Wren In Doubt

 A House Wren! Those were the words with an exclamation point that popped into my head as I stood looking through my wife’s binoculars, the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds in my left hand. Mystery solved!
The “mystery” began this past, endlessly-long Michigan winter. My wife and step-daughter decided to decoratively paint some craft-store bird houses to display around the house. The paint was artistically splashed on and when done, my wife declared that hers looked like a clown house. Seeing it, I had to agree. It did share characteristics of a circus clown…color, design and even the shape. Deciding that it failed to live up to the standards of the house decoration that was envisioned, it was delegated to be repainted later, and traveled about the house until reaching its final winter resting place—my wife's gardening bench in the garage.

During the remaining long winter months, the birdhouse became covered with a growing mass of various garage items of my disorderly placement. With the spring gardening season fast approaching and a rather stiff talking to by the wife about “my junk” on “her” bench, I took action to put my things in their proper place. Clearing the gardening bench of my clutter, I uncovered the birdhouse and knew immediately what needed to be done. I attached a clip to the eyelet on the top of the bird box and hung it from a low branch of the silver maple tree behind the garage. “She’ll hate it hanging there,” I thought mischievously, admiring my work.

Later that day, I proudly pointed out it’s placement in the tree, thinking that this woman of class and good taste I’m married to, would immediately ask me to remove it from our yard, pointing out the travesty of hanging it where all could see. However, she simply stated, “It doesn’t look too bad there…But no bird will ever nest in it.” Staggered by this, I thought, “We’ll see,” and as I asked her if she had seen my car keys anywhere I contemplated my next move.

Spring arrived, and along with it, the songbirds. But not a blade of grass or twig entered the tiny, round entrance of the birdhouse. Birds busily sang and built and ate bugs and birdseed, but all shunned the clown bird house. Directly above it on the maple branches, a robin built its nest. Cardinals occupied our evergreen bush with their nest of grey-speckled eggs. Our bluebird box (bluebird-free for eight years) hosted its annual family of white-footed mice and a nest of angry hornets. But nothing took notice of the possibility offered by my wife’s brightly painted birdhouse.

Then, early in June, as I sweated and pushed my lawnmower past “clowny” the birdhouse, I was startled to see a twig sticking out of the entrance. Stopping the lawnmower (I look for any excuse to take a break from this soul-killing experience), I peered into the small, circular darkness and observed that it was indeed the start of a nest. A scattered mass of twigs and grasses covered the bottom of the box. This development thrilled me slightly, and as I continued to crush the life out of me with more mowing, I made a mental note to tell the wife.

Now the remembering to tell might seem easy, but fast approaching 50, it has become challenging, and she was not immediately available to tell. Fortune offered me a reminder when I nearly bumped my head on the birdhouse on my way inside to clean up. Once inside, I grabbed a pen and a Post-It note and wrote, “A bird built a nest in your birdhouse,” and sketched a small outline of the sparrow-like bird that I envisioned must be setting up housekeeping. I placed the note on the counter where I was sure she would see it and promptly forgot about it.

That very night, Mother Nature, being the cruel mother she can sometimes be, visited upon us a vicious spring storm--with wind and rain and tornadoes--tossing branches, leaves and bird nests from the trees. And typically, out went our power. So out came the generator to save the basement from flooding, perishables from perishing and tropical fish from facing northern climate temperatures which would have surely left them belly-up in a matter of hours. As I was running extension cords to the house, I noticed an unfamiliar birdsong. I followed the sound and spied an energetic little grayish bird stretching out all of its roughly four-inch body and singing in the branch above the “clown” birdhouse. Loudly he sang, jumping from branch to branch repeating a happy song. Then he darted to the nearby pole of our badminton net, stretched out and sang and sang and sang.

I could only assume this energetic new arrival was behind the nest-building. But what kind of bird was it? I strained to see but could only make out a small fuzzy gray. I now have to point out that most of my trouble seeing the bird is because I’m near-sighted and dislike wearing my glasses (when I can find them). So, my only notable observations at the time were of a small, gray bird busily singing a happy tune and darting from branch to branch to badminton net pole and that its proximity to the birdhouse indicated it may be responsible for the beginnings of the nest.

Strangely, I remembered to tell my better half about the nest-building when she returned before the Post-It note was discovered. (Later, she mentioned the “cute little bird drawing” on the note.) To my disappointment, she took the news with much less enthusiasm than I expected. In retrospect, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to top a weekend fly-fishing on Michigan’s Pere Marquette River with 11 other women, showered with attention from multiple male guides with all their talk of hackles and tight lines and exotic aquatic insects. And the vision of me welcoming her home, unshowered for two days due to the still noticeable lack of electricity, did not help matters. Her question after I told her the news was, “What kind of bird is it?” I wasn’t ready for this question. “I shouldn’t have been painting the porch,” I thought. “I should have spent my time in an effort to identify the bird and have the answer ready,” but years of marriage helped me file it away rather than say it.

My ego bruised, I turned to the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds and waited for my chance to identify the bird.

Now, caring about identifying songbirds is a recent development for me. I felt I was fairly good with the red ones (Cardinals), yellow ones (Goldfinches), blue ones (Blue Jays and Bluebirds), black ones (Crows, Starlings, Grackles) and mixed colors (Red-winged Blackbirds, Red-bellied Woodpeckers)--as well as all the waterfowl and upland game birds I have hunted. Lately though I felt a bit more pressure to identify every bird I came across. I can trace this need to identify things directly to my wife who recently began keeping a nature journal. Anyone who has ever spent time with a two-year-old will understand the adult version of this type of curiosity when embarking on a new hobby or activity. My wife's questions brought out a need of mine to answer them and has led to a large personal library of books to help identify the smallest gnat to the tallest tree in Michigan’s air, land, or inland seas.

Her new hobby led me to take a great deal of pleasure in bringing her things to sketch and write about. Bird feathers, black walnuts with squirrel teeth marks, pine cones, broken bird eggs, strange looking leaves, dead butterflies from the grill of the car—all I have proudly given her to draw. It's like the male crow that collects shiny things and takes them home to Mrs. Crow.

So that night, armed with Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds, I thumbed through and identified several possibilities based on my previous fuzzy observations. The next morning, the little bird was singing away on the badminton pole. His song was a bubbling musical series of sharply whistled notes of “Chek,” I grabbed the field guide and the binoculars I had left on the kitchen table, proud of how prepared I was. There it perched, grayish brown with barred wings and a light throat, a light eye ring, yellowish legs and beak, just as described in the field guide. As it met all the criteria of the House Wren, right down to the described song it was singing, I considered the bird identified, categorized, named and proclaimed good. A House Wren. When my wife appeared, I proudly announced the news.

“House Wren,” she said, “What kind of name is that?”

The House Wren

Troglodytes aedon

The House Wren is a common bird found in backyards across the country. This little brown bird loves nothing more than to take over all the birdhouses where it sets up its territory. It will destroy the eggs of other nesting songbirds as well as its own species, sometimes taking over that nesting site for itself, but often just being destructive and nesting nearby. Often a “wren guard” is placed on nesting boxes to prevent them from entering and destroying Bluebird eggs. It loves to eat small terrestrial invertebrates (spiders and insects, with over 95% of them considered pest species by experts) found by gleaning surrounding leaves and shrubs. The male may have more than one mate at a time, splitting his time between families. Similarly, the female wren may leave its eggs and take up with a second male to start a new brood and leave the first male to rear his brood alone. It has one of the largest ranges of any songbird in the new world—from the tip of South America in winter to the northernmost region of Canada in summer. It is a common sight in backyards…If you just take the time to observe.

Solitude

“In solitude, where we are least alone.” -- Lord Byron

Byron gets it. The voices in our heads are the ones that come out and scream at us loudest when we are alone. I get it at night. I hear they are hard to squelch when people are trying to meditate, trying to reach enlightenment. I remember being down on my knees praying in church and they made an awful racket at times. Definitely not the voice of God or the Devil.

The voices were not people but more of a collective orchestra of passionate discord. Drums of memories and horns of worries and string sections of possibilities. I know it wasn't the choir or the organ because I would choose the music-free mass offered on Sunday morning. I really never cared that much for church music despite the fact my own mother played the organ at the church I attended. I was proud that she played so well and the congregation enjoyed her tunes but rare was the hymn that pleased my ears. "Morning Has Broken" was one I did enjoy. Cat Stevens did that old English hymn justice when he sang it on the "Buddha and the Chocolate Box" album. Probably my music likes were corrupted by all that devil rock and roll I listened to. Maybe that was where the noise in my head came from. Perhaps all that resounding guitar and drum and bass line playing. Loud too.

But the solitude that invades my head can take on my forms.

It can be intoxicating. With vigorous ideas and beliefs and dreams that it believes my body can accomplish. A drunkard it is, bragardly and boastful to my inner souls desires.

Other times, though rarely these days, it is a bitter tonic full of anger and frustration. Aimed at people, places, things, responsibilities. I assume that those type of voices mellow as you get older, as you taper down on the emotions that dominate you in your youth. The same stuff that makes you think bungee jumping off a bridge might be a good idea.

But mostly now I hear the whispers of truth that solitude allows me to see clearly. The voices work to quiet and settle my mind so that it can focus and refocus on the important task of happiness. Clarifying the perceptions of the world that I am encountering with my body.

Although my mind tends to be a very noisy place, when I look hard enough and seek out the corners of tranquility that are hidden there, it is those quiet and still places that lead me to truth.

The Church in the East

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

Verse by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

The powerful verse from Rilke illustrates a profound quandary that all of us face in our lives regarding changes. The words speak less of an actual physical leaving, but more of the spiritual leaving that takes place in our hearts and how it affects the ones surrounding the “victim” of this spiritual encounter. I see this leaving in others as well as feeling it in myself. Fearful am I at times when I recognize them--worrying about the possible outcomes of the journey.

I have seen my children, my wife, my job, my marriage, my belief system, all travel the road to the “Church that stands somewhere in the east” at some point in time. I have not lost those things, they only traveled a measured path that needed to be ventured along. Loves bonds still held—sometimes stretched—but still fondly attached.

I have also experienced the death inside my own house. I have smelled the rotting sense of deathlike loss and doubt. Fear has stalked and lurked around me with challenging fierceness. I feel my children looking for what I failed to give them as a father. What I was incapable of giving to them at times. I never failed to love, but I failed to care enough at times to forgive myself the failures that I suffered.

Personally, I seek the “church”, die far from the “church” and bear witness to the journeys of others to the “church.” And I will forget and be forgotten as well.

From Wikipedia: Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) was a Bohemian–Austrian poet and art critic. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

Condition: Loneliness

"Be warned: If you allow yourself to see dignity in someone, you have doomed yourself to wanting to understand and help whoever it is."--Kurt Vonnegut

How often have we judged people by their outward appearances? By their manners or lack of? Their haircut or grooming habits? The way they speak: with an accent or a lisp or with a strange sounding voice?Admit it, as human beings we all do it.

I would also put forth this reason why it seems to me more and more that people are judging others by standards that are arbitrarily invented to keep themselves comfortable. We have lost a bit of the extended families that we once were a part of. Yes, we are more lonely. I look around and I see this unconscious longing to overcome the loneliness that has crept slowly into peoples lives. A loneliness that in reality they are creating for themselves. They express this to others on Facebook. They practically cry it out for everyone to see. But that medium does not allow for a cure of the condition. It may actually enhance the feelings of loneliness. Do they think that "Look at all the people I am connected to, and I am still all alone?" That is what I hear and see. Facebook makes me sad. I feel the empty conditions--their longing to be loved--of some of the people I care for.

I will share an example of my own experience. I have officiated high school football for more than twenty years, and for most of that time, I encountered the same coaches and worked with a steady group of fellow officials. They would come and go due to life changes but there was always a core group.  That all changed 2 years ago and the whole group imploded. It happens to work groups just like it happens in families. A painful leap that is growth but leaves a feeling of emptiness.

I still love to officiate but now I have to embrace a new group. A group that I did not understand and actually thought I may not get along with. I had some preconceived notions of some of these characters from previous encounters at meetings, work at scrimmages as well as fellow officials opinions of them. In otherwords, my inside was telling my outside it was not possible to get along and have fun like I did in the past. So I plowed ahead. Fearful. Worried. Cautious. Longing for what I had lost when my little officiating "family" was no more.

But after working a few games with this new bunch of guys, I believe now that I was wrong. And I would bet that the other people that were going to work with me for the first time were probably experiencing the same thing. I hope they will feel better now about it like I do. Now I want to learn from them and become a cohesive unit. I want to continue to understand others.

And lastly, a simple recognition of the conditions leading to hopelessness--to loneliness--probably was personally cured by one of the nicest texts I ever got, a simple "Miss you, Papa."

Humanistic Economics

"Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations; as long as you have not shown it to be uneconomic you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper." -- Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

A man's got to earn a living to get by in this world. But I have begun to take the approach that we should carefully control where we spend our resources to obtain what we need to be happy, provide for our family and support our community.  And community can be as large as you feel like defining it. 

Many major religions speak of the "community of man" in the broad context of the many "souls" that people the planet.  They look at the global development of their mission.

The flag wavers talk of "America" as the border of their focus. Buy American. Support Our Troups. America: Love It Or Leave It. Wonder what the American Indians would think about these slogans?

People in my home town say we need to narrow it down to our own local businesses. The ones that can outlast the Walmart and the Meijer stores.

But the one thing that I really try to do is find people that want to do things and are economically challenged. I found a couple reliable shade-tree mechanics that can help me when the projects get to hard for me with a car or truck I need repaired. Heck, they even work on my old John Deere Lawn mower at times. They are people that I can talk to--at length--about the vehicles problem. I can buy the parts at the local auto parts store and they charge me a fair price to install them. Or I can call them and talk about my problem and they can sometimes lead me to a simple fix on my own. These guys didn't go to school to be mechanics, they learned it by tearing down and building cars for mud bogs and racetracks. They seem to understand the soul of automobiles, if they have one. I believe my Jeep Grand Cherokee has one and it is headed straight to H#%@ when I finally pull off the road for the last time and put a bullet through its heart.

They are also schooling me. Showing me a way of looking at things. Helping me conquer the fear that always seems to proceed a major repair that I undertake. They have stopped by my garage when I reached a sticky spot to guide me along. They have shown me how to weld, use a torch and how to use heat to loosen parts. They have been customer support on the phone. They have "humanized" getting my stuff fixed.

I feel good about handing money over to people like that versus the dealership and the auto repair joints that I have dealt with in the past. They almost think of being paid as an afterthought. They love the challenge of auto repair. They love to talk about cars and their experiences with them. They smile and laugh about what they have done to help you. And they are the actual person that has done the work. Not the service manager with the manicured nails and the computerized billing that confronts you when it comes time to pick up your car.

So invite your mind to look for ways you can reach out to people rather than businesses. Find someone to sell you your meat from a farm and a butcher that can cut it the way you want it cut. Buy some produce from a roadside stand. Go to those garage sales that pop up all summer. Or find your own shade-tree mechanic, they are around every corner.

And find something that you can do for others that will fill you with the sense of accomplishment when you benefit others.

Wikapedia definition of Humanistic economics: Humanistic economics focuses on human economic activity as being social and altruistically constructed, not just individualistically and selfishly derived. The importance of the ethical individual living within a vibrant local community, not merely as a lone wolf nor as a consumer of mass culture and production on a global scale, is often stressed. The importance of accounting for externalities (items not always put on the economic balance sheet like pollution or loss of biodiversity) are other key concepts.

Organization Disaster Case

“Electricity is really just organized lightning.”—George Carlin

My wonderful (a true understatement) wife is perhaps one of the most organized people in the world, at least the known world of “Me”. She is accurate with scheduled appointments. Prompt to do assigned or needed tasks for work and pleasure. All things have a place and she is able to find them with outstanding ease of effort. I also benefit when I need to borrow something of hers as she can either point out its location, or, if it is an item I have used in the past and retrieved, I know where to look…if I remembered to put it away properly.

Then there is the recent case with my back-up staple gun.

Now it will be important to back up a bit and explain my approach to organization. I approach it with a lack of understanding that my brain no longer files away storage locations of things with the clarity that it used to have. A brain that used to run like a brand new computer works more like a Commodore 64 computer from the early 80’s. Google it if you can’t remember that “state-of-the-art” device. Basically it works slowly like it is infected with a virus. Scrambled as well and needing to be de-fragmented like the hard drives of computers. Projects are lying around in various states of completion and incompletion.

• weed wacker that needs a throttle cable (waiting for the part to come in the mail)
• 2nd weed wacker that needs repair if I could figure it out (trying to find the manual)
• boat seat needing to be reupholstered and repaired (trying to find my second staple gun)
• baseball officiating gear that needs to be stored and football officiating gear that needs to be found (just need to take the time to do it)
• garage door that is crooked when it closes (this could take an engineer or a professional garage door mechanic)
• a 1962 Chevy Nova II (more like a skeleton of a car at this point)
• a basement room with drywall hung and first mud applied (trying to find the motivation to plaster)
• fish tank that needs cleaning (just need to take the time to do it)
• lawn tractor #2 won’t start (battery, starter, solenoid?)

The list just goes on like a bad romantic comedy. Or a slow action film.

But when I think about things and put them in perspective, the broken and lost stuff is old like my brain. Old stuff needs to be fixed. Stuff that hasn’t been used in years is gathering dust in spots around my house like my knowledge of college calculus, dwelling in some far-off corner of the gray matter in my skull. So my brain needs to be fixed too. Brain dust is covering it. Picture that if you can. Need to find a “brain-duster-off-er.” I kind of feel like George Carlin looks in the above picture. Or maybe I just need to quit putting so much pressure on it and give it a break. Let it just go where it wants to go and stop forcing it to work so hard. Maybe like water it will flow to the lowest point, scouring itself out while it races to the sea of knowledge.

I would apply Leo Tolstoy’s following quote to the brain as well as to the body as he inferred: “Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.”

I truly do hinder myself with a desire to remember everything, I need only remember what is available to me, close to my mind’s surface.

And I almost forgot, the back-up staple gun was found where I last used it. In the toolbox I take to the rifle range to attach my targets down range.

How to Forget?

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.--Henry David Thoreau

I need to learn a new skill.

A skill that can help me to be able to see things in a truer light. A light that casts a shadow of truth on objects, people and thoughts. I must learn how I can make space in my cluttered, unfocused mind and that restless spirit of mine that troubles and toys with it. I seem to be seeing many things in new perspective. Bright, new visions. As I am growing older, aging and evolving, the universe of my memories is growing crowded and confused.

I look around me and I am surrounded by so much that talks to me of what I have done in my life. There are the bookshelves filled with the volumes I have read. My favorite authors, collected and shelved for me to see, take down and turn to that certain passage that pleases. A snow goose mount from a special hunt with dear friends. Pictures and autographed baseballs and elephant bookends.

But perhaps I should begin to remove some of these things. Take the books I probably won't read again and donate them. Give away my drawings and art that lies flat and unviewed. Mostly forgotten things. Unused. Should be discarded. Simplify a bit more.

What I truly need to develop is not the ability to remember more, but the ability to forget. Give up certain ways and things. That would bring a peace to me and allow more joy to work it's magic on my life.

Gary Ryan Blair, "The GoalsGuy®", kind of sums up what I am contemplating when he wrote, "Learning is about more than simply acquiring new knowledge and insights; it is also crucial to unlearn old knowledge that has outlived its relevance. Thus, forgetting is probably at least as important as learning.”

Let the forgetting, begin.