Posted in Eternal moments, Lived meaning, Reflections on the everyday, tagged sunrise, time on October 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »
A sunrise no words can match or quench.
Burning apricot flung across fading shade of night.
Rain from a cloudless, effortless sky deepens color on the eastern horizon.
Washing out the past and blazing the trail for the only thing we really have—this day.
Posted in Lived meaning, time, tagged consciousness, memory, time on August 26, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Decades ago, I turned a page in the magazine, Common Boundary. On the facing page was a photograph of an old woman, her eyes recessed in a plain of wrinkles, the landscape of long human life.
Her eyes were remarkable, vibrant blue, steady, deeply knowing.
The moment was profound. This extraordinary woman, the embodiment of the belief that “the eyes are a window to the soul.” I cannot recall the article. I had forgotten her eyes until this morning.
What life had she led to live within her skin and far beyond it at the same time? If there was ever a goal in life, I thought, the authenticity and honesty reflected in that gaze had to be it.
On a business trip, a hotel room anywhere. A mirror, the essential tool to minimize the lines now tracking across the map of my own face. In its reflection, I glanced into my eyes, looking at me as if I were someone else. Blue, thoughtful, knowing, steady. Seeing from and to someplace other.
In that too-quick moment, I joined the woman I so admired years and years ago. Mine was a dusty existence, I met few goals, and realized disappointment. But those eyes remain for me the mile marker of a truly lived human life. Full circle.
Posted in Eternal moments, Parents and children, Reflections on the everyday, tagged consciousness, time on May 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »
On Saturday morning while running errands, I detoured through the local small town community park. Neatly maintained pickle ball courts and baseball fields, a well-appointed playground. Gazebos for picnicking, and a small amphitheater for outdoor concerts. Early enough that the baseball crowd had not yet arrived.
A van pulled in. What appeared to be a mom and her perhaps seven-year-old son exited the vehicle and headed to the playground.
Mom looked straight ahead, her posture tired, a chronic condition of parenthood. Walking a few feet away, the boy scampered excitedly, looking expectantly at mom.
A moment in time. The poignancy of older and younger. One whose path has led them here, and one whose path is being formed in this moment.
Two sides of life, both ordinary and extraordinary, in an instant.
Posted in Nature, Seasons, The Garden, tagged autumn, gardens, time on November 5, 2022| Leave a Comment »
It had to happen.
On this morning, the flowers are more brilliant than before. Brittle frosted petals, leaves, buds. Deepened color in the autumn garden, a medieval sketch of high linear detail, a confection of final color — red, blue, yellow, green, orange. No feature missed. Paused in perfection, flowers held taut in icy fingers.
With the day, the frost relents, the flowers sag to brown mush. A slow exhalation of the garden into the coming season. Until next year.
Posted in memory, Reflections on the everyday, The Garden, time, tagged memory, time, wind on September 26, 2022| Leave a Comment »
About 4’ in height, the garden spinner has three wheels of descending size. Polyester ribbons affixed to each wheel were once brightly colored. The flag at the base of the spinner, a stitched red ladybug atop a green leaf, points to the direction of the wind.
For the last 20 years, the spinner has held court in the corner of the summer vegetable garden using the breeze, or the winds blustering through, to proclaim its presence. A gentle breeze moves the largest of the wheels first. A thunderstorm madly propels all three.
The spinner delighted young children playing in their sandbox or tending the garden. It gaily provided ornamentation at their high school Open House celebrations. And it stands now, bereft of color, but still fit, in its garden corner.
The spinner has welcomed and harvested the winds of two decades. It awakens in the Spring, grows quiet as Summer goes to ground in Autumn, and dreams away the Winter in the garage.
At first glance, it is now a tired old spinner whose day has passed. Is it an artifact too long held for its memory? While it enjoyed its sunny days, the bluster that overtook this place blew away its color and its more nimble nature. Visiting this summer, my oldest remarked on its longevity and rightful place in the garden. Just now, a puff of air moved its wobbly wheels, as it easily pivoted to reveal the direction of the unseen quality that powers it.
The spinner remains. As stalwart as the day I assembled its plastic and polyester pieces, it fulfills its purpose to translate what is unseen to the visible world. Not as pretty, but still a structural, kinetic marvel that defies a date with the landfill.
Things change, and sometimes, things remain.
Posted in Airplanes, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Air travel, memory, time on April 16, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Flying through the sky I saw the distant shadow of this airplane against the clouds. The shade tracked us into the distance and disappeared. I began to look closer and I saw…
A flock of cirrus clouds plying their way eastward beneath us
Endless rows of expressionless houses far below
The next state over, expansive tracts bisected by lonely roads
Still further, the checkerboard irrigation patterns of farming
A small town, a cluttered magnet from above
Wind turbines dotting in distant rows
Passing over the marshmallow fluff of a beautiful cloud deck
Wrinkles in the landscape below, a tribute to old elementary school salt dough maps
A jet passes us with ease at a lower altitude
The wrinkles pile up, then spread into flatlands
Small mountains look like exposed fossils of dinosaurs that once traipsed there
Arid, rolling brown land
Strips of brown and green soil, like a long row of exotic piano keys
Building clouds mirror mountains below
Another jet, passing through
The confused noodle of a dry streambed
Wheeling over mountains, the palette of the place I called Home. It’s spaciousness and tendency of quiet in magnificent wild spaces always present, even if I am not
The sun tracks across the lake, a blazing comet beneath me
New subdivisions, identical monopoly pieces
Old subdivisions, all colors, shapes, and conditions
Scrapyard, trucks and cars piled and peaceful in their final resting place
Rail yard, parallel lines stretch toward distant destinations
Rubber hits the road, touchdown.
Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, time, weather, tagged consciousness, memory, Snow, time on January 8, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Glistening clouds of snow blanket the ground, the roof, the roads.
You may know these mornings. Quiet, a dog barking in the distance, conifers silhouette a deep blue sky brightening before an orange-stroked sunrise.
Winter storms pass, leaving moments of unsullied stillness. Beneath the blanket and cold, some things sleep, some perish, some wait – much like memory. Other than the energy of our blood and bones we are only memory. Some memories finally pass, others will only pass when we do.
The sun will soon dazzle the landscape with its untrammeled brilliance, blinding thought to anything but glory. Then the blankets will fray to fluid and reveal again what lies there.
Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, weather, tagged swings, time, wind on December 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »
From dawn to dusk, strong winds and fleets of rain.
At sunset, the instability blew off. The sky is bright on the western horizon, clouds lit with rusty pink ageing to pewter grey.
On a walk with the dogs, the streets are empty, the very air animated.
The wind is playing where children usually do, rolling balls down the street, pushing over trash cans.
Passing a swing set, the single swing flies high back and forth, ghostly in its trajectory, as if weighted by a child.
I swung a small child in such a swing once. The child and that swing have long blown away. The wind is like that.
Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, The Garden, tagged autumn, shadows, time on November 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »
The shadows of bush branches outside the window fall on the sunlit wall by my table.
The wind waves and they dance on the wall and along the tabletop.
Life is in those shadows. Seasons pass, decades, and the shadows send a signal of what is present somewhere, but not within my reach.
Their impression, more fluid than their being, is energy just passing through of the solid object upon which we are more inclined to focus.
Shadows can traverse time, forward and backward, infinite. While the object that opens that door is even now withering to autumn.
Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, time, tagged consciousness, human body, time on July 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Have you noticed? You are getting older. So am I.
At my annual physical recently – a systems check of moving parts. cardiac, respiratory, gastrointestinal, musculature, neurological, and dermatological. Blood pressure — the force at which blood courses through veins to keep major organs fit. Blood pressure is a Goldilocks statistic — neither high nor low is just right.
In concert, these systems create the song that is you. Regardless of age, the collaboration of those systems, and that song, is changing, even now. The breath and thought of today cannot be the same tomorrow.
The pithy slogan “Change Happens,” reminds those with concretized views that change comes to each life. The deeper truth is we are change, conditioned upon those beautiful physiologic systems and the environments in which we find ourselves.
Sudden or chronic illness, or accident, drives home the message. If lucky, we are allowed to live within the one body granted us until it ages out of the game. Generation after generation until humans are no more.
Life is anguish for some, joy for others, maybe most of the time somewhere in between. Bridging the space between sky and earth, our bodies are the gift that allow us to feel, express, reflect, participate. They ferry us where we want to go on the planet, in its waters, and above.
Experience is the natural and sometimes hard-won aim of biological life. When systems fail and the body slumps, the kernel that is us trills on, star stuff once again. The drama, accomplishments, losses, and possessions mean naught but as the memories of others that will fade in time.
At dawn, noon, or dusk, mind the blood, mind the body, and enjoy your glorious time while it lasts.
Shouldn't...but Do 