Onion Cap

I had a week off over the past week.  Today was the first day of “work” I’ve had for 9 days.  Nine days off it a row!  It’s enough to get away and forget for a bit what I do every day.  Get a little distance, see the bigger picture, and all that.

This is common practice in European countries.  Here in the good old USA, we believe in working until you drop, that it is somehow admirable to work every day of your life for at least 16 hours a day, just to show how tough you are, or perhaps how dedicated. I admit I have been a victim of this ideology.

But no more.  I’ll work my butt off, and will go toe to toe with anyone for stamina at work – for a couple months.  But then I’m taking off – at least a week – to get away and forget about it.  It is immeasurably refreshing.

Duh.  Oh, that I would have been this enlightened years ago.

Ice forms on Lake Wissota

The ponds across the road have a dangerously thin layer of ice, but the big lake is not yet frozen.  This morning the temperature is down in the teens again, as it has been for a few days.  Thin ice flows develop overnight and then break apart when the wind comes up to create waves; crusty new ice crackles and chinkles along the rocky shore.

What is it about hanging pictures that I find so consequential?

Maybe it’s choosing the pictures – evoking memories, affecting the mood of a room, creating a story with what’s on the wall, defining space with narrative and image.  Every picture or photo evokes a person, a place, a feeling, a memory.

Then there is the task of hanging something on the wall so that it looks good.  You pound the little, easily bent nail into the hard plaster wall in just the right spot for the hanger, otherwise the picture gets too high or too low;  and if you have an arrangement of pictures, the hangers have to be placed just right so that the group looks orderly.  If you get the hanger in the wrong place, even by a fraction of an inch, then you have to pull it out — now you have a hole in the wall.

It all seems so high stakes while I’m doing it.

Here’s a fantastic interview with Greg.  I am deeply thankful for Greg.  And check out those glasses!

People in any historical time have had the tendency to think that they live in unique times, which is of course true; we always live in unique times.  Can there be a time more unique, more significant, more consequential, than any other time?

Oh, you say, what about now! We think we are living in very important times now.  Especially 2010.  Just think of the things that are going on: global warming, overpopulation, digital global communication, rising (or falling) standards of living, a conservative wave crashing upon the shores of Congress.  It all seems pretty important and consequential, but is it more so than usual?

Maybe the world is actually ending.  I saw a billboard along the freeway the other day declaring that we are in the end times.  The sign of course directed me to a website.  Think of it, websites about the end times; just a few years ago, that would not have been possible.  Apocalyptic visions provide an extra layer of urgency to any time, which is why we’ve been having these end-of-the-world visions for as long as there has been a written history.  Nothing gets our juices flowing like a good, old apocalypse.

Thank goodness we find other ways than apocalypse to feel the urgency of time, because if we ever had an actual apocalypse, well, that would be it.  Holidays, on the other hand, give us a countdown we can live through.  Holidays remind us of change by being traditional.  We seek to reconstruct and relive the holiday of our memories as we anticipate and finally land on the next holiday; suddenly the day arrives, and we can’t help but notice that we got older, the people we love got older, and lives and jobs and families changed.  This sense of passing, of changing, creates a sense of urgency, of feeling, of significance, of the necessity of now-ness.

Although I am thankful for the illusion of chronocentrism which gives me a sense of significance and importance, I am more thankful for how the awareness of this illusion allows me to pierce through it for just a moment and see that all we have is now, all we have is each other, and that’s the only way it’s ever been.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I visited Bess in Madison a week or so ago, and somewhere during the visit one of the ear-hangers on my reading glasses snapped off.  I think I have about 10 pair of reading glasses with the ear hanger snapped off.

Bess had the clever idea of taping a pen to the frame to create a replacement ear hanger.  Having been a carpenter who lost many a pencil behind my ear, I could immediately see the practicality of this.

Pen Glasses

So here’s my first attempt.  The pen is hard to use as a pen, as it turns out, because the glasses flop down and get in the way.

What an invention.  You do have to watch that you don’t poke your eye with the pen.  A pen does make for a very comfortable ear hanger, and you do have a pen handy.  Of course you can’t see to write, but then you can’t have everything.

Greg Brown’s song, “Wash My Eyes,” is one of my favorites.  It’s fitting for all times, but especially for the times we are in; but of course, we’re always in a time of some sort.  I spent many years singing and hearing this song with the line “Let the cruel and raging seas. ” I found “seas” a bit confusing, but oh well, it’s Greg you know, and he knows his way around a lyric.  Then, in the Age of the Internet, when all lyrics are found by a Google search rather than patient listening, I discovered that the line is a much more seniscal “Let the cruel and raging cease.”  I still like “seas” though.

This song has always been to me a prayer.  Today it is a very fitting post-election, Thanksgiving prayer.

Here is the whole song:

Wash my eyes that I may see
Yellow return to the willow tree
Open my ears that I may hear
The river running swift and clear
And please
Wash my eyes
And please
Open my ears

Wash this world that is one place
And wears a mad and fearful face
Let the cruel raging cease
Let these children sleep in peace
And please
Wash this world
And please
Let these children
Sleep in peace

The Great Oil Spill is stopped, but the sea is still pretty oily.  Are the whales safe?  How about those coral reefs?

I saw a sail boat for sale a while back and it got me thinking.  What it would be like to sail the seas today in a small ship, like Jack London on the Snark?  Maybe such a sail to Australia is in my future.

Change continues.  Two years ago we were celebrating Obama’s election; two years later some other people are celebrating Boehner’s ascension to power: no one is publicly celebrating the current progress of the human race.

We’ve lost a sense of unity, of common purpose, of mission.  Are we here for selfish ends?  Are we here for each other?  Do we make up what we’re here for as we go along?  Are we here for a purpose that calls upon us to eliminate or dehumanize anyone who does not share our purpose?

Time to restart.  Come on people now.  Everybody get together, try to love one another, right now.

Or, maybe just plan a sailing trip that will take several months, if not years.