All aboard. People I very much appreciate:

Saturday, March 31, 2018

Not-Bad Saturday


I begin this post --with little idea where it's going-- with a Normaphoto of a segment of her garden:

The garden is a good place to spend Easter Eve, or Dark Saturday or any of the other names given to the day before Easter. Most people don't call it anything. It's always a quiet day here --a day during which the northern hemisphere conducts renewal and birth, which are tremendous operations and not a bad way to spend a Saturday. 

These processes are best monitored from gardens, even if it's only a potted plant on the window sill, a bird flying past an apartment window, a sunbeam on the floor. As I may have written here before, it's all one garden and it grows around a star. So I wish you all a happy Easter, from not-bad Saturday, wherever you are.
 

Monday, March 19, 2018

A Day --an Unresolved Day

Let's face it, we all have them --at least I hope I'm not the only one. They begin like any other day --deceptive, capricious, full of  carouselling karma, maytagging molecules-- with scenes like this:
I was answering comments to a prior post. I got done, then dressed for errands. I wanted to go to the bank --in hopes they will someday give out free samples like grocery stores-- and drop by the grocery store for free samples . I fired up the Mazda. I fired up the Mazda again. The Mazda finally got out of the driveway. I stayed home:
You can tell I troubled to dress in my Monday best. I said, "Bye Mazda, have a nice expensive vacation. See you next weekend."
I walked back up our lane, feeling low and mean, then saw the rusty '71 VW Bus with vines growing over it.  "What the heck?" I thought and climbed in. Turned the ignition key and the old thing roared into life --despite all the time I'd neglected it. 

Time. 

Time is many things at many levels of reality, but it always is a measure of entropy. Entropy is the ongoing rate of disruption in a closed system --like a car, like me. Cars are only partially conscious, but we get ringside seats.  Time turns us into things we've never been before. No wonder I had to go sit down in the bus, I was jumpy--dreading another surprise from time.

I took Bus to the corner store. Gassed her up and bought us each a bottle of Merlot --which of course she ceded back to me.
I poured one in the kitchen and checked what was coming in from Norma's Iphone. This:
Honestly, I don't know how she does it. No fancy camera, no special lenses, wild things just let her get close --in this instance, a couple inches.  She knows scenes like this get me breathing right again. Now it's late at night, and a half-glass of good Woodbridge Merlot gets me ready for bed, but it's the closing photo of a busy bee that will calm and sooth my head.

Friday, March 16, 2018

The Right Rocks

Norma loves bricks.  She also dislikes straight lines. Along with gender, this is the major difference between us. I am a guy, and bricks are rectangular. Guys know brick walkways are supposed to be straight. It's like when we shop, we go straight to what we want and go straight to the checkout counter, then straight back to the car. Women don't. They wander all over a store, double back, circle around a few hours or days and finally find some item that was invented, marketed, stocked and sold while they looked for it. But I digress.

I have hauled bricks for walkways to this property for many years. Norma creates plans for the walkways. None are straight. All  are curvy. I protest emphatically. She says, "Set them as they are plotted."

I say, "But there will be gaps!"

She says, "Gaps will be filled when we find the right rocks." ,

I am always surprised at her answer. Surprise is psychological condition caused by dopamine, a neurotransmitter, carrying a compelling message through the brain: the extent to which a reward or punishment differs from expectation. It directly affects mood, memory, attention and cognition, and therefore qualifies as a vehicle of addiction, fear, strong emotional response, involuntary conditioning, slavish agreement, flight or fight, and the strange expression men get when they decide to uproot to tend an off-shore oil rig in Qatar. This is all due to a molecule, dopamine --the irreducible essence of what guys call "going apeshit". 

But then, after 48 years of marriage, I look into her eyes and ask myself, "Is this the face of someone who will always insist upon curvy brick walkways?"
 
And I must say yes. I will, however redirect your attention to the first photo and point out the fact she found the right rocks to fill the gaps. Moreover, I must --as a guy-- warn all other guys about dopamine and all molecules: Stay away from molecules! They are dangerous! Especially brain ones!


Saturday, March 10, 2018

1963

In the summer of 1963, I was standing atop Parnell Tower with my siblings and cousins. Parnell tower is a 60-foot wooden observation tower in the Kettle Moraine State Forest.  The forest is flat, having been scraped ahead by a glacier. It is part of the Ice Age National Trail --where glaciers leveled Earth in search of the sea.

I suspect glaciers could think, but am not sure they were compassionate. They did, however, provide places for towers from which fluids could be discharged and observed --this of course was in 1963, when there was far less chance of people being below. I noticed droplets assumed a spherical shape which they maintained so long as they were falling weightless. I noticed this again 55 years later, in little, from a Normaphoto: 
 This illustration of spherical droplets required somewhat less altitude than can be achieved at Parnell Tower. Observe:
The little solar-powered fountain is presided over by a concrete goose who, in my capacity of Goose Repair Technician, received a new head in return for its future vigilance. I hope, someday, that same kindness will be conferred upon me.