When we’re kids in the '60s, we buy candy called ‘atomic fireballs’. We’re given gray caps with the Confederate flag emblazoned above the brim. Our Catholic school basketball team is called the Rebels, even as we finally become integrated. Someone waves the big crossed Confederate flag at games.
Today as I practiced yoga on the front porch, the noise of the cars was drowned by the noise of heavy machinery. The highway department was cutting down the trees across the road, each marked with a red paint cross. These were tall trees some of the Mississippi Kites nested in. (Fortunately, the kites have migrated—it’s not nesting season.)
So, I balanced on right foot, then on left, arms extended upward, tree pose, standing tall as the machines chopped the limbs one by one.
There's a stalwart, beautiful oak farther down. It too is marked with a red X. And some weeks back, ‘preparing the dojo’ in our yard, I came upon arrows of orange paint in the grass, marking the line. Our pecan trees soon will be gone.
It’s as though the trees know. They’ve produced an abundance of pecans this their last season. They give us food, shade and grace.
I don’t understand humans. I don’t understand me.
We dull our hearts, our senses.
A friend, who also had a Confederate Army cap when he was a kid, doctored a photo of himself. He replaced the Confederate flag with a yin-yang.
Zurich
19 Sept 2005
2 comments:
I know it is little solace, but **ALL** of the things that concern **YOU** will pass away within this very narrow slice of geologic time.
For your health your outlook on situations such as these must change OR you must arrange things such that you aren't confronted by them (except say once every 20 years).
It is a comfort, George, to think of life's challenges in terms of geologic time. Thanks.
And if we could arrange to have to face only one death, major illness or traumatic change in life every 20 years, I guess most of us would leap at the chance.
But we might miss a lot too. Adversity can trigger passion, determination, focused awareness-if we can manage to stay afloat! There have been times these past few years I've felt like a puma on the prowl-alert and hungry and very very alive.
When we're comfortable, maybe there's less motivation to explore, to test our limits, to pay attention to the subtleties in our environment. When we’re always well fed, what charges our appetite?
Thanks for your recommendation on outlook-why stare through windows facing trash bins if we can choose a lake view instead? I struggle with that one-
and thanks as always for writing, George-
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