As I was walking home from work on this dark and rainy evening, it occurred to me that I am changing. The change is so gradual as to be unnoticeable at close range, but of late I've noticed some odd things about myself. Seeing walnuts lying under trees with their hard outer green husks being gradually softened by the weather prompted this line of thought.
Like them, I carry on, assuming that I will continue on as I am. Ok, I can't really say that walnuts assume anything. However, I think I can say that they are passive in this process, being acted upon, rather than proactively changing, which is not the point I was making at all. I may be taking this analogy thing too far. The point now being lost, here's my point.
I am not who I was just a short time ago. I am more distilled, less covers the distance between my inner self and the outer world. This shows up in various ways. I am more accepting of some things, yet more hostile and unbending as to others. In both cases, I feel I am closer to the truth of who I am. Hence the walnut husk comparison.
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
A vagabond I shall be
"A vagabond then is primarily a man who travels without any definite utilitarian aim. He does not go abroad expecting to bring about the millennium by impressing upon the world his own opinions and prejudices, neither does he ramble from Country to Country collecting statistics and accumulating information as a pure matter of mental discipline. He is content to be a simple observer in the great world of God- studying those things which interest him for no other reason than because they do interest him . . . [A] vagabond seeks to know the world and its people as they are, and in order to acquire that knowledge he is ready to become all things with all men and to make himself equally at home in all places. In this sense of the word I do not hesitate to avow myself a vagabond of the most pronounced type." George Kennan
There's a word for people who just travel for the sake of the experience, of seeing what's there. We look askance at them, wondering aloud how they plan to fund their retirement, or when they will 'grow up'. I guess the trick is to find someone who will pay you to do it. Or failing that, maybe win the lottery.
Excuse me while I go buy my lottery ticket.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
The horizon beckons, and chopsticks await
" . . . my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die."
from Ulysses by Alfred Lloyd Tennyson
"Death closes all" indeed. But before those doors are slammed and locked there are some things I hope to do. Ok, really there are many things on that list. I fear more than anything a gradual slide into mindless daily routines, the failure to learn something new, to attempt something difficult.
I want to learn another language, travel to places that discomfit me and jar me out of complacency, I want to be inspired, challenged, and I want to make something that will last beyond my short time as a citizen of this world. Oh, and I really want to gain proficiency with chopsticks.
I want time spent with others such that I leave the exchange affected by it, and I desire solitude of some amount on a regular basis. I want to find something good to watch on Netflix once in a while, and I hope to discipline myself to accomplish more in the next ten years than I have in the past fifty.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Contentment, where art thou?
I wonder if contentment is destined to elude me, other than fleeting little wisps of it on a warm sunny afternoon. The greener side of the fence calls persistently, and I'm continually distracted from the thing in hand by what's not.
Is this genetic, or a general human condition? Over the course of my life, I've encountered others who genuinely seem satisfied with whatever lot they've been given. Sometimes I'd tilt my head and purse my lips as I looked at them eyeball to eyeball, in a concentrated attempt to see inside their heads, to see if their professed acceptance of the status quo was genuine. It's not that they were sated, but that they sought no such thing. Or so it appeared to me. But who can really know the mind of another?
Instead I sit here looking over the fence, chewing thoughtfully on the blade of grass in my teeth and pondering what it is to be other than I am.
Is this genetic, or a general human condition? Over the course of my life, I've encountered others who genuinely seem satisfied with whatever lot they've been given. Sometimes I'd tilt my head and purse my lips as I looked at them eyeball to eyeball, in a concentrated attempt to see inside their heads, to see if their professed acceptance of the status quo was genuine. It's not that they were sated, but that they sought no such thing. Or so it appeared to me. But who can really know the mind of another?
Instead I sit here looking over the fence, chewing thoughtfully on the blade of grass in my teeth and pondering what it is to be other than I am.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Exactitude and the parts of an elephant
I have a fondness for precise usage of words to communicate exactly what I wish to express, and as a tool in understanding the meaning of what others are saying.
This morning as I left my driveway, I heard on the radio the forecast for today, "Highs in the mid-60's to mid-80's," apparently hedging their bets. Having lived here for a number of years, I know that in reality, the range of highs varies that much within the radio station's listening area due to coastal and other influences. But there's no room in a sound bite for such detail, and so the range-one must have an understanding of where their location fits in the range to have an idea of how warm it might get come mid-afternoon. If I relied on the radio for weather forecasts, I might be frustrated by the inexact nature of their information.
My focus on precision is useful to describe things like my visceral response to certain behaviors, or the nuances present in an unconventional relationship. Or the look on the face of the man sitting on the bench with all his worldly possessions gathered close, or the openness and pure delight of a young child's face whose life view has not yet been tempered by the realities of human behavior. Would that I could describe such things with clarity and exactly the right words to shade the verbal picture with meaning that arrests the listener.
Alas, I cannot. And even if I could, it turns out that there is no exact calibration tool to assess what meaning each of us assigns to a given word, even from within the same cultural and socioeconomic setting. We must rely on imprecise tools such as synonyms, and while we can get close to certainty, we can never arrive.
That inability to know with certainty that we both mean the same thing when we agree on the use of a word may in part be the source of misunderstandings, but I believe that it's also an essential element of the diversity that creates beauty and the resulting opportunity for discovery. Like the blind men who each felt a different part of the elephant, we all understand what we understand. It's in the telling, and listening, that we find there are more parts to the elephant than we knew. This awareness of our ignorance is the only avenue to expanding our elephant knowledge. We will never know all the aspects of the elephant, but we do better if we try.
This morning as I left my driveway, I heard on the radio the forecast for today, "Highs in the mid-60's to mid-80's," apparently hedging their bets. Having lived here for a number of years, I know that in reality, the range of highs varies that much within the radio station's listening area due to coastal and other influences. But there's no room in a sound bite for such detail, and so the range-one must have an understanding of where their location fits in the range to have an idea of how warm it might get come mid-afternoon. If I relied on the radio for weather forecasts, I might be frustrated by the inexact nature of their information.
My focus on precision is useful to describe things like my visceral response to certain behaviors, or the nuances present in an unconventional relationship. Or the look on the face of the man sitting on the bench with all his worldly possessions gathered close, or the openness and pure delight of a young child's face whose life view has not yet been tempered by the realities of human behavior. Would that I could describe such things with clarity and exactly the right words to shade the verbal picture with meaning that arrests the listener.
Alas, I cannot. And even if I could, it turns out that there is no exact calibration tool to assess what meaning each of us assigns to a given word, even from within the same cultural and socioeconomic setting. We must rely on imprecise tools such as synonyms, and while we can get close to certainty, we can never arrive.
That inability to know with certainty that we both mean the same thing when we agree on the use of a word may in part be the source of misunderstandings, but I believe that it's also an essential element of the diversity that creates beauty and the resulting opportunity for discovery. Like the blind men who each felt a different part of the elephant, we all understand what we understand. It's in the telling, and listening, that we find there are more parts to the elephant than we knew. This awareness of our ignorance is the only avenue to expanding our elephant knowledge. We will never know all the aspects of the elephant, but we do better if we try.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
To whom much is given...
Sudden events, often of a tragic nature, tend to push the reset button on our daily gripes and grumbles. The list of things that become a burr under the saddle is nearly infinite- how hot it is, how cold it is, the shape of our bodies, the things that inconvenience like the road construction which slows our path to a job that we also complain about.
The sudden awareness that someone else is struggling for survival instead of a bigger house, or who has to fear what the night may bring, while we feel discomfited by the not-so-frequent bather who stands outside the coffee shop we visit each morning, asking for some spare change- this brings to a skidding halt our self-centered bemoaning of the travails of our daily lives.
But only for a short while. My awareness is as short as my memory, and in no time at all, I forget to be thankful for my warm house, a car that runs, the ability to call 911 and know that I will receive aid, the freedom of choice that I exercise almost daily. I forget that while I might not like having to park eight blocks away and walk in the cold wind, I still can do so, to attend an event or visit a museum, or some other discretionary diversion that is far outside the scope of the life of a refugee, or even a poor child in Appalachia, or perhaps my neighbor.
It's partly an accident of birth, and partly just good fortune thereafter that is the reason my list of worries pales in comparison to that of many others in the world. I can't help but feel that this means I owe more than a sense of my good fortune to the universe at large, and my fellow sojourner in particular.
What and how much is required?
The sudden awareness that someone else is struggling for survival instead of a bigger house, or who has to fear what the night may bring, while we feel discomfited by the not-so-frequent bather who stands outside the coffee shop we visit each morning, asking for some spare change- this brings to a skidding halt our self-centered bemoaning of the travails of our daily lives.
But only for a short while. My awareness is as short as my memory, and in no time at all, I forget to be thankful for my warm house, a car that runs, the ability to call 911 and know that I will receive aid, the freedom of choice that I exercise almost daily. I forget that while I might not like having to park eight blocks away and walk in the cold wind, I still can do so, to attend an event or visit a museum, or some other discretionary diversion that is far outside the scope of the life of a refugee, or even a poor child in Appalachia, or perhaps my neighbor.
It's partly an accident of birth, and partly just good fortune thereafter that is the reason my list of worries pales in comparison to that of many others in the world. I can't help but feel that this means I owe more than a sense of my good fortune to the universe at large, and my fellow sojourner in particular.
What and how much is required?
Monday, August 31, 2015
Diverging roads
"Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility. Experiencing on their senses a world different from their own, they realize their provincialism and recognize their ignorance." (Paul Fussell, in the Norton Book of Travel)
Flaubert said that travel made one modest because "You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."
You discover that you can be a patriot and still acknowledge that someone else does something better. You experience the grace of individuals who do not assign to you personally all the wrongs perpetrated by your country since time immemorial.
You see that the night sky hanging over the yurt is the same one you can see in your own backyard, should you take the time to look.
By going and coming home, you discover that you are changed somehow. You will surely shrink back into the everyday pettiness and circumcision of interest that daily life very nearly requires. But you will not wholly forget, and in those moments when you have a small choice whether to open your mind to something new or to stay in a safe place, perhaps sometimes you will choose the former because you remember. You remember that there are many paths, and that you can choose.
Flaubert said that travel made one modest because "You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."
You discover that you can be a patriot and still acknowledge that someone else does something better. You experience the grace of individuals who do not assign to you personally all the wrongs perpetrated by your country since time immemorial.
You see that the night sky hanging over the yurt is the same one you can see in your own backyard, should you take the time to look.
By going and coming home, you discover that you are changed somehow. You will surely shrink back into the everyday pettiness and circumcision of interest that daily life very nearly requires. But you will not wholly forget, and in those moments when you have a small choice whether to open your mind to something new or to stay in a safe place, perhaps sometimes you will choose the former because you remember. You remember that there are many paths, and that you can choose.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
the intervening years
When we are young, we stack our days with heaping piles of activities, from end to end, even stealing from short nights to avert loss of an opportunity to squeeze one more thing in. And we look on the middle aged with a mix of contempt and pity, vowing that we will not, unlike our parents, ever choose a full night's sleep over the chance to watch a meteor shower, or give up an opening night seat because it would mean a fifth night out in a row.
Alas, the weight of our days begins to accumulate, and we too yield to the summons from within, to focus in on the gems we have discovered along our raucous headlong journey. In order to accommodate this close regard of a few things, whether chosen of free will or forced on us by life circumstances, we very gradually begin to let go of the periphery, allowing it to diminish as does the road behind us, still part of our personal history, but no longer part of day to day life.
I would like to say that this middle-aged selection process is not the beginning of the narrowing that comes with old age, that we don't expand our horizons for 29 years, and then having unknowingly summited one day, cross immediately into the other watershed, where the flow of golden life is gradually drawn away from us.
I'd also like to say that pigs fly and there really are unicorns.
Alas, the weight of our days begins to accumulate, and we too yield to the summons from within, to focus in on the gems we have discovered along our raucous headlong journey. In order to accommodate this close regard of a few things, whether chosen of free will or forced on us by life circumstances, we very gradually begin to let go of the periphery, allowing it to diminish as does the road behind us, still part of our personal history, but no longer part of day to day life.
I would like to say that this middle-aged selection process is not the beginning of the narrowing that comes with old age, that we don't expand our horizons for 29 years, and then having unknowingly summited one day, cross immediately into the other watershed, where the flow of golden life is gradually drawn away from us.
I'd also like to say that pigs fly and there really are unicorns.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
To follow the bread crumbs
You never know what may result from a seemingly insignificant happening.
I'm reading some letters written by Anton Chekhov during his travels to the eastern edges of Russia- all the way to the penal colony on the island called Sakhalin. His report on the state of life there is of less interest to me than his reports to family and friends about the journey.
Travel seems to me to be a literal analogy to the exploration of the unknown. Obvious statement, that. Or maybe not. I've discovered that people travel for different reasons, with very different approaches. Still, if one keeps at it, even the stubbornly single-minded are in some way affected by what they see, smell and hear.
I read recently a quote from T. S. Eliot:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"
Who am I to say he got it right? But I'll say it anyway, because I've found it so. Home, wherever and whatever we assign that moniker to, is never seen the same way after once leaving it.
And then a friend tells me she is reading T.S. Eliot's letters, as I am reading Chekhov's. So the trail leads me toward T.S., no doubt long overdue.
I'm reading some letters written by Anton Chekhov during his travels to the eastern edges of Russia- all the way to the penal colony on the island called Sakhalin. His report on the state of life there is of less interest to me than his reports to family and friends about the journey.
Travel seems to me to be a literal analogy to the exploration of the unknown. Obvious statement, that. Or maybe not. I've discovered that people travel for different reasons, with very different approaches. Still, if one keeps at it, even the stubbornly single-minded are in some way affected by what they see, smell and hear.
I read recently a quote from T. S. Eliot:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"
Who am I to say he got it right? But I'll say it anyway, because I've found it so. Home, wherever and whatever we assign that moniker to, is never seen the same way after once leaving it.
And then a friend tells me she is reading T.S. Eliot's letters, as I am reading Chekhov's. So the trail leads me toward T.S., no doubt long overdue.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
This gypsy life
I missed that Friday was a holiday, and thought I was getting out of town ahead on the madding crowd. I was headed to San Diego to visit friends over the 4th of July weekend. By 3:30 am I was too tired to drive further, so I slept for a few hours in the back of my car.
The drive was a grind, at least as far as the Grapevine. Today, on the reverse trip, I'm flying down the ribbon of road that is Interstate 5. I pass trucks laden with onions and tomatoes, fields of hay, corn, orchards, beehives, and yet more crops, mile after mile. In places there are scraggly sunflowers that have taken root in the cracks alongside the road, presumably a later generation of volunteers from a prior field of sunflowers.
I stopped for gas and as I left, had the briefest of exchanges with a fellow traveler who was brushing his teeth beside his open top jeep. Sans words, just the universal acknowledgment of travelers. Somehow that common acknowledgement of shared humanity lifted my spirit as I traveled on.
It's very easy to complain about the seven plus hours in the car today, or the much longer trip on Friday. But I am reminded to value the mundane moments of this life. They are what make up the bulk of my days. And to be thankful that I can choose. I know there are so many times and places in the world where that would not have been true.
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