher and more perfect place.  I never hear anyone evolve into something they think is socially incorrect.”

“Well, life does get more complex …”

“Not necessarily.  Life can get more simple, lose limbs, fit a niche by being less demanding and precise.  Evolution is complicated, not a march toward some platonic ideal.”

“My ideas however,” said Joe sternly, “do have offspring, and do evolve, and do turn into different creatures altogether.  An evolving meme species, as it were, ideas dying into entirely new directions.”

He was right, I guess.  I shrugged and smiled, and continued on down the street a trifle embarrassed.  I guess I could use some evolution of social skills myself.

Friday

• Grass matts have moved, somewhat diminished, and are once again sprouting up and rooting downward.  Under natural conditions, there would be plenty of open space for marshlands to gradually occupy upslope as water rose, adapting to changing sea level.  However, humans like to live near the shore, so above the actual littoral there are wide bulldozed beaches, rocky berms, concrete walls, and wooden or steel bulkheads.  There is no place left for the grass to adapt to.
• I have no power in all this.  If I worry about each sparrow falling or marsh grass failing I will simply be sad all day long, and miss all the wondrous beauty that remains.  I dutifully send off my dues to organizations like the Nature Conservancy and desperately hope that somewhere, somehow, things will turn out well.  Today, I must content myself by being grateful that I have been privileged to know this world that is and what not long ago was.  Accepting powerlessness is no doubt a necessary adaptation of my mind.

Saturday

• Not long ago, all biologic thinking revolved around nature and nurture _ genetic makeup versus learning and training.  Only higher vertebrates could be taught much of anything, all the other species were trapped by their genes.  Adaptation to conditions was limited to being stunted, misshapen, or hungry.  Recent discoveries and observations have proved such a limited view quite wrong.  Not only is there vast variation in genetic genotypes for a particular species (height, size, whatever) but epigenetics prove that genes function by being turned off and on at crucial times, and that these triggers are often triggered by environmental conditions.
• So even within a given species, individuals can often be born pre-adapted to conditions.  Hunger, warmth, and various other stresses on the mother or egg can affect the development of the embryo, and even organisms born with completely identical genes, such as twins, could theoretically grow to be different sizes and certainly non-identical later minds.  The more complicated the organic system, the more likely epigenetics will alter it.  The human brain, of course, is the most complicated organic system of all.
• Adaptation after youth in all species, especially human, is well documented and much discussed, but hardly understood.  Why do some people, regardless of upbringing, become antisocial failures?  Why are others superstars?  What is the magic key that socializes human beings?  Why do some adapt to poor or wonderful conditions with increased vigor and success, while others fall into ruin and, for example, addiction?  None of this is known, and constant new studies seem to indicate that what is known is wrong.
• I wake each morning, as I suppose we all do, preadapted to my immediate world.  If it has changed unrecognizably due to some disaster, I would be lost, but such is not usually the case.  Within that adaptation, I go about my limited daily routine, fitting quite well into the grooves of my life.  I accept my limitations, and strive with my ambitions.  I have been that way, it seems, for most of my life.  That is a long, ongoing, adaptation, founded on my genetics and modified by my environmental and social situation.
• All this and more is strikingly obvious by observing not only other people, but especially the rest of nature, in which we have invested no envy nor internal competition.  Birds and trees, fish and weeds, can teach us a lot about ourselves, if we just open our minds to full contemplation of their world.  Life remains an open book for us to examine.  Unfortunately, at least for the hubris that we should know everything, that book contains infinite pages.

Sunday

• Today is the Huntington Harbor festival, and the tulips have cooperated.  Booths and music and various events have been planned for the extravaganza.  Unfortunately, this picture was taken several days before.  Right now is one of the most miserable mornings we have had in a while _ very below normal temperature, nasty drizzling showers, raw wind sucking away warmth, and a grey cast to every color.
• Spring makes every plan for outdoor activity an anxious adventure.  The day may be too hot, cold, windy, rainy, overcast, soggy, or combinations of any and all of the above.  In a society that loves schedules, that leads to some frustration.  I have escaped anxiety of good weather on days off, but I remember how annoying it could be to have a lovely spell followed by a nasty weekend.  Our culture still has not learned how to adapt to circumstance except by ignoring it by moving events indoors.  I will take my poncho and make the best of it.

Lovely Tease

Monday

• Arrives the summer!  Temperatures in the seventies, bright warm sun, flowerbeds overflowing, ferns uncurling, everyone outside rejoicing that winter has gone for good.  Truly it has _ but.   Well, it’s still mid-April, as those paying taxes know well.  Although this weather may hold for a while, it will bounce considerably, and chill rain, wind, and gloom could easily descend for a week or so at any time.  Any given day might have quite a bite to it, and nights can be downright cold. 
• Home from a weekend wedding excursion to Maryland, we realize just how much we love our area of Huntington.  Perhaps other places can be just as sweet, but I think seniors _ me anyway _ always wear ruby slippers and wish to return whenever they are away very long, no matter the marvels encountered.  Of course, we are so adaptable that we can redefine “home” wherever we may settle later.  On this bright sunny morning, no place else could ever compare to my own back yard.  

Tuesday

So much to know, so much to see,

So much to do, so much to be.

No time to waste, gone in a blink,

No time to rest, reflect, nor think.

Like April showers nothing lasts

Like springtime flowers fading fast.

I’m finished chores, without a care,

I contemplate all from my chair.

Wednesday

• Adaptability of temperate zone vegetation (and fauna) is amazing.  People may become upset or depressed about variations in the weather _ freeze, wind, rain, heat, sun, drought _ but they can always go inside to comfort and have a glass of water.  Trees and flowers and insects and birds have no such option.  Yet they survive and thrive.  At this time of year everything moves at a frantic pace: new leaves opening at nearly blinding speed, birds frantically flitting to find mates and build nests. 
• Life on this planet is stunning.  Like everyone else, I take it for granted.  I read about life millions of years ago, and what may happen in the future, and what may exist in the far reaches of space, all interesting intellectual fantasies.  But I force myself also to try to understand exactly how miraculous and infinite the web of Earth _ Gaia _ is on this exact moment in this exact spot.  I can sometimes imagine a meaning or force in our universe that concerns itself with human affairs.  I remain incapable of imagining such encompassing every insect, leaf, bird, and blossom in our whole vast and miraculous world.

Thursday

We bask in warm sun high at Coindre Hall, gazing over the blue harbor, smiling at the noisy antics of two huge hovering bumblebees.  Higher temperatures have hatched all kinds of flying insects.  We futilely wave through a mini-swarm of gnats that unerringly hover directly in front of our eyes.

“Mayflies,” snaps Ed suddenly.

“What?” I slowly come out of my reverie.

“Here today, one day, gone tomorrow.  All life’s like that, too short, too lost, too forgotten.”
“My, aren’t you the cheerful one.  Well, I guarantee you there are no mayflies.  One _ it isn’t May yet.  Two _ they only live in running fresh water, of which we have none.  And three _ if there were any they wouldn’t be up here on top of the hill since they only skim a little ways above the surface until a trout leaps and gobbles them.”

“That’s the idea,” he responds sullenly.  “Compared to the time and majesty of the universe we are worse and more useless and shorter-lived than mayflies.”

“Well, compared to the time and majesty of the universe the sun itself is only around for a little while, and surely doesn’t count for much in the grand scheme of the galaxies.  Big deal.”

“So depressing …”

“Nope,” I chirp.  “We share one thing with mayflies that makes it all worthwhile.”

“You’re kidding.”

“We keep on going.  We want to fulfil our life span.  Survival, with all that implies.  Continuation to a new generation.  We have no choice, as long as we’re alive.  It’s what this,” I spread my arms, “is all about, if it is about anything.”

“I still think it’s basically mayflies.”

“Maybe mayflies are happy, in their own way,” I argue.

“Jeez, go away and let me be grouchy,” Ed growls.

“Well, of course,” I head on down the hill to the shoreline.  “That’s part of it too, you know.”  I didn’t wait for his reaction, the day was too beautiful.  Sometimes it’s better not to think too much.

Friday

• Ferns uncoiling from beds of leaves are almost alien forms.  So unlike the buds and blossoms and leaves of everything else except fungi, they astound with an alternate vision of renewal.  Fossils reveal an ancient lineage, ferns were here long before any flowering plants, covered lands before animals emerged from the sea.  Even now, they need no help for pollination or dispersal of spores, using only wind.  Easily ignored, yet beautiful in garden and woods everywhere.
• My mind leaps into metaphors and similes perhaps too easily.  I can imagine my accomplishments as blossoms, my daily struggles like a tree in storm,  my aging like seasons through a year.  Trying to do so with fiddleheads unfurling is difficult.  They stand apart, comparisons escape me.  I am once again grateful that I can be so confused, amazed, and surprised.

Saturday

• All around this April, nature is “doing something.”  Each plant, each animal, even the molecules frantically circulating in all living beings is “doing something.”  I’m so tired of hearing that our political leaders should be business people who know how to “do something. “ What we really need is an ecologist or gardener, who understands complexity and contradiction and balance.
• Business works by focusing on one narrow goal, with maybe a couple of side glances.  Make money.  Eliminate competition.  Throw out what is in your way.  It’s a bulldozer razing a rain forest, and well fitted for those with incomplete views of the universe.  It’s an artificial game, that has no relevance to season, nature, or human society.
• People are part of an organic whole, just like my yard and our entire world.  Multiple goals, various strategies, conflict, tension and coexistence are more important than winning.  Adjustments and adaptations must be made.  Some complexity is never resolved, simply suspended in contradictory coexistence.  Principles based on that should guide society, which is a mirror of our natural heritage.  A business leader is befuddled in that situation, because desired outcomes lack a clear purpose or way of determining if the company is “winning.” 
• The absolute worst leader a society can have is someone who wants to “win.”  That requires picking out one or two clear goals which will supersede any other consideration.  Such a situation resembles introducing an invasive plant like kudzu into a fragile ecology, and is just as disastrous in the long run for the culture which it overruns, impoverishes, and destroys. 
• The lessons of nature are unfortunately lost in this election season, as candidates spend their time eating in delis and spouting canned speeches to crowds and cameras.  I wish that just once a week they’d be forced to spend a day in forest or field, observing silently the ways of a red winged blackbird or contemplating how the wealth of the world came into being, and how all humans need it still.  They might even notice that “doing things” can happen in different ways than they think.
• My utopian dream of the week.  Now true April returns, leaving the eighty degree temperatures we have been experiencing as a fond memory while we return to more seasonable weather.  But this lovely teasing spell has served its purpose, and all the world unfolds once more, heedless of political parties and angry multitudes.

Sunday

• Perfect timing on weather this year has led to spectacular results.  Shots of very warm air have forced open some late bloomers like tulips and crabapples, while cool nights and a return to less extreme days preserved the rest.  So this area is covered in brilliant beds of tulips, carpets of dandelions,  ragged drifts of lingering forsythia, clouds of cherry blossoms,  brilliant accents of pink crabapples, and, of course, all the varied fresh colors of new foliage.  Only the magnolias seem to have left the parade.
• Even people, now having had a taste of very warm and humid days, are relieved that we’re back to the usual sixties.  As long as there are no more drops below fifty, all will be perfect.  But _ that will change.  I find these patterns resemble my life track _ sudden change followed by a lingering plateau _ for better or worse.  This particular springtime plateau is one of the best seasons we have had since _ well, the last one.

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.

Cold Hold

Monday

• Willows in Huntington’s town park ignore freezing blustery gales.  Spring rushed in on unusual warmth following a mild fall and winter.  Now that crocuses show only green leaves, daffodils wave in the breeze, and cherries are in bloom, nature has slowed the pace.  What seem to be snowflakes driven by fierce winds are actually petals ripped from tree blossoms.
• Much of life involves managing expectations.  Perhaps that is one reason TV weather forecasters love exaggeration.  Expecting a blizzard and receiving a few inches is a kind of present, while expecting a calm day and finding that same snow can be depressing.  In that sense, early April is one long deception, with predictions about as useful as wooden nickels.  But as the saying goes, if you don’t like it now, wait a few minutes.

Tuesday

Deadly April breeze swept through

Killing blossoms just begun

Chilling winds in spite of sun
Confounding truths I thought I knew

Cold this day which haunts my soul

Where went lovely restful scenes

Warmly yellow reds and greens?

When comes my summer soft and whole

Lusty birds shriek all is well

Ignoring freezes as they fly   

No reason for my mournful cry

I must adjust, escape this spell

I’m spoiled, I want just what I wish

Nature must conform to plan

I seek control, I am a man

But also webbed in all of this

Wednesday

• Water can serve as a moderating influence during temperature swings.  Harborside generally blooms later than a few miles inland, but on the other hand it is rarely blasted when infrequent deep frost settles in from the Arctic for a few nights.  Nevertheless, temperatures in the low twenties can rupture cell structures, even for these weeds.  In a few days new growth will shoot up _ that’s part of being a weed, after all.
• Hard time of year to be a farmer (well, being a farmer is always hard.)  Early fruit blossoms look wonderful, but such frost can kill many of the blooms and reduce the apple, pear, peach, and cherry crops significantly.  Unlike weeds, tree blossoms are one-shot each season; once lost the chance for fruit is gone.  As climate changes, people can huddle in houses, but perhaps the most dire effects outside of droughts are the massive storms, high winds, and sudden temperature variations.  We can live through most weather, but not if there is nothing to eat. 

Thursday

I was just rounding the corner by Knutson’s Marina, finally shielded from a fierce north wind, when I saw Joanne jogging towards me, dressed in shorts and a light sweatshirt.  We both started to laugh.

Pointing at me, she ran in place “Jeez, you look ready for the next blizzard, Wayne.”

“Well, you look like it’s tropical beach time,” I retorted.  “My wife would say you’re gonna catch your death.”

“My boyfriend would claim you’re about to give yourself heatstroke.”

It’s true I was somewhat overdressed, with glove and knitted watch cap and heavy coat.  “Us old people,” I noted, “catch colds easily and find them hard to get rid of.”

“Nah,” she replied.  “I just saw an older guy dressed just like me.  He was moving faster too,” she teased.

“Knees,” I excused my speed.  “Anyway, how we feel weather is probably mostly in our heads anyway.”

“Well, the calendar says spring and in spring I wear shorts to exercise.”

“The thermometer says winter and I dress appropriately.”

“Ok, old guy, creak along down the road.  You’re missing the lovely sunshine.”

“If spring chicken doesn’t put on at least sweatpants she may miss next week entirely.”

We laughed at each other again and continued our opposite ways on a morning that was apparently totally different for each of us.

Friday

• Nature seems almost suspended, as forsythias and daffodils remain in full bloom, tulips advance slowly green upward, and early azaleas are hesitantly swelling buds.  Each walk on each day seems identical.  It had been thus, of course, each winter day, but expectations of activity are high now.  Weather is far warmer than it had been, but far colder than impatiently desired.
• There is no garden work to be done.  Just wait a little while and storms will break, I tell myself.  Just keep walking and enjoying and looking.  But it almost seems a personal conspiracy of elemental forces, suggesting I use this rather as an end of hibernation, finishing reading and whatever, before rushing off.  I should accept this all gracefully.  I am not saintly enough.

Saturday

We are all spoiled now.  Our ancestors were generally forced into daily or seasonal patterns.  Even with the use of fire, night was far different than day.  Food had to be stored carefully in fall for consumption during winter.  Crops had to be planted at the proper time, when even the moon was taken into account.

Now we throw a light switch for utopia.  Instant light and heat, constant entertainment, feast food by driving five minutes down the street.   Driving down the street, for that matter, without hitching up old Dobbin.  

Oh, I love being spoiled.  Being over sixty, especially poor and over sixty, was never this wonderful.  Louis XIV, the richest man in the world, was considered an incredibly ancient decrepit and useless man by the time of his death at 73.  Medicine and rising social standards of living have worked their marvels.  Rationally, I find my complaints such as they are trivial indeed.

And I am indeed caught in an odd state, like this week of April itself.  Rushing forward to summer, sap rising, grass growing, blooms swelling, sunshine longer, and a hint here or there of warm breezes to come.  Yet also holding back, enjoying what will soon pass, no more daffodils for another year.  If the world, or I, see another year and spring.  So I want to seize the life I have and enjoy it. 

But holding fast is always an illusion, even in this week of drip and bluster.  All will change instantly with a single day or two of southern winds.  Or, more personally, with one catastrophic or ongoing change to our health.

Sunday

• As often at this time of year, outside beckons.  Birds flit madly about the seeds in the birdfeeder.  Squirrels pursue their incessant chases and frolics.  The sky is wonderfully blue, at least when clouds temporarily part long enough to see it.  Sunsets linger into evening, instead of rushing by in the afternoon.
• Time to change the wardrobe and rush out.  And then, I step into the cold, feel the raw damp draining all my warmth and good spirits.  Often I merely content myself with a few minutes of staring from the porch, perhaps a short stroll to see what’s going on in the front yard, and then back to waiting for what should be better times.  A great time to develop meditation and philosophy.  Unfortunately, that brilliant sun keeps distracting me.

Time Elastic

Monday

• This weekend in the Christian world words like “eternal” and “forever” were frequently and fervently tossed about.  What such concepts actually mean, like that of time itself, is hardly clear.  Consciousness, after all, is experienced as an instantaneous timeless moment, with only memories to stitch it into a continuous flow.  Yet denying time is silly, it’s used meaningfully in a common sense way, and science can measure its intervals with precision.  Science, on the other hand, knows how arbitrary such measurements are, especially at quantum scale, and has absolutely no handle on “eternity.”
• A birthday week encourages thoughts of the passage of days, years and decades, and forces a hard look on exactly how I am using my conscious moments now.  In an abstract, meditative way the times I have experienced almost seem more an illusion than reality.  My current momentary existence is increasingly difficult to comprehend.  Common sense, fortunately, intervenes, and I fall into the flow of conventional time passage without much difficulty, and remember the past, and plan the future, and go about my business.  But “forever” and “jabberwocky” remain equal parts gibberish in my confused mind.

Tuesday

Yesterday I was a child

Last night I dreamed I’d become old

What happened?

Daffodils smile yellow.

Wednesday

• Wild garlic is easily overlooked as a sign of spring, and more often than not once noticed in a garden is immediately weeded out.  Most of the showy species around here _ forsythia, daffodils, cherries, crocuses, roses, even Norway maples _ are imports.  Globalization since 1492 has overwhelmed most of the local species, especially in populated areas.  But garlic and dandelions were always here, within a given meaning of always, and were used as food and presumably medicine by native Americans since they first arrived on these sandy shores.
• Some mourn the loss of what has been.  Possibly the most radical element of Western mythology is the idea that time is not forever circular, but an arrow with beginning and end.  Our singular lives as baby and child through aging and death are not exceptional illusion, they are truth.  The idea that a forest or mountain is permanent, that seasons repeat forever, that continents or the sun will always be as they are and were, is the great falsehood.  Gradually I have realized that the times through which I lived are unique, never to repeat.  Perhaps I have been some cosmic form of wild garlic, but in my vanity I would rather believe I resembled a dandelion.   

Thursday

Blustery clear morning, I’m strolling Hecksher Park and flop down next to Bill, sitting quietly on a bench overlooking the newly rebuilt swan nest.  “Been here long?” I begin.

“Depends what you mean by long, I suppose.”

“Uh, well,” so it’s going to be one of those conversations.

“By the clock, I don’t know, maybe an hour or so.  Honestly I have no idea.”

“Time just passing you by?” I needle.  “Nothing to do this fine day.”

“I am doing something,” he points out reasonably.  “And enjoying it quite nicely until you came along.”

“What way besides the clock would you suggest makes your stay long or short?”

“Well, Wayne, from my own standpoint it was no time at all.  I’ve just been suspended here as the world whirled along.  I can see from your antic shallowness that you would have considered it a boringly interminable interlude of tedium.”

“Not fair.  I sit sometimes …”

“Maybe.  Anyway, seems a very short time to me.  However, I’ve watched joggers flitting by like mayflies the whole time, flit, flit” he points out a couple rushing alongside the lake.  “From their standpoint I’m as solid and everlasting as this bench.”

“And you have been lost in considering the nature of time and its elasticity and other mysterious and elemental ruminations,” I continue.

“Perhaps time has no meaning,” he intones like a TV guru, “but you wouldn’t know.”

“OK, I can take a hint,” I say, getting up.  “Boy, you must have gotten up on the wrong side of bed this morning.  You’re in some kind of mood.”

“Mood? Mood?” he stares at the sky a moment.  “That’s a whole different question …”

Friday

• Warm breezes bring clouds and rain, bright sun accompanies chill.  In between it’s nice to sit and watch the water blown about with casual gusts, as geese, ducks, seagulls, and a few lazy migrants cavort.  One or two boats are ready to go, owners anxious to take advantage of any spectacular day that might arrive. 
• I sit and think maybe I should be doing more.  Upon a time I would write, or draw, or paint, or fill my mind with plans and hopes.  My joints are happy to just sit and do nothing, reminding me they are no longer 21.  By afternoon, various muscles will join that chorus.  My brain tries to convince itself that it is as good as ever, which works until I try to remember calculus or chemistry.  So I sit, I gaze, the world spins.  Time suspends even as it rushes by.

Saturday

• Western Civilization for the last two thousand years has sought the underlying simplicity of everything.  A confusion of gods and goddesses, for example, were simplified into one.  Since at least the Renaissance there were further attempts to locate the prime mover, the first cause, unifying mathematic  “laws”,  the building blocks of matter and energy.
• Much of that worked and created a more prosperous and even more magical world.  Understanding how all life on earth is related or pondering deep secrets of universal gravity in no way diminishes our appreciation of all that is.  We confidently track the past back to a big bang, we confidently predict what will happen to our solar system in billions of years.  Entropic Time itself would appear to be one of the simplest rules of our cosmos.
• But.  Finding the underlying “simple” rules do not negate the fact that we exist in an infinitely complex state, surrounded by infinitely complex systems.  Describing the past and predicting the future does not help us understand our momentary consciousness.  Time is “just there” but we truly have no greater conception of its nature than any five year old.
• I think on this now because our society is sliding into another belief system where simple solutions should fix everything.  Simple morality, simple taxes, simple savagery, simple government.  Few want to point out that social systems, like our bodies themselves, are complex unities.  For fifty years we believed that simply giving people everywhere more goods and services would lead to a simple golden age.  It has not.  Worse than that, simplistic political and/or religious fanatics are ready to tear down all that has been achieved.
• I meditate on the nature of time.  Simple, uncontrolled, necessary, arrogant time, which sometimes drifts by without notice, sometimes presses me into panic, sometimes drags forever until it is suddenly gone.  Whatever essential time may be, my experience of it is about as complex as anything encountered in my life.  If I ignore that great fact, my days are in trouble. 
• Simple can be beautiful.  When simple is declared absolute it can also be deadly.    

Sunday

• Time may be simple, may be complex, may be the most unknowable thing in the universe.  What matters is the instantaneous slice called a moment.  Perhaps there are many moments, but we only actually ever experience one, which is now.  Now as I write is a dark drizzly day, rapidly becoming colder, filled with mysteries and beauties which I could never describe nor enumerate.
• Philosophers have spent lives cogitating on exactly what and why with no conclusion.  Scientists measure and tag everything else, but time remains elusive.  The nature of time is a rock upon which reason shatters. And thus my elastic time moves along _ this week rushed past, this afternoon crawls slowly, and my entire previous life seems as instantaneous as this keystroke.

Chromatic Contrasts

Monday

• Like the start of a fireworks show, this first week of spring produces noticeable explosions of color against background browns either in nearby flower beds or far off landscapes.  No longer necessary to peer anxiously checking if one crocus is beginning to open _ there are clumps of them shouting for attention.  Daffodils wave brilliantly, but hillsides remain mostly a harmony of sienna and umber.  Blushes of red and yellow-green fuzz crowns of trees. 
• Also like beginning a fireworks show, I have not yet become jaded.  The first starbursts and fading trailers still evoke ooohs and aaahs from the audience.  In coming weeks there will be more and more, overwhelming in quantity and quality, and yet, somehow, that will remain less exciting than a single forsythia high on a hillside, a blotch of magnificent gold, bravely alone awaiting possible snow.

Tuesday

Lawns are greening, skies bright blue,

Winds blow chill, snow may be due

Daffodils shine every day

Yellow nod along my way

Crocus blooms chained to sun

Open morning, quickly done

Sunlit maples making love

Fogged in scarlet high above

Now I cheer each bright new show

Overhead or down below

Almost too soon this time moves on

Another prelude season gone

Wednesday

• Easter week, which some neighbors take as a signal that yards must be scoured as deeply as kitchen countertops.  Predictions and actuality of a quickly-melted beautiful snowfall have narrowed the window for cleanup.  Today yard crews are blasting everywhere with multi-megawatt leaf blowers strapped to their backs _ they’d use nuclear if it were available.  Noise level is approaching insanity.
• There are many things taught in school, but unfortunately none involve aesthetics.  Our binary culture firmly believes that every leaf and twig should be banished to wilderness, every lawn should be monocultured, poisoned, drenched, and barren.  Instead of realizing a few leaves, even weeds, add elegance, balance and communion with the natural world, we consider them an affront to our consumer sensibility, wealth display, and control.  I don’t much care that such an attitude is sadly wrong _ I am annoyed that it must be so noisy.

Thursday

While admiring the harbor view from the top of Coindre Hall, I noticed Linda toiling in front of an easel under a subtly flowering maple.  “Ah, starting a new career?” I asked as I strolled down.

“No, I’m more of a Churchillian artist,” she wiped her brush on a handy rag. 

“Blood, sweat and tears?” I inquired, startled.  “Surely it doesn’t take that much out of you, even at our age.”

“No,” she laughed, “And speak for yourself!”

“But that’s Churchill…”

“Just a part. He was a complex man.  Surely you read his book on painting?”

I remembered something vaguely.  “Oh, yeah, he had an exhibit at the Met once, right?”

“More than that.  Painting as a Pastime is still an excellent guide for amateurs on exactly what we think we are doing wasting our time making pictures.”

“And that is?” I had become intrigued, and my memory wasn’t pulling anything else up.

“He said nobody really understands how hard it is to see unless they try to paint.  Lines are hard, but colors are impossible.  Every time you look, relationships have shifted.  He was absolutely right.”

“Doesn’t that just frustrate you?”

“No, surprisingly it just makes me see better.”

“Well, very nice picture, good luck anyway,” I encouraged, continuing on towards the water.   

“No need to lie ….” drifted from behind as I suddenly noticed the subtle shifting hues within shadows.

Friday

• Unusually warm temperatures followed residual chill of snowstorm, typical spring swing.  Today has settled into the normal middle: cold in wind, warm in sun, always on the edge of “too.”  Along the harbor, temperatures run five or more degrees below what they are inland, fifteen or so below reports from New York City.  Consequently, floral displays change dramatically within short distances.
• This pattern will hold for a while.  I waver  _ grateful that winter has gone, somewhat anxious for May to arrive.  Certain garden chores can begin, although there are limits to what can be accomplished.  Chance of frost remains, but we put out pansies to brighten the patio.  I enjoy staring at crocuses finishing up their run. Blooms pop up everywhere, sometimes exposed when I clear off the detritus of winter storms.  Spring is _ above all _ surprising.

Saturday

• A set of famous pictures looks like a duck/rabbit, or a woman’s profile/vase, depending on how you glance at them.  Optical illusions show what is not there.  We used to think that what we see is somehow “real” but now we know we are only interpreting photons hitting a biologic maze to trigger chemical/electrical messages interpreted by interconnected neurons.  And those photons are bouncing off impossibly odd combinations of weird forces acting in an emptiness that is not even space.  Seeing may be believing, but it is far from absolute truth.
• Aesthetics _ theories of perfect visual combination _ are arbitrary.  Logical constructions declare one thing right, another wrong.  Such a theory will claim, for example, that a complementary color may clash, or accent, or harmonize in a scene. Meanwhile, we only see what we expect.  Some of us look at a scene and notice certain patterns _ houses, cars, a piece of trash _ while others admire shrubs in bloom, green grass, and opaque clouds. 
• As a game, aesthetics modifies notions of beauty.  We are capable of admiring formal gardens, or wild waterfalls, or jungle or desert or anything else.  Our tastes are infinite, and we can shape our environment to please or startle us with unexpected contrast or pleasingly matched subtlety.  Those with vast wealth and power _ Cheops, Tiberius, Kublai Khan, Louis XIV, the Vanderbilts _ constructed immense artificial wonders based on particular opinions, which most of us are happy to experience for a while.
• With more modest means, I try to be more practical.  Realizing that aesthetics are entirely in my own mind, I must shape my own mind when I cannot control the outside world.  A rotting boat in the harbor could strike me as ugly unless I consider it picturesque.  Since I can do nothing about the wider environment, controlling my appreciation of it is simply common sense.
• That approach has limits.  Ragweed is beautiful, in a certain way, but I will rip it out of my garden.   Discarded snack wrappers add bits of color to the roadside, but I may clean them up.   If I accept everything, I will do nothing, not even that which I ought to do.  But if I try too much, I become frustrated and as callous as my neighbors frantically blowing leaves into oblivion.  Unlike in movies or self-help books, there is no happily rational middle path.
• Nature happily ignores my inner turmoil, and plops any color anywhere and dares me to enjoy it.

Sunday

• Carpet of purple mint has its moment in the sun, but is too subtle for most folks to notice.  It’s not simply rushing about in cars, but an entire attitude of ignoring the environment except on special occasions.  Many pedestrians grimly staring straight ahead with internal intensities matching their dutiful exercise, others lost in music from earbuds to pass an otherwise boring interlude, many of the rest talking on phones.  This entire marvelous world is taken for granted, while more important business takes precedence.
• Once in a while I wish I were a real photographer with professional equipment.  Here the purple is washed out, and I regret it’s not more dramatic.  But I remind myself that the purpose of this blog is not to amaze anyone with the photographs, nor stun with my insights.  There’s enough of that in the world already, and more all the time.  These are just poorly captured moments of an average person on an average day trying to pay more attention to my immediate surroundings.  A spiritual exercise, if you will.  No prayers nor meditations are deepened with fancier apparatus.