Daily Archives: August 24, 2014

Aging, Family, Great Work, Weather +Climate

Nocturne

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Lughnasa                                                            New (College) Moon

Rain so hard it sounded like hail has scoured the air, washing the dust out and dropping the temperature. The tornado watch expires in half an hour though we’ll have more thunderstorms later tonight. Weather is local; climate is global. Climate change in this case has given us days with more moisture in the air, driving up the chance of stronger storms and more concentrated rain fall.

(Curry The Line Storm)

Robert Jay Lifton, a grand old man of American letters, known for his psychological and psychiatric work on war and nuclear weapons, has written an interesting article in the NYT, The Climate Swerve. He’s careful, doesn’t overstate the evidence, but he makes a point similar to one I made here a month or so ago. Something’s happening to public opinion about climate change. Something pressing the public toward concern, possibly creating the political climate necessary for making difficult choices. Read the article for his thoughts about “stranded assets.” It’s a concept you will hear about more often in the future.

Had lunch with Jon today at the Craftsman on Lake Street. He was in town, briefly, for the wedding of a long time friend, flew in yesterday and out today. Dressed in a new blue striped dress shirt, dress slacks, neat beard and his curly hair, he hardly looks 45, almost 46. More like mid-30’s.

The bond of this family has begun to gel, why now I’m not sure, though it must have 500Jon Gabe Mesomething to do with Ruth and Gabe getting older. There’s a realization about our own aging, our fragility that comes as kids advance in years, but in this case it’s a sweet realization, a realization that the future, as the song says, is not ours to see. But that that’s ok since we know well some who will inhabit it, shape it, lead it.

The future they inhabit will have its own set of agonies and joys. When Ruth and Gabe confront a world altered by climate change, by the polarization of political parties in our time, by the struggles to drag some of the Middle East back to a seventh century golden age(that was never golden), by the rise of China and India and Brazil and Indonesia, they will be in that world as we are in ours: a bit confused, somewhat hopeful, mostly living their lives from day-to-day just as we do.

 

 

Weather +Climate

Higher Powers

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Lughnasa                                                                    New (College) Moon

Thunder crackles, makes low rumbles as the day, heated to 91, cools down. 77 at the moment. This is weather balancing itself, the heated, humid air making storm clouds which transfer cooler air and moisture from higher in the sky down to earth. The process is effective, but it can be dangerous. Lightning and tornadoes and straight line winds and hail.

Our lives are, in this sense, like trees. Our homes, our gardens, our orchards must remain in place, subject to changes in temperature, moisture and wind. Like the tree our built environment can sustain damage beyond our ability to repair and then we must rebuild. The tree has its saplings; we have construction crews.

Even though these storms raise the possibility of havoc, their power, well, it’s like nothing else. They may not be alive in the strictly scientific sense, but they give the earth a voice and a strong hand. Like many Midwesterners I’ve been listening to this voice my whole life, humbled by it. Anyone who has seen and heard a tornado knows that there are forces greater than our own. A higher power, in the AA parlance.

 

 

Colorado, Poetry, Writing

Poetic and Chaotic

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Lughnasa                                                                New (College) Moon

Things to do in Colorado: write poetry. Read about the new U.S. Poet Laureate, Charles Wright. He sits in the same place, sees the same view and has done for over 30 years. While there, he notices his moods, captures them in his way.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written poetry regularly, a very long time. Over 45 years. Then, all I’d written got stolen along with my 1950 Chevy panel truck, a favorite vehicle that truck. It had three on the column, a sticky clutch and burned oil. Somehow, though, it stole my heart, just like that blue Volvo station wagon and that red Toyota Celica.

Somebody stole it, or else I parked it while drunk and never remembered I owned it. Coulda happened like that, too, I suppose. Life was like that back then in Muncie, Indiana. Poetic and chaotic and political. Another college memory, coming under the college moon.

(could be it. now if that file of poetry is still under the seat.)

So anyhow I think I’ll find a study in the mountains with a window where I can put a table and a pad of paper, a mechanical pencil. And I’ll sit there, noting what passes beyond the window and within my mind, jotting it down, see what the mountain air conjures.

The other kind of writing, this blog, fiction, I can do at a typewriter (oops, there’s an anachronism. I meant, keyboard.) but poetry has been manual for me, maybe because I started writing poetry before I knew how to type. I learned typing in high school, my senior year.

You know, I’d like to have that Chevy panel truck back. Wonder if whoever took it is done with it now?