Surf's Up

The month of September is at my doorstep, but the summer is still trying to suck every last drop of life blood out of us, like a crazed vampire who doesn't know when to stop draining its victim.  Almost imperceptibly, the great wheel of the seasons is turning with tantalizing slowness, and the sun continues its languid, snail-like journey towards the south part of the sky.  I leave my weekly aerobics class at approximately the same time, 6:50pm, and I can tell it's getting a tiny little bit darker each time.  Used to be I would walk out of the gym into the bright sunlight of an early evening, but now the sun is hovering just above the western horizon, sinking a little more each day.  The equinox is about three weeks away, and before long I will exit the gym to a sky devoid of sunlight..

I so love autumn because it has always been a time of reflection and contemplation, a time to consider what has been done so far this year, and plan for the long cold winter nights.  Everything seems richer and more colorful; the air will soon carry a touch of chilliness in the morning, and there will be a fragrance that speaks of the harvest and coming-of-age, of promises fulfilled and lessons learned.  The nighttime sky, always an indication of things to come, shows the Scorpion slinking low across the south toward the faintly glowing western horizon, and gallant, regal Pegasus, the celestial flying horse, making a powerful leap into the eastern sky, taking its rightful place of honor in the starry firmament.

In the coming months, the Scorpion will disappear in the west just as Orion the Hunter throws his leg up over the eastern mountains and hoists himself sideways into the sky, his faithful dog beside him and Lepus the celestial rabbit underneath him.  The Scorpion and Orion are locked in a death pursuit, each chasing the other but never catching up.  Scorpion wants to sting Orion with its glittering tail, and Orion wants to kill Scorpion with his club.  They've been doing this for billions of years and will probably continue for billions more. Such is their fate, both of them hopelessly joined in titanic struggle that will never be resolved.  Orion will rise higher in the southern sky until around the winter solstice, when Orion will take his rightful place as Lord of the Sky, glistening in the cold, deep winter night, Master of Heaven and Earth, surveying his kingdom.  The Rabbit will still be underneath him, right above Columba the Dove.  And very late at night, right around the winter solstice, you will spot the star Canopus, the harbinger of spring, skimming barely above the southern deserts and wildly twinkling like an over-caffeinated, multicolored strobe light.

I have been listening to a lot of music from the 1960s recently.  XM satellite radio in my vehicle, along with the music channels on DirecTV, serves up an endless stream of great tunes from that amazing decade.  Some of the music still sounds incredibly fresh and new, as if recorded just last week.  The music and the vocal harmonies of a lot of the groups were startlingly complex and intricate.  Looking back over four decades, I have a new appreciation for the achievements of bands like The Mamas and The Papas, Spanky and Our Gang and the glorious "Jersey Boy" pop of the Four Seasons.  Even shallow contrivances like The Cowsills, a musical family whose members ranged from youngsters barely out of the toddler stage to the surprising youthful and hip (for the 60s) mother, recorded an amazing song called "The Rain The Park and Other Things."  The Cowsills were a manufactured pop group, a precursor to the ubiquitous "boy bands" of the 80s and 90s, and their short-lived success degenerated into a series of acrimonious lawsuits which ended up tearing the family apart.  Besides the reign of brash, revolutionary groups like The Beatles and the Jefferson Airplane, the 60s also saw the dawning of the singer-songwriter era with geniuses like Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell, whose brilliance would continue into the new millennium. 

Sure, there was a lot of crap music from that era, something that is inescapable no matter which decade you examine.  The "bubblegum" music craze was particularly obnoxious, and unabashedly phony studio groups like "The Archies" and "The 1910 Fruitgum Company" sold millions of annoying records.  Reflecting the cultural war at the time, a lot of people snapped up faux-patriotic potboilers like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt. Barry Sadler (1966) - and on the other end - whiny, overwrought polemics like "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire (1965).  But all that was counterbalanced by Motown, the early Beatles, and the whole San Francisco psychedelic era, and those are the musical genres with real creativity, and real staying power.

Also central to the 60s sound were the Beach Boys, whose music and sophisticated vocal arrangements are still universally regarded as the best of the best.  Brian Wilson's perfectly crafted masterpieces such as "Good Vibrations," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and the shimmering, transcendent "Surf's Up" are unforgettable.  The Boys, along with lesser lights such as Jan and Dean, created the entire California youth scene, an eternal playground full of fast cars, surfing and beautiful girls in bikinis frolicking on a golden beach in an endless summer (recently given a garish, playfully hallucinogenic update by Katy Perry in her "California Gurls" video).  As someone just entering their teenage years, I was completely captivated by this perfect vision of a happy, carefree world drenched in lemon-yellow sunlight where you didn't have to work, and the biggest problem you had to worry about was catching the perfect wave.  Growing up as I did in a gritty steel-mill town near Pittsburgh, life could get oppressively dull and dreary.  The nearest body of water was the dirty Allegheny river which absent-mindedly meandered nearby, definitely not conducive to surfing.  The "beach" (derisively called the "Polish Riviera") consisted of a tiny strip of land on the other side of the river made up of smooth, round river rock, which was incredibly uncomfortable to walk or lay on.  Wintertime could be long, harsh and very depressing, often not seeing the sun for two weeks at a time, the trees devoid of green leaves, and the world locked in a frigid grip of icy, frozen ground and heavy, leaden skies.  But gods help me, that was my home, and I loved it.  Truth be told, sometimes I miss those incredibly dismal, cheerless winter days.

When conditions outside become difficult or unpleasant, either emotionally or because of the weather, the natural urge is to turn inward for solace.  Whether it's 10 or 110 degrees outside, it's the same thing, two sides of the same coin.  Memories are important stepping-stones back to a world with which you are intimately familiar, and that can be a very comforting thing.  It's endlessly fascinating to me how a song or a piece of music can evoke such rich, detailed memories of who you were and what you were doing when you first heard it.  I can remember all the words to songs I have not heard in 40 years, yet I can't remember what I did last week.  Funny how such seemingly trivial things make such an enormous impression on you.  Memories are funny, precious and remarkable milestones on the journey of your life.

The Dog Days of Summer

Summer is going full blast here in the Valley of the Sun. The solstice occurred last month and on that day the sun was so far north when it set that it shined into my living room through the French doors to the patio, which only happens for a couple of weeks a year about this time. Now, the sun is starting to recede southward and no longer shines into my living room at sunset. Too bad, I was starting to get used to the room being filled with that nice orange glow.

We managed to get through another Hell On Earth Weekend, which is the weekend closest to July 4th. As I remember a couple of days before the 4th it reached 118 degrees for the high temperature. It's pretty hard to tell people what heat of that kind is like, because unless they've served some time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia or one of those type of places, they just have no frame of reference for that kind of excess. The old standby description still works: Take a hair dryer, turn it on high, and point it at your face. It feels exactly like that.

I was in a fairly severe automobile accident on the 6th of July. I was coming back from the spay/neuter clinic with 9 bunnies in my car when some asshole who couldn't wait two damned seconds to make sure it was safe, pulled out in front of me from a sidestreet and I slammed into him. It was pretty nightmarish - my beloved Santa Fe was totaled, and had to be towed away. Asshole in the other vehicle was able to drive away, although the police were thoughtful enough to give him a traffic citation on the spot. So I went car shopping today, and bought a new 2011 Hyundai Elantra Touring. It's a nice little car at a good price, and I look forward to picking it up tomorrow. I had no idea being in an accident would be such a mental and physical trauma. I was kind of in shock and pretty scatter-brained for a good 24 hours afterwards, besides being black and blue and banged up. The airbags went off in my car upon impact, and it smashed the carrier in the front seat, carrying a sweet little rabbit named Winston who had come to us all the way from Yuma. Had to sit in a carrier for three hours to get to Phoenix, only to be put in another carrier and then be in a nasty accident. Luckily, neither Winston nor any of the other bunnies were injured.

In national politics, it's been proven once again that it's impossible to over-estimate the stupidity of the average American voter, as a heinous, insidious black hole of ignorance and fakery by the name of Michelle Bachmann befouls the airwaves and news programs at every possible opportunity. There aren't enough bad things I can say about this obnoxious, pasty-faced, simple-minded old scarecrow, so I'm not even going to try. But for some inexplicable reason people listen to her dead-headed stupidity and seem to revel in every twisted, mindless, idiotic pronouncement that comes out of her eternally-flapping mouth.

Her husband is a real piece of work, too. A big, stupid-looking lunkhead, he looks like a fat drag queen who is trying for some reason to pass as straight and clearly failing at it. He runs the family business, a Christian counseling center, and is virulently anti-gay, to the point of trying to foist "reparative therapy" on evil homosexuals. This therapy, also known as "pray away the gay," is used to try to "convert" homosexuals to heterosexuals so they can be in miserable, loveless marriages, go through bitter, acrimonious divorces, beat their beards (I mean, wives), screw up their kids for the rest of eternity, and sneak around behind everyone's back going to gay bars and drag shows. Her husband has "closet case" written all over him, and he must spend a lot of time dressed up in women's clothing and heels, prancing around the house and singing "I Feel Pretty" while Wifey is out on the road spreading her toxic stupidity from coast to coast. It's just a matter of time before Fat Boy gets caught in some airport restroom doing a tap-dance with the person in the stall next to him, but what else can we expect? Being married to Michelle Bachmann must be a truly hideous experience and will twist you so far around you will see the back of your own head.

So, what do we have to look forward as we come into mid-July? For one, the looming debt ceiling deadline is August 2, and the pundits are threatening that financial armageddon is on its way. The Republicans are doing what they always do, demanding tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy people in this country, those who already have so much. Astonishingly, the Repubs refer to these people as "job creators," and are still flogging the long-discredited Reagan-era dead horse of "trickle down economics." Oh, the rich people and corporations are creating jobs alright - in China, India and Indonesia. It's almost as if the Republicans are thumbing their noses at American workers and the 9.2% unemployment we've been enduring for many months now. And lots of people in this country are so dumb they fall for it hook, line and sinker. Sigh.

It's been a pretty exciting couple of weeks, and there have certainly been a few things I could have done without. But, when life tosses you a flaming bag of crap, you just have to deal with it and move on. I keep thinking about the lovely cool weather that is still three months away, and I can't wait to wake up on a nice, chilly, autumn morning and wonder how I ever managed to get through another Arizona summer.

State of Grace

In a previous post I mentioned I am a lover of language and words. Some scientists say that the use of language separates us from other animals, but I don't believe that. In my opinion, other (maybe most) animals on this planet use language. I certainly think that whales and porpoises have and use language. The great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans - most likely have some sort of vocal communication. And my work with rabbits over the past decade has convinced me beyond any reasonable doubt that they have a common language which they use to talk to each other. It's far too subtle for humans to discern, but I believe it's there. Even very young rabbits are born with an understanding of the lapine language.

Maybe what does delineate us from other animals is the extent to which humans use language. Over thousands of years humans have created hundreds, if not thousands of individual languages and dialects. More importantly, humans have devised a way of codifying and writing their language down, which means knowledge can be preserved and transferred to other humans. Animals may have dialects but to our (admittedly meager) knowledge they do not write things down.

Humans have taken language as a means to express information about concrete objects and extended it to include abstract concepts. Abstractions are very important ideas that don't necessarily have a physical manifestation. Emotions, such as sorrow, joy and anger, are abstract concepts without a physical component, even though you can often "tell" if someone is angry or sorrowful from the way they look and act . But these are merely outward signs, not the emotion themselves. Other abstract concepts such as courage and honesty are even more ephemeral - it's sometimes impossible to tell from their outward appearance if someone is courageous or honest. But they exist and are very important. It's interesting to me how some of the smallest words can carry immense abstract meaning, which brings me to the subject of this post.

"Grace" is one of these words. Five letters, one small word, but what an interesting concept. Everyone has heard of grace. Athletes and dancers can be described as "graceful." We talk about being in someone's "good graces." A Catholic prayer starts out, "Hail Mary, full of grace." We've heard about "grace" all our lives but what does it truly mean? If a dictionary entry did not exist for "grace" and you were called upon to write it, what would you write? It is such a highly abstract concept that everyone knows what it is, but it is very difficult indeed to describe it in concrete terms, much like "hope," an even smaller word but equally abstract. We all know what "hope" means, but how can we describe it concretely?

I did look up "grace" in the online dictionary and there were eight different entries for its meaning, including the short prayer said before meals and a temporary reprieve or exemption, such as a grace period for paying a bill. Only one entry came close to the abstract meaning I'm thinking about, "the quality or state of being considerate or thoughtful," which for me doesn't quite come close to describing grace. For me, "grace" is a state of being, but it covers so much more. It is a state of contentment, satisfaction and happiness, of being magnanimous in spirit, of being generous and joyful and accepting and embracing everything in life. It is a place you find yourself when you are fully appreciative of the life you have, being surrounded by people and things that you love, and understanding how fortunate you are. I think all animals naturally exist in a state of grace. Humans also have a legacy of graceful living, but too many years of "civilization" have taken it away from us. That's why we need to strive and purposefully try to get back to this natural "state of grace" into which we are born.

The Quaker song "Simple Gifts" has a line which for me comes close to describing this state of grace:
"...When you find yourself
In the place just right,
You'll be in the valley
Of love and delight!"

And that's where I want to be.

Perfect Moments in Life

What is this thing we call life, the gift of existence and consciousness bestowed upon us when we part company with the womb at birth? Is it like a cosmic pinball game where we are the little metal balls and bounce from event to event, moment to moment, careening off in different directions depending on the event? Does our sense of time give us a better (or worse) idea of our destinies?

I think of the present as a singularity, an instant in time. We are surfers riding the very crest of the wave of time, teetering on the edge and rushing toward some distant, unknowable future. All the moments of our lives have brought us to this very point in time, everything we have ever done has contributed to us being right here, right now, and is the springboard to whatever fate has in store for us. And where we will go in the future is about as easy to predict as exactly where a leaf is going to touch the ground when it falls from a branch 30 feet high.

Humans have an understanding of the present, as do all forms of life, but we are also saddled with a memory of the past and anticipation of the future. It's hard to be sure if other animals would have detailed memories of the past or a concept of the future - they live completely and totally in the moment. Although who's to say the blue whales or porpoises or the great apes such as gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans don't have similar understandings of time? We don't know, but humans certainly do. And, as is their wont, humans will embellish their concept of time with regret for things that happened in the past and entitlement for things that will happen in the future. Consequently humans experience time as a great mishmash of past, present and future all blurred together. Our present experience is colored with remembrances of the past and hopes, fears and desires for the future. But what about the times in our lives when the past and future drop away and we are living precisely, totally and perfectly in the present? These are some of my perfect moments in life:

I can remember as a child growing up in the Pittsburgh area one extremely frigid winter morning when I had to go on an errand or something. The sun was up but there was an icy haze to the air that filtered the sunlight and let the blue from the sky illuminate everything. It must have been single-digit temperature, and the ground was covered with a thick layer of dry snow that crunched loudly under my feet. I walked past a neighbor's house where they were drying their laundry in the clothes dryer, and the warm, moisture-laden air was being pushed outside through a vent. When the hot, moist air hit the dry, extremely cold outside air it immediately turned into massive, white billowing clouds of steam, which rolled and boiled out in fantastic, cloud-like shapes. There was also this amazing, pure, wonderfully clean fragrance of clothes and fabric softener and warmth that was just startling and incredible. The confluence of that wonderful, homey fragrance, the icy, frozen morning air and soft, blue skylight in that instant merged into a total memory experience that I haven't forgotten all these years. For an instant I was lost in those billowing, fragrant clouds of steam and I loved it.

Another time it was a summer evening at my childhood home in Pittsburgh. The weather had been very hot and uncomfortable for a while, but the day before some massive thunderstorms rolled through the area and, as often was the case, a cold front behind it brought deliciously cool, clear and dry air from Canada to our area. It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening and the sun had set about a half-hour before in the western sky. All the red and orange sunset colors had faded, leaving only a band of brilliant, ice-blue twilight on the horizon. I stood in my back yard and just gazed out at this beautiful band of blue light against the darkening sky and the inky horizon, feeling the incredibly pleasurable cool breeze and the silence of a summer evening. There was a business, I think it was a bank, in a town a mile or so away from me up the hill and they had these electronic chimes that rang out the hour. Right at 9pm as I breathlessly savored the cool blueness and serenity of the twilight the chimes started playing, and this very ethereal, dreamlike and pastoral music drifted in on the breeze from a distance like a whispered vesper prayer. The music danced in and out on the breeze, fading slightly and becoming louder at random, and I can remember being utterly transfixed and mesmerized by this perfect nexus of sight, sound and feeling. The past and future did not exist for me - there was only this moment of complete, total peace. I don't think I have ever had such a feeling of happiness and contentment in all my life. It only lasted a minute or two, but it was transcendent in its beauty and I will never forget it.

Today being Easter Sunday 2009, I invariably think back nearly fifty years to another Easter Sunday when I was in third grade. Easter was a movable feast and in western Pennsylvania was always at the mercy of the weather - sometimes it could be decent but often enough it was cold, blustery and rainy, even snowy. But that particular Easter occurred late in the spring and the weather was gloriously clear, warm and sunny. The gentle March weather that year had resulted in the pear tree in our back yard being absolutely loaded down with hundreds if not thousands of fragrant white blossoms. I can remember looking up and seeing golden sunlight filtering down through this incredible canopy of white flowers, and the soft warm breezes touching my face really did feel like a gentle kiss. I was dressed up in my finest Easter outfit and I just felt so perfect and clean and special, almost like being reborn. If there is a heaven it must be an awful lot like that sunny Easter Sunday morning in my backyard, all pure radiance and clean light and white blossoms. Again a moment of complete peace and contentment, something all the intervening years and events cannot possibly dampen.

These are just some of the moments that have made my life so rich and worth remembering for me. Please take a moment to remember one or more of YOUR special moments in life, when everything was perfect at that very moment and you didn't want anything more or less than what you had right then. Remember them, the precious, perfect moments that make up a life.