• Tag Archives tree of life

  • Kate is Home!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

    The home is full again.  Kate got home at 7:00 pm.  Four of us were wagging our tails and I hugged her.  She took off for the doctor yesterday and never came home until just now.

    Her arm looks better, not well, but better.  Her spirits are good; though she says she’s “going to play the invalid tomorrow and Thursday.  We’ll see.  She’s not too good in that role.

    We had grilled chicken, chard (from last year’s garden) and whole wheat spaghetti with olive oil and butter.  After the meal we both scratched our heads during Tree of Life.

    It evoked the era of my childhood so well:  kick the can, swimming, roaming in the fields, running down alleys, getting into mischief.  I pulled back from understanding and went with the flow, the feel of things.  I liked it.  Don’t know that I’d want all the films I see to take that form, but in this case, well done.

    Tomorrow.  Some errands.


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television Cooking Family Health 📎and tagged

  • The Simple Life. Bah, Humbug

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain                               Moon of the Winter Solstice

    “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. I say let your affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand. We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” – Henry David Thoreau

    (Walden Pond, 2010)

    When I bought my farm up near Nevis, Minnesota, Thoreau and I would have been on the same page.  The Peaceable Kingdom had its own well, a septic system and heat provided by the forest I owned.  Of course, that year the simple life saw a divorce, the temperature hit -50 and a heavier yet reliance on beer and scotch.

    Don’t get me wrong.  I think simplicity is a beautiful thing.  Then again, so is complexity.  If my body simplified itself, there wouldn’t be much me left.  If my consciousness simplified itself, the rest would slip away.

    There will always be, of course, the few who take the Taoist monk approach, a life lived close to nature.  There will be, too, those folks who just find wilderness better company than the rest of us and who’s to say they’re wrong?

    Me, though, I love samsara, this whole roiling, boiling mess we have for a place to live.  I love computers and television and movies and books, philosophical and political thought and action.  I love relationships, messy and unwieldy and complicated as they can be.  I love art, often complex and difficult.

    I suppose this means I’ll never have a Walden experience or the insight of wandering through the Tao.  I’m ok with that.  If you need simplicity, then seek it, make it so.

    As for me, give me complexity or give me, well, what?  Greater complexity.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Literature Myth and Story 📎and tagged