Thoughts

I've been thinking about people who matter to me, and I thank for helping me live my destiny.  When times seem even more uncertain for everyone than usual, your mind tells your heart about humans you've always cared for who have helped your brain in sunshine and rain be relatively smart enough to guide your heart in treasuring life's universal art.  Wherever you are arriving, you want to know these special spiriting souls are surviving, maybe even thriving.

7 months ago, I was calling many people whom I am blessed to know, keeping touch while each of us grows amid our various shows.  Some of these people I have seen recently.  Living alone precipitates spreading one's social engagements apart, so that you reduce the risk of anything that may attack someone's heart.  I am lucky I have important people still able to see in any capacity, with or without a pandemic.  I have many lovely students I cannot see physically in front of me, and still I feel very privileged to continue speaking with and listening to interesting people every day, at least in some way.

If these words have made its way to your eyes, that means you have survived.  I'm thinking about great people I always thought I'd see at some point soon enough.  I realize how incredibly generous our awesome living sun earth balls of spinning magic making mysterious paths encountering one another through all of history must truly be if I've met and continue to get to meet these beautiful souls.  Seeing you again is one of my goals.

A Mirror Number

 

Sunday

 

October 3

  A high of 52, supposed to get in the 30's again later, as soft rain drops fall in rhythmic intervals, faster and harder on the roof as my fingers pound the keys with a lamp on and some logs waiting for the fire.  Plenty of gray mixes with peeks of light while riding to get life giving water which I always carry with me yet also need to pay other people with papers made from trees so I may sustain me.  Riding on the country highways, back roads, farm fields, rows of evergreens with mixes of red, yellow, orange, gold which every autumn nature unfolds.  All of this is a chance to just think, walking amidst the pines and deciduous with the full assemblage of foliage preparing for another one of life's generous peaks on the way home.

A little under five months have passed since I've been reminded this beloved cabin does not have insulation in most rooms.  Whenever I think like that, I see that old tent in the snow, and am thankful I have anywhere to go.  Even so, back then, at the whole start of this unexpected experience, when the ground still had snow, I'd had a season's worth of firewood ready to go.  Some of that remains and I am thankful has served me and a few visitors well.  But the guy who gets paper for delivering materials used to make the same was behind on his orders for just about most of a moon, so I've had to ration: is it really cold enough to have a fire tonight?  If yes, how long should I wait?  Probably soon after this is published.

As for this afternoon, all these conditions make it reasonable being on the couch while reading Richard Powers's The Overstory, which had won the Pulitzer Prize for novels the year before I purchased it a year ago on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, that island called New York, New York.  Having started Monday, I read every day, including a mountain hike with a friend which would of course include reading a few paragraphs at the summit.  The people in this book all have meaningful experiences with our partners in the living breathing that go beyond just living with breathing trees but seeing and noticing and learning about what that all means.  I am Michael J. Sullivan's grandson, a man who loved trees but also grew his family by growing trees while removing others for uses in our lives, for example, where I type, and the heat givers about to share their inherent warmth.  The activism in the book is inspiring, but I think larger changes must combine human creativity and brave dedication with proper political maneuvering on national stages.

Speaking of a national stage, I've said before that I've been reviewing a 1990's television series, Northern Exposure, about a guy from New York City who moves up to a cabin in a small town in the north, where people farm, hunt, fish, hike, camp, help each other out and somehow experience all the rich cultural depth and philosophical playfulness and seriousness that one could hope for in any life's journey.  This evening, the character was worried that his inner New Yorker persona was changing and leaving him, and that he was getting too comfortable with his new identity in a small town where they weather severe winters and share information about how to survive more comfortably, all while chewing pumpkin seeds.

If the cities were happening the way they once were, sure, I would love to go mix with the hearts and thoughts crowd sometime.  I love having various people from around the world to communicate with thanks to miracles of instant electricity online, but being together in the same place where we share the same air we are breathing and living without a care... something I, we, took for granted.  After six years in Harlem and teaching in the Bronx, Midtown, and Upper West Side, with people from everywhere just about everywhere one could possibly stare, gorgeous parks with living breathing trees dancing in the breeze, all of a sudden, the world battles disease, begins to wheeze.  Having done my time with such I was lucky and very thankful I escape.  I am up surrounded by trees, in a place I love which provides nature's beauty... However, there are very few living breathing people, as warm as they are.  But as I light this fire so I can enjoy a reminder not to take warmth for granted, I look forward to more country living as I review as many writing seeds as I have planted, thanking life for what universe always provides

Although I have never stopped believing in the importance of writing, reading, language and communication, sometimes I have wondered if it matters.  And then I remember what's happening in the world, and how even though we will never truly completely understand one another, or even ourselves, it improves the quality of our lives if we try, and that's why words, sentences and well expressed ideas joy riding in our grey matter will always really matter, especially if we want to communicate what's the matter and make the world gladder

Labor Day

In honor of today, I recommend Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom.  I'm about halfway through, but today I read from the chapter about the introduction of the idea of "wage slavery," real slavery, women entering the workplace, the late 19th century labor movement, the early twentieth century progressive movement, and all the various definitions of "freedom" Americans have produced

Again

 7 days later I made it to the summit