Twisted Plots and the Wrinkles in Life's Fabric

I keep reminding myself that if a person is "Van Winkled" to what's happening elsewhere on the planet, then the only news that remains available is "local" and "personal."

Specifically, "news" becomes whatever seems of import that happens directly to him or her. It's the solipsist's news beat.

Or Welcome to Me-World...

Of course, the blogosphere is replete with this sort of daily diary stuff.

Most of the time, I find myself unwilling to risk a Twitter-style yawn by sharing nuggets of the monstrously mundane aspects of my life (e.g., I had a BLT for lunch, yum! e.g., Just took a Gas-X tablet, ugh!). There's nothing in my daily routine worth reporting on this blog.

Every day is average. Every day goes much as expected. So I write about other matters.

But the last couple of days! Whew! I won't claim it was as if we were on board the Titanic, but our metaphorical ship of life sure wasn't reaching its ports of call in an expected fashion.

All Is Well (Or Is It?)
It began with a planned Easter holiday junket to the nearest major metropolitan area to seek some cultural nourishment not available in our little burg of 110,000 people. We set out on our adventure on Saturday afternoon by getting in the car and driving two hours east of here.

There have been rampant wildfires in this part of the state. For weeks now the daily temperature has approached the summer heat levels of July and the wind has ripped across the arid plains and there has been no rain and no rain. It's a recipe for out of control flames to sweep unimpeded across the landscape.

For weeks, the weather app on my computer desktop
has delivered the same "alert" nearly every day...

Pastures have blackened. Houses have burned. Cattle have been barbecued alive in the field.

Many days I'd stepped outside the house and smelled the smoke in the air. One night my wife drove home with the car's sun roof open. Mistake. She found ash drifting down onto the seats and into her hair.

During our drive on Saturday we checked for places where the fires had burned. We saw one small charcoaled patch alongside the road. Not too impressive. I think it was at this point we began to relax.

The Nonexistent Noodles
So for our Saturday night dinner we selected a Vietnamese restaurant we  had discovered on our last trip to the big city. They featured the kind of delectable, well presented food we can't obtain back home. But wait. Something was wrong. Yes, I mean wait. Really wait. Our appetizers arrived and the server said that our orders were coming. But you know where this is headed.

So March was "National Noodle Month" (seriously) and we
missed it, so we thought we'd atone by ordering up some serious
platefuls of Asian noodle dishes...

We waited. We waited. Our glasses of ice water ran dry. Outside we could see through the tall windows the sky was being illuminated by giant scribbles and lassos of lightning.

Mother Nature was having a blast. Not us.

When the food finally came it was with apologies. At least it was delicious. The manager knocked a few dollars off the bill and gave our son a free cup of chocolate ice cream.

To conclude the evening we headed over to the used bookstore. The night sky still appeared apocalyptic. But the Four Horsemen remained at bay and only scattered drops of rain fell on us. We went back to our hotel with a bag of books and used LPs. We were feeling pretty good about life...

The Empty Church
The main reason we had journeyed all the way to this lovely large metropolis was that I'd picked out an  elegant, Spanish-styled church associated with a major university at which we would attend Easter services. It was near our hotel, but we still had to hustle to pull our best clothes out of bags, dress, and get ready to go.

We arrived on time. Hurray! But another twist, another wrinkle awaited us...

A man accosted us in the parking lot and told us that the service had been moved from the church. "There's been a power outage," he explained. We were redirected to the nearby campus. Church would be held in the student center where they still had power.

Such disappointment! We had wanted to hear the bells toll in the tower. See the robed choir process down the stone tiled aisle. Watch the morning light pouring through stained glass. Feast our eyes on the vaulted ceiling.

The church we hoped to attend...

It was too late to amend our plans. So we joined a line of Easter church goers who, like us, had found that the grand old church on this morning was only an empty, non-electrified, darkened tomb. Plan B was to gather in what resembled a hotel banquet room. Industrial carpet, rows of banquet chairs, cheesy chandeliers. Everyone made the best of it.

Sometimes life doesn't go according to plan. This isn't necessarily bad. Isn't that the message of Easter?

Ah, the MOMA, the perfect venue for our Easter brunch...

Spill the Wine
We were really looking forward to our Easter brunch.

We had reservations in the cafe at the Museum of Modern Art.

Soon as we arrived we knew: this was it! The architecture was wonderful, the food the other diners were tucking into looked aesthetic and palate pleasing.

Indeed once our food arrived my son and I whipped out our cameras and started acting like tourists and taking pictures of it. That's where I became incautious. My blazer sleeve snagged my champagne glass.



A glimpse in the foreground of the glass of sparkling wine moments
before the tragic (and messy!) fall...


The glass tumbled. It shattered with a LOUD  pop!! on the table. I was splashed with golden wine and, with my synapses firing like military grade ordinance, I leaped up by reflex before I even realized what had just happened. Behind me my chair fell over. The nearby diners went "oh!" just like they do when a waiter drops a plate.

"Are you all right?" the waitress asked, hurrying to my assistance.

Some part of me was. All right. The rest of me? Not so much.

I tossed a wadded napkin in the direction of the puddled wine. I excused myself to head in the direction of the bathroom.

The Seventh Plague
It was almost time to go home, but what else could go wrong? Hadn't we had our quota already?

In fact, I refuse to count as an adversity that we had planned to finish our visit with a visit to a large super market that features gourmet and natural foods that we can't buy back home. We had even brought a cooler that we planned to fill with ice and then pack with organic meats and vegetables.We arrived and found the parking lot empty.

Closed for the Easter holiday.

So we began the two-hour drive back. Again, we relaxed. Then, only half an hour from home, the sky began looking gray and grim. It appeared to be storming off in the distance. We were within fifteen minutes of home when the rain began to fall. Heavily.

Photo by Greg Kendall-Ball (who V.W. personally knows!)

The windshield wipers had to be put on full speed and visibility was only as far as tail lights of the vehicle ahead of us. Still, we could proceed, albeit at a slightly reduced speed.

Then hail began falling.

Not good. We sought shelter under a highway underpass with a crowd of cars, SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks. We were now on the outskirts of town, only five minutes from our driveway. Soon the rain slackened .

We and the other highway travelers took shelter, huddling beneath the underpass. while rain and hail poured down

I started up again. Only a mile from our house the hail started falling again. Big hail. Verging on golf ball size. I screeched to a halt beneath the gas pump awning of a car wash. The entire town appeared be swamped with water. This came after months and months of drought.

Eventually the hail relented and sun began to poke through and I got the three of us home. Hail stones still littered the front yard. Our roof might have to be replaced. But that was it, right? Nothing else untoward would happen to us on this day? There as to be a time limit on such things?

Apparently so. Which makes me happy. You see, it may have been a lot of trouble, but at least I derived a blog post out of the weekend. What I don't want, though, is an entire series. - V.W.

Home again.

Never Mind the Jackson Pollocks, The Abstract Expressionists Were Here

While we were out of town and staying in a different locale for a few days I decided to pass some time by strolling behind our lodgings to see what might be available to photograph. At first it didn't look promising.

There was a wooden deck and a barbecue grill. Beyond that, the most interesting trees were stripped of their autumn color. True, someone had hung a rusted, valveless coronet from a branch, but as photogenic as this venerable musical instrument sounds, every way I framed it turned out unsatisfying. I might as well have been photographing a giant paperclip.

I lowered my view. I started looking at the ground which was covered with the following:

                           - Leaves
                           - Twigs
                           - Acorns
                           - Deer droppings
                           - Rocks

Hmm. Interesting. I bent lower. The camera shutter began making the satisfying ka-chik sound. At that moment an odd thought occurred to me about nature. On this day and in this place it looked like modern art.

The Importance of Being Wilde: A Brief Digression

In "The Decay of Lying," an 1889 essay cast in the form of a humorous dialogue between two slightly bored young gentlemen (Vivian and Cyril), Oscar Wilde offers to the world his, at the time, revolutionary views on art. Using Vivian as his mouthpiece, Wilde contends for the absolute superiority of art over every form of reality. He's tired of people saying, "Oh, that's just art," as if art in all its forms is a harmless and not particularly useful child's play or mere ornamentation.

Wilde claims (through Vivian) that art is so powerful that it influences life and how we live. And he contends for an ideal vision of life that art can give us to compensate for the "defective" offerings of nature, about which Vivian loudly complains:

"But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris's poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can...[but] I don't complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air."

Haven't you noticed all
the Turner sunsets lately?

According to Wilde, art does even more than turn out nice William Morris chairs or lovely houses. He says that nature is actually influenced by art and improves itself thereby. How so? How can a sunset be affected by a painter, for example? Because, as Wilde points out, we only know nature through our senses and perceptions and these can be shaped and informed by art.

Vivian/Wilde considers the case of the English artist J. M. W. Turner, renowned for his blasts of chrome yellow and orange over a maritime horizon. Vivian says that Turner sunsets are everywhere in nature these days. However, before Turner painted his sunsets, no one ever saw one.

Vivian makes a similar pronouncement about fog, a favorite subject of impressionist painters who were then the rage.

"At present, people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist till Art had invented them."

The principle is not so hard to understand. If we encounter something in art, we may start to notice it outside of art. It might be a certain way a garden of flowers reminds me of a Renoir. Or I watch Jersey Shore and later I see a woman in the checkout line who sounds like Snooki. Or everyone around me  starts peppering their conversation with a phrase popularized on YouTube or in a commercial. It's a paradox: Life and nature imitate art, Wilde says, not the other way around.

Enter the Abstract Expressionists
Until I went looking for subjects for my photos it had never occurred to me that modern art, especially the ultra-famous group called the "abstract expressionists," could prove the truth of Oscar Wilde's insight. These men, and a few women, who painted in the 1950s and 1960s were known for finding ways of applying paint to canvases so that it resembled nothing recognizable, much less the beauties of nature.

Rothko painting


Those who were dismissive of this school of painting, including the general public, were quick to fault it for its nonfigurative aspect. They said the painter had created in a random fashion and even a child could do that...or an elephant holding a paintbrush in its trunk! Please tell us, just what is that red Rothko supposed to resemble? 

Mark Rothko had his own justification for painting something that did not look like anything recognizable. He was painting an emotion.

"...the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions . . . The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point."

But a strange thing was happening to me during my photo shoot. Rothko was right, but at the same time he was wrong. Yes, much of the work of abstract expressionism was emotional, I'd always granted that, but for the first time it seemed to me that these paintings might have something to do with nature as well...because just as Oscar Wilde contended, nature had set out to imitate art.

No filtering or Photoshopping was required. As I strolled around the property I could clearly see the phenomenon through my viewfinder.

It was crazy, but the camera didn't lie.  Nature had "conspired" to look like an abstract expressionist painting.

Example No. 1
I was looking at this propane tank outside the house.


It's fairly nondescript until one goes in close and seeks out
Nature's "imitation" of abstract art.



Mark Tobey painting

Propane tank moss streaks

Example No. 2:
The bark on the trees was interesting. It seemed to be unwinding itself from the tree trunk and in some cases it hung down like a beard.




Barnett Newman painting

  If I zoomed in on the bark, I saw this...

Example No. 3:
The rocks in this area are pockmarked limestone. They resemble solidified sponges or frozen gray sea anemones.

Of course, one can collect rocks and build a wall and end up with something like this...

Jane Frank painting

Or it might look like this...

Or here's the same wall zoomed in...

Example No. 4:
The most famous of the abstract expressionist is Jackson Pollock, called by his detractors "Jack the Dripper." Pollack laid out a large canvas on the floor of a garage converted to studio and he flung and rained down paint as he moved around the painting in progress, being careful not to step into the wet paint, of course.

Jackson Pollock painting

I tipped my head to the ground and noticed the way the leaves and twigs had covered a backdrop of dark earth.

"Outdoor Floor No. 1"-  Action Painting by Mother Nature

My Favorite Photos:
At this point I was seeing the "abstract" almost everywhere. Nature didn't conform to plans, designs. It was wild and free and energetic. I no longer needed an analogue from the world of modern art to discover, frame, and shoot nature's explosive expression.

Thrilling Conclusion
At the end of the day, as the sun set (behind the hills so I could not be sure if it was a Turner sunset or not), I was left with the powerful realization that without art I'm less aware and, therefore, less alive. If I had never seen an abstract painting, my photo shoot might have ended in minutes with me grumping, "Nothing to take a picture of here!" Instead, art had opened my eyes.

The point of art isn't to fetishize it and hang it on a wall and worship it or oo! and ah! at it in the museum. The value of art is that it gives me a way to see more deeply into the everyday world. It helps me realize that I'm surrounded by wonders and it leads me to override my habit of shrugging my shoulders and failing to notice any of it.

At its best, art helps wake up ol' Rip V.W. to another kind of "news," the kind that's surely worth being awake for. I must try to step lightly from now on because, believe it or not, for as long as I reside on Planet Earth, I seem to be walking on art. - V.W.


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Rip Van Winkle's Dog Descendant Found



Everything I need to know about sleeping
I learned from my dog...

Lately, I've been learning lessons in being laid-back and at ease no matter what is going on. My teacher is a dog.

Here follows, in brief, the true story of the 21st Century's current holder of the competitively judged, and much coveted, Rip Van Winkle Noble Nature in the Realm of Somnolence Prize. Said prize is awarded to honor outstanding achievements in snoozing and just plain being mellow.

Future Great One in Exile
See that handsome mug in the above photo ? For over a year no one wanted him.

He lived at a place called Rescue the Animals where he was treated kindly and spared the euthanizing propensities of the city pound. Yet the puppy that came from who-knows-where remained ignored. He stayed and stayed. He grew and he grew, but no one would adopt him.

Visitors to RTA always gravitated toward the bouncy, stereotypically cute dogs or the mutts that gave a strong hint of some breed. But what was this one? The staff at RTA had decided. The dog had a wonderful personality and wanted nothing more than to be petted. He wasn't the world's ugliest dog, yet there were aesthetic challenges that would never be overcome.

So they named him Bullwinkle. Which in our eyes was the cherry on the topping. This made him perfect.

- He never barked, which was a bit strange, but then we grew used to it and wow, a quiet dog!
- When he saw people his tail always began to wag like a crazed metronome
- After an early shock from an electrical cord, he didn't chew stuff up
- He turned out to be so submissive you could pick him up in your arms, turn him on his back and he just lay there
- The late 50s early 60s chestnut, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, was already our favorite cartoon show

A New Home
Bullwinkle came to us much like his cartoon namesake, Bullwinkle the moose. Bullwinkle the dog is homely, kindly, innocent about the evils in this world, and heroic without trying to be. The ultimate anti-hero.

Even though he's a dog, Bee-Dub's actually much smarter than the venerable moose, much of whose humor was occasioned by how the dense contents of what lay between his antlers led him to always bumble. Our Bullwinkle doesn't bumble. He sleeps.

And he sleeps. And he sleeps. No one makes it look easier.


Inspiration
As I try to remain Van Winkled (metaphorically asleep to the greater activity of the world) for the next nine months or so, I look to Bullwinkle for evidence that I can make it.

Laboratory studies show that the average dog or cat sleeps 13 hours a day. Bullwinkle manages 15 at a minimum and most of the time it's probably more like a world-class 18 hours a day.

 

Bullwinkle aka "Bee-Dub" in his campaign mode.

While he's awake he uses his energy mostly to let us know that he's interested in eating or going for a walk or being petted. For some dogs one might use the verb "lobby" to describe how they fuss or rub up against you or whine to let you know what they want. Bullwinkle requires a more powerful word.

Bullwinkle campaigns.

Like a general or a politician, he comes at us with all his forces, especially if he's campaigning for food. He's a multimedia animal whose attention-getting tricks include salivating, running around in circles, tail wagging, extending a paw. Perhaps because he does not have a "bark!" setting he's all the more animated and much more like Rocket J. Squirrel than Bullwinkle the moose at such moments. He's patient, too.

"Look," we'll say at three o'clock. "Bee-Wub's campaigning for dinner." He still has 90 minutes to go. Does he give up when we ignore him and go back to what we were doing? Hardly. Like Harold Stassen, who ran for president nine times, Bee-Wub stays on the campaign trail.

Once Bullwinkle gets what he wants, however, he exchanges his "Bull" for a "Van." Prepare to take notes. You're about to witness the work of a master.

9 a.m.: Satisfyingly fed and played with Bee-Dub wants to go outside and sack out in his little red wagon.

11 a.m.: There's nothing like a change of locale to encourage further sweet dreams. Bee-Dub switches to his canvas folding chair.

1 p.m.: Even those with fur coats can be sun lovers and work on their Coppertone tans. Besides, the grass looks awfully soft.

Mid-afternoon: How about a change-up? Bee-Dub wants to come inside. Still worshipping ol' Sol he nails down a patch of golden delight on the carpet in the master bedroom.

9 p.m.: It's been a hard day! After being walked around the neighborhood, Bee-Dub dens up on his blanket by the dining room table. He'll be there until the family rises and shines the following morning.

Thrilling Conclusion
The original Rip Van Winkle in the story by Washington Irving was ceaselessly faulted by his wife for being lazy and never tending to work that needed to be done around the home place. She essentially drove Rip out of the house and made possible the great adventure in napping that would make him one of the most famous of all American literary characters.

I am not an advocate of napping one's way to fame or fortune. The way I see it, life is the equivalent of a dance and all the opportunities are there and looking for a partner to go out onto the floor and start moving to the music. How can I sleep through that? A reality in the flesh is much better than one confined strictly to my dreams.

On the other hand, there are some dances that I might be better off sitting out. I can grab a little nap on the sideline while others get involved in the fray. Once the dust settles I can decide if there's anything worth standing up for and taking by the hand and partnering with.

I suppose I'm saying it's not always necessary to do that American thing of valuing action above all else. If something in my life happens that is the equivalent of the dog noticing a stranger at the door or reacting to the phone ringing or a truck rumbling past, I don't have to automatically jump up and start barking at them. It might be good to reflect first. Then I can take a considered course of action. I might even decide it's time perchance to sleep. Because, as Bullwinkle knows, there's always tomorrow. - V.W.


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A Termite War Recalled



Don't forget. On June 2, 1886 Grover Cleveland wed,
the only President to marry while in the White House.
That was 124 years ago!

Anniversaries are important to us personally. We remember birthdays, weddings, even the date we lost loved ones.

The news media loves anniversaries perhaps as much as we do. It's a way of making what is old new and generating fresh headlines. "On this day in history...."

In the west we particularly focus on the first year, the fifth year, and thereafter the decades (sometimes combined with a five, like "25th or 35th anniversary"). The event we revisit may or may not have changed the course of history, but that's not necessarily the point. Just this year we've been reminded that it's been...

- One year since Michael Jackson died.
- Five years since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
- Twenty years since Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
- Thirty years since Mount St. Helens blew up.
- Forty years since the Rolling Stones released their classic double album Exile on Main Street and forty years since the Beatles broke up.
- Fifty years ago bubble wrap was invented.

What are we to do with this information? Relive it perhaps as an exercise in nostalgia? Maybe learn some lessons? Or, it may be appropriate to take comfort in how we've moved on and humanity continues to endure.

Another possibility is that we're supposed to get excited all over again about such matters. For example, did you know that 95 years ago Ovaltine was introduced to the U.S. market (from England)? Perhaps you'd like to buy some and mix up a hot cup right now. You can sip it while you listen to the newly remastered Exile on Main Street with unreleased bonus tracks included...

Seeking to Commemorate
Today it seems like a Van Winkle thing to do, in lieu of looking at real news, to dig into my datebook and find out what I was doing at this time last year or thereabouts.

I've kept datebooks for around twenty years now. Besides writing down appointments in them I use each year's installment as a bare bones diary to note things I've done or experienced. This includes weather notes (rained 1/2"), runs I've made (25:23), and movies watched (Coco Before Chanel). It's not a very complete record of my life, but it is enough to provide footholds as I walk my memory along the treacherous ledge of recalling something or tumbling into the canyon of its being completely forgotten.

One Year Ago - An Invasion

On a Saturday one year ago, I looked up at the top of the guest bathroom wall and noticed two small holes with delicate out-thrusts of sawdust clinging to them. This was odd. I hadn't drilled any holes. I sighed. House issues seem to always arise on the weekend. I had to wait until Tuesday for the friendly pest control man to come out and confirm what I expected.

Termites, some of the most capable insects around, had crawled beneath the house slab, found ingress via the plumbing pipes, then made their way up into the attic. What followed was a regimen of shooting poison foam into the walls, digging trenches around the house and pouring poison into them, and putting over $2000 on my credit card.

The woodpile whence they came?

A year later, if not for the datebook and the fact that I'm scheduled for a termite re-inspection, I would have forgotten about the anguish of that day. How I blamed myself for a wood pile we inherited when we bought the house that I should have had removed long ago, how I suspected that when I finally had the wood hauled off it was already infested. After that the termites, I'll say it again, some of the most capable insects around, dealt with the foreclosure and loss of their home in their own fashion. By moving into a larger one. Ours.

And a Horror Took Place in the Woods
The other thing I have on my calendar for this time in 2009 was that the following Monday I substituted for a professor who was at a conference. Per his request I taught the extraordinary Japanese film Rashomon to a World Lit Class.

Many of the students in the class were non-English majors. They were not much used to reading literary classics, much less watching foreign films. And here was one from 1950, shot in black in white, and with subtitles. Even more challenging, Rashomon is a work of genuius that is as densely layered with meaning and nuance as a novel by William Faulkner or James Joyce.


Evil bandit assaults virtuous woman,
while husband (tied up) looks on.
Or is that what really happened?

The story revolves around trying to figure out what exactly occurs when a violent crime is committed: a rich man and his wife are ambushed in the woods by a bandit who kills the man and rapes the wife.

The film is deliberately redundant. We see the plot unfold four times--only each time it is from a different character's point of view (including the dead man's!). So it's not always quite the same story. Somebody's lying. Or they exaggerate to make themselves look better. Or they lie to themselves. Or their information is incomplete.

This means the blame for the tragedy keeps shifting depending on who is the teller of the tale. Which leaves us wondering by movie's end, What really happened? Is there any way to know for sure?

Of course, this is a perpetual human question. People can occupy the same space, go through the same experience there, and yet have wildly divergent accounts of what happened and what it means. This has been called the "Rashomon effect."

Second Thoughts from the "Victor"
From my perspective the termites were defeated a year ago and then I forgot about it. Their chance to chew wood to their heart's content was foiled. I protected the value of the investment in my home and that was the main thing. But it is interesting to ponder if there could be an insect perspective on the event. If so, it might go like this...

        A year ago a Mount St. Helens of poison foam engulfed our termite colony,
       a Katrina-like tidal blast of noxious chemicals spilled into our tunnels
       and drowned us. If one or more  of us were more talented than the rest,
       we lost our equivalent of Michael Jackson. As far as the termites of the world
       are concerned, it is the owner of this house who is the villain. He made the
       phone call that brought the exterminator who raped and killed us in the
       innocent eaved woods of the attic.

All this is a tale of classic competition.

     "This place isn't big enough for the both of us."


     "What you have, I want."


     "I'm more worthy than you."

There are always many reasons to seek the final solution, the one that always means "I win, you lose."

Honestly, I don't feel bad about eliminating the bugs who, if left alone, would have eventually brought down the roof upon our family. But I still find Rashomon disquieting. The film reminds me how it's so easy to assume that I'm always in the right or to feel justified in my opinions about what life means or how I believe the best way is for me to get my way.

That's why at this one-year anniversary of the Termite War I'm thinking it would be good if I backed off a bit. Stop worshipping my own certainty and the assumed purity of my motives. See if I can give other people space to be who they need to be. And maybe if I didn't go around over-turning their wood piles, some of these problems could be avoided in the first place. - V.W.


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Thoreau Unplugged

Reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in the 21^st century feels to me like this.

I get up just as dawn is about to arrive. I open the back door and walk barefoot onto the concrete patio slab. Behind the house I can make out dew fringing the grass. I sigh and do what I know I have to do. I bend over a tin bucket filled to the brim with water. Cold water. I begin splashing the water on my face. My skin tightens and I almost shout at the shock. I do a little dance as cold droplets fall on my already cold feet. And it is at this moment I realize what a man shouting across the expanse of more than 150 years wants me to know.

I am alive and living on an amazing planet.

There's more to it, actually. Much more. So this morning while I sip my coffee and the sun is inking the sky with patches of tangerine and coral I take my time and dip into Walden. I've planned this for some time. (See Gaze Into the Gender Mirror post.) I want to see if Thoreau can instruct me in how to live in my Van Winkled state.

Paper Houses

Thoreau came to mind a few years ago when our son was going through a paper craft phase. First, our son found a model of Bill Gates’ house he could build in miniature. I mean small. The $45 million, 27,000 sf house belonging to practically the world’s richest man ended up being no more than 2 x 3 inches in size and perfectly amenable to tiny fingers manipulating toothpicks and Elmer’s Glue. One hopes Mr. Gates, if he knew, would feel sufficiently humbled.

Then I ran across this paper craft (above) of Thoreau’s cabin that he lived in for two years and two months at Walden Pond in Massachusetts. I urged our son to build it. Which he did. Which gave me an opportunity to explain about this important figure from American history.

Who Was This Man?

Though Henry David Thoreau had little use for the ways of society, he was far from a misanthropic crank. In Walden he confesses that he loves to talk with farmers as he makes the rounds looking for a piece of land to settle on. On July 4, 1845, when he began his project to live alongside Walden Pond, he chose 14.5 acres within hailing distance of humanity. True, Thoreau lived alone in his cabin, but he was only 1.5 miles from the home of his good friends the Emersons. He states in Walden that he can see through the trees the roofs of the nearby village of Concord. Frequently he entertained visitors at the cabin and then he went visiting himself.

As sociable as he was, we need not make Thoreau out to be a smooth character. Encountered up close I think he may have had been like the homely unplastered, unchinked planks of his cabin. Planed mostly smooth, but still with some splinters and knotholes and lots of air leaking through. He was what we’d call a “character.”

The man was opinionated. To say the least.



A Thoreau-going Dislike of the News

About the news I think it fair to portray Thoreau as loathing it. He couldn’t understand why people were so avid to know what was happening to others, especially those who lived in faraway countries. The news seemed to Thoreau some kind of gossipy spectacle which he compared to everyone running to a fire when they heard the church bell peal in the middle of the night. It didn’t matter if the building was saved or burned to the ground. They just wanted to see it or hear about it.



Reconstructed Interior of Thoreau's Cabin

 Worse, according to Thoreau, all news amounts to the same predictables in play. All that changes are the names, dates and locales. In the end, paying attention to the news is hardly a harmless pursuit. The news leads people astray.

"Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous . . . By closing eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit every where, which still is built on purely illusory foundations."

I can’t help wondering what Thoreau would have to say about our large screens, 3D movies, books that arrive via pixels on an e-reader, or conversations with disembodied voices as we walk along talking on cell phones; in other words, our conscious cultivation of something other than physical, sensual, wrap-your-hand-around-it reality.

He might ask someone like me to add up the costs, the way he totaled precisely his expenses in constructing his cabin--$28.12, including 14 cents for hinges and screws and one cent for chalk.

The cost of my following the news and lapping up the latest greatest entertainment can't be expressed in dollars, though. The cost comes in the amount of reality I subtract from my own life.

And what is reality?

Consider the following episode. Thoreau awakens and hears something in his cabin.

“I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame.” 

In Thoreau's world the person attune to reality not only makes room to notice the mosquito, he or she actually celebrates its presence as a vital part of nature worthy of admiration. Thoreau in essence gives the mosquito its own headline and a glowing musical review.

R.I.P. H.D.T.

Thoreau died in 1862 at age 45. He’d suffered for years from tuberculosis. His health worsened after a trip into the woods in 1859 when he sought to count tree rings on stumps during a rain storm. His last full set of words were, “Now comes good sailing.”

This satisfying prediction was followed by two more words.

“Moose.”

“Indian.”

It’s possible heresy, but I like to imagine that if Thoreau had lived today he would have blogged while his Walden experiment unfolded day by day. As someone who felt called to announce humanity’s follies, he would have found the Internet the best way of communicating his message to the world. Slow down. Study at the feet of nature. Use nature wisely. Tread lightly wherever you go out of respect for all life. Get to know yourself deep down at the level of the soul.

As for his final utterance of “Moose” and “Indian,” Thoreau was such a realist I have to think he was not suffering from a death bed fantasy. Could it be he was knowingly speaking to the ones who stood ready to welcome him as he sailed off on his new adventure? I can see them now. Side by side the three of them move deep into the tall woods, crunching leaves and pine needles. Moose, Henry, Indian. Then at last, they are swallowed up by shadows. - V.W.

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Review of My Ficus Tree

It's rampantly leafy, my ficus tree, but I hadn't noticed that. In fact, I hadn't looked at the tree in the master bedroom in a long time.


To Tree or Not to Tree
I wouldn't be reviewing our ficus at all except for my present condition of being deprived of all news of happenings on the planet.

In order to cope, I have found myself Van Winkle "wake walking" about the house, looking at things and reassessing them during the time I might have normally had the newspaper open or the television turned on, or, more likely, would have been scrolling pages and clicking links on the Internet.

Today I went down the hall. I went left, I went right. That's how I came face to face with this little tree.

Hey, what if I wrote of review of it?

All right. Let's see. The ficus benjamina or "weeping fig"  would seem to be the all-purpose, lonely, sentry-like tree, suitable for the in-door worlds of corporate America or the American home. The ficus is so successful in being a part of the cultural fabric we've woven (in which nature gets to play a decidedly minor role) we hardly notice them. Yet they are so numerous that people have figured out how to introduce a more efficient version into our lives.

Voila. No water, no fertilizer, no light required, just an occasional squirt of 409 cleaner or dab of Superglue if something comes loose. It's as near to natural as you can get, this now-on-sale "nearly natural Silk Ficus Tree."

The tree currently under consideration is a bit better than that, although 95% of the time its owner is unaware that it's a living entity and that once a month he ought to pour a gallon of water down the barrel basket throat of the poor thing. If he forgets, it lets him know it has feelings. By mournfully dropping leaves.

Something's Been Going On
What I hadn't realized about our ficus is that it seems to be doing well. The reason for the surprise is that last I checked, a rather long time ago, it was somewhat sparse in the vegetation department.

The tree's condition depressed me at the time as it was a reminder of the first ficus I ever owned. That one belonged to me when I lived in Alaska. It died a slow death, a victim of an eastern exposure during the dark winter and a drafty window that let in the cold. Not even 24-hour "light support" courtesy of the blueish glow of metal halide tube lights could keep that ficus from converting itself into a large stick sculpture.

Our current ficus is another story. It's become like our son who almost unnoticed added two inches to his height during May-August. Suddenly on the day he's starting school again we hold out hands to measure and say, Is that really you?

Yes. New leaves have grown over the summer. This reviewer is impressed.

The Realization

It's a jungle in there...

As today I stare and take mental notes at the foot of my happy, modestly successful, warm weather thriving ficus, a metaphor occurs to me.

Some people are ficus trees.

Hmm. Really? That sounds a bit bizarre. What does that mean? Let me try to explain...

Stuck as they are in dusty corners or at the bottom of the stairwell, we may ignore the folks who live and work outside the limelight, but it doesn't matter. If they're given temperate albeit humble conditions, these people put down roots. Without the benefit of a cheering section or accolades or magazine headlines or news feature stories, they quietly, slowly, grow and they even flourish.

I know, it's awfully sentimental. But seriously. Imagine it.

Right now there must be some single moms or single dads standing tall like a ficus and quietly raising their kids to be decent, respectful human beings.

Or, off to the side, it's a husband and wife, just emerging from marriage counseling, and, against the odds, they're going to save their marriage, growing old together, putting new leaves on their life, and the kids will someday gather at the silver anniversary.

Or there's a social worker figuring out creative ways to help clients even when the State keeps cutting funding.

Or there's the teacher standing in the aisle of OfficeMax putting art supplies in her cart for her third graders and she's paying for it out of her own money.

Or you'll find the priest or the minister, the 99 out of 100 who would never abuse anyone, huddled with confused or suffering people and listening to them and passing to them again the box of Kleenex.

Or notice the silent, wise child who is doing her homework at the kitchen table and knows when to say "no" to too much screen time or how to ignore that text message that just rattled her cell phone.

Or hold in your mind for a moment and forward best wishes to the day laborer who's just trying to support his family on piss poor wages and he's bringing home dinner tonight to five other people while staying off the bottle and the welfare rolls.

Or there's the white collar employee, so far down the corporate food chain that if he got to be like Dwight on The Office, or she could be Pam, it would be a HUGE promotion, yet they're talking pleasantly on the phone to irate customers, filling out their expense accounts and time sheets accurately, doing their job and doing it well.

This community of human ficuses might even include some talented artist everyone ignores, but he or she is still getting up every day and hoping for just enough dose of water to keep on putting out a sufficient number of leaves to declare, I took my stand here and I exist. And if no one notices, so be it. That artist's goal is to endure as a true, real living thing in a world of way too much silk and plastic, and share the shade with someone else who needs a moment of cool rest.

The Rating
Because this ficus tree has taught me so much and it costs me probably pennies per year to maintain, I'm going to give it a thumb's up and a **** rating. Suitable for all ages.- V.W.