LOOSELY SPEAKING...

Journal: Home Garden Report

I harvested all the ripe tomatoes today and had them with my breakfast. Cherry tomatoes… 3! And there are a couple of bell peppers growing nicely, which are green now, but will, I think, go red later on. The squash flower on prolifically, but I am not seeing much in the way of actually squash fruits. But there are two nice little eggplants that I should probably cook with soon. The potatoes are leafing wildly, but I restrain any impulse to yank anything up just to see how they are doing below ground.

Resident on the deck garden are the latest brood of dovelings–saw a wee one over the edge of the nest just yesterday! That makes three this summer, and this the third summer they have nested on my deck. From what I know of Eurasian Collared Doves, they have no particular breeding season, and quite often just when the fledglings have flown, I begin to hear that throaty ‘come hither’ cooing in the near vicinity.

This would be a good time to carry water to the front deck plants, the ones that get little benefit from almost daily showers. They get some splash from the real humdinger downpours, but we haven’t seen one of those the past few days. There is a volunteer from splashed birdseed, a sunflower about to bloom in a windowbox at the edge outside the railing. They are my favorite ones, all brilliant yellow blossoms!

In my kitchen there is a little tub into which I toss eggshells, pepper seeds and squash seeds that appear when I am preparing veggies to cook. It is nearly full, and the plan is to carelessly toss them into one of the raised beds by the back fence, and see what happens. My gardening technique one might call ‘prehistoric.’

Out there, the wild bird garden is near fruiting with millet seeds which may, in turn, bloom with various wild birds. You do plant wild bird seed to get wild birds.

4-Hour Night

Morning creeps in,
My head is not ready for it.
It glows against the mountain
against the quiet clouds
tinging all things golden
as they brighten to full day…

I am not ready
wanting the landscapes still
of dreams
of downy comforter and bed
pillowing my head
in sleep, dayless,
consciousless…

Slowly,
relentlessly
day pushes out
the shadows of the house;
world sounds,
the silence
of the head and house…

Body nags
its various needs
like the cat demanding
that I rise right now
and admit the day
and make a start
though it wholly goes
against my heart.

2019

Growing Up Civilized

I watch documentaries. I used to watch tv and movies, and read to escape more than to be informed. That was when I was younger, and believed in romance. I devoured fantasy and science fiction because they were colorful and fed my inner life with the stuff of dreams, and required nothing from me. But now I am older, and have a different hunger.

I devour history now, and watch quality documentaries. I pursue knowing rather than feeling.

The American Experience episodes about the Triangle Fire, about the American relief effort during the Russian famine of the early days of Bolshevik power… Prohibition… The history of the conquest of the West… Ken Burns’ documentary series, The Civil War, and the later ones about the conquest of the American West, The Freedom Riders… Such a wealth of clarification, of context and knowledge!

I am simply astounded at how much is not taught, is glossed over, is ignored in the American public classroom. I want to encourage people everywhere, every age, to sit down and discover what we have missed, what we should have been told about, should have been moved by, so that now we would have some actual comprehension of where we came from, of how we got where we are now, of the heroics and the abominations of our government policies, to really get it, that these times are set in a context that led straight here. We have to understand that there have always in human history and society been the takers and the givers: the greedy for personal power, and the ones who strive to make the world better than they found it. This dichotomy is part of the human experience, our options, our opportunities to choose every day what kind of effect we will have in the world. We can’t not have an effect. So we must choose with care, with consciousness, what that will be.

Without knowledge, we are naive, we are vulnerable, we are set up to be, or feel powerless in the face of great political machines and monsters, of progress for the sake of change rather than improvement. Without knowledge, we cannot choose with consciousness, with intelligence or integrity.

It seems to be an assumption that control and power, that advanced technologies make us great and define our civilization. But these things are not the foundation of civilization. They may be a product of it, but if they are not accompanied by the mindset of civilized people, then they miss the mark, and we remain simply very clever barbarians.

Civilization is defined by how we regard the suffering of other living things. It is the quality of welcome we offer strangers, it is tolerance of difference, appreciation of diversity. It is choosing to be conscious, to accept responsibility for our personal effect. It is looking beyond ourselves to the needs of others, of the larger community, with the understanding that we all thrive together, or not at all. It is about considering long term causes and effects, rather than short term gratifications.

When it comes down to it, civilization is about growing up.

Homestead

It was spring
and everything was new–
Life and love and everything,
and everything we planted grew!
The door you’d made was open wide,
the scent of new wood on the air
that brought the warmth of spring inside
and stirred your soft and tawny hair…

Summer came
and baby’s laughter rang
through the vine-thick upper frame,
and all the lullabies I sang
while lower, latch secure,
kept little wandering feet within.
Oh, summers then were sweet and pure…
So many summers there have been!

Autumn gusts
and leaves all scattered:
reds and yellows, browns and rusts,
and harvesting was all that mattered;
That door seemed always on the swing,
and the floor was never swept!
The light in your eyes made me sing…
The nights were cool, but warm, we slept…

Winter closed
that Dutch door tight
and by the woodstove, we supposed
that snow would come, most every night.
We had each other all those years–
the kids, the cats, the dogs, the bird–
We laughed, and loved, and had no fears!
The storms outside, we hardly heard…

Seasons rolled,
as they are wont to do
and sometime, somehow, we grew old,
your fine wood door, no longer new…
I went last week, and looked again:
It still holds firm, below, above–
and “now” has not forgotten “then,
when it was built with youth and love!

2006

Mystic Whispers:The Wreck of the Faery Galleon

A sailor stands on a quiet deck
in the still of a peaceful night–
He suddenly sees, like a cobweb-dream,
a galleon of faery-light,
riggings of gossamer, translucent and pale,
looming up high to port.
Silently sailing, as if quite alone,
as if no more solid than thought–
wonder and marvel,
afloat on a sea as smooth and slick as glass.

Onward, in silence, broadside to his own,
there’s no way the ships can pass….
He watches it coming, the phantom ship,
with it’s wondrous faery crew–
Naught can be done,
there is only the hope
that this ghost of a ship will pass through–
But the delicate lines and fragile truths
of the gossamer hull are too real:
They shatter and buckle and slide beneath
the rusty old iron and steel…

Not a sound marks the moment,
not a crack, not a cry,
as the faery ship goes down.
Not a ripple disturbs the smooth waters at all,
as the faery crew struggle and drown…
Only the sailor, standing alone,
ever witnessed the terrible sight
of the ruin and wreck of the faery galleon
that still and peaceful night.

2005

Apricots Growing Wild

Sweet, sweet, wild fruit
in the first heat of the day
in the desert…
Cool and sweet,
unlooked-for treat
in the desert morning,
an oasis…
Nectar, glowing, sweet as light,
and chill, from the night.

Cool and sweet delight
heralded by wasps
drunk with pleasure…
They do not sting,
I do not kill–
Sweet truce
in the first heat
of the day in the desert.

~1983

Animals and Souls

It used to be an assumption, and a very convenient one, at that, that only human beings have that esoteric quality we call ‘soul.’ But how do we recognize a soul? What are its signs in a personality? What assumptions was that assumption built on?

Descartes shaped the notion back when Reason was all the rage, and spirituality not so much, that animals are basically meat mechanisms, all their actions based on reflex. He asserted further that the mechanical understanding of animals absolved people of any guilt for killing and eating animals.

We went with that in Western, ‘civilized’ thought generally, for several centuries, never much pondering on the nature of consciousness, of suffering, of whether animals have emotions or any kind of awareness that goes beyond instinct and reflex. This made imperialism so much simpler, ethically and morally, it was so easy to declare that so-called primitive people were not actually human. Of course, these lesser humans included anyone not of European descent and coloring, Jews, Romani, as well. The foundational belief was there for people like Hitler to exploit an increment at a time.

What we know now through observing what every dog-owner has always known, that animals have awareness, emotions, some even have cognition at very high levels. This being so, we have to re-evaluate what has been assumed, taken for true without further consideration, for generations, in the ethics and morality of our interactions with animals.

This article is about elephants particularly. It is a clear statement that it is time not to focus on whether animals have human qualities, but to recognize that human qualities we have are not just human, but animal qualities as well.

Yes, it is a long article. It is a meaty article, and meat takes more chewing, more digesting than cream puffs and croissants. I found it worth the investment.

Mystic Whispers: Icarus in the Sky

Icarus, Icarus, foolish lad!
It’s the worst idea you’ve ever had
and there were others I thought were bad!

To soar to the stars, you demented bird,
takes more than wax wings, or hadn’t you heard?
My lad, you have flown to the height of absurd!

And yet, and yet, the impulse was grand,
though you never considered you’d have to land…
Yet, to be with the gods, lad…? I do understand!

2005

“Millennials are ruining everything!”

I read this article…

http://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomers-caused-millennials-destructive-spending-habits-2017-6

Wow… Millennials are arrogantly having better taste than to eat at Applebees, have the cheek to choose to support small-owner businesses over big corporate chains, and are destructively not buying into the economics that sank their parents’ savings and home equities because the bankers could not be trusted to do their job honestly and with fundamental integrity.

Well, this is what happens, Empire Builders, when you despise, disregard and disrespect the builders of the very foundation of your empire. This is what happens when the consumers that provided your fortunes decide to consume elsewhere, because no one likes to be dissed and used. You have such a narrow view of what power is, you never saw this coming.

Everyone but the vested interests in fossil fuels knows that the day is done for fossil fuels. With people taking better care of their health–because you’ve screwed us with the costs of medicine and health-care–Buffalo Wings is going out of business.

Millennials have no savings, are not buying houses because they are already overwhelmed with the cost of living, some with the costs of providing for a family, and some with tuition depts, not to mention their having witnessed for themselves the venality and untrustworthiness of the Big Banks. The market for recycled clothing is growing while Macy’s struggles to keep on doing what they used to succeed at. The chariot-makers and the buggy-whip manufacturers know: Values change, needs and wants change, and if you don’t keep up with it, you are out of business.

The would-be oligarchs have forgotten that it takes a whole and healthy community for everyone to thrive. It takes mutual respect and a willingness to consider everyone’s needs. It takes a social consciousness and conscience, good faith and integrity.

What nerve, to blame Millennials and their parents! They blame their victims, and are blaming their kids for declining to be their victims.

A sad reflection on pathological power