Don't It Always Seem to Go That You don't Know What You've Got Until It's Gone
Joni Mitchell

So many things I've taken for granted,

Now, at 72 I'm finally paying attention to the details,

The harder to capture scale of reality,

The intimate relationships between the insects, the microbes, the microrhizal fungi, their relationship to plants, and on and on,

And just as we learn these things, our impact on the planet has been so profoundly negative, that we've already impacted so many links in the web of life, that we're feeling the effect.

Without bees we'll enter some dark ages of food production,

And our persistent use of the same toxic chemicals to control the current corporate agricultural demands on the land are devastatingly long term with many components no longer available.

There is a disaster lurking on the horizon when the balance between sustainability and lack of adequate components in the necessary web of life, that we ourselves will find ourselves challenged...like the suffering in Ethiopia or other drought and drained lands.

Why Did I Take This Picture?

     Even I don't know for sure.  The red of the Osier Dogwood always draws my eyes, after winter in search of flowers, and the bracken like much waiting to flatten still upright, firm, and contrasting shapes.

WHO ARE YOU?

I can just feel the tree's wisdom
 as it surveys yet another
 encroachment  on wildspirit
by a century of development
 with grazing,
 and orchards,
and pesticides
 and trucks
 and tractors
 until now,
like the a helmeted soldier,
The fencepost, shines with power of
Boundary - Mine -No Trespassing
.
Where is this line,
Twixt yours and  mine?

Tresspass with my feet,
No, the law says, better not.

Trespass with  my eyes,
 or next a drone?

Tresspass with my thoughts,
 my metaphoric vision,
Or don't my feelings count?

these thoughts conjure the muse in me,
to see a whole evolving Wenatchee Valley, ever more developed, ever busier, spread out suburbia,in a metaphor even I don't fully understand,

But, it's a military mood the post brings me,
in contrast to wise old sage, history, the ages that I see in the eye of that cottonwood, damaged by loss of branch and crafted into an eye to express her story.

So many perspectives, so little time left.

       Bette Davis warned me many years ago, with her monicker..."Old age is not for sissies."

     That old Who am i ? question keeps popping up...this image was me some 30 years ago while on the road somewhere journalling and gaping worlds so unlike the one here in America...worlds of Muslims in Morocco, or Hindus in India, or Bhuddists in Nepal, and a mix of both in Indonesia, and there were tribes free from all that, and of course Greek Orthodox, and Lutherans, and Catholics from land to land.

      But I didn't get the feeling that any of those labels really mattered, because they were mostly good people with good motives and civil respect for me, and helpful, friendly, courteous, and many became a friend for a few hours to talk.

       I find it tragic that people like the Klu Klux Klan, or ISIL, or Boko Haram, or some White Nazi Group feel they have a right to call themselves any religion...unless psychopathic

sadistic hatred mongering obsessive compulsive fanatics can be related to anyone's savior.

      It's hard not to break down and weep when we see the state of the human condition today.

Mother's tying bombs to themselves to blow up innocents from another clan.

       Educated men from middle class families willing to be barbarians and hack off the heads of innocent well meaning people just to stage and grab attention.

        An economic system that is virtually sterilizing the planet and creating artificial luxury at the cost of extinction of countless life forms, many we don't know, and won't because they're already extinct.

        Having to accept that our leaders are corrupt, and we have virtually no say about humanity's future because our government has become a grand stage auction of the wealthiest.

        

And yet, even I am more comfortable with a home, a garden, heat, food, sewers, water, transportation, recreation, in short all the 'needs' have been met, and add internet, lights, microwaves, hot water, mobile phones, any food in season somewhere on the planet, stoves, refrigerators, and my grandparents, even my parents would feel overwhelmed with so much luxury.

         Meanwhile, bee hives have shrunk to 30% of their population since 2007.  1000 year drought is hitting one of our most agricultural regions.

Everywhere soil is blowing away because the microrhizal layers have disappeared and nothing is holding the dirt together, or helping plants bond, or retaining moisture and nutrients.  

         I feel a debilitating helplessness watching us destroy our planet that could be overtake my attitude of awe that comes from exploring and learning about our universe, the miracles of life & consciousness, geology, chemistry, hormones, DNA, and all the other ingredients of reality which we're just now beginning to understand..

           

     We recently bought a Celestron microscope which takes pictures of what you see, and then those pictures 5 mp can be manipulated to bring out what I see...a decayed leaf, a lettuce seed, and some 'salt cubes'.  Life at this scale is fresh to me, and the deeper we now look into the structure of matter and life, from string theory in space to our DNA and its continual evolution are so astounding, and mind boggling, that I can focus on a level of reality within my range, and over which I still have some control and where there is still so much to be learned.

      Keeping the mind active, leaving the cybernetwork to be outside, hands in dirt, planting seed, pulling weeds, smelling my hands with that odor dogs roll in with bliss.

Again the moon rises, a whole sterile planet just ten times length around the earth away from us.

What opportunist plants and animals will be able to survive an increasingly unpredictable climate with extremes and huge portions of the agricultural world newly formed desert?

Will we write and even more gruesome "Grapes of Wrath".

 

   
Yes, emigrants and immigrants are the same people, but they are separate roles of the same soul.

Oh the blessings of being an immigrant,
to live in a country with so much natural scenery, mountains, rivers, valleys, space to live...'lebensraum' as Germans call it.  My father had the dream after being in the Merchant Marine of Holland and seeing Seattle and Vancouver he was lured, postwar, to escape all the Re-occuring ethnic divides, 'nationalities and principalities fighting for power, wars after wars...and for what. I was 8 when I left,
     Now, even 62 years later, I still manage to utter that Dutch in a way that my family and friends can understand me...?

Oh the sadness of being an emigrant.  To lose your extended families, have all your values constantly challenged, treated like an outsider and leaving grief behind when you see your grandmother for the last time.  Here 6 decades later, my nostalgia for the reflecting canals of Amsterdam on my way to school will always be missed...and the sense of community, the feeling of being safe as a kid on the street, with everyone looking out for one another.  I miss the history, the lapses of time, the stories of the past, the respect for the architecture...the parks where I played, the food that we ate, my grandparents. In short, emigration is a sort of inner ethnic cleansing...storing the past, and creating a new life.

Winter Doldrums

To adapt, or, not to adapt? 

That is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler to avoid the rings and textings of outrageous nonsense,

Or acquire the generational obsession of the times.

Asking the fates for the path to follow once one spends a septet of decades musing about how to create the meaning of my life, while adapting sufficiently to be "able to fake it" while trying to preserve the values and lifestyles I was raised to believe in.

On with eye contact,

Conversations in person.

Manners, sharing meals, 

The Rules of Civil Conduct and in person engagement.

From the farm by car,

From visits to telephone calls.

From families facing each other at dinner,

To TV tables with TV Dinners all eyes on the tube.

From one distraction to the next,

Until peace and quiet are like some zombie unreal moment to avoid at all cost.

Which way forward...adapt or die said Darwin,

And no doubt he was right.  

But for how long?  How much more annual change in

Eternally updating internet asking for more attention to operate the system, than to have any time left over to use it for the intended reasons...

Expanding my awareness, yes, but not at the expense of ever speeding up the illusionary cyber-reality while we remain apathetic and indifferent to a dying planet around us.

I feel I should be down right Luddite and Thoreau-ish

About all this geeky tech stuff, and then I hear tales of the great solar flares totally wiping out the 'grid'

Thus bringing us all back to a reality we've totally forgotten...communicating, exchanging goods, and dependent on our local range of goods and services locally delivered.

I guess it's called the 'generation gap'

Should old fogies actually believe that they have some wisdom to offer the younger generation?  Oh well...at least I can run a blog.

OMG: A Black Santa Claus Masquerading as a Horse

Let's see now, Sint Nikolas came from somewhere in the Mediterranean, and then Krampas, and then Father Christmas, and Black Piet that comes with Sint Nikolaas
And Jesus was white, right? Even though Jews in the middle east were more a nice brownish shade...fantasies, fantasies,
fantasies.

Temporary Frozen Inpermanence

     My metaphorical imagination can travel simultaneously through galaxies, recognize h2o crystals, and see the marvelous lines that I believe are what the Tao would refer to as the "Flow", that line that suggests the meeting point of all the forces at play in that spot at that moment...
     Wouldn't the universe be boring if there were permanence instead of constant change?  It's hard to accept, but the absence of flowers in winter, helps us appreciate them in spring; the absence of abundant sunlight leads to frozen lines of force and beauty not usually seen.
     We must see death, too, as impermanent, for it is no more than a state of dormancy, a dramatic shift of energy to other matter, and we must accept, even welcome this change, as any other, if we are to live fully in the moment without fear, without a sense of failure that we haven't completed all we desired, to recognize we are the product of our own inner forces, looking to reach stability and find those beautiful etched lines of harmony seen above.

I write these words while very conscious of a remarkable soul, Nelson Mandela, who comes as close to the Bhuddist enlightened man setting forth to enlighten others, in everything he did.  He had the courage to be himself, no matter what the consequences.  And there is, even in me, the skeptic of all matters socio-political, that we have, in Nelson Mandela, a model we can turn to in times of ethnic stress if we wish to live without violent turmoil around us.