...more recent posts
January 1, 2002
The Eighth Day of Christmas
Is also New Year’s Day.
December 31, 2001
The Seventh Day of Christmas
December 30, 2001
The Sixth Day of Christmas
December 29, 2001
The Fifth Day of Christmas
December 28, 2001
The Fourth Day of Christmas
December 27, 2001
The Third Day of Christmas
December 26, 2001The Second Day of Christmas
December 25, 2001
Merry Christmas
December 21, 2001
Solstice
Weird warm weather, and reverberations of war, have made the Holidays hard to focus on this year. But then, it’s always that way; always some distraction; something that seems important, taking precedence. That’s why the Holidays are enshrined in a specific time, even as they allude to something timeless. The calendar brings them to the fore, and, ready or not, we must celebrate, or else suffer alienation.So here we are, in the very trough of the Year, yet turning towards the Sun once more. A little piece of Sun got caught in a cloud, like a fragment of rainbow; what my Dad used to call a sun dog. I put it up on the page as a sign for the Holidays; promising a Summer’s worth of Sun, even as Winter begins.
But first: the Time we’ve been prescribed. We’ll do the best we can with it, and hope today’s hearts can still conform to the Traditional message of hope and rebirth.
Step number one: send a Christmas card.
November 22, 2001
Giving and Getting Thanks
Troubled times, but there is still much to be thankful for. With all the horror close at hand, I've barely been scathed. Life is still a gift, and the first thing for which we give thanks. That we in America live so much better than most of the world is perhaps a great accomplishment, but it's not our god-given right. We should be thankful for our good fortune, and willing to look objectively at the reasons behind it.A nation is an abstraction, of people, land, and laws. On Thanksgiving Day we habitually turn to things that are more palpable to us: the friends and family we love, even the food we eat. If Thanksgiving represents Tradition, then it is our harvest holiday, Pilgrim mythology notwithstanding.
Harvests are of many sorts, but here we mark the fruition of routine. The toilsome tending of the crops; the daily interactions with the people closest to us; the reliable turning of the seasons: these are the patterns that breed Love and Life.
My routine in the Park has gone on.
Outside circumstances have polluted my concentration at times, but the seasons pass unperturbed. This page has wandered a bit from its usual subject matter, but I don't enforce borders here, and whatever works its way into my life is apt to leave a spoor within the Arboretum. Still, I do want to get back to such important matters as may be buried in the fallen leaves, glimpsed in the first light of dawn, or argued in the variant plumages of south-bound birds.
To that end, I will tell a little of the doings of the Fall, and, perhaps, illumine something of how thanks may be given.
The Fall migration of birds is winding down, and I have to say I've done pretty well with it. I've seen seven new birds, including some that are not easy to see. Most notable of these is the Connecticut Warbler. I found it on a chill and windy afternoon in early October, after a cold front moved through, which is often the occasion for a wave of migrants.
Some birds are rare, and some, though common, are hard to get a look at. The marsh-dwelling Sora Rail, another new sighting, falls into the latter category. The Connecticut Warbler on the other hand, is both rare and difficult to see. It skulks in the underbrush, walking more than it flies. In Spring it migrates west of the Appalachians, so it only appears in the Park during the Fall, when it takes the Atlantic route. Wood Warblers are the crown jewels of birding in eastern North America, and among them the Connecticut is one of the most sought-after, and one of the most elusive.
But there it was, walking through the Wildflower Meadow. With its dusky brown hood, it was a female, or else a first fall bird, born this year. The adult male is brighter, but I'm not complaining; any sighting of this bird is special. It's a cousin of the Mourning Warbler, and young birds pose some possible confusion between the species, but I knew the proper field marks. The strong eye-ring, the long undertail coverts, and most decisively the walking, rather than hopping, gait, were unmistakable signals of identity. Still, I was glad to have the sighting verified by another lucky birder who happened by.
It's good for one's reputation to have an unusual sighting backed up. But more than that, I've had some good birds pointed out to me by other observers, and one wants to be able to return the favor. This is done as a matter of principle, not tit for tat (or tit for chat), so “thanks” is institutionalized as a system of nonspecific reciprocity, spreading the good stuff around. Which is great, but I prefer to bird alone, as a form of meditation, so I don't always get the chance to share. On this occasion it was almost preternatural the way Nick Wagerik (an insect enthusiast, but also a birder, fully appreciative of the warbler’s import) appeared at just the right moment. He thanked me for showing him the rarity.
But who do I thank?
I knew the Connecticut was a good bird to get, but I didn’t know quite how good. People actually congratulate you for having seen it. There are birders far more skillful than I, with years of experience, who have never seen one.
So why me?
It must be said that luck is no small part of birding, and my luck is leveraged, if not by skill, then by persistence. Not to mention an appetite for spending inordinate amounts of time staring into dense tangles of vegetation. It’s part of my routine. These factors alone are enough to explain why I might see good birds, but I like to think that it’s more than that. Yes, I’m thankful, but sometimes I actually think that the Park is thanking me. Because I appreciate it; because I use it in an appropriate manner; because I love it, its treasures are endlessly unfolded before my eyes.
I don’t want to see a rare bird; I just want to see what’s there. And there’s always something worth seeing. The more I see, the more enchanted I am; the more inspired to look further. The more I look, the more I see; the more I see, the more I look, and so on, in a reciprocity of fulfillment beyond expectation. At some point, I find myself looking right through the Park, and onto the very visage of the Goddess, and surely it’s Her that I must thank. Yet She sheds my thanks like water off a duck's back, and everything returns to me.
When Love has leveled the divide between the Lover and the Beloved,
what we do for ourselves will be done for the Other,
and a “Thank You” earns more than it owes.
November 11, 2001
Veteran's Day in Time of War
November 6, 2001
Twelve Month and a Day
After its appropriate interval, mourning comes to an end. My father's death is now a year and more removed. A cycle through the round of seasons serves to put things in the past. If grief subsides, the pain of loss does not. But we come to recognize it as the same pain that touches all of life; an undertone that ever drones beneath our descant joys. My memories of him remain a melody surmounting the basso-continuo of death.The business of his estate is also drawing to a close. It's taken a full year, and taken a psychic toll greater than the actual work involved. Legalities too, are best left in the past.
To move beyond is not to forget, but to put the memory in its appropriate place. Mourning dignifies the process; it's better than just waiting for time to drive a wedge between us and grief.
Either way, the time is past.
I've looked forward to the release, little dreaming that my loss would be outstripped five thousandfold. And now my heart rehearses the cliche, and I'm actually glad that my father isn't alive to see this war. He had enough war in his life, rendering civilian service in one; decrying another. This one falls beyond his span. No need for him to see another generation bequeathed the same old shit.
He would have worried over me.
So it's been quite a year, November to November.
Not the happiest of years. But I think of my father, and I joke about my "target" status, and I head out to the Park when I can. Lately it's hard to say whether I have a pursuit or an escape, but I've got to keep looking.
Wandering and wondering.
Last week I saw Eastern Bluebirds, a pretty good sighting for the Park. These birds declined greatly in the last century, their habitat disrupted, their nests displaced. Today they are the beneficiaries of more human intervention than most troubled species. Nest box programs are popular, and have shown success, but the Bluebird remains common only in our nostalgic past.
I'd never found one in the Park before, but it wasn't the first time I'd seen them. One year ago I was in Michigan, attending on my father's death. Amid the vigil and the stress, I took the time, while there still was time, to walk in a nearby park, and there I saw my first Bluebird. A hard pleasure, under the circumstances. I remember thinking it was not the Bluebird of Happiness.
Bluebirds generally seem to elicit positive responses, but the popular association with happiness seems to have coalesced in a 1908 play by Maeterlinck. Two children set out searching for happiness in the form of a blue bird, and travel far, only to find it back in their own home. It's a familiar lesson, and I may have suggested as much myself, from time to time.
The birds themselves suggest more.
Reappearing across time and space, bracketing a tortured year, their flight is not deterred by terror. They remain on schedule. Yet they are migrants, and must be at home wherever they are, even in a patch of park between the breeding and the winter grounds.
The dead, we like to think, have returned Home.
If home is at the source of happiness, and if, as the birds teach, it can be found in every place, then we are describing something tantamount to heaven. According to their faiths, my father, the suicide pilots, and the five thousand victims should all be there together. A scenario no less likely than that they should "be" anywhere at all. It is a Traditional belief that death renders equality, dealing the same hand to all. Judgement is a later notion, which some have attributed to god, but the only deity I know forgives us everything, hoping in turn to be forgiven.
The end of mourning is forgiveness: to hold no grudge against the burden of the Mystery. A hard end, an unasked for beginning; but in between, something worth honoring with an ascendant heart.
I love my father still.
He is a Home I carry with me always, but I will mourn no more.