Give and Give

"The measure of life, after all, is not the duration, but it's donation."--Corrie Ten Boom


As of this week, I've given blood 115 times. 115 pints of my blood have been used to help people--accident victims, surgery patients, blood work experiments--without costing me a thing except for time. The first time was when my sister was preparing to have a c-section delivery and asked the family to give blood for her in case she needed it. My blood type didn't end up matching her but it put me on the steady path of donating. That was over 21 years ago and I have tried to give every 56 days since. I have missed a few times, because of work or illness or forgetfulness, but I have tried to continue as consistent as I could.

My blood could be running through veins of people that I walk past on the street. There could be people who have had a second chance to have a family or save a child for their parents by my simple "Gift of Life."

I try to think of this thing that I do as just a normal part of my life, something like a dental check-up or a doctors appointment. I had my son doing it for a while, but tattoos and piercings have kept the Red Cross from allowing him to donate his blood for stretches of time. Perhaps he will think about that before he puts another body decoration on himself, and realize that he can offer more by being eligible to donate than decorate his form.

Look around and see if you can make time to do something similar. It's kinda cheesy, but the old slogan, "The life you save may be your own," really could apply to blood donation.

Give to the your local food bank. Donate the old coats and scarves and hats. If nothing else, at least check that organ donation box on your drivers license. Remember that not everyone is able to do everything but we should each as an individuals find something we can do for someone other than ourselves.

The Man In Black

Car rides are interesting events at times. Forced into a close space, conversations are spontaneous and often enlightening. There are times as the radial tires click out the miles you wish the trips would end and then, times where the dynamics are biblically enlightening and you wish them to keep going. Forget the destination; I’m enjoying this ride, and the conversations.

Enter the following exchange of dialogue as Coldplay’s hidden track from the X&Y album, “Til Kingdom Come” was playing. I will note here that this album is one we 3 seem to agree on and has been in the car CD player for approximately, “FOREVER.”

ME: That song was written by Johnny Cash. (Please note here that I believe I am one of John R. Cash’s biggest fans, and I enjoy the music of Coldplay)
16 YEAR OLD STEP-DAUGHTER: He was a druggie. (Please note here, minor Coldplay fan, not a fan of the “Man In Black”)
ME: He had his problems but he overcame them, he looked into the great void and overcame. (This went on for some time; I get a little passionate about it) I guess I’m going to have to Blog about it.
WIFE: I’m surprised it wasn’t your very first Blog. (Please note here, Major Coldplay fan and also not a fan of Johnny Cash)

Outnumbered and surrounded, as well as pinned behind the wheel of the car, I had nowhere to run so I began my verbal justification of the relevance of Johnny Cash, the musician and the man. I have been doing this for as long as I can remember and I have not come across anyone that seems to understand the style, songs and music of Cash. Or share my appreciation of his music. Most people think I am nuts. Sometimes I think I'm nuts.

But just give his songs “Big River”, “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Orange Blossom Special” a listen, performed live if you can find them. (They are all in my collection and I have also seen him perform them twice live in concert during the late ‘90’s) If you aren’t convinced of Cash’s unique place among the true American artists after listening, there are no words that can do it. Another approach would be to listen to Cash's interpretation of the Soundgarden song "Rusty Cage."

On another note, I stumbled on my knowledge and found out later, that the song “Til' Kingdom Come” was actually written by the guys of Coldplay and was offered to Johnny Cash to be performed at an un-named special event where the two artists, Cash and Coldplay, would share this song on the stage. Cash passed away shortly after accepting the song but before the event was finalized. Thus, it ended up as the hidden track on their album, X&Y. I don't know if Chris Martin and Coldplay share an appreciation of his music or just recognized that a song that they wrote fit his style. I hope it was the first.

And I still have more to learn about the man.

Til Kingdom Come Lyrics
Steal my heart and hold my tongue
I feel my time, my time has come
Let me in, unlock the door
I never felt this way before

And the wheels just keep on turning
Drummers begin to drum
I don't know which way I'm going
I don't know which way I've come

Hold my hand inside your hands
I need someone who understands
I need someone, someone who heals
For you I've waited all these years

For you I'd wait til kingdom come
Until my day, my day is done
Oh say you'll come and set me free
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me

Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me
In your tears and in your blood
In your fire and in your flood
I heard you laugh, I heard you sing

I wouldn't change a single thing
The wheels just keep on turning
The drummers begin to drum
I don't know which way I'm going

I don't know what I've become
For you I'd wait til kingdom come
Until my day, my days are done
Oh say you'll come and set me free
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me

Stardust Dance

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star"--Fredrich Nietzsche

Winter. Stars. Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

I was surprised at the experienced magnitude of the heavens on a recent trip across the wild northern reach of my state. Remote stretch of unploughed blacktop that sliced through cedar and pine. A covering of white snow blanketing everything. Completely. Contrasting the total blackness of the sky. The space between our planet and the heavens devoid of all the lights of man's marques and house lights and glowing computer monitors. Even my dashboard lights would not work this night, flickering on and off and on and off until I turned them off to halt the flickering. I plunged ahead in a ebony cockpit. Distant suns, our stars, piercing their light at this dark that surrounded them. Long stretches of nothing but the black of the sky, with its violent glow of stars. Their light being thrown at the earth, at my eyes.

It looked like beautiful chaos to me. No pattern, only white, static, turbulence. I know that there must have been cosmic planetary motion, but I could not detect it. Motion so far away from me that it could not be spotted by my vision.

And something was changing in me. I felt as if I had aged. Not years or days or hours, but lifetimes. I felt my soul was suddenly old and wandering. It danced away from my body briefly. I felt tuned to ancestral connections. I felt as if time had suddenly stopped. It was as if I was laying in the snow, cold rising through from below and stars warming from above.

It returned, my consciousness, with a strange hint of recognition that it could understand the surrounding chaos. Briefly. And then that feeling was gone, cold creeping back like hands pulled from a warming blaze. Lost.

But in that moment I recognized my own mortality and immortality. Why two similar words that really hold the same meaning? They were the same. They ended at the same place, in the same state.

Dust. But a beautiful, though distant stardust, in the eyes of those who would remember.

"I cannot stop the thought,

I'm running in the dark..."
--Pearl Jam, from the song "Immortality"

Devotion

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death.

--excerpt from the "Hail Mary" Catholic Rosary devotion

A few days past, a friend shared the news of the recent loss of his mother with me. And shared is a profound statement. She passed away after a brief fight with a cancer, and the visible hole that was torn from his heart was obvious. Lost is what I heard in his voice.

Abraham Lincoln said "I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life." These sentiments ring true to me, though not through my mothers prayers, but her actions of love. I am most fortunate to still enjoy my parents alive and well and owe much to them. My mom has never been judgmental to me, but I know she must have worried terribly at times. I am a silent sufferer, was so even as a kid, but she allowed this to be OK for me. She knew how to take my burdens quietly from me, leave me my silences and free me to travel on my personal journey. I imagine that it took incredible strength to do that. Just trying to understand three sons would break down most mothers these days. My sister must have felt like a gift from above.

But perhaps she learned how to love us in her life lessons. And more than just sharing DNA, family stories and relationships, our mothers are a physical as well as spiritual part of us. There are times I hear her voice when I am talking. She speaks to people through me. I see her when I am cooking, remembering that tiny kitchen that she so carefully prepared our meals in, surrounded by cupboards her Dad built for "her." Light pine with black hinges.

I wish that I could tell her to not worry, but I imagine that is fruitless. Being a mother is to worry. I see that beauty of caring in my own wife, also a mother. I like to think that the poem I have at the end of this post can capture what I so clumsily have tried to put in words. The truth is there are no big and mighty words that can adequately capture our "Mom."

My mother is a poem

I'll never be able to write,

though everything I write

is a poem to my mother.

--Sharon Doubiago

Right, Wrong, Morals?

"Nature has no moral imperative."--Luke Dempsey

Nature, in biological context, exists to exist. Or maybe more importantly, to continue to exist. It is survival of the fittest when it comes right down to it.

Animals and plants do not exhibit the "moral compass" that directionally pulls us either right or wrong in our dealings. They wonder not on great issues such as is it right that "I the fox kill you the mouse" or when "We zillion emerald ash borers lay our eggs, you ash tree, will die!" It just happens. There comes with natures actions no sense of right or wrong. Really, it is ALL right. Lacking moral values leaves no act wrong. And no need for remorse, reparations, revenge, regret and other "R" words.

How would humans be if they had no moral imperative as Luke Dempsey stated? I think that we would be circumstantially better in some ways and devastatingly horrible in other ways. Wouldn't our children be stronger if we taught them survival skills and didn't smother them with our fears and doubts? Taught them all how to symbolically "swim" to live, without convincing them about the reasons why they need to learn this? Maybe they could come up with incredible new ideas if we didn't force the old ones down their brains.

Would they kill their neighbor to have their house or wife or treasure? I don't believe that we as humans inherently desire those things. Those are artificially planted by sick minds that are following a strange and twisted "moral compass." Not a compass of good which exists, but the sick-puppy mind, the"Devil" that exists in the cells of our brain.

Because there is no moral compass in nature, what nature shows us is that it does no "wrong." It moves in waves and cycles and continually evolves and changes and adapts to the simple events of existence. It doesn't seek to alter existance, it just "is." We cannot take the leopard out of the leopard or the cardinal out of the cardinal. They just are.

Are we better than that? Or do we destroy more of everything we interact with utilizing the morals and values that we most often time try to force on the ones we encounter? Make the fox eat celery?

Circling Along a Straight Line

"My heart leaps up when I behold...A rainbow in the sky."--William Wordsworth

I seem to be encountering circles in my life and they seem to be helping me to un-straighten the path that I have been traveling. Now you may feel that the straight path would be the one that seems to be the right one to follow, I am beginning to think that I find more to love on the little circle detours that I find myself on. They are like miniature surprises and fill me with wonder.

It got me thinking about circles.

A circle in the form of a ring is the symbol of eternity an such has been adopted since Roman times as an outward sign of betrothal and marriage. The halo is symbolic of holiness and is found in pictures throughout the Renaissance, the sculpted and carved and painted beings of great sacredness; Jesus, Mary and the Saints being just a few examples. Infinity can be represented by the geometrical fact that a circle has no end and no beginning.

We find ourselves huddled around campfire rings at night and the legendary knights of King Arthur assembled around the "Round Table." Ezekiel in the Old Testament of the Bible saw the first flying saucer, spoked wheels within wheels that rose from the earth towards the heavens.

The teachings of Buddha are symbolized by the eight-spoked "Wheel of Dharma", and like a moving wheel, the wisdom of the Buddha continue to spread. And how can you not look at the circle of Stonehenge and not wonder what powerful messages were heard by the builders of that monument.

Rainbows in the sky link the heavens to the earth, appearing so large we can only see a half for the other half is obstructed by the massive body of the Earth. Only staying with us for brief moments at a time and seen often by a chance glance to the horizon. I still breathlessly proclaim the sight of them to whoever is around me at the time.

So even though I am trying to follow a path to a invisible point on the horizon, I think I have one leg a bit shorter than the other. I travel and travel and surprise, I find myself looking back down at the footprints I left in the past. Traveling a circle through life. Involuntary backward time travel.

Fear Is a Stomach Ache in Disguise

In a recent issue of the Nature Conservancy's magazine, Sanjayan, a lead scientist for them, was asked by David Letterman about the fate of our planet. During the course of the interview, Sanjayan came to the conclusion that the environmental movement had "...done a spectacular job of demoralizing and depressing people." And depressed people are paralyzed people. They begin to feel the hopelessness and the uselessness of even trying.

And that is where I believe we begin to let go of the control of the personal freedoms that we should jealously guard . We know that the truth has to lie somewhere between the voices on the right and the voices on the left. Especially when they start to shout to be heard. When that happens, you should automatically stop listening. Maybe even, run.

What I believe drives people more than any other emotion is fear. I was told that jealousy was really anger disguised and when I look back all my anger was really merely fear. Different fears at different times under different circumstances. Even when people are angry, what underlies that anger is "don't hurt me."

Example of the right not wanting to be hurt: "Don't let me live in fear without my guns and freedom of religion and gas guzzling cars."

Example of the left: "I'm afraid to live with your guns and your religious freedom and your gas guzzling cars."

How about the middle: "I can live with your guns if you keep them safely and use them for hunting and personal protection. Practice the religion you wish and I will choose mine, and I will treat it with respect if you respect mine. I may need a large vehicle for work or to pull a trailer to earn a living or enjoy my free time. I may also have a fuel efficient car in the garage that I use whenever I can. Face it, I don't like the high gas prices either."

So I'm not going to let them scare me anymore. Tell me only the truth and not all the loud rhetoric. Let me form my own unique opinions and work for what is right. For fear has done nothing but corrupt and destroy the world around us.

Fear of a prophesy that his son would overthrow him and be king, the Greek titan Cronos (or Roman god Saturn), the god of time and ages, would swallow each of his children when they were born. Eventually, he was tricked by his wife and made to disgorge the children by his son Zeus, who had been hidden from him. His actions based on his fears resulted only in a bad stomach ache and changed nothing.

What prophesies do you fear? Better yet, what will you do when you no longer fear?

Living as a Question?

I'm not sure that we are seeking answers or a higher being when we are trying to find our way through our lives. I wonder if others feel as I do? This desire to know and the fear of finding out.

A Poem:

I know you, God

Your touch on my cheek

As you brush by,

Smelling of cedar.

And when I stare

At a blazing sunrise,

Burning through winter fog,

With warmth and light.

When I embrace

My beloved ones

I understand why

I long for an eternity.

But how can I truly

Grasp the vastness,

Of the majesty

Your arms wrap around.

An embrace that

Sparks both life’s beginning

And the long, slow

Plunge to our earthy end.

Do you stand and wait

For our return?

To answer the questions,

That our life proposed?

Or is eternity filled

With the same distant

Gathering of the eons of

Wicked and confused souls.

Life would not be much,

If we were to know,

The answers to the questions,

That just living seeks.

Honor

Favor and honor sometimes fall more fitly on those who do not desire them. --Titus Livius

Statues of great people always appear to me to be blind. True representation of the image of death of the person, their fleet departure of the soul from the physical body it once inhabited. The eyes of alabaster and marble and bronze are unable to capture the emotion of sight and vision of men. Images that transpose to thought, wisdom, daring deeds and appreciation of beauty. Empty but for their past.

But I am always trapped into staring...captured in the concrete moment of monuments.

So, though the statues never could see, only their creators vision is seen, we see them and remember the deeds and the gifts that the representations hold before us. We carve entire mountains into the lions of our country, Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument as well as the carvings of confederate heroes on Stone Mountain in Georgia. Town squares are built around great men and women crying out from stone and metal to remember them. We strike out and topple and deface them when the glory they represented fades. Deny by destroying the creations of our past.

Who are these people of the monuments. I do believe that there are people out there that do set out for great glory and that is their goal and where all their passions run. I do not want monuments to that type of glorious self indulgent purpose. I have more belief that happenstance and duty to a purpose or cause is what ultimately bestows greatness. And should be immortalized.

There will be always statues...but to me, the ones that are obscure, of people whose deeds were great but destiny delivered them to their glory, are the statues that speak the loudest. They represent those moments of surprise, of honorable conduct.

The Vietnam memorial in San Antonio is an example of one of the most poignant capturing of honor that I have ever born witness to. I remember the total loss of words that deadened my being.

Titus Livius (59 BC -AD17) Was a roman historian who wrote about Rome and the Roman people.

Looking Ahead Backwards

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. --Percy Bysshe Shelley

I think that I have figured out something that has been bothering the grey matter that lies between my ears. I will try now to synthesize it coherently, which will not be easy. It is how to predict what lies ahead--our future. I don't want to predict it, just anticipate it, try to somehow prepare myself gently for what is laid out before me.

I have read some of the thinkers of the world, not overly in-depth or anything like it. Some psychologists, philosophers and some sociologists, seeking to come to some conclusions on living. Most of what has been written regarding living tends to view what has happened in the past is the cause of the way we function as we do now. Freud blamed it on love or lack-of-love by and for our moms. Jung on our dreams and the concepts of paired opposites...good/bad, love/hate, past/future. Nietzsche on everything and nothing at the same time, the tragedy as an affirmation of life as it eternally reoccurs.

But I digress.

To know our future is to take all of the surprise out of living. I discovered during a long road trip across Michigan's upper peninsula this fall, that all that I saw, the whole entire trip, was the past. What I saw, the trees, the landscape, the waves on the lake along the roadside was not at those moments even real. I was zooming past the future, time traveling backwards. By the time it took the mind to gather and process those images, the were already over. In the past. Like viewing the stars. Radiated light thrown from millions of light years away, from suns of distant solar systems that may already have gone cold. They may not even cast forth light now. What we see is the visual messages that are thrown out of the past. We only believe it is now because our mind is tricking us to see it that way. Even the words I type, by the time I look at them, are part of the great vanishing everything.

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said, "Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward. But how to understand, to see the "what" that may lie ahead? The future must be, behind me instead. It must be creeping up on me over my shoulder, ducking constantly away from the edges of my peripheral vision. So what is left is but the need to try and comprehend the future by what I can see in the past. I shall never catch it, the future, but I will surely continue to chase my desire to understand it.

The Demands of Dreaming

“Nothing happens unless first a dream.”

– Carl Sandburg

When I was young I remember having recurring dreams. There are two that I still occasionally have and one that vanished and never returned during my teen years. But even the recurring dream that no longer visits my nights was so poignant that I have a vivid memory of it. Night after night these dreams would capture my sleep and reenact the same drama from beginning to end. It was the same feeling to return to the familiar setting and subject of the dreams that you would experience by returning to some sacred yet secret home. They would start like a black theatre curtain rising at a play you have seen multiple times.

Images, thoughts, emotions and even sounds of dreams of the unconscious mind, will not be fully understood. Maybe that makes them close to divine revelations.

I have been plagued in the past with periods where I experienced bad dreams, suffering in the night, visited by known and unknown personal fears, longings and doubts. Feelings that all I know cannot be true and should by now have been vanquished from my soul and mind. Yet, in the night, they visited me and tormented and taunted me, causing me to wake with a sense of hopelessness. With a dry, chalky mouth.

I do not remember the dreams, only the way that I am left to feel. Sometimes I believe I must have a dream catcher living at the edge of my waking world. At my first waking, the bad dreams caught in the webbing, are turned to dust, with only a vague recollection of feelings of distress remaining. When I look to reasons why I would have such dreams, I believe that they usually meant that there was something in my life that I was not acknowledging, something causing stress and needing correcting. I relate it also to small traumas that I was dealing with.

Despite having bad dreams, I do not fear the nights. I feel that I am doing battle there in my subconscious, and maybe winning the battle one night at a time. The dreams dangle me from branches over dark recesses of the psyche. But I seem to always have the strength to hold on till the morning arrives, even if it makes the morning arrive before the alarm goes off. Dreams allow me to look my demons in the eye, my mind’s eye. Are they trying to convey a message to me? Prodding me to understand something about my life? My purpose? Recognizing the demands on my unconscious that the dreams are whispering will help me make some practical progress in my life’s condition.

I have heard of some people that believe that bad dreams can overtake their night if they consume certain food or drink before sleeping. I even read a theory that dreams are like the minds version of a computer program, and it is “cleaning” the junk out of our memories. I kind of like this explanation.

Judaism has a rite through which dreams that are disturbing can be reinterpreted to give them a positive spin. I need to find out how to do this ritual and then I will start performing the “hatavat halom” ceremony personally and make my dreams all good ones.

Share your dreams in the comments on this blog. It can be therapeutic and I will perform the “hatavat halom” ceremony for you when I learn it.

One of the best dreams written down can be found in the bible. The “Jacobs Ladder” dream is found in Genesis 28:11—19. This painting is “Landscape with the Dream of Jacob” by Michael Willmann (1630-1706)

Tear Down The Wall

The hardest thing that I have grappled with over the course of my adult life is the struggle to remain open-minded. I idealised living a certain way, but at the same time, thinking and wondering in many directions. Some kind of purposeful wanderer. But always pretty closed-minded to other directions once I was on a path. Long-term focus not being my strong suit. A lot of blurred living came about with the changes in direction that occurred during the early course of my life. But I was rarely open-minded for long periods of time.

1980 changed all of that. Or more exactly, I embraced closed-mindedness on a single path.

I remember the first time I was able to vote in a presidential election in 1980. I voted for the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. I did it mostly in reaction to how Jimmy Carter’s diplomacy went south during the Iran hostage crisis. I remember vividly the daily news reports with their continuous countdown of how many days the hostages had been in captivity. 1, 2, 3, 4,…444 days. Then the botched rescue attempt, Operation Eagle Claw (or Operation Evening Light) that attempted to rescue the hostages from the U.S. Embassy on April 24th of 1980. The attempt was aborted when three helicopters were damaged or forced to return to the USS Nimitz by a sandstorm. Eight American servicemen died. How could this backwards country like Iran, hold this great country of ours in check? Ronald Reagan seemed to be the glimmer of hope that was needed to make us proud of our country again. Move us past the shame of the Nixon Watergate scandal, the Viet Nam conflict and disco music.

I was a converted Republican.

I had a daughter and a son during the Reagan administration that I wanted to be raised with the protection and the safety and the morals that the Republican’s represented to me at that time. They offered me a message of hope. It felt like the world was finally stabilizing. It seemed defined when Ronald Regan stood in front of the Berlin Wall, and proclaimed his beliefs, our countries beliefs, that "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality … for it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.” The “wall” seemed much more than just the Berlin Wall. It was the symbolic destruction of the terrible thought that we were on the verge of blowing the world apart. I could feel the pull of hope on my life.

We have heard a lot about hope lately, and I reflect on how powerful a pull that wishing for that can have on the soul. It also causes me to reflect on a lot of the pain that came with that hope during the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush eras. We shut out the mentally ill in our society and turned them out in the streets. We judged and looked away from many of the society that needed the most help. We thought we could bully bad parents into caring for their children. We bullied the world. Greed was king and we created a selfish "Me" generation.

I was remember feeling actually devastated when George H. W. Bush lost the election to Bill Clinton. It was beyond belief to me that people would accept that type of character to lead this country. I believed what Phil Gramm, a Senator from Texas said when asked what would result if Clinton's proposals were passed. "People will be hunting Democrats with dogs by the end of the century."

Where are the "Clinton-hounds, the Bill-dogs?"

But, in hindsight, the world didn’t end. Short of a confusing new definition for “is”, Clinton left the country pretty well off. The second Bush, I believe tried, but he held such a narrow ideology, he was doomed to fail, especially, with building any kind of cooperation across this diverse country of ours.

What the second Bush left me with--gratefully--was a freedom to think as an independent. To "tear down the walls" of closed-mindedness. 30 years coming, I now question everything like a 2-year-old.

I still love this exchange:
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true." --Bill Clinton at his deposition.

Seasonal Nothingness

A Zen Saying

Sit quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Now is the time to allow for nothingness.

The sky seems to have lost some of its blue and is now a filtered, turbulent gray. Nature is gathering up all its resources as it prepares to go to sleep for the winter. Leaves are falling, falling, falling to become a colorful but momentary blanket for Mother Earth. Squirrels are fat, geese an overhead constant and the fickle warm-weather birds have fled for the south. I have put away the summer things, and possibly located where I sat the snow shovel last March. Gas is stabilized in now-still lawnmowers, motorcycles and boat motors. This world, our world, is quieting for the season.

High school football season is over for me. No playoff games this year, whistles will be put away earlier than I am used to. No one is even commenting on my blog entries despite the fact I know they are spending more time indoors glued to the Internet, video games and television.

My circadian rhythm is floundering, melatonin levels are spiking, serotonin levels are impaired.

It would take a chemist to figure me out. Lithium would help.

I am listening for what is being said by the cool wind. By the rains that sound more like a flowing brook or stream. By the air, that can be so cool and a sun so very warm. By the shadows, thrown by that sun, so long and eerily dancing across the ground.

It is calling for something, like my name or my soul or my being. What it is calling for I do not understand so I must continue to listen closely. I will let the chill speak to me of the grave, of the winter, of the frosty, cold eternity. It will help to remind me of the warmth of living, of life, of love.

I will heed the warnings of the white nothingness that surrounds me in the winter. I will find a way to remain warm and alive in my spirit. I will await the return of the green grasses, the renewal of natures promise. I will not surrender to despair.

This must be the onset of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Pink Whistles

“This is our first duck derby ever. We decided on pink ducks because that is the color used for Breast Cancer Awareness.” --Cathy Day

Everywhere in October you seem to see pink in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Even had a pink pizza box this week. Half expected to see pink toppings on the thing. Maybe beets. It to me is a worthy and successful public relations effort, my own maternal Grandmother died from this very deadly disease in her early thirties. Here is a quick story about pink that happened to me.

Our crew was officiating at a 7th grade football game and the association we are members of has asked us to wear a pink whistle in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month for 2 weeks of games in October. We provided the press box announcer a script to read to highlight this and to inform the spectators of the reason for the hot pink whistles. Towards the end of a time out in the 2nd quarter of the game, the announcer read, “In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the officials of the Capital Area Officials Association will be wearing pink whistles for the game tonight.”

From my referee position I had the distinct advantage of looking at the defense, and at this time, specifically, a defensive linebacker (we will refer to him as blue #52).

At the end of the announcement, we locked eyes and I could see this big grin on his face. Then he loudly states to teammates and officials alike, “I like breasts!”

You never know what is going to come out of their mouths. I think he missed the "Cancer" part, all that his 13 year old adolescent developing mind heard was "BREAST."

Middle school boys, they just don’t get it. We really should separate them from our girls. Humor writer Dave Barry summed it up when he wrote, “Scientists now believe that the primary biological function of breasts is to make males stupid.”

'Nuff said.


Bottom photo: Me & the "Mother Tree" on our fall float down the Looking Glass River. Click on the photo and take a closer look at the tree, you can see where it gets its name. I will apologize for the blurriness of the photo, but the photographer was obviously discombobulated by the tree. Tree was named and photo was taken by my friend Bob, a much-older 13-year-old. (last name withheld till he lets me know it is OK to use)

Living Truly is a Gift

“The proper function of man is to live–not to exist.”
–Jack London

I always love the stories that my Dad tells about his life growing up and the many characters – relatives, friends and neighbors – that peopled them. When I was young, the stories were told to others, with me a quiet listener. They were told in old trucks loaded with hounds on the way to or from a favorite rabbit, pheasant or raccoon hunting spot; at November evening deer camps; or with the background noise of a rattling John Boat, hurtling down some gravel road to a fishing hole. Being a hunter and fisherman father, he knew how to spin a tale and to capture his audience. With stories that were both colorful and tragic. They amazed me--how it must have been to live then--with so many colorful characters and crazy, wonderful, magical circumstances surrounding his life. Some of the comrades that left on fishing and hunting trips were as colorful as any found in a Jack London story of the early 20th century.

Only later in life, when a child begins to see more than the obvious facts, did I realize that there were underlying, terrible sets of circumstances that he lived with. The stories that made us laugh and sigh with wonder must have been no less than horror stories in his mind. He grew up with alcoholism in his family, the end of the depression era, uncles that were POW’s in Germany during WWII, a rare-at-the-times mother that worked, and even 2 older sisters (which when he was a kid was probably YUCK, as we only appreciate fully sisters when we are older). Despite all that he still laughed and smiled mischievously to his family. He never stood still, was a constant moving being. He worked like a madman to give us the best he was capable of achieving through hard work, discipline and guidance.

His childhood, as he told us with his recollections, were filled with boyish adventure in a time when simple living gave simple pleasures. Where you could walk out your backdoor and start pheasant hunting (if you could afford a shell, and I mean a single or pair of shells). When you thought that the greatest thing you owned was your BB gun or slingshot or the best cur hunting dog in the neighborhood. Where impossible chores had to be completed, with shovels, axes and bare knuckles (like new outhouses to be dug or slaughtering the pig). Unexpected things happened to him along railroad tracks, in surrounding fields or even inside his ram-shackled house.

I remember Dad being gone an awful lot, but I never felt neglected. More often I was jealous, for he was truly living and breathing in his time on earth and experiencing everything, fully. I was stuck in school being denied a real life.

I understand the gift he must have gave his friends during his sporting ventures with them. As I got older my time with him, sharing the things he loved doing, increased. And I understood him more. He is the perfect companion if you just want silent company. But around a campfire or alone with him in a fishing boat, be prepared to listen if he wants to talk—listen to the stories he has inside him.

He gives me a role model for embracing living and experiencing every gift of our breaths of time. A lesson I am still trying to completely learn, if I ever totally will.


Photo: Dad with his redbone and redtick coonhounds, Bones, Smokey and Shane, who shared many nights with him. He is standing in the basement of the addition he built to our previously 1 bedroom house, so it could accommodate 4 kids.

The Golem

"If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past."
–Benedict Spinoza, Dutch philosopher

Studying the past is different than dwelling in the past. When you dig down inside your psyche, and mine the stored memories it holds, enlightenment may follow.

Have you ever stopped doing something because you had a feeling that it was wrong? Not the moral equivalent of right from wrong, but the not-wanting-to-repeat a mistake kind of tingling sensation? That is how the past signals to you that it can aid in the shaping of the present. Error prevention. Like dashboard warning lights on a car. How many times do you touch a hot stove before you realize not too? Only takes once for most of us, though I keep banging my head on the rear-lift door on my Jeep on the cold days when the hydraulic lifts don’t take it all the way up. Physical pain may be more poignant about teaching us certain behaviors than other sensations. And maybe I shouldn't have such a hard head so I so easily forget.

Creativity may also be the benefit from stored memories. Some people believe that to truly be creative requires a brand new spark, a unique vision of the present. On the contrary, the best of the creative world uses history--global as well as personal--to conjure up its imagery, sounds and vision. Van Gogh was constantly redoing his paintings, revisiting the same places and trying to capture a certain madness that was embedded in his mind which he wanted to paint. Canvas after canvas were covered with the same fields and people, yet every one was unique. His colors meant nothing to the realism, yet everything to his present feelings.

Every news story out there has some similar relation to the news of the past. Health care as a topical example has been dealt with by just about every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Everyone working on it now is trying to avoid the pitfalls of past attempts at it by carefully crafting a plan that will somehow work. They are trying to shape a program that won’t end up an enormous and uncooperative golem, that to try and fix piecemeal would be a difficult and dangerous endeavor.

We need to adopt the lessons from the past but we cannot let it crumble upon and crush the present.

Footnote: Jewish tradition holds that the golem is a creature created by magic, often to serve its creator. Some mystics believe the creation of a golem has symbolic meaning only, like a spiritual experience following a religious rite. A golem can became enormous and uncooperative and the creator may have to use trickery to deactivate it. The creators hubris may bring them down as well as the golem when this is attempted. Think Dr. Frankenstein and the monster or Social Security.

Mathmatical Thinking

The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God. ~Euclid

I am fermenting my mind, my spirit, to try to hear the difference between the sounds of the trees and the sounds of the stones.

This may sound deep, but it is more of a challenge to the way that my mind has always been trained to think than anything else. We are schooled mathematically to problem solve by our educational system. I myself have taken all the highest math classes in college that were offered at Ferris State in the early 80’s. Not always receiving the best grades, but participating in the effort to learn. Dean Schlicter of the University of Wisconsin seems to imply this when he said “Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics.” Early scholars actually thought that God, Heaven and Hell could all be proven with the right mathematical equation(s). They also used math equations to prove that the world was flat, round and the universe revolved around the earth. Math was manipulation by the powerful in charge.

Leaving behind math will be difficult for me. I still love to balance the checkbook to the penny and feel like doing an NFL type touchdown celebration every month at the completion of this task. Sometimes I just play with the calculator. I like to measure. Length. Width. Volume. When I get a chance to do math in my head, my mind jumps to the opportunity, calculating the sums and differences. I like figuring sales tax in my head on the stuff I buy (although I don’t like paying it). I seem to be held in bondage by math. It seems to be the dictator of my mind.

That is why I want to hear the tree and not look at its height and width and age. Same with the stone, I want to hold it and feel its whispers. The sound of them is what the universe bounces off them that my ears and eyes and nose detect--the warmth of the sun, the touch of the rain, the scent of the breeze.

Then maybe, I will be able to capture the reason and believe again.

Dinosaur Bones

I remember staring at dinosaur bones in Chicago's Field Museum a few years back. Once great animal flesh, now fossilized bones of rock. Before they were dug up, they lay under the ground, unknown to those who trod upon them-- man, beasts, nature, seasons, wind, rain, ancient seas, glaciers, eons. They would still lie beneath the layers of time if curious humans (humans like me and yet so unlike me) had not the ability to question and seek reasons regarding their place on the earth.

Their place in the universe.

Why do you suppose we look for the ancient before? Hold on to heirlooms, memories? I believe we may do it seeking the eternal that lies ahead. How else can you explain the vast amount of time that lies ahead of us if we cannot recognize the same millennial passage that has already occurred? How do we ever hope to understand a hundred years let alone a billion years? A hundred-billion years?

I will only live a minuscule fraction or time relative to forever, a grain of sand in an eternal hourglass—one holding billions and billions of grains.

My grain will become like dinosaur bones and I wonder, will anyone even care to dig them up and gaze with fear and wonder at them. I kind of hope so. Like I look at dinosaurs and woolly mammoth. Re-assembled, fossilized, human-dinosaur bones. With amazed wonder.

Log Jams

Searching for metaphors, I found one in a recent project I volunteered to help with. It also signaled another return to my hometown.

The “Friends of the Looking Glass River Watershed Council.” had their annual “LogJamBee”. Basically, it was a clean up of trees that had fallen across the river and created impassible blockages for canoes and kayaks.

They needed bodies and chainsaws. Rope. Block and tackles. An ATV with a winch. We would be fed and watered. We would sweat and labor, dodging spiders and leeches and sawdust and muck. Our job was to open the rivers so others could float the tranquil waters without troublesome (and sometimes dangerous) portages around the log jams.

Plus it gave me a chance to break out the chainsaw.

While we worked though, what came out of me were a lot of personal blockages. The cut logs reminded me of how I relieved stress cutting and splitting ash trees while I was working my way through a divorce. The fall air reminded me of an unpleasant personal memory that seems easily triggered by the smell of wet, fallen leaves. The water of the river reminded me of how I would retreat and escape to this very river as a youth, and where I could actually hide from the real world within the steep banks that flowed through the town where I lived. Hide from people who did not understand or care. Did not see the world the way I wanted to see it.

And I began to let go of the doubt and pain that somehow still sparked in me when I was in contact with the place of my past. I was reminded of how I came to love nature by exploring and haunting these very same riverbanks. I exchanged the pain with the pleasurable outcomes of my lives adventures. To realize that good things came from what were bad situations at the time. My job was to re-focus, clear the log jams of my mind. Realize that the “beatings” would cease when the minds “complaining” quit.

So as the river began to once again flow its natural course, I began to stream ahead, no longer impeded by memories that clogged its way.

Photo by Curtis Remington

Walking Away From The River

Walking away from the river was one of the hardest things that I have had to do in quite some time. It wasn't the walking away as much as moving where I had to go. Back to work to earn my pay. I was leaving the tumbling water of the Pere Marquette river. I was vanishing from the startling autumnal color change of the riverbank landscape I had spent the day on. I no longer could feel the rhythm of the fly rod and reel and the drift of the line. No longer feel alive with tension and excitement as a salmon battled for its place in my mind. Even the day-long misting in the air that filled the day was gone. No longer drifting down the river with the current, watching the beautiful scenery of the pristine Michigan north country slowly, like slow motion, flow by. Already the memories of the salmon caught were going to start toward the distant, fading place in my mind that memories congregate. Even the sounds of the people loading boats and the generators at the campsites and the trucks pulling the boats seemed out-of-place from where I had been.

I was feeling joyous and darkly strange. I think it has to be that I am blessed with this life and able to embrace and love it. Fortunate to be in love and feel loved and to soar above pain and loss and feeling sorry for myself. I knew it was real, but it felt miraculously surreal. Dreamlike. I was leaving one moment and entering another.

But I had pictures on the camera to prove that the moment I was leaving had been real. Pictures that just hinted at the real mysterious glee that was in my heart that day. I can look to the smiles and the waders and the fish in the pictures and remember. I remember so much more than they depict. I remember.

And soon, I will walk away from work to a river again.

Kind of Sucked

Had a rough last few days. Seems that happens at times when you engage and participate in this world. Most of my rough visions involved my officiating youth football.

Dumb coaches that don’t know the rules. How many times do I have to tell them that the rules for high school football are not the same as college and the NFL. They may play their youth games on Sunday but they play under different rules.

Did not hear a single positive coaching voice from the sidelines. If we screamed at our own 4th and 5th grade children like some of these coaches, they would take them away from us. What happened to coaching? The definition of coaching to me is watching the game played and observing the young athletes and offering how they can improve their play. Not to degrade and humiliate them in front of their peers.

What happens next when that doesn’t take place -- happened Sunday. The kids started blaming each other and their bullying continued. I even tried to explain to one 6th grader how you couldn’t talk like that to his "own" players and his opponents. He mocked me by repeating in “that” sarcastic voice exactly what I said. I promptly hit him (and his team) with an 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. I then took the time and explained what he did to his coaches. He remained in the game without any attitude adjustment efforts by his coaches. I wouldn’t have played a snap after that if I had lipped off to an official. The coaches held you accountable for your actions in my youth. You don’t hurt your team and get away unscathed.

One young man broke his ankle. I knew he was hurt by the string of profanity being screamed. I didn’t know that a 7th grader could string that many profane words together so easily. He had obviously done it before because he was good at it.

The EMS that came for him seamed to saunter in slow motion to help him. They really sauntered. This kid was in pain and he needed to get to a hospital and get treated. Quickly. You don’t call emergency personnel to a injury scene to get you to some help…slowly.

Same game. Another ambulance. This time a concussion and a prone player on the sidelines. And I had to keep telling the coaches that they couldn’t coach the kids while they were getting this kid to the hospital. They actually could think of something to say to their team that was more important than that young man laid-out on the sidelines.

I grow more and more disenchanted with grown-ups that haven’t grown-up. I understand more and more why my wise wife likes to be quietly left alone.

Listen to Time

“Enjoy life freely, O Babur, for none enjoy it twice”.
--Babur, King of Kabul

Have you had a similar conversation with yourself like ancient Uzbekistanian Babur had during his life? I sure have, and I, like the king, need to remind myself to enjoy my time.

Also, I think that you can actually hear time when you really listen. You can hear whispers of memory. When you think of someone, can you hear what they sounded like? Is the voice of a person embedded in the brain as well as their physical image? When you look at a picture of lilacs, can’t you hear their rustle as well as smell their scent? I probably would sneeze.

Likewise, when I pet a dog, I feel every dog I have ever stroked. I really can't even control the urge to reach out and pet dogs. It's irresistible. I can smell the dog, the cedar shavings, the living companions of my past. I can see my children with puppies playing around them, sharing the joy of each other. Puppies enjoying children, children enjoying puppies. Hounds trailing game. Snow on the ground. Stiff winter breeze and the smell of December. I need to keep gathering these sensations for as long as I can.

So I am going to go out and continue to add memories, moments and experiences so that time will be captured. Why if a powerful ruler of a nation had to remind himself to enjoy life and not let it slip away, I can do the same.

Hear the voice of old Babur from across the ages.

My duty is to listen or his words would have been recorded in vain.

Kidnapped Brain

"You think to hard".
That is what my friend told me after reading my past blog posts.

Really. I was slightly taken aback by this. But he was definitely right.

I guess what I am really trying to do is chase away all these deep demons that lurk in the back of my mind. Not demons that are leading me into temptation, but ones trying to confuse me whenever my mind starts to get still.

Mitch thinks: "Beautiful sunset". Mind is kidnapped and takes off at a sprint with: "Why is there a sun and a moon and a universe and was it created by God or is it just a illusion and why is that color so pleasing and what does it all mean..."

Really. That is why I try to keep my mind focused on new tasks and interesting hobbies. I need to have a constant visual flow from my senses to my brain to keep it congested so the merging, disruptive "hard thinking" has trouble taking over the time scape of my existence. I sometimes joke that I think I may have a form of ADHD, and that is why I have these intense out of body mind adventures when I sit down and write out my thoughts.

The best part about this is that it has yet to effect the joy that I take from living every single day that I wake up on the right side of the grass.

I wonder, am I like other people in this way?

Now about grass, do you suppose God...

Great Stories

Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great
Distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.

--Robert Penn Warren

Look around you these days in the media and all you seem to see and hear are various cautionary news stories. In newspapers and magazines. Radio. TV news broadcasts. Web sites. All are filled with stories that would break your heart. Some that may make you rejoice. Many will make you cry if you have a heart. Read most of them and the root of them seem to be fear. Fear of unknown risks, our own government, terrorism, and the predator next door.

But where are the great stories, the great discoveries, and the universal truths? Where are the great revelations that stir passions in the souls of man? Our children are hungry. Our young men are dying in deserts trying to bring peace to citizens in the face of those that wish nothing but the turmoil of war, violence and repression. These times seem destructively serpentine--a snake appearing to wish nothing more than swallow its own tail while strangling mankind.

I suspect that time will reveal to the next generations the greatness of the people that live now, as it revealed to our generation what WWII veterans gave the world, what Martin Luther King risked for equality and what a lone man standing in front of a tank did at Tienanmen Square.

A child will be on a knee, somewhere in the future, hearing a story that is about a time before. I hope that it could be me to tell them. And hopefully they can be great ones like the ones I have heard.

Photo Albums

Some of the most cherished memories are held in the photo albums we have. I really only have them from about five generations back, but they hold witness to the constant change and flux of passing time.
One of my favorite photographs comes from an album given to me by my Aunt. It held a picture of my maternal grandfather as a high school baseball player. He poses in his uniform in front of the farm house he lived in. The photo contains so much unsaid information about a time in the 1920's, that I find new meaning every time I look at it. It means much to me as a historical and loved artifact. That I removed it from the album and framed it for my home office is a testament to those sentiments.
The uniform is strikingly similar to uniforms of today, but when is the last time a photo was taken of a lanky teen that showed no attitude? When is the last time you saw lightning rods on a house? Wood siding on a house? Imagine how his fielders glove must have felt to him...a big investment for the time I would bet. And how do you suppose the team traveled to play without buses to haul them to fields around the county?
I never saw this picture before my grandfather passed away. I have so many questions about it, and other photos that I have, that only he could answer. It leaves me only supposition.
I remember his grandfather hands and wish to understand the ones that he had in the picture, one slipped into the oiled leather fielders glove and the other resting on his thigh.

Saint Patrick's Breastplate

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

--Excerpt from " Saint Patrick's Breastplate

We should all be able to sum up the reasons we live as eloquently as the previous words attributed to Saint Patrick. The writer looked around at his surroundings and could capture the universe that surrounded him and recognize his place as a part of it. After all, could a universe--the wind, earth, rock, sea--even exist without our souls seeing and feeling it? Kind of a which came first, the chicken or the egg question. The surrounding universe or the breath of God? The sacredness of the observations that sum up reasons to keep pursuing living are all there. With each observed element of the verses there could also contain a diverse range of represented human experiences.

Wind, for example, can come in many forms and represent many symbolic ways of living. Real wind can be a gentle breeze that cools or a hurricane gale that seeks destruction of whatever lies in its path. It can sculpt the snow into drifts that hold a beauty that is hard to describe and turn cold air into freezing death for the homeless. It can move a sailboat to far destinations or dash it on a reef. Fragrance from blossoms can be delivered to the sense of smell of violent gusts can fill our eyes with dust.

Symbolically, we humans can breeze through life or leave a path of devastation and hurt, depending on which form of wind we choose to ride. Will we use our wind to create lasting symbols in the hearts and lives of the community of man? Or will we be remembered like the hurricanes?

Water

More than any other substance, water, seems to encompass and expose the secrets and the revelations of the cosmos. It flows through our bodies and surrounds us in the air. When it rains, it cleanses all that it touches, grabbing and carrying away dust, pollen and grime. It touches, bonds and dashes it down to the earth, which it waters. It can exist in the planes of liquid, vapor and solid.

Water cools us and warms us. We drink it and soak in it and let it wash over us. Without it our cells would dry up and cease to function and we would die.

It sparkles with the sunlight on its liquid horizon and its transparent beauty draws our gaze below its surfaces. What mysteries lie below? Moonlight can turn it into a blanket of energy that moves the heart to love and loving thoughts.

Water is a dangerous Naiad; its essence fascinates us and lures us by its beauty. We take to seas and it may turn angry and struggle to kill us. Its fluid mechanics can be a physical force and drag us below its surface. Too much water in the lungs and we drown. We must be careful to not anger or challenge Poseidon.

“…Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified.” What terrified them? My thought is it was the true mysterious power of water was being revealed to them. These fishermen, who knew the dangers and blessings of the seas, witnessed the miracle of God’s transformation of water from fluid to solid. Maybe that was the transformation that man makes to finally obtain and believe…to have faith.

I walk on the water these days with my kayak. I haven’t strong enough faith to step on the surface with my feet.

Alive In The SuperUnknown

Alive in the superunknown
First it steals your mind
And then it steals your soul

Lyrics from “Superunknown” performed by Soundgarden; Written by Chris Cornell And Kim Thayil

I am wondering what the connection between the intellect of man and the longing of the soul do to a person. Does wonder need a definition? Example: How can a caterpillar dissolve its cells in a pupa and re-emerge as a butterfly? Science can’t explain exactly how this happens. Maybe God could if he was not tired of talking to me. I think my questions grew to tough for answers.

I also wonder why the math does not add up when we try to explain the size of our universe. How there are unexplained, huge holes in the studied science of the universe. When our thinking reaches the edge of the universe, how are we to define the nothing we will surely encounter? We will invent something to define the nothing. No doubt.

Why do we question what we desire, resist what we need, race for nothing and everything at the same time? Because our mind can’t sit still and listen to the song of the galaxies, sung only to the soul? The brain hums a constant, different tune. Often off key.

The mind, without right or permission, unconsciously snatches mystery and destroys it with reason. The cool intellect of the human mind says “No sea monsters, ghosts, time travel, or miracles are allowed.” To have a space in the soul where they can be embraced can’t be tolerated. Can’t happen. Won’t allow it. Nope.

My soul and spirit have been stolen by my brain and went missing before, but it returns unexpectedly, in its own time.

Now how can I define time?

CCR and Musical Enlightenment

Two of my favorite records came to me by surprise. As a Christmas present from my aunt back in the late 60's. Now I'm talking LP's, 33 1/3 rpm, vinyl, cardboard jacket with a paper sleeve, flat black and circular. You can only find them now at select garage sales and Goodwill stores. Now I don't say that I miss records, I really find digital music and cd's more convenient and easier to listen to. But records, when I pick them up(because I still have them), tell me about a time, place and person.

The only records we ever had as kids were some that my mom had and some Disney dog story LP's, scratched and listened to a thousand times. Gunfighter ballads from Marty Robbins. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and San Quentin. Johnny Horton singing about the War of 1812 and Alaska. Great albums,but those two Christmas albums, "Green River" and "Cosmos Factory" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, opened up music to me. The sound was so different and emotional and STEREO! I did not remember asking for this group as they really were unknown to me at the time. I believe my aunt must have really liked them and was trying to share that with me.

What she ended up sharing with me is the curiosity to embrace an eclectic love of music that puzzles me to this day. I probably said thanks at the time for the present, but I have never truly thanked her for what was the true gift.

Thanks for the gift of opening my ears.

As a footnote, I have Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, Marty Robbins and everything by CCR all on CD now-- still some of my favorite music.

Gravity

Gravity: importance, seriousness, the gravitational attraction of the mass of a celestial object (as earth) for bodies close to it.

This is the definition of gravity by Mr. Webster.

Gravitational force seems to be universal to being human. Metaphorically, think about how it works in all our lives. Are we not drawn to one another with a real force to be together? How about the instinctual drive to go on vacation? There are also many times that gravity pulls me to my work, away from leisure, when I love what I am doing and get positive results from my projects. I can feel a real force involved taking me from work to a lake fishing or kayaking. It is invisible but is true, pushing and pulling constantly. It’s a force that feels physical, emotional and spiritual.

When I recognize this happening I react either by going with the flow of gravity or trying to overcome it. One feels like floating and the other like being pulled by a maelstrom, depending on the direction.

I genuinely love the feeling of floating.

Why?

Why? That is one of the first complete questions that are formed on a child's lips. I know that from the many times I tried to answer my own children's baffling questions. Like what does the color green smell like? It is repeated until the why is not important any longer. When did I stop looking for the reasons (the why) for things? What is that point where we quit asking for the reason why and start to merrily follow the path that seems to be in front of us?
I remember not asking why when I was a teen. When I thought that I was the answer to the questions. I began to just watch others to try to determine the wheels of the mechanics of living. I became silent in my quest. I remember at that same time, I began to wonder internally about the greater spiritual things that crept into my thoughts. But I was not really asking why. I was more seeking factual answers to the problems, dilemmas and situations that I was encountering. Now, I realize that my brain was broken to why.
Why is listening to the breeze, feeling the sun, smelling the morning, looking at loved ones, speaking with gentleness.
I am going to once again ask...Why?

Finding a "Reason to Believe"

Seen a man standin' over a dead dog,
by the highway in a ditch.
He's lookin' kinda puzzled,
pokin' that dog with a stick.
Got his car door flung open.
He's standin' out on Highway 31,
like if he stood there long enough,
that dog'd get up and run.

-from the song "Reason to Believe" by Bruce Springsteen

Lyrics from songs enter my head and become metaphors of life. The quoted lyric above, sings to many points encountered in living. How many times, having faced in disbelief occurrences in life, do you try to deny it, try and make the past return. Unravel what has happened by trying to weave together the memories that told your story...Your belief in what was real and that you may have loved. I know I have stood with both feet firmly planted in the past's slipstream. Puzzled, mired in memories, so confused by what had happened that I knew it could only be made right if I just believed hard enough in the past. I think the best I ever did was to fill the present with a whole lot of sad longing and emptiness. How I figured death must be like.

I have never successfully made "that dog'd get up and run"--no matter how hard I poked it--so now I am content to love the dog that was. And more importantly, look to embrace the puppy in the moment.

The Now Is A Superpower

When I walk up to a river to fish, I bring with me the past and the ability to see a future.
I know what water is from experiencing its moods. I know what a river is as I have seen them before. I know what it may hold under its surface from what I have pulled from water previously on the end of a fishing line. I remember which baits or lures will work and how they will flow in the draw of a particular current. Even if this is a totally new location, I can piece together from the past what is happening now in front of me.
But yet, I am totally existing in the moment at hand. Surrounded by the space around me. I have never been there before like now. What will happen is a total unknown, but if I act the way the past subconsciously reminds me to, I will have glimpsed into the future. I may catch a fish, snag a lure or fall in the water over my waders...All possibilities. All futures.

However it happens, that will soon be another memory to predict another future. That's the superpowers of being in the presence of now.