Just Breathe...

The following is a transcript of some free writing I did this afternoon.  I don't often hand write things because I find that my hand cannot keep up with my brain in any meaningful, legible way.  There are times, however, where I make an exception for some reason.  Today was one of those times...I did not overthink it much, I did not take the time to edit or craft it.  I just put it from paper to screen.

I'm sitting in the Arboretum as I write this.  It is probably my favorite place to be of late, especially near to home.  My summer was full of turmoil - much of it of my own making - and I often retreated here for solace and to escape the noise of the whirlwind around me.  Numerous visits for several months brought me from late spring through summer and now into fall.  This has afforded me the opportunity to see the change from the growth of spring to the vibrancy of summer and now the slow decay of autumn as Mother Earth prepares herself for the long winter to come.  It is hard to stay lost in man-made desperation and chaos when each step rattles the world -- a chipmunk darts across the path ahead, while a turtle slips into the waters to one side and something rustles in the dry leaves on the other.  There is silence, but it is folded into the scurrying of unseen creatures, the call of the bullfrog, the song of hidden birds.  From visit to visit, the swamp would rise and fall according to the will of the rain, and a single leaf falls or countless cascade around me at the will of the wind.  Not a single care I bring with me can stop this ebb and flow of nature's endless cycle.  I have watched the brook near to bursting from spring's powerful torrents and cautiously stepped around fallen logs and bending branches which were not there the walk before.  I have startled wildlife, sat in the sunlight, been drench in a sudden downpour.  I have wiped sweat from my eyes as I peered into a tree where two herons perched and crept as quiet as may be towards sunbathing turtles, hoping to capture them in frozen image before they slipped away.  I have peered fruitlessly into the trees trying to see what rustled in the undergrowth or hopped from branch to branch.  I have had camera on hand in exactly the right moment to capture snakes, crawdads, a rainbow of birds and flowers, dragonflies and bees, a fawn and a snapping turtle.  All allowed me to step into their world and, for a time, live there in respectful distance, my errands no less important than theirs.  My survival differently but equally dependent on what I found there.  

I have sat for hours on the board walk, on a log, on a patch of leaves, on a grassy hill above the wetlands, searching for peace and coming closer to it than I dared hope.  Immersing myself in nature is profoundly moving in seemingly contradictory ways - I feel at once alone and yet in tune with the vibrant life around me.  I feel insignificant but somehow an intricate part of something powerful at the same time.  I am equally enamored of a bug skimming the surface of the water as I am of the trees pushing their way towards the bluest of skies.  Each remind me of the strength and grace that nature gives both her largest and smallest creatures.  Each intricate leaf, each unnamed plant, each unrecognized flower, each sound I cannot place is part of me and I of it.  I owe my soul and my heart to the hours I've spent listening to my own footsteps, hearing my own heartbeat, feeling the air fill my own lungs, and taking in each minute beautiful detail of the world with my own eyes.  This is peace  - I come seeking it, outwardly, and find it within.  Tranquility in endless movement and chaotic rhythms.  Finding beauty in a submerged log, a fallen leaf, browned grasses pushing through a stump half drowning in swampy waters.  No matter what ails me, what troubles I found or made, life will go on.  Birth from death, renewal from decay, the promise of a greater tomorrow. And even in the crumpled leaf and the broken twig, there is hope and beauty and promise.  Serenity.


There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
—Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”

Water Warmth (Freewrite)

Yesterday, I gave my Introduction to Literature class the following prompt:  When you're having a really bad day, what do you do / where do you go?  If money, time, and travel were not an issue, where would you go and why?

Below is an unedited transcription of what I wrote in class in response to that same prompt.

***

 When I have a bad day, I really don't go anywhere or do anything - I just fold myself into my games and my home, putting on comfy pants, getting some hot cocoa -- perhaps a  hot bath.  Warmth seems to be key today -- though that may be a result of fall coming.  I get lost in writing or gaming, a tv show, or a book.  Something to take my mind off whatever it is.  I often look for affirmation -- comfort from friends.  Sometimes I want to talk it out, sometimes I want to forget it.  IT all depends on what it is.  Comfort is key -- sometimes nature is key as well.

If I could go anywhere, I think I would go somewhere with water.  Camping.  Unplug and unwind.  A beach.  I'm just now realizing my association with water as a soothing element.  I wonder if this is because I'm usually closer to fire -- candles, campfires, heat, warmth.  Perhaps water is a counter to that -- baths, rivers, waterfalls, waves.  There is an allure there.  I even find comfort in a rain day on occasion.  It makes me want to retreat into that idea of comfort and warmth.

Water.

Warmth.

Comfort.

"Earth's the right place for live:  I don't know where it's likely to go better"

Sore Pignals...

One of the first blogs I wrote was a rant against both fortune cookies and Sleep Number beds. I still feel strongly about both – in fact, I was thrilled to get an actual fortune the other day and also thrilled to find that there were real mattresses in this year’s room at the hotel where I first encountered Sleep Numbers. My life has strange highlights, and these were two of them. Notably, PF Chang’s still gave out one more cookie than there were people at the table.

Today, I want to talk about two other revolutionary products – only one of which I can actually remember. The first goes back a ways, to my honeymoon as a matter of fact. J. and I don’t have cable at home, so we tend to watch TV whenever we go anywhere that has it. Our honeymoon was no different. Although we spent many hours in the sun, at the beach, wandering around Bermuda, visiting sites, and generally enjoying the cruise – we also spent time in our stateroom watching a marathon of Law & Order: SVU. Romantic, I know. I still remember the occasional signal lost on the rolling ship and it wasn’t long before ‘Poor Signal’ turned into ‘Sore Pignals’ simply because it was amusing. We’re odd. This should surprise no one.

Anyway – during that marathon, there also seemed to be a marathon of infomercial ads for Aqua Globes. If you don’t know what an Aqua Globe is, it’s a glass ball on a tube that you fill with water. The idea is that the water slowly runs down the tube into your plants and waters them for you. It was only about the second time the infomercial came on that I began to deconstruct it. The rants relating to Aqua Globes left J. in tears, I’m fairly sure. The first issue I took with it is that if the people in the ad were truly as idiotic as it seemed they were, I don’t think I would trust them with any glass object, let alone one with a hollow glass tube that tapered into a point. These people were insane. They would tend to their plants with so much water that there’d be an inch-deep pond where their wooden end-table surface used to be. I kept waiting for the infomercial that sold end tables with the two-inch lipped edges to save your things from falling off or, in this case, water-damaging your carpet. If you put so much water in a plant that it completely saturated the soil and then created a reflecting pool on random surfaces in your domicile, then I’m not sure that Aqua Globes were going to solve your deeper problems. Just a thought. Also, if I cannot be trusted to water my plants every few days – so they wilt and die and turn my house into a black and white image from the Depression – then how am I going to remember to fill the Aqua Globe every two weeks? And how I earth will I manage to stop filling the Globe when it’s full, since I can’t seem to water a plant without rivaling the Great Flood?

The other item is the one I can’t remember, but it has something to do with shaving or, more accurately, unwanted hair removal. The only part of the ad I can remember is, of course, in black and white. It seems typical to cast one’s life in shades of grey when you don’t have whatever As-Seen-On-TV item they are selling at the moment. It’s like the ad industry’s version of the Wizard of Oz – though I’m fairly certain the ad execs have more drugs. Anyway, the woman in the commercial is sitting on the toilet in a robe with her foot up on the bathroom sink. She has about three inches of what seems to be men’s shaving cream slathered all over her leg and she’s dragging a dry razor up her shin bone with speeds rivaling an Ariel Atom V8 500 (I’ve been watching some Top Gear lately and that’s the car topping their leaderboard at the moment for Driving Really Fast Around the Test Track). The image then indicates somehow that the woman has cut herself. Every time I see this, I’m fairly certain this woman deserves to have her leg sliced up if this is how she’s choosing to shave it. I know they exaggerate these things for effect, but when it hurtles into the realm of absurdly comical, then it’s hard for me to take any of it seriously. In fact, this commercial sunk in so much that I cannot even remember what it’s for. All I can do is surmise that we are meant to feel smarter than these people and that if we see a small reflection of our own failings in them, maybe we’ll feel better about calling in the next 10 minutes and getting a second set at no extra cost.

The more I think about it, perhaps that woman is in such a hurry because she can hear water flooding her living room from the excess water she put in her hydrangea just minutes before going in to the bathroom to drive shave her leg with her husband’s Barbasol.

In any event, I need to go read a book or do something without advertisements because even thinking about these commercials is giving me sore pignals.