April
14, 2020
Today’s
idea – Patience, that’s a tall order for a whole lot of us. We, who have been suckled
on rapid gratification - one day free shipping, instant messages, Instant Pot,
instant coffee, digital photos, speed dating, love at first sight. Time zips
along like quicksilver, and we expect things to happen “now” or, at least, real
quick and in a hurry. But with the lockdowns and quarantines, our pace of life
has suffered a change. We are finding,
if we are not part of an emergency team, it is pointless to rush about because
it only creates empty time beyond the bustle.
We struggle with that too, adverse to the idea of idling (too close to
loitering), only cars and dogs do that. We
have a little more time on our hands! Walking around the neighborhood, I see
little sign of idle; yards are neat and trim or getting that way fast. Employment has been translated into lawn work
and home projects. The curbs are stacked
with piles of household detritus, yard waste bags, tree limbs, the evidence of a
rigorous Spring clean out of garages or extra rooms, maybe a remodel. The landscape companies are in tall cotton
too, there are many new terrace verandas and pergola patios rimmed in rows of
fresh bedding plants, gutters being cleaned.
Dogs are getting more exercise than they have in years. And still there is time for something more if
one is averse to idling. How many days
have we been at sea on this voyage of quarantine? How much longer must we float
along? Number 45 appears to have never cultivated a toenail of patience in his
life, and in his daily briefings he is a ruffled hen. He thinks the country is falling apart
because furloughed workers have too much leisure time. Sending them a relief
check will only cultivate laziness. He
reads his tea leaves in the stock market curves. I don’t feel bad for the man. There is news of a cherry tree in Japan, more
than a thousand years old, that is in full flower of pink and patience. It knows how to wait out everything: wars, famine,
earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, bad economies, pandemics. Every blossom whispers - endure.
Today’s
image – I like the emotional reciprocity of gifting and being gifted. This week
has been a banner one for me, in my mailbox, a festively wrapped box and a postcard
with a handwritten note affirming my well ignored attributes by a kind daughter
in law. I love and miss handwritten notes.
Not only is letter writing disappearing but fewer students are being taught to
write in cursive. It is just not an efficient use of time in the school day,
they say. Keyboard typing has become the
standard language dispatch technique outside coding. And I know, there is something lost when kids
can’t read the individualized flow of letters across a page or notecard, and
for more reasons than missing out on a grandparent’s well wishes and news. The pen is mightier than the keyboard. It
sustains that part of the brain that pen to paper can do like nothing else. Proponents of typing content that keyboarding
allows us to communicate faster. But by
writing faster, do we take more time to think? And what is lost in cognitive development
when children are deprived of the motor skill experience of learning letters
and making a sentence by holding a pen or pencil, chewing on the end lost in
thought. I love this idea by Vivanne
Bouysse: “There is an element of dancing when we write, melody in the message
which adds emotion to the text. Afterall
that’s why emoticons were invented, to restore a little emotion to text
messages.” Okay, I’ve off on a tangent that runs wide of my original image of
the beautiful heart of reciprocity. This journal is originally written in a
hand that free dances. The curve of my
letters on the page reflects hope that dwells in anticipation of better days
ahead and in the happiness I get from calling better days to my front door.
Today’s
observation- My Westie and I went for on a walk on the other side of the river.
We like to explore Sylvan Park. The park is on a thirty-seven-acre manmade
island from a former peninsula jutting out into the Rock River. There, a steel mill was built in 1894 and it prospered
until 1958 when it was abandoned. The
place languished for decades until the 1980’s when neighborhood initiatives got
things rolling to clean it up and make it a public recreation area. The sixty-year-old secondary forest in a
damaged natural environment lay fallow as it was reimagined, cleaned up and
rebuilt into a treasured city park, now used by walkers, runner, cyclist and paddlers
throughout the year. There is only a
trace of trash and vague vestiges of buildings, but the park is teaming with flora
that is nonnative and invasive – Asian honeysuckle, Japanese barberry, European
privet, Euonymus, Garlic mustard, Winter creeper. The American origin stories for all of these
arise from human immigrants bringing pieces of home with them or sending for seed
or shrub to landscape their frontier estates and cottages like the folks back
home did. And like those immigrants, the
plants have propagated and spread out in wild abandon. I make a mental note as I walk to watch for
the next clean up campaigns, wondering if efforts to the eradicate these plant
exotics will be as futile as the First Nation folks feel it is to reclaim any
sustainable home geography. My ramble on
the island has kicked in some crazy mind chatter that flows deep and wide about
appropriation, exploitation and amnesia.
What is an organism anyway but a vessel of spirit and genes? One enlivens,
and one extends a biological expression onward. Today, I decide that the act of
placing one foot in front of the other and simply breathing in the soup of air
as a walking meditation in holy communion with the other living things around
me. I choose to be in this moment as if
it were Eden, sharing creation now and now and now and now. Those trespasses and thoughtless incursions,
the bungles and unfortunate mistakes should just become compost in the wind,
the rain, the sun and with the hard work of a host of decomposers. Here is my prayer, out of a rich loam of contrition and
better intention, let our species grow beyond its petulant adolescence. The virus is doing its work of throwing a monkey wrench into the finely tuned machine's motherboard. There is wiser and kinder Phoenix among its circuits, I have seen it.
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