Two Hours For The Price of One: Daylight Saving Time is Over

Oops, we are not saving daylight anymore.  It's a free-for-all, a scrum and losers get the hindmost.  Get yours while you can because it will be dark soon and you won't be able to see a thing for a few months.  I wonder what the temporal version of "green" is.

Anyone whose stomach is on a meal schedule that was well established for the last eight months will have to suffer until they adapt to Standard Time.  If this is done for farmers, as I was told it was originally, I think the cows walking to the barn to be milked when their udders are full have the final say.  If this is done to put us all into jet lag all at one time, it's working.

My eyes pop open when there's a certain amount of light out, usually dawn, no matter what time it has been decided it should be.  When days start to get long again, that's when I'll be happy.  The tilt of the earth to and from the sun, shooting stars and the gibbous moon are better guides - certainly more fun - than arbitrary moving up and falling back of an hour of time twice a year.  Ugh, more coffee please.

Tumbling Rocks, Storm Surf

Walking in the salt-tinged rain this morning brought us to our senses.  Or rather, it brought our senses more to life.  We heard the loud crack of giant rocks banging and clacking in the surf while cold drizzle coated our jackets and faces.  The tossing and tilting waves spewed salt-laden mist heavy with kelp, fish and wet earth.  Debris thrown on the walking path crunched under our feet like glass.

The ocean's watery hand is violent and unrelenting in its insistent pounding.  Life and death intertwine, trading places often.  There is no room for weakness or ambivalence when the tide rises and waves are roaring.  Some parts of the shore are piled up with shredded heaps of kelp ripped up during the last storm.  It lies in acrid mounds, rotting and decaying, washing back into the surf in shreds and bits.

Shore birds unable to dodge and lift above breakers are broken themselves.  Cracked shells and legs of sand crabs, anemones and mollusks have been scattered by both waves and other stronger birds.  Constantly, the smacking whump of wave after wave continues, beating hard against slowly eroding granite rocks.  As if forming a zone of indecision,  loose boulders roll from the earth to the water and back again, and you can hear the crackling boom as they are pushed by tons of water.

The potent and primal admixture of cool misty air, rough dark rocks and tumbling waves reduces all things to a struggle between life and death, a drama that continues from dark to light and dark again, ceaselessly.

I Am This Because I Am Not That

I went to the farmer's market and noticed three little children amidst the browsing large adults.  Juxtaposition of the tall and short people, old and young created a visual dynamic.  Contrasted sizes and abilities between the babies and adults described each to the other.

The children are charming to us because they are not adults.  We know adultness because babies are babies.  They can't be anything else.

A dog is a dog.  Perhaps when we watch the dog, we learn more about ourselves, we define humanness because there are dogs.  They can only be dogs.

Snow is snow.  Perhaps when we take time to feel snow and not impose our human qualities on it, simply letting it be snow and learning how snow is not human, we learn more about being human.  The whole entire physical natural world teaches us things about our own nature because it is not human.

We walk on two feet.  When we watch another creature who walks on four or six or eight feet, we define our humanness.  If the world were comprised of only human beings, we would much the worse for it.  We would not know that Usain Bolt is fast as a gazelle or that a baby is as soft as a rabbit.  We define things that are because of the things they aren't.  Black is not white, but both look more beautiful because of the other.  The difference between them helps to define both of them.

The babies and children I saw today were cute and funny and small because they were not adults, not dogs, not pumpkins or any other of the things in the world around them.  The difference was wonderful.

Gabriel The New: So Far So Good

His Newness, Gabriel, my grandnephew, has reached the tender age of 12 weeks, a very healthy boy.

I visited the little one two days ago when his mother and I could intersect our schedules for a half hour.  She is doing very well, regaining fitness and taking a place alongside mothers her age who have infants his age.

What can you say about babies?  Mothers have lots to say.  So do dads, of course, and they notice every subtle shift in mood or wobbling movement.  Their every hiccup or yawn is delightful and adorable.  With skin is so soft you second guess the sensitivity of your fingertips, you wonder if you have actually touched them.  

Gabriel sat as I held him on my lap and wobbled vigorously, and when I stood him up before me, his little legs made repeated pogo hops up and down, bouncing automatically, like a marionette.  Being only 12 weeks old, very little is willful about him.  His body is spasmodic and uncoordinated, and yet he is very strong.  He is adored, appropriately so, by all who see him, and his parents are doing everything you hope parents will do to support the growth and development of their child.  Everyone kisses him, talks to him, wants him to hold.

Yesterday, two days after I visited Gabriel, I encountered a young man who had, by all accounts, never been given any fraction of the love and gentle guidance that His Newness has been showered.  The young man I met, not much past his teens, had been given street drugs when he was in first grade and had begun "partying" with his parents when he was in middle school.  He was hooked on heroin at the age of 16 or so.  As I looked at him, I saw Gabriel, all wobbly and helpless but absolutely developing confidence and curiosity about his safe and secure world, even now.

I wonder if there is a bigger crime than ruining your own child's development, distorting their neural activity and undermining them socially and emotionally from the outset of their lives.  I don't know.  All crimes are monstrous, certainly.  Good parenting is crucial, something I naively hope we all understand.

I am even perhaps naive in believing that parents who try to raise their child well are what is needed to get that child to adulthood without mishap.  Values and beliefs guide the child, good or bad, weak or strong.  If a baby like Gabriel, who is soaking up every little sound, every nuance of every word, gleaning information at all times from his home and family, is in a pretty consistent steady place, he has a better chance of understanding how to be an effective adult.

His Newness is at the funny stage of being easily distracted now from nursing.  He leaves off and looks all around the room, at the people with him and what he does not notice would barely fill a thimble.  His mom and dad have to be just as aware, interpreting and teaching him, guiding, setting limits to keep him safe.  They are, and he is thriving.

I didn't tell them about the drug addicted 20-something young man I'd encountered whose life is so marginal right now.  The stronger and more positive their love and joy can be, the better they will weather storms ahead.  Besides, holding Gabriel, all cute and wriggly and warm, was a good balm for me, too.  I'll be going back for more very soon.

What Matters

Now that Halloween is in the rear-view mirror, the long slow slide to Christmas has begun.  I'm thinking it's going to be okay if I keep on keeping it simple.

First of all, let me explain one thing.  I think of the year in terms of being on a big looping circle, like a roller coaster.  It begins an uphill swing starting on the winter solstice and reaches its apex at the summer solstice.  After that, as the days get gradually shorter and shorter we descend, so to speak, toward the winter solstice once again.  Upswing, then downswing.  It's my visual, and I'm sticking with it.

Here in California, the big circle idea is overlain with the peculiar and unique weather pattern of the California coast, where summer is cold, late autumn is warm and dry and winter generally very mild.  Late winter and early spring both throw storms around and we get wet.

Today, like yesterday is warm, bright and, well, pretty.  It feels very pleasant.  It doesn't feel like Christmas is coming.  Instead, Easter should be coming.  It's that pretty.  But, Christmas really is coming and friends are talking about changes.  No one is talking about giving big gifts or going shopping.  They're talking about making gifts, being outside where the biggest gift waits for them every day.  No one is taking life for granted.  Maybe it's the election, but the feeling is we've skimmed by a tough spot and need to hang on to what's important.  Most of all, friends are looking at each other with appreciation.  Just because we show up day after day.  It's not a bad thing, this thing called love.  

Life is pretty tough sometimes, and it's complicated.  Showing up for a friend, plain and simple, is what Christmas might be about this year.  Giving of oneself, expressing gratitude.  They're free to give and priceless to receive.