Light and Water

There is a lagoon behind my house.  It's home to several alligators, but this year they have made themselves scarce.  I went looking for them this morning, and it was like one of those painted landscapes with a reflecting pool.  The water was perfectly still, and everything across the water was reflected in the water between.  Nothing moved in the water, and the water itself, a kind of dull brown, showed the trees, the grass and the sky without distorting the colors.  The mirror image was just that.  

It was the second unusual water scene in two days.  Last night we walked the beach around sunset.  The sun had set away from the ocean, leaving shadows and dark sand.  The water, in contrast, stayed light, holding the reflected light even with the sun away behind the trees.  In this case, the water was not reflecting an image.  Instead it clung to the light, or the light clung to it.  So the darkening sand sat alongside the bright water, a reversal after a long day of the sand showing bright in the sun while the deep green and blue of the ocean absorbed it.       

Something similar happens in the morning.  The water notices the light first and glows with a light that seems to come from within it.  As the sun makes its appearance, the water darkens to its deep blue green for another day.    

How does the water change itself?  It uses the light, the same light that surrounds us all day, making it possible for us to see what is around us.  The light leaves us at night, and, as it comes and goes, the water is the first to receive it and the last to let it go. 

Between the time the light arrives and departs, the water offers us a true reflection.  

The Suffering of Tides

Living near the Atlantic Ocean, I am aware of the tides, if for no other reason than deciding when we can best take a walk.  I have heard that the tides are influenced by the gravitational pull of the moon.  I have also heard it said that the phases of the moon influence emotions.  But I have never connected the two, until today.   I can feel the tide draw us in, crowd us out, and believe we all face the same rotation.  As I walk along I see the water wash away sand castles, names and messages inscribed there.  It pushes us away and obliterates whatever it wants in its path.  It even claims huge chunks of the land at its peak.  As the tides recede, walls of sand remain, offering the illusion of strength in the absence of the water.  If you were there at the height of the tide, you know the tide seized sand at will, and the walls are really jagged remnants.  The high tide of human emotions can seize territory as well, and be just as destructive. 

At low tide, the water has receded and calmed.  It is quite rare to see large wave when the tide is out.   Even a windy day will not produce more than a two foot wave at low tide.  We stroll out and enjoy the illusion that the tide has been tamed.  Things seem calm and easy for an hour or two.  You even watch the sand suck in water as it tries to escape by rolling back as the wave recedes.  The high tides overwhelm us some times, but the low tides let us rest.  We spread out across the open space, and build our castles, park our shelters and chairs.  We buy the illusion again, twice a day--the water is gone.     

This lull allows us calm and rest, with nothing ominous until the tide begins to run at us again. It's not the wave motion that shows the teeth of the sea.  Each wave has its moment, but it eventually outruns its water supply, collapses and recedes.  It's the inexorable tide that makes us wary and ready to move.  Each time we are sucked in and then chased away.  We know it will happen twice a day, and we run back and forth.  It is a model for suffering in the sense of the human condition.  A few natives develop the clarity of mind to choose their times and places.  They see the source of suffering, the breathing of the mighty ocean, but the mass of people are infrequent visitors and are driven.  It is said that once you see the source of suffering, you have the key to its end.  But few who see the tides and the tide charts that predict them act on the knowledge and develop clarity to end the to and fro.  

But this is only the shore view.  From the safety of the shore, we watch the beast and feel safe, once we see the limits of the tides and waves.  But what of those who ride those seas?
  

Horseshoe Crabs

We walked the beach today, and it's the season for horseshoe crabs to molt. changing their shells for the year (with that said, horseshoe crabs do not observe the Julian calendar, in part since they have been around long than we have--approximately 300 million years.  Horseshoe crab Mom to child:  "In another few million years, humans will show up and try to impose a calendar.  Do not worry, this too will pass.")   

Anyway, we saw dozens of their shells, discarded along the beach.  We have seen shells as big as 15" in diameter.  Today we saw the smallest shell we have ever seen, it was no more than 3" wide.  Knowing these are long-lived animals, we wondered about how the progression took place.  It is said that horseshoe crabs grow 25% each year.  So, after they shed that snug-fitting old shell, they are fitted for a new one 25% bigger.  I had a mental picture of my mother's twice a year trip to a discount shoe place on Taylor Street in Chicago.  She would have been pleased to make this trip just once a year, but with three growing boys, we had to be fitted with new "shoes" twice a year.  I know we drove her crazy in those years, growing our feet as we did.  She was glad to be getting those shoes at  discount, but she would have been happier if we weren't growing as quickly as we did.  

Back to the crabs, they molt 12 to 16 times before reaching adulthood.  If the math is right, they grow up to at least 15 times their size.  I don't think human shoe sizes are proportional. but growing 2 sizes in a year was not unusual for us.  I think we wound up 11, 12 and 13 in shoe sizes.  Ultimately, I don't think mama horseshoe crabs have to pay for the kids new shells.  

I don't know if horses have to be fitted for larger shoes as they age, maybe they do.  But, I know they don't get to swim out into the ocean to change their shoes, and neither do us humans.  Remembering those trips to Taylor Street, I think we would have rather gone to the beach for our shoes, but my Mom would still have been crabby about the cost.  Love you, Mom.  

No More News (week)

If there were a time when one might expect the news media would be performing an essential service, it should be during America's presidential election years.  They should be covering the candidates like a swarm, holding them accountable, asking the tough questions, investigating background and history of the candidates and their organizations.  Following the money, for heaven's sake.  2012 is historic--it will be the most money ever raised or spent in a campaign season.  As an observer, I have largely withdrawn my attention from what the media has offered--for two reasons.  

One reason is I simply cannot shake the perception I have that most of what passes for news is opinion.  The facts are not allowed to speak for themselves, they are spun.  The spinning takes place at the point the newsmakers choose, for the most part.  It appears there is always some schlub ready and willing to report what the people they are reporting on are saying about themselves (yes, schlub is a word--see your Merriam-Webster).  Worse yet, I sometimes get the feeling that occasionally some of those doing the reporting are spinning what they see and hear to serve their own opinions.  I just don't have confidence in any of them any more.  

The other reason is the very media that are supposed to be the watchdogs are the recipients of all that campaign money in the form of advertising.  There is almost a conflict of interest built into this dynamic--report misrepresentations, accept advertising money to air commercials aimed at correcting the matter.  Or, make it more innocent.  Just keep accepting money for airing some of this tripe that passes for campaign ads until the public's appetite for any political discourse is exhausted.  I know mine has been overwhelmed.  I can barely stand to turn on the TV or radio for fear that I will hear another commercial depicting a candidate as a liar (it's a congressional election in this case).  So now, I find myself driven away from the one estate that is supposed to be keeping the process honest.  

Which brings me to what prompted this little piece--the death of the paper version of Newsweek, the premier news magazine of the last century (sorry, Time, I haven't really checked the peak circulation numbers historically, if you were number one, I apologize).  Newsweek has disappeared in a presidential election year, announcing they will become a digital-only magazine.  I don't know of a successful digital news magazine, so I am guessing this may mark the end of Newsweek altogether.  I guess I should be sounding the alarm about who will keep the politicians honest, but....  Who cares?  

Go Long

I have a favorite shirt store.   Yes, and, knowing I’m no clothes horse, you probably know it's nothing fancy.  I have just grown to like the way the shirts fit me—I like the fabric, the colors and I even like their label.  There’s a message on it, usually accompanied by a stick figure depicted engaged in one form of recreation or another.  It's "Life is good."  I know, I know, it sounds trite.  But just reflect on it with me for a bit. 

I don't need the shirts to tell me—life is good and especially for me.  I live in a beautiful place, a place I hope never to leave.  How did that happen?  I have no clue.  I certainly didn’t set out to land here.  It was just serendipity, I guess.  I have managed to land in the right place.  But that's peripheral, really.  I have been given two precious grandchildren, and I don't know what I did to deserve them.  They are a delight.  In recent years other family members have begun migrating here to join us, either part time or permanently.  Not because we are so wonderful, it’s just that we have found a place where life is indeed good, and they know it when they see it. 

I have found dear friends here whom I will always treasure, wherever they roam.  Some are like me and will not willingly move away, others have dreams to pursue.  In today's small world, thanks to blogs, email.  I can probably stay connected to those who wander.  Maybe some day we’ll even resort to social networking if I ever find a way to get comfortable with Twitter or Facebook.

Other friends have begun to gather here, college friends who can't explain exactly how they wound up here either.  So, I don't need my shirts to tell me--Life is good.

But recently, the message on one of those shirts hit me right between the eyes.  Do you remember playing touch football in your younger days?  I do, and don't pretend you never heard about the younger members of the famous Kennedy clan when they played.  Anyway, I grew up in a neighborhood where this was the premier Fall pastime (in those days, major league baseball didn’t run on into November).   Touch football games didn't require as many players as tackle, since blocking was not really required.  Defensive rushers were just required to count three seconds (one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand).  So touch football is usually played with three or four on a side.   All that was necessary to stop the player with the ball was to touch him, pretty much anywhere.   Huddles consisted of the quarterback telling his top two choices what to do--e.g., “Rich, you take 5 steps out, then buttonhole toward the center,” and “Eddie, take 3 steps then slant toward the end zone,” and so forth.  By the time the quarterback got to me (the youngest and slowest), he'd say, "Jimmy, you go long."  I would dutifully run out there and “go long."  Most plays the QB never threw it to me, or even looked.  But I, along with my counterpart on the opposing team would run around out there and wave our arms, enjoying the state of "going long."  Once in a great while, a ball would float out in our direction, and one of us would catch it or bat it down--we were suddenly game changers, and, guess what?  Life was good!

You see, “going long,” if you have the patience, can be rewarding, and if life is good, you just might want to “go long” in more ways than one.  

Back to that shirt that hit me right between the eyes.  It said, "Life is good."  Below that was a simple drawing of a football, followed by the words:  "Go Long."  Sounds good to me, I bought the shirt.  

Trips and Tripping

Are those two words in the title related, I wonder--tripping is a miscue, and a trip is a planned venture, right?  Well, I hope you can trip over things while on a trip.  That's part of the joy of travel, I think.  With the right approach (which I would define as not much of a rigid structure or schedule), you can stumble across people and things you didn't plan on.  It is usually the unplanned sights, sounds and situations that delight me.  I was at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland on a rainy day and it was a marvel, even the rain.  Until I stepped out of the van there and looked about, breathed and felt the rain on my face, I would never have agreed if you had told me visiting such a place in the rain would be such a delight.  I was not alone in that point of view.  While half the people there scurried around with their heads down, a portion of the crowd was like me, "soaking" it all in.  Having it rain was not in the plan, but somehow it made the moment.

On another trip, I agreed to a tour of a dunes preserve--totally unplanned.  My sister, my wife and I just showed up at the far end of the parking lot at the appointed time and met a strange old woman who professed to be a mover and a shaker in her little town.  To hear her tell it, she was the person who started the ball rolling in this multi-million dollar project of creating a nature preserve along the shores of Lake Michigan and the Kalamazoo River.   I will remember the walking tour she gave us for a long time, and I think it is because of what a strange character she was.  I just stumbled over her and it made that little walking tour memorable.

Similarly, looking for a book of poetry written by a local person and published by the University of Michigan Press took me into a little place I would never have stumbled across there.  What sticks in my mind was a remark made by the person manning the register in the little bookstore that day.  I had run across the poet in an essay the poet had written about a local political storm centered around that nature preserve I mentioned above.  Tracking her down, I found her little web site and she named that bookstore as one of the places selling her book of poetry.  When I told the man tending the register in the bookstore, he said. "Our little 500 square foot bookstore on the Internet?"  Stumbling into that man and circumstance made the visit to that bookstore stay with me.  There were thousands of books, seemingly stacked randomly on desks and tables and bookcases jammed into that little room, yet he quickly told me. "if it's poetry it will be in that bookshelf atop the table on your left."

It's what and who you trip over that makes tripping worthwhile--or is it tripping over people and places that make trips worthwhile?

Saved by the Book (the Notebook, that is)

I was struggling on Sunday, when all this came along to do in a short time.  Frank set the wheels in motion with a phone call.  After some back and forth, we had a deal, and a great deal to do.  My struggle has been a sort of detachment, a feeling at a loss, like swimming in a tub of jello.  I knew I had things to do, and I meandered through them, putting off what I didn't feel like doing and feeling as if I was letting myself put off living.  Beyond that, I didn't feel productive.  Things got done, or they didn't, without much consequence.   There was always tomorrow, even if I wasn't sure what day today was.  Yeeech!  It all seemed so boring, and a lot like wallowing it it, so to speak.  Is that what depression feels like?   

So when Frank visited, and we started signing things, I went looking for something to write on.  A sheet of copy paper would have done (remember when we called it typing paper?), but I grabbed a spiral-bound notebook, and that seemed to change everything.  I started jotting things down, and I knew where I'd find them if I couldn't bring them to mind at once later.  I started noting things I had to do, and I knew where to find them later when I started to feel like tackling them.  I started doing what I needed to do, and, even as I was stymied at one step or another, I just noted what I had done, and what I was waiting for next.  I knew where I'd find what I needed to get caught up and to start again.  

By Tuesday night, I had filled four pages, and I knew what I had done and what I had thought of and not yet tackled.  So far, I had left nothing out, had put off nothing, and ducked none of it.  It expanded to cover more than what Frank had handed us, and I did some planning on other things.  They will all fit there, and will be there when I get up.  I don't need a calendar to make appointments in, and I have a low-tech place to store my to do list.  Not that I object to technology, but it wasn't helping me.  I was letting it pile up, and not feeling that subtle little sense of satisfaction--crossing one off the list, making a little progress, taking the next step.  

My guess is I would have found it again anyway, but I give credit to this notebook.  I was lost without it, and, coincidence or not, I feel like I am alive again.  In terms of life's geometry, the spiral notebook has me spiraling upward again.  Simple, aren't I?  Thanks.