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.
     

Cultivating Gratitude

Being in a state of gratitude, Say the gurus leads to a mental peace, even bliss.

Pulling the veils off commonality to feel the aha light of warmth that comes with thankful memories of a moment when my father reached out to show me beauty and a miracle of even a broken mussel shell was handed to me, then, long ago on a beach near Amsterdam.

Perhaps, that day, the gift of recognizing beauty was given me, and I am so thankful to creation that I was chosen to follow beauty as a mission, and to share it with those who doubt that whether God, or not, our lives are each a miracle, and while I'm sure chance had a major role, there's something else driving the universe, and when I am in awe of creation, and simultaneously thankful with all my soul for the opportunity to be here today, here, now and fully aware.  Then, gratitude is a sort of bliss, and I search for as many things I took for granted to recognize, as I can.

Wabi Sabi or the art of Decay

      Ah, the forlorn sight of history ignored, wasted, decomposed, and expressed in warped geometric shadows...why do I find this beautiful?  Perhaps because it says more clearly than any words what the ultimate fate of all things will be...decay, and ultimately disappearance...

     Some inner voice, the preserver, wants to shout..."Save this! It's important to the story of that part of Washington State centered on Chelan and Douglas Counties.  The vast open spaces around Waterville and the immense winters long kept these people isolated until machinery capable of keeping roads open in blizzards and snowdrifts from wind.

     Nonetheless, standing before this house brings imagery of a very hardworking isolated family whose neighbors were miles away, and who needed to be prepared for harsh winters.   Perhaps, as a European born child after WWII in Amsterdam with memories of recent war torn buildings I am unconsciously also drawn to my early childhood, as I see the comings and goings of decades and centuries of buildings, people, artifacts, and the lack of interest we show in even the previous few decades, like JFK's assasination almost as antique in the mind of youth as Abraham Lincoln's.

    Words like abondonment, neglect, waste, and a sense of sadness that we have come to this, that families no longer have an option to live 'off' the land to supply their needs unless they can carry a huge mortgage.

Knots in Weathered Siding

     Wood knots share their name with knots in rope for good reasons. Knots are not easy to untie, and wood knots particularly tend to be that portion of the wood with greatest density around which the rest of the wood has to migrate.
It is dehydrated artery and vein of the tree seen in cross section.
Weathered wood from abandoned houses provide inspiration, and reflection on our history and our past, but they also conjure up the analogies of knots in our souls, knots in our relationships, knots tied too loosely, and knots tied too tightly.
As with the tree, our knot should not only be a tie, but also a confluence of nutrients, a path to flowing saps that will determine it strength, continued growth, and contain a template of past years.

     

Because this knot was taken from the siding of an old house near Waterville  off Highway 2, that had long been abandoned, and the house in total disrepair, I couldn't help but think of history, and why we cannot see that our history, what our ancestors, both Native American and European invaders who lived here, had to endure ( before cell phones (-: )and the lifestyles necessary for their survival, 

And yet a knot still exists, larger and more complex than ever, but it is there, part of an even greater knot, or web as knots are hard to untie.  

Likewise the knots in our mind, those harder transfer points of mind, soul, and body.  Here, knots can cause problems, they need to be carefully monitored as not too tight, or too lose.

Families must work with these knot networks to make sure the flow is even, not crusted, and lubricated from time to time, as oil, on a wood knot will help preserve it as well.

Contemposcribe

The closer you look, the more fascinating it gets...

      Another dormancy has arrived...a few hours of precious daylight, sometimes even the sun.  Knowing the landscape, I've learned these early winter days leave fascinating advances and retreats of water vs. ice, and that the frozen fluid shapes reveal a lot about every moment each frozen layer encountered, much like we're learning about our world through tree rings.
Then I sat down, and looked at one bubble frozen temporarily in time, and saw the complex web of tubules and fractures, curves and micro-infrastructure was involved even in the 3 inch bubble, frozen.
Of course I had to do a lot of manipulating the original to reveal this complexity, but that we can illustrate using what we see, although enhanced, is itself a miracle.