This will end in tears

The second installment of this series came to me while I was cooking dinner. It was the hottest week of the summer to date, and I was thinking about how oppressive the heat was and how oppressive a relationship could be.  I think about you as I break t he woody stems from the asparagus Removing those parts that are  firm, chewy, fibrous, and undigestible. Just like removing you from my life  leaving the tender shoots to blossom  or to be consumed by another. 

We ruled this world long before you fragile beings existed. Before you learned to walk erect. Before you domesticated some of us and kept us a pets. Before you built towers in the sky covered in glass that caused so many of us to bludgeon ourselves out of existence. Before you created cell phones and other electronics that fuck with our migration patterns. We have not forgotten. We bide our time. We sing the songs of our past, weaving the tales of our prehistoric lives into a cacophony of glory in the woodlands near your homes . And as the light fades, and our calls go silent, we dream of running, fighting, biting, jumping, hunting , and ruling over continents that no longer exist. This is not our swan song. This is a caesura, not a coda, although yours may be coming soon. We need only wait until you destroy yourselves, and warm the Earth back into the primordial lands that were our homes for millions of years. Before the fire in the sky. Before the rivers of ice. Before the furry ...

Like many homeowners, I am a reluctant remodeler. Not that I mean that I am reluctant about having my house updated. Rather that I am literally a reluctant remodeler of my own house. When I was growing up, and in college, and even after college when I was living in apartments, I would dream of one day owning my own house. I had fantasies about getting a great deal on a place and stripping away years of paint and wallpaper to discover the glory of the original woodwork and the plaster walls. Tearing out carpet and refinishing the hardwood floors. Updating baths and kitchens in the style of the age of the house, but with modern amenities. And after all of the work, surely no more than a year of effort, I would imagine myself reclining near the fire, the warm tones of the wood reflected all around, drinking my tea and reading a book.  Now you see why I said that I was fantasizing. Sometimes I still do fantasize about the last part, even though I've owned a house for 16 years...

If you look around you will find patterns in nature. Famous examples include the Golden Mean and the Fibonacci Sequence. Those patterns describe the number of petals that grow on most flowers, or the distance between leaves growing from a branch, or the size and spacing of the chambers in the nautilus shell. Snowflakes are made of fractals, honeycombs are tessellated hexagons, and the wind forms waves on deserts and oceans. These patterns tend to extend to the micro and the macro levels, where subsequent orders of magnitude follow the same patterns as the ones in the objects from which they are built. The shape of a crystal follows the alignment of the bonding of the compounds and the elements from which it is made. The patterns repeat all the way up, and all the way down.  But it's not just the physical structure of items that follow patterns. There are other dynamics that can be observed. The spiral formed in clouds when a fighter jet passes through is mirrored in the whirlpool l...

This past summer, the first summer of quarantine, I was standing at the sink thinking depressing thoughts during a depressing year. It was the middle of August, and I was taking a "vacation" in quotes, because there was no place to go, and nothing safe to do. Being quarantined, working from home, and not seeing friends or family for months was beginning to take an emotional toll that I was rapidly becoming unable to pay. I could feel misery and depression skulking around as I noticed the days growing shorter. "But you are fortunate" came the unbidden, and surprising, thought. One moment I was sinking into a funk, and the next moment that thought was simply there. Shiny, solid, real, and undeniable. I examined it in my mind, while my hands scrubbed the remains of my morning tea from my cup. "Not to be cliché," it said, "but your blessings are numerous, and you know how to count." And I sat with that a moment while running a soapy dish under the ta...

I recently watched "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix and it reminded me of playing chess as an adolescent, and about that one time that I won a regional chess championship for the 12-14 age group at the local library. I've been going through old posts on various journaling sites and stumbled upon this entry:  If life is a game then you're the pawn. I'd be the king but I like more freedom of movement. I guess women really do rule the world because everyone is always trying to get the queen. You're problem is that you still believe in the white knight. But you live in a castle and everyone knows that the knight has to leave before you can build one. You try to be religious but your bishop is always sidestepping from the truth. And you feel powerless because someone's always got you in check. You've got to learn to lighten up, after all, it's only a game. -  January 13, 2003    

I lament the demise  of the epistolary novel. When I share my grief, via text, with my literary friends, I get back the reply, "lol ikr"