Category Archives: Nature

Things Seen and Unseen

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I know I’ve talked here before about how easy it is to stop seeing what’s right in front of me because, well, it’s always right there in front of me. The ubiquitous becoming invisible, and all of that. But lately I’ve been thinking, too, about how often what I haven’t seen before gets automatically dismissed by my brain as non-essential because I relied on the part of thinking that makes instantaneous generalizations and assumptions and chooses to categorize things, as soon as it decides the new thing doesn’t pose a threat.
Digital illustration: Friendly Little Insect

While this rarely makes, in real life, the stuff of horror stories, as much as I like a rollicking scary tale at times, I am more concerned when I begin to wonder just how many things this autopilot state of mine makes me miss. Have I bypassed grand opportunities through lack of attention? Undoubtedly. Has my life been different than it could have been had I been more deliberate and thoughtful and thorough? Certainly. Are there people I’ve met whom I never got to know as well as I should have done, never appreciated as deeply as they deserved, never enjoyed the benefits of learning from them or being made better by a real relationship with them? That is unquestionably the hard truth.

Will I be smarter, moving forward, because I paused to ask myself these questions? That, my friends, definitely remains to be seen. I like to think that I’m teachable, but I know I’m also drawn to the easy path in life and often distracted by non-essentials when I should at least be watching where I step, so I’ll make no promises. If I do, however, happen upon any new and delightful things or, especially, people and recognize greater value than a passing glance would have registered, then I won’t consider myself beyond rescue in this regard. Plus, I might find in them the material for some fantastic fiction later on, if I’m lucky.

Foodie Tuesday: A Balanced Diet

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Photo montage: Fun with Fruit & VegetablesI appreciate good health and all of the dietary elements that can determine whether I’m healthy, and if so, just how healthy I am. I know that diet includes not only the things I eat but how I combine them, when I eat, how much I eat, and many more factors that interact to create the ever-changing state of good health I seek. I realize, too, that nutritionists and scientists and other dietary mavens are always learning new things, and nearly always getting new ideas, too, some of which they can prove and others, not so much. That doesn’t stop tons of people, including me, from becoming obsessed, however temporarily, with the latest dietary trends and tweaking our diets without always considering whether those new, however ingenious seeming, ideas have anything to do with how our own bodies operate best.

Huh.

Yeah, I’m always thinking of new and better ways to make my diet more seemingly ideal for me, and I have some goofy thoughts on the subject at the best of times, and that’s the truth. What I can say in my defense is that among the relatively few things I have managed to learn in my lifetime thus far is that there is a whole lot more involved in my health and well-being than food.

I love when I can find the balance I need in any day by eating when I’m hungry, stopping when I’m no longer hungry, and focusing on getting not only a reasonable apportionment between protein and fat and carbs and vitamins and minerals and all of that dandy stuff. I love when it’s satisfying to my taste buds as well. Most of all, I love when that’s all fitted into a balanced diet of being with loved ones, going wonderful places, learning new fun things, and not least of all, of making art. There are always going to be theories, guides, charts, Rules and expectations about what constitutes the ideal way to eat, from the old spa cures that had people eating nothing but blandness or drinking rather large quantities of vinegary-dry white wine to the FDA-approved Food Pyramid, to the various independent dietary regimes from Scarsdale to South Beach, from Paleo to the Perfect Health Diet. I’ll outlive some of them, and many more will follow me. My budget and schedule, my taste preferences of the moment, and the company I keep, will continue to change my dietary wants and needs as well.

As long as I can keep listening to music, writing and drawing, and surrounding myself with great and interesting people, I will feel well fed.

Photo montage: Another Balanced DietI need to tell you that there’s one sure way to have just the right diet, at least if you happen to be me and visiting Vienna. You just wend your way down a couple of funny little narrow byways and find the welcome that waits for you behind the door of the Gösser Bierklinik. That’s right: a clinic dedicated to beer. If that doesn’t make you feel better, you don’t know a healthy diet at all, wink-wink. Hail, Austria! It’s really a lovely old, old restaurant—don’t miss the neatly labeled Türkenkugel, the cannonball reputed to have been shot into the place in 1683 and still enjoying the pride of place where it sticks out of, or into, the wall.Digital illustration: Bierklinik Highlights

But don’t get hung up on ancient history too much, or you will miss out on one of the best Wienerschnitzeln I’ve had anywhere, and I am a fan, so I’ve enjoyed a few. The Bierklinik’s is tender inside, lightly seasoned, crispy on the outside, and unadulterated with anything other than the requisite lemon wedge for squeezing a drop or two of extra sunshine on it. Fabulous. Combine that with some ordinary but blazing hot fries and a bracing drink of anything from water to the titular beer, to what our server assured me was the ‘ladylike’ way to have a beer, a Pfiff mit Schuss, or beer spiked with elderflower cordial—I can’t speak to the waiter’s assertion, not being so incredibly ladylike myself, but it was a light and sprightly accompaniment to the Schnitzel, and given the perfectly convivial group with whom we were dining on the evening I tried it out (my husband and I were with three delightful friends, but also joined eventually in conversation with the marvelous German couple and his parents who were sitting at the next table), it was no more, and no less, effervescent than the conversation. Schnitzel, fries, a good drink and excellent company. Sounds like a perfectly balanced diet to me!Photo: Gösser's Schnitzel

 

Cat-astrophe

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While I did borrow my sister’s cat Mercer’s image for the following tail [ahem!] of hubris and humiliation, it would be unfair to accuse him of such plebeian emotions and activities as are recorded herein, mostly since he would be tearing off at top speed if any cat other than his companion Ruffian were within spitting distance of him. I can’t say for certain whether this is because he’s far too important to be approached by mere ordinary cats or he’s absolutely petrified of all of them, but I can take a guess. His Royal Highness indeed!

Photo + text: Tom Slingshot

The Gilding of the Gliding

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That magical time known as the Golden Hour seems to give everything, not just color, an extra fillip of beauty. Colors do, indeed, become warmer and more saturated when the sun is at such a low angle to the horizon as its place near dawn and dusk, but there is so much more to the mystical powers of those fleeting moments that it is a great treasure to be still in them and let the wonder fill me. At such times I feel more connected to nature and everything around me seems more in tune, better adjusted, and I feel that I am, too.
Photo: The Golden Hour

How can the mere angle of the sun turn a scrubby lawn into finely cut velvet? The touch of gilt on the scene makes every ounce of it seem that much more precious and valuable. The bejeweled day, in turn, makes the simplest action in it take on significance it never had before: the chattering of birds in the trees becomes a miniature angelic choir; the dipping of oars in the water turns from a quiet splashing to the whispering of poetry; the evening breeze that gently stirs shore grass becomes a delicate communiqué from the harmonic internal logic of the universe, and I am at one with it all. As the golden hour ripples through my environs and begins to permeate me, I almost feel as if I am gliding along their silky way right in sync with the rowboats nearby, waving fluidly as the grasses on the verge, tipping my wings with the evening birds to slide onto the branches of the trees. I am at peace with the world, and the world, with me. That is golden indeed.

Stars Everywhere

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Photo montage: Stars in the DarknessThis world is a dark place. War and strife, fear, hunger, hatred, greed, self-righteousness, and poverty gnaw the bones of suffering people on every continent at every hour. And all of these menaces are, in accordance with early expressions of the idea of Tragedy, nearly entirely the making of our own species.

Little hope, at least in my mind, of that sorrowful truth changing as long as our species continues to dominate the planet. We are deeply flawed. Even the finest among us tend to forget themselves and their mortal limits at time; regardless of how educated, high-minded and genuinely well-meant their attitudes and actions may be, it’s sadly true that underlying those attitudes and actions is a firm belief in their rightness. Only natural that it’s hard, from that perspective, to allow that others might have an equal possibility of being right, or at least as wise and well-meaning, as they themselves are, and to show them the full respect of that acceptance.

What, then, of accepting life among my fellow flawed beings in this imperfect world? No comfort is found in denial or in persistently, aggressively resisting what may not have the possibility of ever changing. But to accept this grimness as an eternal truth and let it lie like lead on my soul is no help, either.

I look to the stars.

Physical stars exist in a surprising number of places, many lower and commoner than the depths of the sky, and I look to them and rally as I realize that they stand, every one, as beacons reminding me of what is good not only in the nature in which we imperfect beings live, but what is good within us as well. Small as our fineness may seem, individually and corporately, at times, it does exist, and if there is to be any hope of overcoming the dark, it must come from the nurturing of every little glint seen starring that darkness.

I look to the stars in the indigo distance of the sky, sparkling like promises of better things as they look back at me. I look to the lesser stars of reflected light that dazzle on earth, the  diamond dashes on every body of water and glimmering in every eye, never mind among real gems and the many things made expressly to be beautiful and good and positive. I look, more than anywhere else, at the multitude of stars that shine from the hearts of good and true people, people who are thoughtful and generous, merciful and hardworking, and kind and loving, sometimes despite and against the dark things of this world, and often, wonderfully, for the sole reason that they were made to be such earthly stars.

I am Ancient History

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I know, I know. You already knew that.

But I’m thinking just now of how little I fit into the here and now.

There’s so much that was part of my everyday milieu right up to today that Those Young People I see around now have never even heard of, unless they’re youthful fans of archaeology. Stuff that I thought was hip and cool and fabulous is not only dated, it’s just plain unknown anymore.

I think I might be a science project. It’s just possible that I am being studied by aliens, or at least by the vast numbers of people so much smarter and also younger than me. And they are doomed to be disappointed. Those who study me and my life will plumb the depths of my personal history, kicking up heaps of mouldering dust and struggling with seemingly endless minutiae that could lead to important and fascinating factoids about existentially important stuff, or at least about me, only to wash up, time and again, on an equally dim and arid shore of obsolescence and insignificance.

It’s not that I mind, really. I assume this must be the case, in fact, for most people of every generation. Most of us must feel something like this, whether it’s true or not. We’ll all find there’s a great deal that’s very quickly forgotten as soon as we’ve lived it. If anyone ever delves into my little history, there will be a whole lot that looks, yes, alien to them in its unfamiliar antiquity, even if it is rather recently past in real time. I may not be at the peak of what was hip and cool and fabulous any more than I once was, but I can pretty well rock the role of living dinosaur.

Digital illustration: Artifacts

I am the sole artifact in my own little segment of history.

While I was Sleeping (It Off)…

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I’ve only twice thus far in my happy, healthy life been under anesthesia, at least when I was old enough to remember it. The first was during college, when I had my third molars removed, an act that I consider was more about wisdom on my part than on the molars’, despite their being commonly named “wisdom teeth”. It was good preventive medicine in my case, being the only invasive procedure I’ve ever had to have a dentist do and as a bonus, keeping me from getting them infected or impacted or, quelle horreur!, having them come in by shoving my naturally straight other teeth askew. I must have had a terrific anesthesiologist, because I don’t remember any particular suffering during or after the event, other than an unpleasant reaction to the first and only pain pill I took upon waking, and I was well enough after a day of devoted ice-packing by my mom to venture out to the mall the next day with the family, and dine comfortably on crisp green salad and toast.

The second time was when I underwent that happy coming-of-age ritual, the half-century tune-up of my chassis when I was given what felt like a really delightful extra night’s sleep so as to while away the time during which I had my colonoscopy. I, unlike other people, have no interest whatsoever in watching myself on TV in the process of receiving medical attention of any sort. Despite that potential glamor and entertainment of that approach, I felt myself cheerily fortunate in having a splendid nap instead, not to mention getting the desired clean bill of health in the bargain.

Though I’ve had limited personal experience with going under anesthetic, I certainly know plenty of people who’ve had all sorts of adventures with it, both good and bad. And I am all the more pleased, on knowing some of the tales of hallucinatory glory, that I have nothing to show for my own such trips but a gleaming set of straight choppers in my healthy jaws and an equally pristine stretch of plumbing in my abdominal regions. And I plan to have no further need of being anesthetized any time again soon, pretty please. Though I truly appreciate good medicine, I appreciate even more not needing any.Digital illustration + text: Psychedelia

It was Only a Dream…

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Photo: Waking UnderwaterA short meditation: The Oarsman

When I opened my eyes, I saw a cedar boat ahead, a craft of sleek and patinated wood; I was ashore, looking, watching without knowing why, standing on the verge with the clear salt sea touching my feet and on its cold breath casting up an offering of tide-polished stones and shells moved into patterns like a prayer shawl.

The cedar boat drew near, and in the boat, a man whose solemn joy preceded him and made my thoughts lie still.

Only the scent of cedar broke the salty air. I waded out to catch the prow and saw the oarsman watching me, and I was humbled but not afraid. He said nothing. I didn’t think to say a word, myself, but caught the boat and slowly pulled it ashore.Photo: The Scent of Cedars

The oarsman wore a long superlative braid that rose and fell on his breast; I made fast the boat to a spike of driftwood at the verge, tying the painter in a braid as like his own as I could make it.

When he stepped from the boat, the oarsman put his broad hand on my head, wordlessly, and I felt, too, his solemn joy.Photo: Solemn Joy

Washed in Light

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The sunlight that pours in, falling over the sash like crisp, clear water, washing the walls, spilling over the coverlet and floor, refreshes like no rain has in years. I acknowledge the need for, even the longing, sometimes, for rain, but nothing comes close in rain, at certain other times, to giving me the reviving strength I find in showers of sunlight.Photo + text: Nearing Heaven

But What of the Camel?

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Ha! Once again, I seem to have failed to press the Publish button yesterday. I just noticed that this post was still queued up and not yet available on the blog, so I guess it’s a two-fer day today. Appropriately enough, it’s a post on my natural gift for failing to blend in with the herd. Make of that what you will!Digital illustration: Camel CompanionI think I may have mentioned before that there is a ranch only a short distance from where I live that raises bison, a herd whose distinctive companion is a camel. When my spouse and I were out on a little expedition in the area recently, the bison were even nearer the road than usual, and to my delight there were among them many calves of the season. We are generations away from the time when bison covered the American plains in masses that blackened the grasslands from one edge of the horizon to another, so it’s a pleasure to see even modest groups of them thriving and growing as they do in protected places like this one anymore.

But where was the camel?

It’s possible that the two times we passed the pasture that day, the camel was on its dromedary coffee break in some less visible spot toward the back of the fields. Maybe there is more to the bison herd than I know, and the camel was on duty, keeping the other bovine bunch company elsewhere. A little part of me couldn’t help but puzzle and worry over it, though. Camels can grow old and die like the rest of us, I assume. What a pity if this one camel should have died. I would be sad if I knew that to be the case.

It’s surprising, perhaps, that I find myself thinking about a camel and wondering about its welfare. It’s only partly made clearer by recognizing the seeming strangeness of a camel being at home in north Texas in the first place and the further oddity of said camel being companion and guardian to a herd of American buffalo.

Then again, not so surprising. I am, after all, something like a cousin to this unique camel. As a native Northwesterner who has always lived well north of the Mason-Dixon Line until moving to Texas five years ago, I am by definition a foreign body, an alien, in Texas, no matter how at home I find myself among the locals. As the perpetual listener at the back of  choir rehearsals, unable to make my vocal folds cooperate dependably enough to sing along, I am affiliated with the herd in a way that is very meaningful to me and that I take seriously not only as a source of pleasure but as support for my singing, conducting, and accompanying friends, but I am still not a part of the herd myself.

So it matters to me to know that all is well with that mysterious and slightly humorously incongruous camel. And I’ll keep you posted on the bison-loving camel that is me.