Her Day
My trusty sidekick for 40-some years of my life is having a birthday today! Send love to Cyndie! She’s a horse-whisperer without a horse.
At least we still have each other.
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Happy Birthday, Cyndie!
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I Hope
Yesterday afternoon, it occurred to me that I don’t have the same skills for conjuring up “hope” out of nowhere like I do for manifesting “love” by way of a basic mental exercise of simply doing so. Could that be a remnant from a life-long propensity for a dysthymic depressiveness?
The violent clashes between protestors and police forces seem to be getting worse around the country, while things have calmed down dramatically in the Twin Cities. Part of me fears the local rabble-rousers will become re-enthused by the expanding uproar and want to get back in the game.
Another part of me fears the possibility all this turmoil will be for naught, like too many times before. In a year or two, or five, a white police officer will kill a person of color and we’ll still be questioning how this could have happened again.
Cyndie is working a different program. Hopefully, she will prove to be more successful than me at mentally growing neural networks of hope by reducing thoughts focused on the angst of violence, looting, and arson and the racist hatred and inflammatory rhetoric fueling it all and replacing them with visions of the world as a place of equal love and acceptance for everyone.
If we can imagine it, we can build it. If we build it, they will come?
Let there be hope.
All you need is hope. Hope is all you need.
We hope you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
With a hope like that, you know you should be glad.
I Hope
Dixie Chicks – Writer(s): Martha Maguire, Natalie Maines, Emily Robison, Keb’mo’
Sunday morning, I heard the preacher say
Thou shall not kill
I don’t wanna hear nothing else about killing
And that it’s God’s will‘Cause our children are watching us
They put their trust in us
They’re gonna be like us
So let’s learn from our history
And do it differentlyI hope, for more love, more joy and laughter
I hope, you’ll have more than you’ll ever need
I hope, you’ll have more happy ever after
I hope, we can live more fearlessly
And we can lose all the pain and misery
I hope, I hopeOh, Rosie, her man he gets too rough
That’s all she can say, he’s a good man
He don’t mean no harm
He was brought up that wayBut our children are watching us
They put their trust in us
They’re gonna be like us
It’s okay for us to disagree
We can work it out lovinglyI hope, for more love, more joy and laughter
I hope, you’ll have more than you’ll ever need
I hope, you’ll have more happy ever after
I hope, you can live more fearlessly
And you can lose all the pain and misery
I hope, I hopeThere must be a way to change what’s going on
No I don’t have all the answersI hope, for more love, more joy and laughter
I hope, you’ll have more than you’ll ever need
I hope, you’ll have more happy ever after
I hope, we can all live more fearlessly
And we can lose all the pain and misery
I hope, I hopeI hope, I hope, I hope
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Emotions
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in a glimpse
between love and anguish
hot tears
of mixed emotions
witness to it all
lifetimes of repetition
a war to end all wars
which failed to end any
facile progress
careening haphazardly
in multiple wrong directions
following our own tracks
right back to where we started
laughing in the face of terror
refusing to be fooled
when endings start to begin
right in the middle of everything
carefully failing to notice
the veil
behind which
we always hide
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Protest Exhaustion
Night after night, we who aren’t out violating curfew instructions just can’t get ourselves to stop watching the uninterrupted live coverage of what is happening in our communities between people protesting police misconduct and the battalions of police and the national guard who are tasked with enforcing regulations. It’s exhausting.
I think that’s one of the points the protesters would be happy is being made. Imagine how exhausting it is to be “living while black.”
Three nights ago in Minneapolis, the drama on our television screens was hours of media coverage revealing overt vandalism, looting, and arson in the unbelievable complete absence of police action. Two nights ago, the scenario changed dramatically in that the freeways around Minneapolis and St. Paul were closed early and a very heavy police and national guard presence showed up within an hour of the curfew to control outcomes.
There were a lot fewer fires.
Last night, there was hope that a full day of peaceful protest would end quietly, but then a maniac driving a semi barreled toward thousands of people crowded onto the 35W bridge, and chaos ensued.
Even after a full night’s sleep, I still feel exhausted by it all.
When can we get back to just worrying about the contagious virus for which we have no vaccine?
When can we get back to concerns over how the millions of people facing financial calamity resulting from the pandemic will keep from going hungry or losing what little possessions they have?
Which came first, the angst of racial oppression or the angst of the pandemic?
One foot in front of the other. One deep cleansing breath at a time. I think we are going to need to figure out the trick of carrying on with everyday life even while exhausted, because the change we need to happen is going to take more time than just a week of overnight riotous protests.
Afternoon naps make a lot of sense in times like this.
We could also work on the visualization of planting our love to the world like a seed in the ground that we feed and nurture and watch as it sprouts and grows into a towering tree. Make it a time-lapse visual, so we don’t have to wait a hundred years for the love to get to its maximum height.
<yawn> I’m going to do my visualization while lying down. With my eyes closed. For a couple of hours. Couple-eight.
Oh for a full night’s sleep again…
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Different Tracks
Our grass is growing fast and the ground is saturated from recent rains so I decided to use the power trimmer to mow areas with standing water to avoid creating muddy tire tracks. While focused on the grass in front of me, I was oblivious to what was happening behind me.
As I shuffled along at a slow pace, I was leaving muddy tracks behind me. Ha ha! Oh well.
I trimmed along the paddock fence from the outside and then stepped inside to clean up around the overhang. With no horses grazing the paddocks, the grass in there is growing pretty tall.
It feels very satisfying to transform the place from looking abandoned to freshly trimmed. It’s only partially abandoned.
This morning we are abandoning the property for a few hours to attend a socially distanced graduation ceremony for Cyndie’s niece, Althea, on her family’s driveway in Edina.
I appreciate the attempt to accomplish some traditions amid the upside-down turmoil of a global pandemic and civil unrest.
In the middle of my afternoon of mowing yesterday, I claimed a block of time to watch coverage of the launch of the manned Dragon capsule as it happened. In the evening, I watched the news broadcasts of police and national guard soldiers arresting violators of the curfew put in place to quell the looting and riots that have unfolded amid the protesters who are fed up with police abuse and unchecked murder of black citizens.
Remember when kneeling during the national anthem was the attempt to express protest over police misconduct?
While I am making different tracks in our wet areas, protesters are seeing a need to use different tactics to bring a change in the unacceptable status quo of equality being professed but not enacted.
We shall overcome, someday.
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Can’t Breathe
Anger boiling over in the form of roiling balls of flame with no visible public servants on hand to contain the rage as daytime turns into night makes for a disturbing meditation in the moments before nodding off to sleep.
It is hard to breathe through our masks.
It is hard to breathe through the smoke.
It is hard to breathe when being choked.
It is hard to contend with the fact that all I was going to do was breathe in our forest air yesterday and beam love to the world, yet the Pentagon needed to put military police on alert as protesters ignored curfew orders and ignited numerous new fires.
Morning turns the tide and reasonable people emerge with brooms and trash bags to pick up debris in an attempt to hasten the healing of the damage done overnight.
It’s an interesting dynamic to watch the venting of angst built up over multiple generations and centuries of time followed by the immediate effort to clean up the present damage which will actually require generations of repair to remedy.
How many years of treating people of color (and women and LGBTQ and homeless and impoverished and mentally impaired human beings) with equal respect to their white counterparts will be needed to complete healing that is the dream of healthy well-meaning communities of enlightened citizens of the world?
I’m not sure I can breathe that long.
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Stress Squared
Just when we thought the problem commanding our attention was an invisible virus contagion with potential to kill that has shut down life as we knew it, centuries of systemic oppression have boiled over in response to another murder of a black man in police custody, this time in Minneapolis.
It’s mind-numbing.
Unfathomable that so many people were present during the incident and either chose not to or were unauthorized to intervene.
My commute home yesterday took me uncomfortably close to some of the riotous protestations underway beside the freeway, but beyond a momentary slowing of traffic in the area, the worst disruption for me was hearing details of what was actually happening at that moment on the live radio coverage as I passed by.
The activity in the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul was disturbingly close to where our daughter, Elysa lives.
Hearing about the transformation from protesting to arson and vandalism by some people is heartbreaking.
There is stress stacked upon stress, stacked upon stress.
It is hard to know how much influence one can have from a distance, standing among the trees of our forest amid a chorus of bird songs and frogs beckoning, sending love to all those people in the thick of things just 50 miles away to the northeast.
Today, that’s what I’ve got to offer.
I wish it could put out fires. Or, better yet, keep people from ever starting them.
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Weather Delay
The hatch was closed on the SpaceX Dragon capsule with astronauts buckled in place, but the window of acceptable weather collapsed with about 17 minutes to go on the countdown to launch. I had just mentioned to Cyndie over the phone during my commute home from work that I would miss seeing the spectacle but suggested she turn it on to watch.
A few minutes later, she called me back to report the mission was postponed. There were lightning strikes showing up inside the radius of acceptability and the stormy seas in the “if-need-to-abort-launch” landing zone were also problematic.
“Due to the weather conditions, the launch is scrubbing,” NASA wrote. “Our next opportunity will be Saturday, May 30 at 3:22pm ET.”
The good news is that their next try will be at a time I should be available to witness the historic return of U.S.-launched astronauts. I was able to see a few minutes of NASA’s live streaming coverage yesterday about three hours before launch and was thrilled over the incredible visual access provided to what felt like almost intimate moments of preparation.
From a mix of alternate camera angles switching back and forth like a scripted movie, I saw technicians’ eyes inside their hooded jumpsuits and above their face masks as they tended to the complex number of details securing Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley in their seats. Watching with the sound off, I was undistracted by narration as I watched the sequence play out and the techs waited as the astronauts wiggled their hands into the sleek spacesuit gloves and tried to close the two different zippers.
Eventually, a tech reached up to assist with the last little pull. Then the two technicians swapped positions and double-checked each step the other had executed on their respective charges. The astronauts and techs exchanged fist-bumps that gave me goose-bumps.
Why, in my day <cough> all we got was Walter Cronkite talking along with occasional animated shots of what was about to happen interspersed with long-distance views of the launch pad, in grainy black & white images.
If you haven’t visited the NASA live streaming coverage before, I encourage you to check it out on Saturday afternoon. It is truly fascinating. Coverage is expected to begin around 11am ET.
Tuesday night, we had some weather delays of our own at Wintervale. Anything we expected to accomplish outside was put on hold for a series of rumbling thunderstorms that carried on through the night, leaving drainage ditches filled and flowing and the small creeks up to the brim by yesterday morning.
Sure am glad I’m not trying to plan a bike trip in this kind of weather this year.
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Pay Attention
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Attention to what? That’s a good question.
Here are some possibilities:
- Your posture right now.
- Who is suffering most among those you know and love.
- The best return for your investment of time.
- How long it has been since you voiced appreciation to someone deserving.
- How you might help someone less deserving.
- Your most common habitual “tick.”
- When you sense yourself not acting in your own best interest.
- How false information is being used for unethical advantage.
- What it is you are actually afraid of.
- How long it has been since you laughed and cried at the same time.
- What you actually ate in one day that was not a healthy choice.
- How swiftly days become weeks and weeks become months.
- How much sleep you are getting.
- Maintaining a healthy social distance from all others.
- The expression on your face when not actively smiling.
- How much of our unspoken thinking is inadvertently communicated.
- When you find yourself unable to ask for what you need or want.
- The power of love.
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Three Trees
Cyndie sent me this image yesterday and what caught my eye was the combination of three of the trees we have planted in our time here were all in the frame.
On the left is a crab apple in blossom.
On the right is a hydrangea that Cyndie planted beside her labyrinth. When we moved the gazebo last year, that tree needed to be relocated to the opposite perimeter.
In the background is a maple that we moved from beneath one of our big old maples a short distance away to the east. That little maple offspring is now all by itself in the center of the labyrinth.
All three trees have gone through a lot in these new locations. The hydrangea is showing some green this spring, but we think it is a last gasp before the end. We were thrilled to see it didn’t appear to look shocked after the last transplantation, but then, later in the summer, a limb dropped off and revealed a spongy wound that showed little sign of healthy life.
I didn’t expect to see any leaves this spring, so what did sprout has me curious to see what another year might bring.
The most rewarding of the three is that maple. It was our fourth try to get a maple of that size to survive the trauma of the move to the middle of the labyrinth. I like to imagine what it will look like in a hundred years when it towers over the circuitous garden.
I hope to live long enough to see what a 20-year-old tree looks like in the labyrinth.
In the meantime, we are thoroughly enjoying all of them, just the way they are each day.
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