Flies Like Rain

A single desultory fly zooms to and fro within the confines of my lampshade, pattering and pinging against it without cease.  This is what you are doomed to do if your life span is three days long and all other forms of life regard you as a despicable annoyance.

Now the fly has escaped into the greater realm of the livingroom, and rain has started falling outside, hurtling downward from turbulent masses of warm and cold atmosphere somewhere high above while the fly hurtles itself in a zig-zag pattern, the very illustration of insanity.  

It seems the fly has brought the rain.  His random trajectories and self-destructive bashing against the lampshade earlier had the same pinging busyness as the rain does now on the hard surfaces of the house.  He flung himself toward my open window earlier, rushing headlong into the interior of my room, probably to his great surprise (having hit the pane a few hundred times before that), a weird little pratfall move that flies are prone to, I would think, erratic as all their flight is, without purpose and without aim.

And here I sit quietly, not randomly moving like fly nor pelting raindrops, but in juxtaposed stillness.  I wonder if flies come from another world where everything but they move wildly in all directions at once so that the fly feels like I do now, perfectly still.  In his mind, the fly could be holding still, while his senses tell him everything else really is moving all willy nilly.  This assumes flies have minds, albeit briefly lit ones, of course.  

One way or another, a moving fly is immediately aggravating, but the rain is not even though both make the exact same pattering sound as they hit things.  But since the sound is the same, they are alike, and who would make that comparison except a sitting-still human with sleep in her eyes on a Saturday night?

Possibility: Changing The View

We are looking forward to seeing what we have never seen before, or seeing things differently than they may have seemed. It's time to travel, to take in some new views and viewpoints.  We are off to France soon, and preparations are nearly complete.  

Life is different there, just enough that it knocks us out of complacency and indifference. All details become stimuli and prompts for change in body, mind and spirit.  As when travelers come here and see our town with fresh eyes, we will see and hear there what perhaps the French overlook.  If we are lucky and keep open to the possibility, realms of discovery we cannot yet imagine will reveal themselves to us. It happens on every trip we take because what is experienced externally stimulates what is internal and unseen within ourselves.

So, in order to prepare I am dusting off my travel guides and figuring out the bare minimum that I want to carry with me. If travel is tiring, it usually has more to do with lugging too much stuff around and believing that the plans I made ahead of time are cut in stone. I prefer to travel lightly and imagine that many scenarios are possible on any given day. I want to discover and adapt to life where I am going. I figure if I haul a heavy load of belongings with me, I am forcing the world to encounter me rather than me encountering it. In a nutshell, I want to leave myself behind.

Travel.  The word ignites the imagination.  There is no better way to push myself into learning mode than to extricate my whole entire self from my routine and literally land someplace else that is foreign and unfamiliar.  Discover, adapt, learn, and open to possibility - whatever may come.  Travel!

Wow, I'm a Gardener

I walked around Cypress Garden Nursery today, drunk on beauty and fragrance.  I feasted my eyes on a froth of flowers and realized the Cypress Garden had simply transferred all their knowledge about growing healthy vibrant plants to me.  I have at last replicated their success, at least a much smaller version, and I am immensely grateful to them for that.

This year, my garden, which is largely a container garden, has sprung from a sad, ratty ugliness born of serious neglect to become the most abundant garden I've ever grown before.  What's my secret?  First of all, I had to pay attention to it more often.  Then, heavy pruning in January, regular feeding with an organic fertilizer and regular watering -- if rain wasn't doing the job -- has turned the tide.  (I have settled on E.B. White organic fertilizer, and I don't get paid to say so.)  My plants are growing abundantly and are producing profuse amounts of flowers.  A couple of plants are very challenging, and I still I need to figure them out, but the majority are dancing on their stems in apparent happiness.  I like to think so anyway.

Pruning is the one area that takes time to master, and I have asked a lot of questions.  If injudicious cuts are made, you can lose a plant, but if you don't prune out dead wood at the beginning of the growing season, the plant is stuck with it and vitality is lost.  Roses, the most vulnerable plants to pests and horrible afflictions, need pruning in January and then constant attention to battle the waves of predators that materialize from nowhere.  So, I remembered that and accomplished my pruning when the yard was still cold and dreary.  Now the roses are popping out all over the plants like nobody's business.

It is said that life happens in seasons not in 30-minute segments, so I am in this for the long haul now.  Sticking with the plants as they go through their life cycle is proving to me that keeping my eyes on the prize (lots of flowers throughout the growing season) takes perseverance and a long-term focus, but wow is it worth it.  If my flowers could sing, I'd hear quite a chorus.

The Roar of the Chickadee

I was just outside in the sun, it being just past lunch, when a breeze ran by from the ocean, jostling the vines on my balcony.  Every plant is flowering and the soil is damp, redolent of pungent living things.  A chickadee is yelling its small head off, shouting its song to the stars buried behind a thick periwinkle sky, and he is unnoticed by many.  And yet, the song of the bird is layered over the nuanced fragrance from young plants and the ocean nearby, and together the message is bold and clear.  Life is everywhere.

What is it that grips my attention exactly?  The angle of the sun is rising every day, flattening shadows as it reaches its zenith, rainstorms have gone away, and the sun's warmth is urging the swell of buds and unfurling of petals.  But, like the shouting chickadee, each single flower goes unnoticed.  The volume of song and the intensity of color as one flower joins its many cousins in a color shout of their own has reached a critical mass of beauty that is now undeniable:  You must notice it.  Otherwise you are surely blind and deaf.  The day is so beautiful that even if it were not seen or heard, it would be felt and that is enough.

Life is on the march.  The urgency of its pace is unique at this time of year, its footsteps a drumbeat made up of infinite small hearts and veins of pulsing sap.  Abundance is akin to possibility; no one and nothing can deter it.  Too many small voices and too many small energetic  living things are responding to the urging of the sun for them to be subdued.  The shouting chickadee whose head is thrown back as he summons his own chirping roar of invincibility is one of a chorus of shouting voices.  The energy of life is now eager and free to rise until it can rise no more.

The Many Who Stopped The One

The wicked criminal is dead at last, and the world is celebrating the cloak-and-dagger planning behind the blazing attack on his compound in Pakistan.  The news broke yesterday and has not ceased.  It's a fascinating and dazzling event, the tip of a data-gathering iceberg.  Compared to the Bourne series, James Bond and other suave Hollywood super-spy heroics, this story is all about a long persistent slog, a tedious and frustrating hunt for a rich and ingenious sociopath.  

All the people who have cynically said the President is not doing enough, is too soft, too indecisive, too uncertain, unclear, unwhatever, really have had no idea how much has been done behind the scenes all along.  Let's celebrate perseverance and professionalism.  We need to feel some relief after having been cynical about our nation and its intentions in the world.  What I think we will learn from this in the long run is that the world is incredibly complicated and that we do depend on smart people in every country in the world to help maintain peace.

The same agencies being lauded now have been toiling to gather information about bin Laden's whereabouts since before he bombed the twin towers and brought ruin to us.  He was responsible for heinous things prior to that and was as elusive before that, if not as notorious to the entire world.

The invisible work of intelligence gathering and data comparison was the long grind, the frustration, the peering into opacity that had to go on and on for years until a picture could be completed. Like an archeologist who finds one tooth and part of a femur and reconstructs an entire hominid from it, genius and imagination had to fill in the gaps.  Bits and pieces of odd facts and translations of intercepted  bits of conversations were made to make sense, but it took years, and it will be ongoing for years to come.  

People all over the country are eating their words of criticism and impatience.  Perhaps they will simmer down a bit about other problems that appear to be going on and on without any change. If this event is any indication, it tells us that lots of other smart people are working on intractable problems in other facets of government and need our patience and interest in their success.

There will always be evil and stupidity in the world.  There always has been.  But, there has always been genius, courage and perseverance related to goodness and idealism.  For a little while, the shadow people who work under cover can take a bow on the world stage.  They have earned every bit of our appreciation and applause.