Springing along

Today felt and smelled like spring. Of course I was in the deep end of the pool of classes, online grading, paper collecting, quiz-giving and only surfaced to feel the air at the end of they day. Each day comes round and perfect and we squander them as we scurry around doing things busily.

Perhaps it is time to stop and simply see.

Attention Must be Paid

Perusing the papers today I see picture after picture of men who have been laid off or “excessed.” How can we speak of “excessing” a fellow human being? --Dismissing them as unnecessary, insignificant? Their faces share a common look: they are in their 50s and are trying to maintain their dignity in the stark reality of a dollars and cents economy that could care less. They have taken care of their families, worked to feed their babies and send them to college. They have served their country and their communities. They were accounted as a member of a work force. Their faces show struggle but also pride. Their eyes reveal the worry as to how they will keep their children in school, pay their mortgage, hold up their heads in their community. As middle aged men they see themselves as expendable and they know their future does not look bright. No one’s does, of course, in the current economic meltdown but if you are a 55 year old man, too young to retire and too old to re-invent yourself perhaps, where do you go? His family and friends look to him for nurture, for guidance, for protection. If he is married, his spouse works hard too. Perhaps she works in the home or perhaps out there in the world but their life is on the rocks and neither quite knows what to do now. Attention must be paid to these quiet heros who have labored all their lives to provide and now appear to be tossed aside. Their responsibilities weigh heavily on their sloping shoulders but they square their back and face the future. Those who remain employed might be tempted to turn their face and ignore them; too close to the bone perhaps. But we should not. We should thank them, respect them and make room for them in our businesses and work places. This we should do.

March around the corner

February begins to slip away as night falls and we can feel the tug of winter, grasping and holding on to us. Perhaps some snow or ice? Persephone is still underground. Demeter is waiting, anxiously pacing the stiff earth and sear countryside.

Now we are in Lent. Regardless of one's religious bent, Lent can offer us a time to reflect and notice the small still voice that whispers through the pines.

Sadness

Today the universe lost a special and wonderful person. Perhaps she was ready to leave. But we were not. When you pass by an older woman on the street you probably do not even see her. You dismiss her as insignificant, unimportant, old and thereby done. How tragic- for you. My friend was a bright shining hard beam of witty and loving goodness. She was mercifully spared the indignities of modern medicine except for her final six days in the hospital. No purgatory for her. She knows what is what.

Some people must go through months of process to disconnect from the world. Others are floating here but really existing in the heart of all that is. That was my friend. I cannot name her but I can tell you that in the world, there are those who matter. Whose gentle goodness and keen intellect and sharp sense of humor define what it is to be human. That was her. Only the poets can capture this feeling. Mary Oliver. Charles Wright. Others. Only the poets. Not the philosophers Maybe Plato... Maybe...


"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go” --Mary Oliver

The Aesthetic of Nature

What is it to view nature aesthetically?

The Geography of Childhood

I am working on an article/presentation on the concept of space, nature, animals and childhood. In what ways does our immersion within a natural world, the space that surrounds our home, our path to school, our after school dreamtime affect who we are and who we become? Surely who I am has been deeply formed by growing up in the middle of a city where the Queens borough Bridge defined my skyline and floated above the rooftop world where clothes were hung and hide and seek were played. the dizzying drop to the ground always offering an edge of terror to the black tar sponginess of irregular shapes and secret spaces. Then again, roaming through wild grass on the edge of the ocean, establishing my kingdom of dune-home, secret paths through swamplands-- all of these childhood imaginative space, a shining circle of being in which I could breathe, be myself and rule.

My story is but one. So, how does the world as nature, as animated, appear to the young child and offer her an ontological anchor? What living beings spoke to you when you were five? And told you their secrets? Adults are divorced from the camaraderie of the child and animal world. Both child and animal are small, viewed as insignificant and indeed, as we might say today, are marginalized from the adult world of power and action. Ah, but are they? Or do they inhabit an alternative world in which animals confide in the child and the child rules her kingdom by the sea, in the playground, backyard, dusty alley. What world is revealed to children that adults have lost the ability to see, to sense, to feel?

Heartbreaking movie

So I just watched the Visitor. What a heart-rending movie about being lost in life, illegal in this country and transcending barriers.