Archive for September 2010
Trip Beginnings
I am preparing to travel to Portugal with Cyndie in a few days. It was back in January of 2010 that we began plotting this adventure and now we are packing our bags. It is a very exciting time. This trip is special for us in that it is not just a random touristy jaunt to a foreign country. The seeds for this magical adventure were planted almost 8 years ago in an online discussion on the topic of trees.
I have mentioned in my posts here in the past about my activity with the virtual community of Brainstorms. It is there that I first met our connection in Portugal. He shares an affinity for trees, and my interactions with him in that online community started with discussions on the planting of new trees and expanded over the years to include stories about our children and details about the rest of our lives.
For years I read about the work going on to maintain the place he referred to as, “the farm.” He admitted that no real farming occurs there, but the 22 acre property includes forested areas, some with cultivated stands of pine trees, a variety of terraces that have grape vines, olive trees, peaches, dates, and oranges. There is a greenhouse and a good variety of flowering plants, especially one of our host’s prizes, the camellia.
After he wrote about the completed renovations of one of the old original buildings, which he described as a “writer’s cottage,” (complete with pictures of the new roof going up on the structure of hand-cut granite blocks) I wanted to offer my services as ‘farm-hand’ in the biggest way. Then he went and added horses, an addition that I knew would appeal to Cyndie.
Last January, we offered up the idea of our visiting Portugal to help with chores on the farm. I asked how long a stay would be appropriate. We couldn’t have been more pleased with his reply… A minimum of a week, preferably a month. We were able to make it 2 weeks. It becomes a reality in a few days.
Uncovered
Last night I dug up this piece I wrote back in February of 2003. I recognize some of it, but I don’t really have clear recollection of the time when I composed it. My curiosity for pronouncing “th” as a “d” sound was satisfied back then by a friend who described the phenomenon as resulting in their family of polish immigrants from not having the “th” sound present in their native language. Dat seems an obvious and understandable enough explanation for me.
.
.
What if I simply wrote about it
and when you read it you were moved
by its inherent tendency to apply
rendering all your suppositions proved
not like the tacky film of ad campaigns that try
no farther
much farther a way than that
down where involuntary doesn’t even begin to exist
and up into the stratospheres of our existential bliss
where the vibrations of our ever-present song
invigorate our reasons to believe
which we do
and have been all along
neither color nor flavor
but both all that and more
where nothing else disturbs
the focal distance from before
the shoelace became frayed
and elastic recoil that happens not
sickly film forming over soup in pan
as simmer faintly fades from hot
beneath the late afternoon’s waning light
revealing brilliant yellow gold
where moments ago there was only white
there’s both new and also something old
already been here already done all that
it’s the same as what already was
as if that’s some bright new found fact
a digression from a fear
accessory after the act
it fascinates and it bores
though mostly alluding every grasp
like a meaning getting briskly stamped
upon our spongy blue-green minds
and we wile away while we can
or is it them or me or you?
flailing away in attempt to understand
both a meaning and intent
focussed solely on the only thing that
hasn’t even happened yet
slippery sliding down a slanted slope
of largely hypothetic tries
to heap ungodly piles of healing balm
on swollen red and tired eyes
and waiting ’til the late of any night
as if waiting makes it all alright
seeking not that phantom wisp of what
it is that starts
and stops
this unattainable freight in flight
which circles round upon
the very path
it paved away from here in desperate fright
a feeling not so bad in fact
except for when it lingers far too long
draining out the last of tact
struggling grip on the flowered teacup
steady enough to avoid
stuttering clatter as you sup
a smile and a worry that have grown together
as if wed years ago
when nothing that has happened
had even begun to happen yet
wonder what
if any
silly significance lies
in the way that some people skew their words
to pronounce the “th” sound
as if it were a “d”
and say with cultivated aplomb
dat dem’s da ones dat up and died.© 2003 John W. Hays
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Dizzy Reflection
.
.
cubes of ice
melt in my glass
and drops of rain
rattle my roof
while nothing else
happens
to reveal
what happens
while the rain
rattles my roof
and the ice
melts in my glass
.
.
New Season
I lost a few more hours of my life to football again last night as the opening game of this year’s NFL season was played by my home team, the Minnesota Vikings, against the New Orleans Saints. It just served to reveal to me, more of the ways I am getting old.
When I was a kid, I was truly excited by all things NFL related. Now, far from it. In all fairness, my first gripe of the night is something that goes far beyond just an NFL issue. It seems all facets of industry that strive to sell entertainment to the masses have fallen into a ridiculous pattern of trying to out-dazzle anything that has come before. It used to be that a championship game was so huge that they demonstrated it by making the half-time show into a spectacle that could stand on its own, even without a football game. Then the half-time became so big they gave it extra time. Pretty soon the commercials of the championship game became as noteworthy as the half-time show. Football isn’t the only place this is happening, but the NFL could be the poster-child of superfluous excess heaping glitz and glamor that is ultimately tarnishing a product that once was able to stand on its own and sell itself.
Before last night’s kickoff, the warm-up act was a couple of full-production live music performances by artists who normally perform their acts as the main event. It’s distracting. It makes the music artists appear second-rate. I’m getting old.
Then the talking heads that are there for the actual football game announce that they have a special news report from their special reporter from “Sports Illustrated.” He proceeds to tell us that another quarterback (Tom Brady), from a team not playing tonight (the Patriots), was involved in a car crash today, but was not injured and practiced today. Oh, thanks for that!
Then at half-time, they tell us that they have breaking news to report… Same special reporter, same quarterback from that other team, agreed to a 4-year contract extension. Thank goodness they were able to break in with that morsel. Why am I not buying what they are selling anymore?
It is a new season, but I’m feeling older than ever.
Oh, can you tell from my ranting? My team got beat in their opening game. Yeah, they eventually did have a football game in there somewhere. The pre-game concert was a lot better than the football.
Surviving
I was flipping through the television channels last night and landed on one of the survival shows where people describe their experience and actors perform the reenactment. I have a fascination for survival stories. I don’t know why that is. I have never been involved in that kind of situation, but when I see such stories, there is a strong sense of recognition. I can definitely imagine myself as the person in the story, but there is always a question in my mind about whether I could actually endure what is being depicted. I think about what I would do different from the people in the reenactments. Too often, my thought is, “I would have given up long before they reached their next precarious predicament.”
I think about what it would be like to survive, even as I wonder if I have what it takes to do so.
If you haven’t ever watched one of these “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” episodes, there are segments where the narrator reports what goes on in the human body at the different levels of reaction to injury, or exposure, or deprivation. It is incredibly informative. I began to think last night that it would be valuable information to have in many of our other daily dramatic endeavors.
During our commute through rush hour traffic, the narrator could report how our blood pressure rises and breathing quickens as adrenalin surges. Or when we skip a meal and later choose some lousy processed food option that’s convenient, the voice will detail the subtle changes our bodies make in response to our bad choices. When we find ourselves embroiled in some dramatic spat with others, we could receive information that improves our perceptions of how our emotions are raging and better hone our responses to maximize safe and healthy outcomes.
Why does it only happen in the reenactments? Maybe someday, in the future…
Progress
This weekend I got a chance to make a little progress with removing material from the wood for Cyndie’s bracelet. I admit to working slowly, but I’m happy to be able to show there is some difference visible. The patterns emerging on the wood are as rewarding as we had hoped they would be. I’m kind of surprised it has proved to be as solid as it is. I expect a crack to pop open whenever I spend time working it. So far, so good …no crack yet.
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Summer’s End
Yesterday marked the end of summer activity at the lake place. All the inflatable toys have been deflated, and anchored rafts have been removed from the swim area. It was a bittersweet day. The weather started out beautifully sunny and we got in a last bit of boating before setting about with the chores of dismantling the equipment of summer recreation. It was a stark reality being presented that affirmed the finality of the season.
Cyndie and I stayed for the afternoon and were able to get in one last game of Cross Crib with her parents on the deck. Then we gathered the cushions and brought them into the basement for storage. Clean up seemed even more dramatic when the contents of the refrigerator were being thoroughly sorted for us to bring home perishables. With family travel plans scheduled for many of us, there will be an unusual lull of visitors to the lake place, and we needed to put a little more effort into the chore of prepping for departure than usual.
From the grass field beside the lodge, I took a look back as we were packing up the floating trampoline, and I saw how great the lodge looked. Behind it, one of the trees was already losing its green color. My favorite place is about to transform into a spectacle of autumn. By the time my next chance to visit rolls around, many of the trees will probably have lost their leaves. I’m alright with that. Bring on the winter, I say. I’ve got igloos to build. What a treat it is to have that to look forward to!
Day Off
It’s Labor Day today and we have the day off, so we are still up at the lake. There will be a tiny bit of work done, to bring in the rafts and deflate them for storage. Other than that, we will just soak up the last gasps of summer here before heading home and returning to the weekly grind. It is 11 days from our scheduled departure for Portugal. From one paradise, to another. I don’t know if I can stand it, but I’ll try.
Flowing Thoughts
I apologize in advance for my decision to allow some words to flow unabated, but this is one of those times when I haven’t come up with a specific subject worth writing about and so as an exercise in freeing myself from the logical center of my thinking and all the usual censors of common sense for communicating in a conventional manner, I allow the words to tumble out in a stream of conscious flurry that for some reason involves a distinct aversion to happening in concise, pleasing-to-read sentence structure. It brings to mind the fact that it reflects all of nature and time in that none of that ever pauses in the way we do with our little dot at the end of each grammatical phrase. The earth just spins and spins and light fades to dark so fast sometimes it boggles my mind and then in a blink it is daylight again and critters and little children are skittering about with irrepressible energy to explore their world as if this might be the last chance to do so, probably sensing that for centuries people have been conjuring ideas that our existence is doomed and some apocalyptic event will unleash horrific wrath as if something we earned or at least somehow deserve and it may just be thoughts like that which allow entire tribes of people to become so fixated on their fears and hatred that they will do everything in their power to avoid peace settlements which normal logic sees as twisted because peace makes so much more sense in the way that a calm sunny day compares to a dark and stormy one. Do you see how an untethered mind will wander to the angst which can be the wrong place for a mind to dwell and therefore effort does need to be made toward correcting the path of the stream of thinking toward a plane of hope that allows for a vast landscape of happy, healthy ideation in which possibilities abound and where reality is still well within grasp so that it doesn’t turn out to be some frilly false front of fantastic, but a seriously great accomplishment of truly healthy being and that is something that can be managed on an individual basis and with some luck there are moments when enough healthy logical individuals come together to impact our world in a way which adds value for the masses and not just in the way a group of athletes do when they surmount all obstacles and beat the odds to triumph and claim the top prize in their sport, but in a way that entire nations succeed in doing right for all citizens and supporting the human rights of people and animals and when doing so finding that everyone wins, not just the greedy financial wizards who devise ways to dupe the system… oops, there it goes again. See what I mean? So much for that exercise. I’m considering going back to normal sentences. As if that will solve things. I suppose it can’t hurt. Hope that was relative something. It’s what I am offering today. It is Labor Day weekend here and I am up at my favorite place. I’m going to go see what the day brings. Thanks for stopping by. Happy Sunday to you!
Relative Something 