But it's doing all right. A ceramic frog attached to the bottom of a ceramic mug. A gift from my father many years ago, packed away in a box during a move, and unseen until recently. I've begun using it again, and it brings back a lot of memories. I'd half forgotten his sense of humor, his appreciation of the absurd, and had totally forgotten how much I miss it. And him. Delving back further into those memories, I recall that when I was in grade school he was always "threatening" to put fried grasshoppers in my lunchbox. And one time he did. A flat green can filled with black fried grasshoppers. They caused quite a commotion in the lunchroom. I took half a bite of one and nearly threw up; Bill Christopherson, a strapping farm kid, ate two of them sandwiched between two potato chips. Then the teacher took them away. He loved the Rocky and Bullwinkle show for its sly humor, and proudly wore the "Wassamatta U" sweatshirt bought him, though he would never buy such a thing for himself. He was a good man, and like most kids (I hope) I took him for granted, didn't listen too much to his memories, and knew almost nothing of his inner hopes and no doubt frustrated dreams. As usually happens, during my teen years and early 20s I moved away from him, physically and personally. Fortunately we mended bridges well before he passed away. He was a good man, and tonight I'll raise a toast to him with my ceramic frog.
As of now, my creative well seems to have run dry. The best I can do is dig through half-finished stories and see about finishing them, or at least dressing the up differently. I hope it's a temporary thing, but, like most writers I know or know of, there is always the underlying fear that the pump will never again be primed. So I decided to write here, in hopes of doing some priming. Trick myself into writing, as it is; sorry if that seems self-indulgent, and I will take no offense if you stop reading here. Still here? Okay, let's go. Sometimes I feel I have reached the point at which I "know" too much. That is, I've seen enough of the universe unfurl that I understand what that Biblical prophet (whose name I forget) said, perhaps Ezekiel, that "all is vanity." That is, that nothing material really matters. Writing essays seems pointless; even if I do manage to get a fresh spin or take on something, so what? If it's fiction, what again is the point? Who was it that said, "anyone who writes for anything other than money is a fool." Well, what is there other than money, except perhaps the distraction of writing itself? Which, of course, may well be the point. A theological writer name of Michael Novak once wrote a book called The Experience of Nothingness, which loudly called out to my angst-riddled post-adolescent self; in it, he observed that there was something odd in having existentialists and nihilists writing books, that is, in committing the time and effort necessary to write them. If nothing matters, why do anything? Of course nothing matters. It's the starting point for everything. When I get off my butt and back to work (actually I mean on my butt and back to writing) things will flow, so long as I don't try to sketch them out ahead of time. I know of nothing more absorbing than to have fallen into the rabbithole of writing, nothing more rewarding than the feel of a fine-tuned and -turned phrase. I was going to end this with a pithy quotation I found recently, but I can't find it and will paraphrase: "For the man hunched over his motorcycle, trying to fix something, nothing matters but that. He has no time or need to worry over the so-called bigger picture" I'm also reminded of friend who loves bicycling, who pointed out that one reason he likes multi-day bike trips is that he go the entire day thinking of nothing but the road beneath and ahead of him. Okay, as Paul Harvey used to end his radio broadcasts, "my time is up, thank you for yours." And thanks for stopping by.
My mother is dying. Not of any particular affliction, but, as she will be the first to tell you, of old age. She's 97 years old, curled up by back issues, knees shot, only one kidney, wispy white hair, eyes that reflect light in brightness, wrinkled skin, and a smile that is both sweet and pensive. She's blessed -- or perhaps cursed -- with a genetic tendency toward long life. Her dad died at 95, her brothers lived into their 80s, and so on; they all kept a full head of hair all their lives; I appear to be of that line, since my hair is as full as ever, at 71. But mom is dying now. On her birthday a few weeks past she suddenly slipped into panic-filled confusion, and went to the ER, and from there back home, then back to ER the next week, and is now waiting an opening for assisted living, the part of life she always proudly avoided. But that's where she'll have to be now. She can't be on her own anymore, and soon, I'm sure, can't be anywhere. And she's good with that. I drove down to see her and we had some gentle and warming conversations. Memories of old days, talk of her grandkids and great-grandkids. At one point she looked at me and said, as though remembering something important, "you were my first-born." That's a chronological fact, but I think she meant more than that. We both found ourselves looking back at those first three years of my life, when she was everything to me, and I was everything new to her about being a parent. The vague memories that rose up in me brought me to tears and to gratitude. And being able to see her again like that was a gift I will never forget. After three days I had to leave, and I doubt I will be seeing her again, except at the very end or very near it, since it's obvious the light is fading. But she's at peace about it and, because of that, so I am I. She had me dig out a shoebox full of pictures out a cabinet and take it with me, so it didn't get lost in the shuffle of closing out her apartment. It's a mix of things, most from the 70s and 80s, a few much older. The house I was born in, and so on. Many of the photos are from the ten or so years she and my dad spent on a rural farmstead after he retired, a place I loved and wish now I had had the money then to buy and keep in the family. And there's dad and my aunts and uncles, and the barn cats and mom and dad's dogs. All that I expected and am glad to have found again. I didn't expect the way my own earlier life welled up from those photos, the dog my first wife and I had, my oldest daughter in her youngest days, photos I hadn't seen in years; all of a time I had largely walled away in my heart. I'd forgotten, I'm sad to say, the power that a first-born can pull from one's heart. It's so easy to lose that magic in the everyday life that follows, and I so glad, so blessed, that I have been able to re-discover that now, before I'm at the edge; when I have time to remember and make good use of that magic. I'll miss her greatly, but I'll always treasure having had the life with her, and the chance to re-discover the magic. And I have my own first-born to treasure.
Lately, in my meditation practice, as I settle in to sit, I've had a mental image of standing at the edge of a pool, then plunging into a sea of unknown dimension. The nearest edge is familiar, the feel of my breathing, the softening tensions in my crossed legs, the settling of breath. But I also have the sensation of being on the edge of something big, and deep, and unknown, and it's sometimes a challenge to really let go and trust. Who knows what lurks in the deep dark beyond my controlling waking mind, what risks I take when moving from my waking self, crossing the abyss, returning to my waking self on the other side? Today, as I sat, an anecdote by Bill Bryson rose up in my mind. It comes, I think, from his book about visiting Australia, In a Sunburnt Country. I'm working from memory here, but I think I have the general gist. Bryson talks of a young couple who were inadvertently left behind at the close of a scuba expedition. By the time the crew of the ship realized their mistake and turned back, the couple was nowhere to be found, and, in fact, they were never seen again. Speculation is that when they surfaced they found themselves alone at sea, near the diving buoy, with no ship in sight. But they saw a nearby derrick of some sort, and opted to swim toward it, hoping to at least be able to climb out of the water while waiting for the ship to return. What they did not know was that to get to the derrick they had to swim across a deep, shark-infested, channel, and, presumably, those sharks found the overhead shadows of isolated swimmers first intriguing, then irresistible, and ultimately delectable. A fairly stark image of dangers from the deep, almost enough to scare one out of meditation, back to the comfortable security of the shore of everyday awareness. Until I realized. . . . Until I realized that there is really no shore onto which I could climb, only a flimsy web of interconnected thoughts attached to nothing substantial. Until I realized that while the deepest deep is unknown and may well contain dangers, it is really all there is, and my movement toward those depths, however tentative, is inevitable, and really nothing more than my movement toward myself; that no matter how much I long for the security of the beach, it isn't really there. And I found that strangely comforting as I sank back into stillness, until my session ended and I rose again into the light of the everyday.
Came across this poem by a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and it triggered some reflections on my family tree research: People of my father’s and forefathers’ generations have continuously striven their entire lives, but all failed. Had I exerted myself like them, I would also have no success. Therefore isn’t it joyful to use this life to practice the profound sublime Dharma? . . . I've traced my father's and his forefather's generations on their journeys from Scotland, England, Ireland, and likely Wales. I've followed one side from the Debatable Lands to the Virginia colony, up to Kentucky (Tick Creek), and to Ohio to Indiana to Iowa to Kansas, sowing crops and Presbyterian churches along the way, leaving at more than one eponymous cemetery. And I've followed the other side from northern England and Ireland through the New Jersey colony, to Ohio, to Iowa, mostly farming, but also blacksmithing, innkeeping, and even chicken-plucking, while spending time in Quaker meeting houses and Methodist and Congregational churches. I literally know where a lot of the bodies are buried. In the case of my own father, I find it intriguing that having been born amid his mother's extended family in western Iowa, he grew up across the river in Nebraska and seemed to never really look back east. At least we never met any of those cousins or great uncles or aunts, all our stories were Nebraska-based; and he took his own family west across the state, until we migrated back again to eastern Nebraska. Yet after he retired he and my mother bought a farmstead about 20 miles from the Iowa community where he was born, and that's where he died, ten years later. In fact, the last time I saw him was as he lay in the hospital in the same city where he was born 78 years earlier. I have this image of him being greeted by the spirits or ghosts or souls (whatever term you choose) of all the Iowa relatives of his youth, his mother, his cousins, aunts and uncles (including Burt, the chicken-plucker) and maybe being welcomed into the spirit of those Quaker meeting houses that, to the best of my knowledge, he never set foot in. As though he came home without knowing it, certainly without consciously choosing it. But perhaps I digress. The question I ask myself is what it was all about, the lives of those earlier generations, struggling sometimes to thrive, sometimes to simply survive. The ones who did well, the ones who were ne-er-do-wells, those who died young, those who died old, those who raised families, those who died childless, all of them have ended up, far as I know, in the same place in this world: back to the earth from which their essence emerged countless eons back. Their farms, their houses, their possessions are all gone, as are their hopes, dreams, accomplishments, fears, failures, and successes. Perhaps, as the poet suggested, it is of as much value to spend time in meditation and experiencing the present moment as it was, or would be, to toil in the soil or forge horseshoes, or pluck chickens. ** As I finish this I realize how muchI presume they didn't ponder these questions as well, whether in Presbyterian churches or Quaker meetings or even behind the plow. Or plucking chickens. I hope that when the time comes for me to cross over that they will meet me with forgiveness and understanding.
Working on my family tree, I am sometimes amazed by how many tantalizing gaps show up. That doesn't surprise me when working with far-distant lines, when records were scarce. But sometimes lacunae appear far closer to present day. For example, my father's mother's line is fairly clearly defined in census and Ancestry records back in the latter half of the 19th Century, from Clermont County Ohio to central Iowa. Things seem pretty clear, children popping up every few years, parents and grandparents passing on, and so on. But even that relatively recent past can get a bit odd. For example, there's a girl, Clara, born in 1880 and gone from the family census as of the 1885 state census. Child mortality was high back then, so that's not unusual of itself; my grandmother was born in 1884 or so, so she would not have known Clara and may not have ever heard about her. But it's interesting that a Clara Smith born the same date as the one in our family would have died in 1885 some 40 miles north of their hometown. Other data suggests it's the same Clara, but why would she have died that far away, at the age of 5? Forty miles was a major expedition back then, and there's no indication of family up there. A family trip gone bad? Not likely that story will ever be told now. Then there's a tantalizing bit from my uncle's memoirs in which he mentions that his mother -- my maternal grandmother -- talked of an older, unnamed brother who died at the age of 8. All the brothers listed in her recollections lived to ripe ages, but I find one loosely-connected family tree that suggests a Charles was born in 1876 to my maternal grandmother's family, but Charles never appears in any family state or federal census report until the 1900 federal census, when he springs forth, full-grown as it were, in my grandmother's family, at the age of 23 (obviously not dead at 8), single and working as a livery driver. So where was he in all those other state and federal censuses? And even more interesting, a 5-year-old grand-daughter named Tassie appears in that federal census. It's tempting to guess and presume she is his daughter from a failed or widowed marriage, but no way of knowing. Especially because Charles and Tassie seem to disappear after that. I look around me, at all the detitrus and debris of my life, and tend to presume that my existence, and that of my near and dear (and I suppose far and annoying) family will be an open book, and that any descendants trying to reconstruct days past will have a fairly easy time of it. But that, I think, is pure hubris and vanity. They may be able to draw up a basic map, reasonably reliable, but there will always be gaps and guesses. Because nothing is clear forever. And in the end only nothing is clear.
I seem to recall an axiom from my road biking days that you must be careful to focus on where you want to go (e.g. follow the road), rather to focus on where you don't want to go (e.g. off the edge of the pavement), because your mind will take you in the direction of your attention. Today I got tired of driving my old car with the damaged driver-side mirror, so I went online to see how hard it would be to fix it. I came across a You Tube video with my exact car and a promise that it only takes a few minutes to replace it. After watching it, it occurred to me I could do one better -- I could take off the damaged mirror, glue it, and put it back, saving $40 or so dollars. So I followed the diss-assembly instructions carefully. Or, rather, tried to. At one point the narrator pointed out the three nuts to remove and in doing so noted that one must be careful in doing so, because it's possible to drop one down into the door panel and that doing so "will needlessly complicate your life." I immediately wished he hadn't said that. Because as I unscrewed the first nut, ever so carefully keeping my fingers on it, keeping in mind his admonition, it slipped past my fingers and down into the door. As I knew it would as soon as I resolved not to let it happen. Because I let my mind lead. Silly me.
Got up and out for my early Monday yoga class, got there to find it had been cancelled due to family emergency for the teacher. Went back home to do some stuff, issue was whether to go back to work out, or even to attend a spin class. Or to pack up the laptop and go to the coffee shop for black coffee and a scone, and do some writing. Not an easy decision. When I retired nearly 4 years back, I made the conscious decision to join the Y and to spend my time exercising rather than bloating myself with scones (my formulation of the issue at the time). Since then I've been to the Y three or 4 times a week, spin classes until the pandemic hit, then yoga once it re-opened, since the spin classes were cancelled. And this morning? Here I am, looking out the window of my favorite coffee shop, just finished my scone, staring out at the parking lot, watching folks come and go from the nearby library. Coffee's good, I've got my earphones on with soothing background music cancelling the ambient chatter. The sky is a mix of bright blue and soft white clouds, the temps just below freezing. This is a good place to be, physically and psychologically. Still, I wrestle with the nagging from my worrisome self, that perhaps this is the beginning of a new trend, and perhaps a setback in my journey toward wholesomely healthy golden years. That's what makes choosing so hard for me sometimes, always arguing with myself, with the result that I don't get the benefit of either choice. My final answer here? In my spiritual and psychological meanderings, I've been drawn more and more to the concept of radical acceptance, of "being here now." Rather than living in light of shoulds, I choose instead to live in light of what I am. Today I am someone who craved coffee and scones. That's me at the moment. if I deny that in light of a "should" I would be denying who I am. I need not pretend to be someone else. If that makes sense. Reminded for some reason of T.S. Eliot, “Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” I might as well fully enjoy this decision. The revision will be along soon enough. Cheers.
"But in the rising sun You can feel your life begin Universe at play inside your DNA You're a billion years old today." --George Harrison This line occurred to me as I was raking leaves in our front yard. The primary culprit is a large red maple, whose multitudinous leaves are a sort of purple from spring to autumn, then fade to a pale brown, and fall to earth in copious amounts as winter approaches. I say "culprit" mostly in jest, because most days in most autumns I find joy and relaxation in raking leaves, or sometimes, a burst of macho enthusiasm if I get out my leaf blower and herd them into a large pile. Either way I am reminded of the metaphor they provide of life and death. I can observe them coming to life each spring, watch as they reach their peak, and gather their dried remains once life has left them. Or has it? Should the line be drawn at the point at which the leaves connect to the tree? Or is it the tree who is living, growing and shedding the leaves in season? Or is it the DNA that comprises the tree, which directs the way that collection of cells grows and takes shape? Or is it the earth that nourishes the tree, and finds expression sometimes in vast and beautiful forests, or in single landscaped trees, or even in the scraggly little "junk" trees that show up in almost every vacant lot or abandoned barn? And then there's the life of the forest, large trees dominating, then dying, and their massive trunks falling to earth, where they decompose into softening brown heaps with their toadstool toppings and many mushrooms, all moving toward becoming the soil that, if left alone, nourishes and becomes more trees. including the smaller trees that, by nature or by chance, never tower above, but instead scrabble to find light in the places left open by their larger cousins, all of them ultimately becoming soil again, regardless of size or years of existence. And of course I'm out there raking leaves around rocks that border the tree, those rocks being the cooled manifestation of long-ago (in human terms) volcanic or deep-earth heat and pressure, atoms and elements cooked and molded into mountains which wear into stones which sometimes fall into rivers where they are tumbled until their sharp edges round off. And then there's the earth as a planet in the solar system that floats (if that's right word for drifting in the emptiness of space) at the edge of the Milky Way, and then the galaxies turning in the immeasurable immensity of the known universe. And then there's me, standing in the autumnal sun, raking leaves and wondering at the passing of another season, and almost shivering in thoughts of the earthly and metaphysical winter to come, reminding myself that the me who feels the chill is but a particular manifestation of the cosmic dance around me.
I thought of Dave Mallett's lyrics yesterday (from "Garden Song") as I limped around, my torn meniscus apparently aggravated by my sitting in the lotus position as I meditated, so my knee hurts today. I noticed it twinging near the end of my morning sit, but I thought I could tough it out. Apparently a mistake. My existence in adverse juxtaposition. Just when I thought the yoga and sitting were working together and I felt almost like a yogi. Today I feel like Yogi Berra must have felt after a long day of catching for Whitey Ford or Don Larsen. (Old man analogy, I know). And I feel a tad disappointed. Brought down to earth, so to speak. Reminded that just because I want to be something, really want to be, doesn't mean I can get there without effort, or ever. Life, I'm learning, not for the first time, is a process of aspiring tempered by reality. I'm made of dreams and bone. Mind and matter. Gnosis and knees. Trying to be who I am without settling for less. Until I reach the point at which I stop trying because I finally am. . . .
Not far from the metropolis in which I live sits a large tract of land, thankfully preserved from development. At its center is a marsh and associated wetlands, with a wooded area at one end, and an oak savannah at the other end. The oak savannah rises up in a rather steep hill, which is known as "Frederick's Hill," apparently after an early white settler in the region. The wife and I climbed up the hill early the other morning and watched a beautiful sunrise; the sky was clear, the air cool and filled with faint sounds of birds stirring and calling in the marsh below. Morning breezes rustled the oak leaves around us, and gently pushed the waves of grasses and wildflowers. In the distance sunlight flickered on a large lake. I found it easy to picture the site, and the whole region, as it must have looked a couple hundred years ago, before the landscape was transformed by industrious settlers following in the footsteps of fur traders and other travelers. At the base of Frederick's Hill is a shallow indentation, out of which water bubbles at the rate of something like a million gallons a day. The place is known, not surprising, as "Frederick Springs." It's fascinating to watch the water bubble up and push the sand around, ripples dancing on the surface, weaving shadows across the sandy bottom. Apparently the site was well-known to the indigenous people of the region, the Ho-Chunks, who used to water their animals there. They also considered it a sacred site. No doubt they looked out on verdant hills and woodlands, and presumed it would always be as it was. Because it was a sacred site, they also buried their dead nearby, specifically in mounds atop and on the slopes of Frederick's Hill. The mounds on the slopes long ago disappeared under prairie plows, but the ones on top remain, several of them, apparently holding maybe 100 or so people in total. In that early morning sun I think I felt a bit of what those ancient Ho-Chunk felt, magic in the moving air, a gentle and pervading calm. I'm glad that it remains. I'm also sad for those Ho-Chunk, so ruthlessly pushed aside by "civilization," as the European settlers moved in. It also makes me feel a bit guilty, as a descendant of those later intruders. One line of my family were Quakers, who left England and New England to avoid persecution, and who advocated, and largely lived, in peace. The Quakers are known for their "fair dealing" with the indigenous peoples, making relatively honest treaties and treating the indigenous ones with respect. And I think my Quaker predecessors meant it. But still . . . . Their journals and histories all speak of the beautiful land they moved into and settled, and developed into rustic communities. All good. But that migration/immigration was all premised on the idea that this land was out there for the taking, God's bounty as it were, opportunities to be seized by the willing and the industrious. All premised on the largely unspoken presumption that the land was empty and unowned, unused. All premised on pushing those annoying "Indians" out of the way. Which was accomplished largely without conflict or major bloodshed, save for the brief Black Hawk War, a one-sided conflict that settled things forever in favor of the Europeans. And for all that time, and all these years, Frederick's Spring bubbled and burbled, and the spirits of the Ho-Chunk dead looked down on the springs, while traces of what had been still stood, through hundreds of seasons, reminders that nothing is certain, nothing is given without cost, and nothing lasts forever, regardless of momentary appearances. That's what I saw from Frederick's Hill at sunrise.
The other day I was walking in the woods and saw a pair of adult turkeys staring out at me from behind a tree, through the brush. I shot a photo of them, and put it on Facebook, captioned "Turkey Lurkey." Turkeys lurking, get it? Anyway, I thought it kind of clever. The phrase kept running through my mind, and I gradually recalled where I'd heard it. In the kids' story about Chicken Little, who had convinced herself the sky was falling, and ran through the farmyard telling all the animals, including Turkey Lurkey and Loosey Goosey and such. From that I remembered how much I had loved that story as a very young child and vaguely recalled the warm feeling I had when my mother read me the story. Fortunately, my mother is still alive, at 96, and I called her to share the memory. At first she didn't recognize the story. But as we talked, she did, and described the book the story was in and how I had memorized most of the stories, which she would read me every night, and how I would never let her skip or change a word. I was the first, and at that time the only, child. Because my brother came when I was three, and we moved from there when I was three, I know that memory came from that age. Those were the days before most people had TV, and, living out in the boonies of western Nebraska, there were no TV signals anyway. Dad had a sales route that kept him away from home most weeks, Monday through Friday. Mom and dad's hometown of Omaha, and all family, were 500 miles away and long distance phone calls were costly. "So," my mother said, "it was just you and me in the evenings, with nothing to do but read." From there she began describing her sitting beside the borrowed crib I was in (in those days before the recall police people passed such things down), how it came with an accompanying toy chest, both of which were painted a pale green. Suddenly I saw those pieces of furniture as though they were in the room before me, and felt her nearby assuring presence. We talked for a good twenty minutes, sharing our versions of those evenings. And without realizing it until later, I found myself with a strong sense of closure. How wonderful to bookend our lives together, with stories of how we found comfort with one another during those long evenings, and for just a few moments I felt once more the wondrous warmth of a new mother's love.
This mindfulness may Thaw my frozen heart -- but I Fear what might break free. Graham Lewis At one year beyond my "three-score-and ten" Biblical allotment of years, and more or less a Buddhist convert, I've been doing a lot of reading about the Buddhist view of death. Far as I can tell (and I don't claim to know a lot) I must accept that life and death are two sides of the same coin, and that death is inevitable but all is right, that's the way of the universe. So learn to accept that, and the rest of life will be more tolerable. We -- or some form of "I" -- are reborn in some way, but the quality and status of our death experience, and our rebirth, is influenced by our actions in this life, which make a big difference. The karma thing. I find Buddhism suggests the best course is living a life examined, and living it with compassion and love, and the best results will follow. In Taoism, too, compassion is one of Lao Tsu's three jewels. My problem is, I'm having trouble finding compassion. With closer examination, I'm finding that I have very rarely felt deep love toward another human being, and find that most of my relationships are far more sterile than is healthy. My heart feels dry and dusty and locked away. Sort of like I'm going through life surrounded by some invisible shield, a sort of emotional Saran Wrap. And I'm wondering why that is. I don't know whether I have a form neuroawarenes, like autism, that denies me the feeling of compassion, or whether some forgotten traumatic something happened somewhere along the line (I do have a large blank spot in my memories of my early teens), whether I wasn't raised in a household with "real" love, or if on a deeper level I am afraid of something I haven't experienced before, afraid it will overwhelm me. I hope it's the latter, as I work on this in mindfulness exercises, meditation, and yoga. (And reading). Time is really getting to be of the essence.
I may have posted some of this earlier, but, by way of background, a week ago Tuesday a mean storm front blew through, and a straight-line gust took a shot at our Norway maple. Sitting at the dinner table we heard a loud crack and thump, then everything went dark. A glance outside showed big branches laying across the yard, with the electric service line to our house down beneath them. Eventually the electric utility people made their appearance, and we had power and, that evening, we had light again. But we also were left with a tree in the backyard with massive branches that looked as though they were ready to let go and looking for a place to land when the next storm blew through. One small branch extended over the replaced service line, and a massive one looked like it could reach the house if it fell. Or, rather, when it fell. So, I found a tree removal company that promised to put storm-damaged trees at the top of their schedule. Timing mattered because it was only a matter of time before another storm blew through. The company was good as its word. Next morning I came home from yoga to find the job nearly finished, my dear old tree but a tall trunk devoid of branches. Before long that was gone as well. The massive tree I had seen almost every morning for the past 20 years was gone. Only a stump remains, a few inches above the ground. The afternoon sun now shines bright on the back lawn. Already the snow-on-the-mountain plants that had circled tree have reached tentative tendrils across the stump, while ants and sweat bees extract sap that had once nourished the tree. Next year the wife says we'll garden there. The family who next owns this house will probably never know it was there, certainly will never have an image of it. But I do and likely always will. When I walk through the nearby woods I see trees of all ages and condition, big old trees moldering on the ground, and others leaning on their neighbors, while younger trees push past, seeking the sun. That's how it works there, but in the manicured patch that is our lawn, it won't work. So the tree is gone. I can't count the rings because of the saw marks, but its 28-inch girth and location cause me to believe it was planted when this area was wrested from farmland to make houses, 60-some years ago. So it saw 60 springs come and go, and weathered severe weather for 60 summers and winters. It grew tall and strong, and housed squirrels and birds, giving residents of the house shade in summers and leaves to rake in the fall. Lately, it housed woodpeckers; the presence of the latter was a bad sign, since woodpeckers make their nests in weakened wood. The tree was dying. Growing up in Nebraska, home of Arbor Day and once known as the "Tree-Planter State" in honor of the settlers who broke up the oceans of sod and planted trees to remind themselves of the places from which they came, I feel a special bond with trees and always hate to see them go. But the time comes for everything. And for every one. Goodbye, old friend.
Had a weird dream last night, but all I remember of it is I had neglected some great responsibility, and didn't know how or if I could make it right. Everything I did simply made it worse, because the time for fixing things had passed and the consequences could be dire. Suddenly I thought, "no, I don't have to worry about this, because it's only a dream and I can wake up." And I did, with a sigh of relief. How wonderful, I thought, it is to wake up from a dream to a comfortable reality. Sometimes I think about Chuang Tzu's comment that he once dreamed he was a butterfly, and ever since wondered if he really was a man who awakened from a dream, or was a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Or I am reminded of a comment in a story about life in either the German WWII concentration camps or the Soviet Archipelago: if a sleeper inside one of the camp barracks was heard whimpering in his sleep, the prevailing wisdom was to let him keep sleeping because reality was worse than any nightmare could be. How wonderful it is, I think, that I can awaken to a better reality than my nightmare. Then I think of the Buddhist concept that this so-called life is a web of dreams from which we will one day awaken, whether we want to or not. And in Tibetan Buddhism there's the concept that we need to seriously prepare for that awakening, better practice dying in everyday life, so that when we finally awaken for good, we realize we are waking to a world of illusions, and can see through those illusions and choose the right path. If we cannot see through the illusions, then we will be drawn back into the realm of waking dreams, and may find ourselves awakening to a nightmare from which there is no awakening. Then I think of Theodore Roethke's words: "I wake to sleep and take my waking slow, I go by going where I must go." Because that's the best I can do, for now.