Memory, Hope, and Tradition

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”

“My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.  These memories, which are my life—for we possess nothing certainly except the past—were always with me.  Like the pigeons of St. Mark’s, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl.  Thus it was that morning.”

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Because of a writing project, I have been thinking much about tradition recently.  I have been trying to capture anew the emotions I felt almost fifty years ago when I first saw the University of Michigan Law School after arriving in Ann Arbor to study there.  There are places on this planet which evoke a sense of tradition for any visitor, whether visiting for the first time or the fiftieth; human spaces constructed in such a manner that a mere glimpse of them produces a host of cherished memories and fervid hopes tied only to the place itself by its power to evoke them.  The Michigan Law School is such a place.

Such places are often storied.  Stonehenge comes to mind.  The stones arranged there speak aloud to the winds that ravage the plain on which it stands; they speak of sacrifice and other mysteries lost to humanity – even as the engines of large trucks and racing automobiles on the nearby motorway can be heard, if you can pull away from its enchantment long enough to hear them.  We are no longer certain what Stonehenge meant to those who built it so long ago; the loss of its purpose best evidenced by the myriad theories attempting to explain it.  But its awesome power to evoke the mystery of human existence remains intact regardless of our lack of understanding.

What is it about stones and mortar that produces such a reaction?  It must be more than the energy and purpose which went into the act of their construction.  If that’s all it took, then any building – no matter how bland or ill-conceived – ought to produce a similar result.  And it seems to be more than the artistry of their conception, for their power of evocation is unrivaled even by Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Michelangelo’s David.  As powerful as these two magnificent pieces of art are, they speak only to portions of the human experience rather than its totality.

The places of which I write are assemblages of all the various conditions of the human spirit disguised as construction projects, and in their assemblage lies their power; they speak of humanity’s greatest virtue – its ability to survive and the unflagging effort and unyielding spirit required to do so.  While Stonehenge has evolved to that class of monument which is unassailable by human hand for fear of desecration, the Michigan Law School is a living monument requiring constant attention, maintenance, and repair to preserve its vitality.  The Law School, the Houses of Parliament, St. Mark’s Cathedral, Notre Dame, the Hermitage, and similar places still in use serve to remind us of the necessary spirit and effort required for our survival, while Stonehenge, the pyramids, the Great Wall, and the caves at Lascaux remind us of the majesty and evanescence of their expenditure.  The former are mere aspirants to the status of the latter, and time will take their measure.

Perhaps it is because we are continuously surprised by our longevity as a species that such places offer memories and hope upon first or repeated viewing.  We should not confuse our surprise with immortality, for these places are also evidence that human beliefs about the mystery of our very existence are ephemeral.  But they are monuments to our perennial search for an answer to that mystery and the effort that has been and will be expended upon it; a search that will continue as long as we survive as a species and that may outlast the monuments themselves, if we are careful enough in the process not to further defile the earth on which they stand.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on Memory, Hope, and Tradition

Summer-Swan

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

While the season hasn’t officially arrived, early signs of fall are everywhere in Humptulips County.  Temperatures fluctuate a good deal during the course of each week and between each night and the following day, the rain has come back in compact, intermittent storms that are often violent, and the light softened almost two weeks ago to relieve the glare of high summer.  Make no mistake – it’s still summer and higher temperatures are expected to return by week’s end.  But this summer is breathing its last. The period I call Summer-Swan is upon us – that time of year when August’s high, harsh sun gradually becomes an overripe melon incapable of sustaining summer’s furnace.

The most startling aspect of this year’s change – and perhaps of any year – is the activities of our local birds.  I hadn’t noticed they’d been hiding from the sun until the first serious rainfall of August.  As I walked to our mailbox to get our morning papers on the day after the storm last week, joyous birdsong came from every direction and from near and far.  The morning’s chorus was so raucous that it was noticeable by comparison. I’d grown accustomed to the anemic, desultory birdsong of high summer; this was a complex, roiling Beethoven Mass rather than a beloved folk song fingered upon a lone acoustic guitar.

The air was damp and refreshing rather than humid; the sun had returned to dominate the sky.  While puddles on the paved turnaround at the front of our house persisted in the shade of the pines, the dirt under the pines and on the surface of our lower driveway was dry.  Whatever rain had fallen there had been gulped down by an ever-thirsty ground.  There were no visual traces left of the rain other than the puddles remaining on the tarmac; only the clean smell of dust-free air and the emotional certainty that summer’s remorseless grip had begun to unclench remained as its tell-tales.

When I returned to the house, I went to get a drink of water at our kitchen sink.  I was watching the neighbor’s horses grazing in a distant pasture when I was distracted by a movement in my peripheral vision.  There, in the largest remaining puddle, were the neighborhood’s two mated European Collared Doves bathing together.  It was as if I was watching a ballet.  They sat side-by-side splashing and raising first a left wing and then a right in synchronous display, turn and turn about.  When they’d had enough, they walked demurely away from the puddle with dignity and grace .

They were quickly replaced by a boisterous group of sparrows.   Watching them was akin to watching a football game.  Each dove into the puddle,  splashed about frenetically for a few moments, then chased a colleague away. Each evicted sparrow flew off in a seeming huff, only to return as quickly as possible to go on offense once again.  This bathe-and-chase game continued until the spin cycle was over and each had his or her fill of the rain’s remaining largesse.

If the puddle had been large enough, I would have joined them.  It was that kind of day.  It came after weeks under a harsh sun with nary a hint of rain; it came after a brief, soaking storm of the kind that promises more to come.  It came before the very notion of rain loses its novelty, before rainstorms become things of dreary procession.  Each time one season turns into another, there is novelty in the to-become-expected; relief in the tried-and-true of the forthcoming and the waning of the oft-repeated present.  For we are as fickle as the birds.

Posted in Humptulips County, Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off on Summer-Swan

Grave Digger

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

I dug a grave yesterday.  I dug it deep in our woods on a wide shelf located in a grove amid the pines, down a hill from one of our fields.  To get there, you must stoop and walk between the nettles, blackberries, and weeds that disguise its entrance, but, when you do, you find yourself in a tiny natural cathedral where quiet and shade prevail and contemplation is encouraged.

Digging there proved more difficult than I had anticipated.  The ground is laced with running roots from ferns, pine, and god knows what.  And when you finally manage to cut through the roots with the tip of your spade, you find the rocks lurking beneath.  But these rocks were my friends since I could use them to overlay the grave in hopes of preventing depredation by coyotes or other foraging animals.  I prised them out carefully and kept them in a separate pile for the purpose.

Digging a grave is tiring work, especially for one of my age.  So I wasn’t able to dig it as deep as I’d hoped.  The day was hot and the nature of the work depressing.  There is no satisfaction in digging a grave.  It is a necessary thing if you wish to honor the dead, but no joy is to be found in the work.  Perhaps if I dug graves for a living, I might learn pride in a sheer clean side, a level floor, and attainment of satisfactory depth.  As in all things, there must be a best way to do it, a way that gives the satisfaction of a job well done.

But satisfaction was beyond me; my job was not well done by such standards.  I produced a shallow grave, approximately rectangular but not wholly so.  But it was just big enough and deep enough for my purpose.  When Helen returned later in the day, we went to pile the bricks on the grave that Helen found somewhere within her inexhaustible store of garden paraphernalia.  I never know what she can find there, which is why I’d waited for her.  Besides, I knew she would want to know the grave’s exact location so she wouldn’t have to hunt for it on her own.

It would have been difficult for Helen to find the grave there in the cathedral-like gloom, covered, as it was, by the pine needles and twigs I’d placed over it to complete my chore. My camouflage was good enough to conceal the grave from humans, but not from any animal with a keen sense of smell.  And even if the covering of bricks fails to keep out such an animal blessed with sharp claws and an instinct to dig, there is a part of me that shall not complain – for all living things eventually return to their constituent chemical elements, and if, in doing so, sustenance is given to another living being, is that such bad thing?  My own goal, after all, is to be cremated and buried underneath the root ball of a newly planted tree – preferably an apple.

When I had  filled the grave with its unfortunate contents and dirt, covered it over with rocks, pine needles, and debris, I stood and said goodbye.  I promised George that his sister would join him eventually.  George had been the talkative cat – the one that always had something to say when I came near, its meaning somehow clear even if he spoke with runic mystery.  George and I were pals – not close friends, because George and Gracie probably came from a feral mother and learned stand-offish ways as kittens.  Gracie is even more stand-offish than George was, approaching only when it is her wish – which is seldom and without any words to the wise.

When George spoke it was to verify his presence and conjure a stroking hand.  The attention he sought was finite; when he’d had enough, he would turn, vocalize his thanks, and walk away.  He had the typical split personality of a cat: anxious and fawning when seeking attention; otherwise aloof, unapproachable, cloaked in his impermeable dignity.  I’ll miss him.

I don’t often go to the grove, but when I do it is usually in late Summer.  I prefer its cool depths when the sun is high and hot.  I stay there for several minutes to contemplate the mysteries of lives spent within the complexity and grace of such a foreign ecology.  I let its pregnant silence fill me until I am renewed.

It will be good to have George’s company the next time I visit.  Perhaps he will speak to me again.

Posted in Friendship, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on Grave Digger

The High Harsh Light Of August

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.  The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.  It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.  Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone.”

Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie –
True Poems flee.

Emily Dickinson, To See The Summer Sky

This week seems to have been reserved for driving.  We drove for pleasure on Tuesday to a small town several miles north of the Farm, and yesterday we drove all over the Seattle area running errands and seeking pleasure.  All of our travels were accomplished under the high, harsh light of an August sun.

An August sun is pitiless.  At noon, it shines down in straight lines, highlighting every detail with equal disdain for beauty or disfigurement, its power of diminishment potent and searing.  It revels in itself: its narcissism is complete and unabashed; the notion that earthly sights might seem its equal beyond its comprehension.  It leaves an after-glare that stays with anyone bathed in its full light until well after comforting shadows have been achieved.

Long straight highways are its natural hunting grounds, for there is nothing there to impede its work from wherever you find yourself to as far as you can see from there; and if temperatures are hot enough, the horizons themselves are denied in shimmer.  There the sunlight glares and sears, raining straight down only to bounce off every reflective surface – glass, plastic, or metal, whether stationary or mobile – at impossible angles unknown to science or pure mathematics.  Trees and brush are anathema to highway designers; they must have worshipped the sun to have cleared them away from the product of their work so relentlessly.

I much prefer to travel country lanes in August.  Each of our travels begins and ends there; they sandwich the merciless coruscation.  On a country lane the sunlight is a milder, more approachable god: filtered by the leaves, it dapples the ground with the patterns of their sun worship, its ego leavened by the balm of shadow.   Here its power is in silhouette, and its silhouette is finery and lace.

Posted in Humptulips County | Comments Off on The High Harsh Light Of August

The Grumblings Of Gods

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

Summer is taking a brief break here in Humptulips County.  After many days of high, unblemished sun and smothering heat, the rain has returned, bringing with it low, unseasonal temperatures and a low-hanging, darkened sky.  The light is that of early fall: heavy, moist, rendered in acrylics and oils.  It has painted the sky with overcast and filled every nook and cranny of the landscape.  If the day were portrayed on an artist’s canvas, nothing of its underlying color would be seen as it would be covered with heavy coats of paint applied by spatula rather than brush.

The rain is sporadic, its various arrivals announced by the grumbling of the weather gods.  The thunder is vague, distant, and ambient rather than threatening, as if someone is keying open a microphone to determine whether it is live, and vigorously clearing his throat to assure himself that it is.   These throat rattles favor no particular point on the compass centered on the farm; it’s as if the air has become an exceedingly grumpy living being expressing its displeasure in the manner of a hissing cat – an immense, incorporeal, hissing cat in which the farm has magically come to reside.

These rains aren’t scheduled to last very long; summer is merely resting.  I consider them celestial teasers: previews of what the fall has in store, shown on the largest of all possible silver screens; enticements for each of us to live long enough to experience the Gods’ newest, boldest, forthcoming blockbuster.

Given the quality of today’s production, the gods can grumble on just as long as they please.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Humptulips County | Comments Off on The Grumblings Of Gods

Barn Swallows

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

As I was mowing our pasture a few days ago, two barn swallows worked alongside me – they at their task, me at mine.  As I cut the grass, they caught insects to feed their young hidden somewhere in our barn.  When we work together like this, as we often do, we do so in a sort of aeromechanical symbiosis – me absorbed in keeping the tractor carefully to its lines and turns; they delighting in swooping, diving, dipping, sideways-twisting flight.  Nothing is more free than a swallow on the wing.

Barn swallows always find more joy in their work than I do in mine.  They mind no straight line: they go where they will, go where the hunt or sheer joy takes them.  Their work is their freedom, while I am subject to heat, wind, sunburn, sweat, and an occasional mouthful of dust as I turn back after passing over a molehill.  They are supple in their flight, returning often to the barn as they feed their young; I constantly fight the tractor’s wheel, clinging to its side bar as I ride out the pasture’s bumps, holes, and hilly, uneven surfaces.  I am stiff and sore as I walk back to the house when finished with my work, while the barn swallows fly on behind me at theirs as joyfully as when our conjoined efforts first began.

In the midst of my work, one of the barn swallows flew straight at me, only to turn away a foot or so from potential impact.  Perhaps in turning away, it meant to offer me a glimpse of its cobalt-feathered back in thanks for my part in our joint work; perhaps it came so close in an attempt to understand why so large a creature as I always feels obligated to toe the line.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Friendship | 2 Comments

Where Dreams End and Mornings Begin

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

I had a terrible dream last night.  I was with my son Peter and we were visiting my friend Tom.

Wait a minute.  I need to set the stage better, for there are important facts which are necessary for the reader to know if he or she is to understand what follows.  Tom and Carrie are two of Helen’s and my closest friends.  Tom is an internationally known watercolor artist and has made a good living from his work for many years.  His watercolors brought us together, for I purchased the first of many several years ago and reached out to him by letter.  When he came by to meet me after reading my letter, we began the process of becoming fast friends.  After Helen and I subsequently got together we began seeing Tom and Carrie often, as couples who all like one another do. Later, the four of us became part of a larger group consisting of our mutual friends Jan and Ken and Bob and Estelle.  Nowadays, all of us get together periodically at each others’ homes and tell the kinds of stories best friends tell one another – the sometimes embarrassing ones about self that can only be shared when comfortably among the sort of friends who laugh with, rather than at, you.

OK, that should be enough information.  Back to my dream.

Peter (at least I think it’s Peter – he’s never seen in the dream, but, in the way of dream-time, I am certain it’s him) and I are at Tom and Carrie’s home.  It’s not the home they now live in, but there is no question that it’s theirs.  We are in their backyard and Peter and I are standing a bit away from the place where Tom is working on his car – a low slung red sports car of some kind – probably a Triumph, for I know he once owned one when he was young and fancy free.  In response to something Peter asks me, I respond in a loud voice:  “Well, Tom really can’t write letters very well, so I don’t think so.”

As soon as I utter this nonsense, I am appalled  I’m instantly worried Tom has heard me and will take offence.  The last thing I want is for Tom to believe I think him stupid.  After all, he’s certainly not stupid, he’s just an artist.  As these thoughts flurry through my mind, Tom turns and enters his house through its back door not having said a single word.  I continue to worry as I wait for him, wondering if he heard and how he will react if he did.  Peter has exited stage right, having played his entire role in this dream.

During this interval, I suddenly recall a letter Tom has written to the car dealership where he bought the little red car, complaining very effectively and humorously about something that was wrong with it when he took delivery.  As soon as I recall this letter, I remember that the car is brand spanking new.  The letter succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations because the dealer, overwhelmed by Tom’s urbane cleverness, promptly fixed, without charge, whatever had been wrong with the car.  This is surely my way out of the dream’s dilemma.  Since this is a dream, it doesn’t occur to me to make a simple apology.  Instead, when Tom returns I plan to talk loudly and praisingly about his letter with  Peter (I am not yet aware he’s gone) and Tom will implicitly understand that I don’t think him an idiot.  The more I think about this notion, the cleverer it seems – if Tom heard me, I can remedy things without abject apology; if he didn’t, he will only hear an encomium.  Life will once again be beer and skittles.

The dream continues, and a few moments later Tom comes out of his house wearing a backpack.  He comes straight up to me and announces: “Me want go walk.  You come?”  I am horrified, for not only did Tom hear my comment, he is mortally offended.  He is feigning idiocy.  His words say it all.  It’s too late for my plan to have good effect.  I am trapped in my stupidity.  I have ruined our friendship.

At this realization, I do what any self-respecting dreamer does – I wake up.

But I wake up muzzy headed and confused.  Normally, I am sleeping one moment and fully awake the next, and I get out of bed and go on about my morning.  But not this morning.  I lie in bed for several minutes getting my bearings, and in the process of doing so the dream becomes more vivid rather than fading.  I wonder what it all means.  Is there some metaphysical message?   Is my unconscious self trying to tell me I have been denying my friend Tom the respect he is due for the many years I’ve known him?  I find no resolution, so I finally get up, perform my morning rituals and go out to the kitchen to fix coffee and eat my breakfast.

One more relevant fact.  I usually awake around 4:00 and go upstairs to work on the computer, returning downstairs to make coffee around 5:30.  This morning I awoke at 5:30 and proceeded directly to the kitchen to make my coffee before going upstairs.  Whenever this happens, I usually don’t do so well at the routine described below.

I have a fancy coffee machine (Helen never uses it, so it’s definitely mine) and I go through a routine whenever I use it.  On mornings when I wake properly, my performance of the routine is flawless; on mornings when I wake as I did this morning, I often screw it up and forget to do things in the proper order or at all.  Because of the way I woke up, I am certain I will screw up this morning’s routine, but am amazed to find that I perform it flawlessly instead.  Because of an uncanny ability to multitask efficiently, I finish the routine about 5 minutes faster than normal.  I continue worrying about the dream’s meaning while I do so.

When I reach the computer I begin playing the game I usually play to get me back into computer mode – a game that requires a minimum of thought and allows me to enjoy my coffee before beginning work.  While doing so, I daydream.  I imagine the tale of the night’s dream will make good fodder for one of our group evenings.  It will evoke a good laugh at my expense.  I imagine Carrie’s hearty laughter.  Then, in a moment of real clarity, it dawns upon me that I can augment the tale; make it even more humorous.  I invent an alternate ending – an ending that doesn’t occur with me waking immediately after Tom says “Me want go walk”.

In this new, imagined ending, I remain horrified by Tom’s statement just as I was in the real dream.  But instead of waking after Tom makes his announcement, I have an epiphany:  Tom always speaks as cavemen do; he is talking normally, just as he always does.  He never heard my remark.  All is well.

This ending is surely more clever than that of the actual dream; I will get much louder laughs from the group when I tell it.  My coffee goes down even more smoothly than before.   I sit back, day dreaming contentedly about the anticipated laughter and happiness – only to suddenly  realize that I forgot to eat my morning’s banana because I was so wrapped up in the dream’s meaning.

The laugh’s on me; there is a reason I was so ‘efficient’ at this morning’s routine – I omitted its last 5 minutes.

Well, obviously I cannot let this omission detract from a good laugh, so I begin wondering how to use this final realization to finish off a good tale.  And a new tag line comes to me: all dreams about Tom need to come with a written warning.  Before they begin, a blue screen needs to appear with letters as large as those on DVDs announcing that it’s a crime to copy and redistribute the DVD – that you will be sent away forever by the FBI, if you do – but the language of the warning needs to be similar to TV ads for Viagra or The Purple Pill.  At last I have it.  The Tom warning is:

“WARNING: Dreams containing Thomas William Jones may adversely affect your daily intake of potassium.  Dream them only with care.”

I am so clever.  I am satisfied.  Only then do I have one additional burst of brilliance:  I can write a blog post about my dreams – whether those of the morning or of the night – and have my laugh now rather than waiting for the group to get back together.  I can tell the tale without the risk of forgetting to do so when the next opportunity arises.

And so I do.

My subsequent editing of this piece makes me wonder if my humor has succeeded, but what the hell: the laugh’s on me one way or another.

PS, if you want to see for yourself that Tom is anything but a caveman, please go here:

 http://www.ajkollar.com/artists/artist.php?artistID=148

Posted in Humptulips County | Comments Off on Where Dreams End and Mornings Begin

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men….And Women

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

 Abraham Lincoln

“Respect is often paid in proportion as it is claimed.”

Dr. Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 1758

“… understanding, and action proceeding from understanding and guided by it, is the one weapon against the world’s bombardment, the one medicine, the one instrument by which liberty, health, and joy may be shaped or shaped towards, in the individual, and in the race.

James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

I was once told a story about a newly elected managing partner of a large law firm visiting his well-thought-of predecessor to seek advice.  “What’s the secret to your success?” asked the newly elected managing partner.  In response, his predecessor took out his wallet and extracted a thrice-folded, tattered piece of yellow, lined paper on which were written several names, some with lines drawn through them.  He handed the paper to the new managing partner and said: “Here it is.”  “What’s this?” asked the new managing partner.  “The people to call on when you need something done; the people who will get it done for you.  Some aren’t with us anymore, and you’ll have to identify others as they come along.  These are the can do types who don’t seek publicity.  They just get it done, whatever it is.  They’ll make you look good.”

Recently, a former partner asked me to co-author with him a profile of a mutual friend for a forthcoming issue of our local Bar News.  He sent me a list of potential topics, with the suggestion that I add any others I might think of and when the list was complete we’d split them up.  It was an excellent list evidencing his knowledge of, and affection for, our subject, but missing was an item entitled ‘Character’.  I am not being critical of his list in mentioning this omission, for I am as certain as I can be that he is as mindful of her character as I am, since both of us have long spoken of and benefitted from it.  But being that our subject is one who surely would have been on the predecessor managing partner’s short list had she been a partner in his firm, I felt the topic ought to be called out to be highlighted and written about specifically, rather than used simply as shading in a story about a life filled with hard work, good intentions, and deeds well done.

Our subject deserves the praise she is about to receive, even if it will make her uncomfortable.  By contrast, there are those in our local bar who are constantly praised, who are in competition for every possible award they might deserve if only the award’s criteria can be stretched sufficiently and belief in the award’s integrity suspended just enough.   I have long grown weary of attending their award ceremonies.  One of them often no longer attends such ceremonies, sending stand-ins to accept the awards, instead, as if further praise is too much bother, too much to bear.  I’ve never understood the root cause of such constant public adoration and/or pandering: whether it’s due to the subject’s abiding need for constant praise, the need of praising organizations to be seen standing in the queue of public adoration, or both.  Or, maybe award ceremonies are simply a good excuse to hold a fund-raising event.

Don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not jealous of such persons nor am I of the belief that they are undeserving of praise.  In any community there is always someone deserving of praise, someone who does far more than his or her share, someone who is a leader and an effective, positive force for general good.  But there are plenty of good works performed in any community, and, at least for me, those who toil daily at the necessary tasks that good works demand without seeking notice are much more praiseworthy than those who do so with an intent to be noticed.  And it’s my belief that if a community expends all of its adulation on a chosen few, it will fail to foster the most overall good, fail to realize the most benefit.

So I am excited about the prospect of helping to shine a light upon one graceful deer standing, camouflaged, at the edge of the forest.  For such she is.  And she would be the first to claim that she is nothing more than one of the herd – and that she is, as well.  For she is a member of a company of friends united by doing the best they can at whatever needs doing.  Each of them knows who they are, and none of them would ever believe that he or she is better at their work than any of the others are at theirs – for such was their pledge of membership.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men….And Women

The Well-Mown Field

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

Early morning solitary walks produce a sort of induced reverie.  After all, there is little mental effort involved in putting one foot in front of another, other than that required to avoid holes or stones or to keep to your path.  So the mind is free to become absorbed by external sights or internal musings.  Sometimes the two intersect.

Such was the case yesterday morning.  My first impression upon leaving the house was how good our fields look when freshly mowed.  Yesterday was one of those rare days when all of the fields had been mowed within the previous 48 hours.  Of course, this state of good grooming only ever lasts for a moment, since all grasses grow quickly in the late spring and some grow more quickly than others.  Already the marsh grasses in the lower pasture are reasserting themselves, and the odd sprig of pasture grass still stands tall where a mower hiccupped at a turning or a driver failed to keep to his or her line due, no doubt, to a surfeit of day dreams.

The sight of our fields caused me to realize that most of our neighbors’ fields are also kept well-groomed or well-cropped.  This realization made me wonder why humanity is so captivated by the sight of a well-mown field or yard.  As a species, we spend an inordinate amount of time mowing grass, absorbed in an activity that produces little that we deem useful.  Clippings are considered waste to the majority of us; we who are well-off shudder at the thought of the less well-off having to eat clippings to sustain life.  And the good clean smell of freshly cut grass – as heady a perfume as it may be – cannot, by itself, account for all of the energy we expend on the pastime.

Aesthetics can only be part of the answer.  It is true that a cleared, grassy field can serve as a frame for a tableau, whether one created or abetted by man or produced solely by nature.  At various times, our fields have been home to horses, alpacas, cows, deer, small mammals, birds, and insects.  While the horses, alpacas, and cows have long gone away, the deer and birds visit our fields as and when they like and only the small mammals and insects are permanent residents.  I am often distracted by field mice running from the tractor for shelter as I mow, and am frequently amused by swallows flying in front and in back of  the tractor in seeming symbiosis to feed upon the resident insects rising at the tractor’s threatening vibrations.

There is one point in our daily walk where we may look back down the lane toward our house across open fields.  Here, distance is open to the hills framing the far side of the river’s valley.  The result is a multi-faceted, three-dimensional diorama demonstrating nature’s intersection with farming life.  Yesterday, I stopped there for a moment to enjoy the view and to catch my breath after having made the long, slow slog down the two lanes lying adjacent to a 90 acre parcel presently under reclamation by blackberries, brambles, bushes, and forest.  As I did so, I found myself gripped by the contrast between the emotions produced in me by the 90 acre parcel and those produced by the open vista.  I decided that this contrast might well prove to contain an answer to the riddle of a well-mown field’s allure.

The 90 acre parcel is densely covered in all manner of untamed vegetation, and tall, wild, flowering grasses grow abundantly along the entire edge where it meets both lanes.  The acreage within is a mystery.  It was once known and farmed.  The roof and wall of a ruined home where a farmer once lived can be seen on top of a hill through the trees and brush – if one knows precisely where to stand and in which direction to look.  The road to the home is no longer used and took a meandering, unlikely path to begin with, so the ruin seems to lurk within the vegetation as if a wizard’s former lair.  The fields once assiduously maintained by the long-departed farmer are no more, lost now to nature’s ongoing reclamation plan.  When you look into this acreage, you must peer; when you sense movement or hear sound emanating from within, you must often use your imagination as to its source.  Hence, its mystery.

By contrast, the view from atop the lane across the well-tended fields is evidence of man’s ability to exercise at least a modicum of control over nature’s instinctive clutter and mystery.  The distance between the vista and the acreage is only capable of being measured by the amount of force necessarily employed by a tractor, two good horses, or man, himself, pulling a plow by hand through the prairie sod as each grooms the land.  For we must always be at work defending the well-mown field if it is to persevere, if it isn’t to revert to the state of the 90 acre parcel.  And therein lies its allure: it is simultaneously proof of man’s partial mastery of the elements and a paean to the incredible amount of effort expended in doing so.  While satisfying for its aesthetics, the open vista at the top of the lane is all the more powerful because it speaks of our dedication, because it speaks to our ego.

But if we listen carefully, the open vista should also serve as a tocsin.  The extent of our control over the elements is infinitesimal in comparison to the totality of energy contained in the universe, and if all of that energy were ever to be organized against us – if the wizard of the ruined house ever bothered to reassert himself and reassemble all of the mysteries of his art – we would be overwhelmed in a matter of moments.  So we ought to take good care in our efforts to acknowledge always the difference between a good grooming and an attempt to impose an order perceived by mankind as opposed to the one demanded by nature.  Mankind is, after all, only a single ingredient in the soup that is nature,  and we would do well to bear in mind Aristotle’s admonition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on The Well-Mown Field

Write a Post About a Post

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Gavin Stevens

Write a song
Write a song about the very song you sing
Pen a line about a line within a line
Write a song about a song.

Think a thought
Think a thought about the very thought you think
Hold a pen and write a line about the ink
Think a thought about a thought.

Live a life
Live a life that is the life you want to live
Give a gift that you will always give
God knows fear is not afraid.

Write a song
Write a song about the very song you sing
And when your rhymes do not apply to anything
Write a song about a song.

John Fullbright, Write a Song, from the album ‘Songs‘

I’ve been asked why I bother to keep this blog when it has limited readership and I make nothing from it.  For that matter, I’ve sometimes asked myself that question.  But when I do, I don’t ask myself the part about the money for I already know that answer.  Upon reflection, it turns out that the answer to the money portion of the question is related to the answer about why I bother.

I don’t care about the money.

Actually, that isn’t an honest answer.  I care very much about receiving no money at all, since the lack leaves me free to write what I want when I want, without having to pander to anyone – sponsors, convention, or even you, the reader.     Having no receipts permits me to remain  free – unfettered by the chains of another’s expectations, unimpoverished from having to seek to please.

What I care about is writing in a public forum – even one with such limited readership.  For doing so means I must try my best each time I publish.  And if, in doing so, I satisfy someone’s itch to read, if I pen a line that someone wishes to copy and keep, if I give someone a moment’s satisfaction, if I cause someone to say internally “that’s right!”, then I am satisfied – but only for as long as it takes the reader to react.  In the words of E. B. White:

“I suppose a writer, almost by definition, is a person incapable of satisfaction – which is what keeps him at his post.  Let us just say that I have tidied up my desk a bit, and flung out a few noisy and ill-timed farewells, like a drunk at a wedding he is enjoying to the hilt and has no intention of leaving.” (“Foreward,”  Second Tree From the Corner as quoted on page 210 of In The Words of E. B. White, Martha White, editor)

To write is to scratch a mosquito bite: while you’re well aware that scratching prolongs its irritation, you cannot stop even though doing so would bring a quicker ending to its misery.  But this misery is such sweet sensation!  It permits cautious revelations of those portions of your private self you deem appropriate for sharing; its delight lies in solving the puzzle of doing so but keeping your most embarrassing secrets to yourself – all while having to remain conscious of grammar, style, and voice.  The words produced are merely evidence of the joy obtained from the scratching.  Surely the process, when successful, is equal in satisfaction to having solved the riddles of the Rosetta Stone or the Gordian Knot.  And even when its product fails (which is more often than not), the writer is livelier for the attempt and his brain has been sweetened anew.

For even the taste of a poor tarte Tatin is better than having had no taste at all.

The secret of life is gettin’ up early
The secret of life is stayin’ up late
The secret of life is try not to hurry
But don’t wait, don’t wait…

Gretchen Peters, The Secret of Life, from the album Circus Girl

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on Write a Post About a Post