Wild Clutter

These Sentences

The sentence could not exist without the oceans, the rivers, the air, the life forms, and all the thousands of years of human cultural activities.  Every sentence is spoken by the whole earth."  (Brian Swimme)

Think about it.  Everything comes from the earth.  Everything.  Food, clothing, shelter, and all the things that derive from those essentials -- the structure I am living in, the keyboard I am using, the power that turns keystrokes into digital reality and then to images on this screen.

The earth brings life.  Life brings thought.  Thought brings this very sentence. 

Like the quote says, "every sentence is spoken by the whole earth."

Stuff that Bugs Me

- Tailgaters - especially when they flash their lights.  Why don't they just pass?

- People who take up two parking spaces

- Sales clerks who chew gum while talking to customers

- Tax-happy politicians

- People who call you in the middle of the night and say "hey, did I wake you?"

- Catchas - are they getting longer or what???

- Bad karma

- Waiters/waitresses who come over when your mouth is totally full and say "how is everything?" 

- Talking on cell phones in weird places

- Littering - especially in wild places

- B.S.

- Trying to get the plastic off a new CD

- News commentators who don't pronounce things right

- Shouting

- Bad coffee

- Long speeches and sermons

-  Telemarketers who think I'm their buddy

- Thought police

Hey, I'm in a good mood.  Not on a rant or anything.  Just thought I'd start a list of stuff that bugs me.

Is Blogging Good for You?

Someone just sent me this article from Scientific American about blogging.  Seems that researchers found that people who blogged got beyond their illnesses faster than non-bloggers.

So maybe this means that doing blogs is good for you.  Just like eating your vegetables, exercising and getting plenty of sleep ...

Friday

OK, so I wanted to do all these ambitious errands yesterday afternoon.  So I left work about an hour early and figured I'd get everything done in about two hours and I'd be back home in time to do some Friday evening stuff.

First stop was my favorite camera store way across the other side of town.  I wanted to look at a new kind of filter.  Got to the store.  They were fresh out of the filters.  Better part of an hour wasted.

Next stop was to get a new pair of black dress shoes.  I'm not a shoe fan.  I'm probably one of the few people in the Western world who doesn't keep shoes in the house (they're in the breezeway).  I only wear them when I have to.  But my old black shoes are, well, old.  Very ragged.  So I went to a big national retailer's shoe department (store will remain nameless) and told the bubble-gum-chewing sales clerk what I wanted.   Took her almost ten minutes to bring out three boxes of shoes.  Then she wandered off to socialize with two of her friends.  So I tried on the shoes.  One pair seemed OK, but I had a question and wanted to know the price.  So I walked around the sales clerk and her two friends in a circle a few times, tried to catch their attention, then sat down near them, then stared at them, then walked around them again - but they were totally engrossed in their conversation.  So after about four minutes I went back, took the shoes off, and walked around them again a few times - she still didn't realize I was there.  So I just walked out of the shoe department totally pissed off.  They might still be talking and laughing.  Jeez, I don't expect sales clerks to be at my beck and call, but I'd kind of like them to pay at least minimal attention.

Couldn't find another shoe store nearby.

OK, so no shoes.  More time wasted.  I get back on the expressway and traffic is pretty much at a standstill.  I figure there's a bad accident or something up ahead.  I was on that three mile stretch of freakin road for about an hour.  No way to get off.  Just inch ahead.  We never have those kind of traffic jams in Upstate NY.

Next, I wanted to get someone a gift.  Stopped at the bookstore with a title in mind.  Couldn't find it.

Now, on to the grocery store to pick up seven or eight things.  One item out of stock and couldn't find another.

Now it was 7:30 p.m.

Got hardly anything done and wasted most of four hours.  What a pain in the you-know-what.

Anyway.

Playing with My New Macro Filters

I am psyched about the set of macro filters I got for my Nikon. Played around with them yesterday and ended up taking more than 300 shots.  Mostly common stuff, but I liked about two dozen of them. The shots are all about tiny hidden universes -- the wilted weed that seems vividly alive, the single blade of grass stretching to the sky, the lightning beetle chowing down, the nasturtium bud that looks like a reptile, and the the fiery petals of a summer flower that shout out the season.

Jean Paul Sartre

According to my history calendar, Jean Paul Sartre’s birthday is June 21.

In case you haven’t met Jean Paul through his words, he was a great French existentialist author.  Wrote a bunch of stuff, like The Wall and Roads to Freedom (which, ironically, was immortalized in a Monty Python skit a ways back).

I don’t totally understand existentialism, but I think in oversimplified terms this philosophy holds that there is no Greater Power.  No transcendent reality.  Nothing greater than ourselves.  Existentialism holds that each man and woman is totally “free,” and able and responsible to find whatever meaning life holds for himself or herself.  In its ultimate form, existentialism says that any search for ultimate meaning is absurd – and humanity’s seemingly deep-seated search for meaning brings dark cosmic humor to our world.

I don’t buy into existentialism at all.  Not into Sartre, or his buddy, Albert Camus, or their philosophical forerunners, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. 

Just the same, I’m blown away by the depth of their thought and their commitment to ideas that I think are so fundamentally objectionable.

I guess existentialism is a strange, but inevitable, philosophy given the despair that darkens so many people’s lives.  And it’s strange that existentialism has become so well known and so immersed in much popular literature.

No particular point to this blogging session, other than to point out the existence of existentialism.  And maybe to mention that I believe in the opposite – ultimate goodness and power and light, and a reality far greater than ourselves.

Summer Paradox

Summer is here again.

The sun is high on the horizon.  Everything is bright and warm and growing.  Dew graces the grass in the morn.  Life is everywhere.

The beginning of summer is a deep time, a time to think about new possibilities, about going to new places, about adventure, about shirking the cares of the cold months and turning toward the light and wildness.

So.  In that deep philosophical vein, I wonder:  Why is it that, in our quest for green fields and deep forests and God-given wildness, we spend so much of our summers taming our lawns, perfecting our gardens, and turning our yards into yuppie versions of something out of Hollywood?

Is there something about humankind that makes us crave what is raw and wild, yet at the same time entice us to conquer it?

No answer.  Just a provocative question on this magical first day of summer.

Random Thought About Wildness

Robert Bly says that to be wild is to be "mad as the mist and snow."

Wildness is feeling the fullness of the here and now.

It is to revel in the depths of the unknown and unexplored.

It is to hear the voice of the deep stillness.

Thoughts About Imagination

I was thinking that knowledge is a great thing - except when knowledge limits us.

Sometimes we get too preoccupied with what we know to realize the depth of what we don't know.

We get so into what defines and limits us today, and forget the power of the imagination and the possibilities of what seems impossible.

Here's what got me thinking about this subject:  authoritative pronouncements by some great thinkers and leaders:

- "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."  (Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977)

- "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." (Decca Recording Co. statement rejecting a new group known as The Beatles, 1962)

- "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." (Drillers who Edwin Drake tried to enlist for a drilling experiment, 1859)

- "Everything that can be invented has been invented."  (Charles H. Duel)

- "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."  (Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology, 1872)

- "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." (Western Union memo, 1876)

- "640K ought to be enough for anybody."  (Bill Gates, 1981 - !!!!)

So I guess the message is to try to move beyond the here and the now and the ground, and let the mind travel to the sky and the future and the universe. Who knows what can happen?

New Maple Tree

So I planted this tree (and a few more) the other day.  It will take at least 50 or 60 years for this maple tree to reach maturity.  I won't be around to see it.  Planting a tree that will outlive you - that's a really strange thing when you think about it.