Cardinal Rule

2012 will live forever in my memory as the year I was forced to break Bruce's Cardinal Rule of Lawn Care - never mow the lawn before Easter.

During all the my years of home ownership, I have never violated this cardinal rule - even when Easter fell late in April. In those years when Easter did come late my neighbors sometimes expressed their discomfort over the length of the green on my side of the fence. Never the less I held fast.

But when I walked around to the back of the house yesterday and realized the grass was up to the middle of my shins I had to accept there was no way around firing up the mower - particularly with Easter still 2 weekends away.

The winter of 2011-2012, the second warmest winter on record, has broken my own record... but I'll take mowing the lawn over shoveling snow any day.

A Different Perspective

Studying the sky can sometimes distort our senses of space... and perhaps reality.

Such as a the last sliver of a waning moon being seen as a fingernail scratching through the dark fabric of night.

Or a full moon being the circle of light coming through the eyepiece of a microscope - and we are on the glass slide waiting to be studied.

Perhaps the setting sun is really a golden fob being slipped into the vest pocket of a paisley waistcoat.

From perspectives such as these.... can we humans really be all so important as we consider ourselves to be?

Martian Spouse

It was while I was traversing the sidewalks between office buildings that I spotted her - Uncle Martin's wife.

I'm referring to the Uncle Martin in the classic TV show My Favorite Martian.  The woman just had to be Uncle Martin's significant other because her business suit was the same aluminum / silver as Uncle Martin's space suit.

I debated finding a bench to sit on to watch and see if the woman might slip behind a tree and extended her antenna.

While she never did make any clandestine moves, it occurred to me that had she grabbed hold of the antenna of any of the cars waiting for her to clear the pedestrian crosswalk she would have improved the radio reception exponentially.  Considering the outfit she was dressed in, grabbing hold of an antenna would be like wrapping aluminum foil around the rabbit ears on a television set.

Ritual Shower

With Media Girl just weeks away from giving birth, members of the female persuasion came from near and far for a baby shower.

Regardless of how baby showers are currently marketed, it occurs to me that origins of the baby shower must tie into Passover as a form of ritual sacrifice.  Rather than sacrificing a lamb, women make offerings of gifts. And rather than making that offering in the hopes that death will pass their house, women are hoping pregnancy will pass them by.

If you think about it, the last weeks of pregnancy should rightly be a somber time of condolences.  Sorry you don't sleep anymore - and sorry you won't sleep through the night for years to come, sorry your clothes don't fit, sorry you run out of breath standing up, sorry everything makes you vomit, sorry someone will be demanding your attention for the next twelve years (after which that same someone will want nothing to do with you).

Since women don't gather to offer condolences, they can only be coming together in giving thanks pregnancy did not visit them and in praying it continues to pass them by.

World Around You

Things are really busy on multiple fronts just now.  To those of you who count on the musings offered here - I'll be as consistent as possible.   For now, a short contemplation:

To really see the world around you
First tune out the world around you

Behind the Equipment

Two dump trucks, a trenching machine, and a backhoe were all parked on the lawn in front of a well kept single story private home.  Each piece of construction equipment had a For Sale sign on it.

I wondered about the man behind the equipment. Was his business prosperous enough that he was buying new equipment and selling off the old or had the sluggish economy driven him out of business?

Perhaps he had simply reached retirement. After years of waking up and dressing in his uniform of construction green perhaps he had reached the point where he spent too much of his day with his hands pressed into the small of his back.

And if retirement was the cause, I wondered if he would now wake each day looking forward to the opportunity to explore new things or if he would miss the work he had done his entire life.

In the end, perhaps all that matters is that he will wake each day with his loved one beside him.

Fantastical Equinox

There I was, listening to the morning DJ remind me we had reached the first day of Spring (otherwise known as the mid-point of pre-summer) while staring at a forest of white.

No, the March equinox had not brought a late season snowstorm.  My attention had been captured by acres of flowering ornamental trees.

The sight tested my job dedication to the max.  I was tempted to make an unscheduled detour into the flowering forest where I just knew I would encounter saddled unicorn's, elves dressed in white gowns trimmed with silver, and perhaps a surly gnome or two.

A trip into a fantastical adventure, or another day behind a desk.  It pains me to say responsibility won out.

Sportin' the Green

In this area at least, Mother Nature celebrated St. Patrick's Day by sportin' the green.

The weeping branches of willow trees all but glowed with the green of fresh growth.

Daffodils, hyacinths, and lilies pushed green leaves up through garden mulch and ground cover.

Lilacs and fruit trees are all sporting buds of rich and royal green.

Recognizing its possible to have too much  of anything, Mother Nature made sure to throw in some splashes of contrasting color - whites and pinks of flowering trees; yellows and blues of annuals; and the colorful pinwheels of pansies.

Aye, truly it was a lucky day to be out and about takin' in the glories her highness blessed us with.

Apocalypse?

The very air vibrated and for a moment or two I thought the apocalypse had arrived.

Watching for lightning bolts lancing through a rift in the sky, I noticed the vibration now shook my car.

After ruling out a flat tire, I gave up on searching the sky and looked left, ahead, behind, and to the right.  There... to the right were twin lights brighter than the newly risen sun.

And now the roar of a thousand warriors reached my ears, the twin lights grew in size, and a monolith rose into the sky.

No, not a monolith, an Air Force transport. Engines at full throttle, roaring down the runway that ran perpendicular to the highway, the plane for just a moment obliterated my entire field of view.

As the shadow passed overhead, I remembered to exhale and return my attention to the road in front of me which was fortunately and mysteriously devoid of other cars.

Mixing Bowl

I felt like that pinch of salt that gets dropped into the mixing bowl as the other ingredients are swirling together.

Not realizing I was crossing a boundary, I stepped from the boardwalk into the sand and was immediately caught up in swirling temperatures.  Behind me the day was seventy-five degrees and sunny. Ahead of me a mist of much cooler air was drifting across the ocean toward shore.

And there on the first fifteen feet of beach closest to the boardwalk, the stiff evening breezes were weaving the temperatures together.

One stride from the boards I still had warm humid air around me, two strides further and a blast of chilly air nearly took my breath away. One giant step backward put warm on my back and cold air on my face.

Finally taking purposeful strides toward the ocean I passed from warm to cold and back again until, at the water's edge, the chilly air reigned supreme.

Ninety minutes later, heading back toward my car, I discovered the battle for ultimate supremacy continued with a new vengeance. Mini cyclones swirled sand around my feet while mixing warm and cold in the same space - my head and shoulders warm while the skin on the back of my hands rose in chilled goose bumps.  Had I weighed any less than I did, I might have been blended right into the mix.

Embracing Chaos... and a Short Commercial Break

The art of zen is finding structure in chaos.  Which means sometimes you just chuck the agenda and go with the flow.

Which was just what I did tonight. Though there were things to be done after work, they all went in the trash can.  Because an outdoor temperature of seventy degrees on March 8 comes once in a blue moon.

And while in embracing chaos I didn't experience a blue moon.... my disregard of agendas did bring me face to face with the moon.

My spur of the moment decision took me directly from work to the beach. I was intending only to stroll the boards, but once within sight of the ocean I knew I was going right to the water's edge. I walked the beach until the sun had gone from the sky and the first stars twinkled into view.

Lost in thought... thinking of nothing and everything... I continued my shoreline journey in the dark until a distant light caught my eye. There, on the horizon where sea meets sky, an orange full moon was rising.

Planting my feet, turning so my face was pointed directly to the face of the rising moon, I existed solely in the moment. There were no thoughts of what had been accomplished or still needed to be done. No awareness of the few others I had earlier noticed on the beach.  There was only me, the sea, and the moon.

And in that moment I knew zen.

I'll be away from the blogosphere for a bit... throwing a little more chaos into the cosmos.... look of a new post somewhere around March 14.

Better This Way?

Better this way.... or this?   One or two? Now how about this... or this? Three or four?

I was sitting in the chair in the eye doctor's office while a nurse spun dials on the opposite side of a machine that looked like the face shield for an alien astronaut. Looking through eyepieces that rightly belonged on a set of binoculars, I was studying E's, T's Z's and 2's on the far wall.

Better now... or now?  Three of four?

Well it might be four, I said. Then again maybe three. What happened to one?  I don't think I had enough time to experience one.

The nurse sighed and started flipping dials.

Better now... or now?  One or two?

Two, I said. No, I mean one.  Actually I don't think one's all that great we should probably go back to three.  I think three is better than one.

Sir, comparing one and three is not an option.  It's one compared to two or three compared to four.

Wait. What? But what if three is better than one? If three is better than either one or two don't you need to know that?


Sir, if you could just follow my prompts?

Dials spun again.  Which is better one or two?

I don't want to talk about one or two.  I want to talk about three.  Three is the best... unless maybe it's four.

Hey, what I can say. The pressure was on. I was being evaluated for eye glasses I'd be wearing for the next year and the nurse wanted me to make decisions in seconds.  It just wasn't right.

Misplaced Greeting

The structure itself was unremarkable, an oblong single story affair that looked to be a cross between a private home and an army barrack.

The faded and peeling paint, sagging shutters, and electrical service box from which the meter had been removed all spoke of an abandoned building.

And yet... a wreath of dried flowers hung inside the storm door.  It was the wreath, illuminated by the lowering sun that had caught my eye. 

The house, office building, barrack - whatever it was -  sits on the corner of an intersection that I pass frequently. And though I'm sure I've noticed the building before, I never really saw it until that wreath caught my eye.

The wreath suggested the rest of the building was wrong. There should be electric feeding a building with a wreath on the door. People should either be living or working in a building with a wreath on the door.

I found myself wondering just what had happened here that the building should be abandoned while a floral wreath still offered a welcoming greeting.

Curing the Miserables

Motivated Mom called my attention to the newly released results of poll that reveal the state in which we live is the 4th most miserable state in the country based on factors such as personal health and job satisfaction.

And here I thought the reason for there being a liquor store on every third corner was due to our being in a vacation destination.

Obviously the majority of our state's population doesn't live near the beach, which I'm sure contributes to the miserable poll results.... 'cause how can you be consistently unhappy when you're minutes away from a walk on the shoreline?

There's daily Zen to be found in ocean tides and coastal breezes.

Think about it.  When's the last time you bent down to pick up a gen of a shell or waded into the ocean and managed to hold onto a bad mood?  It just can't be done.

Feeling blue?  Stressed at work?  The cure lies in sand between your toes.

Tonka Tilt

If you've noticed an unfamiliar wobble in the ground beneath your feet  recently it's because folks in this neck of the woods have been working hard to shift the Earth's mass from one place to another.

For the past few weeks flat bed tractor trailers carrying boulders capable of filling entire rooms have been steadily traversing the local four lane highway.

The work that has obviously gone into this massive relocation of stone has had me thinking back to childhood days when the neighborhood kids regularly dispatched a fleet of Tonka trucks to reshape the geography of designated areas in our back yards.

Cubic feet of soil was regularly moved to create both caverns and mountains that became scenes of battles and mudslides.

Had we realized then that we were actually developing professional skills, we might all have gone on to be the most highly demanded excavation team the world has ever known.

There's something about the thought of working amidst dump trucks, backhoes, cranes, and bulldozers in an effort to coax mother earth into cooperation that remains attractive even to this day.

Too Much Yields Too Little

After another crazy day in the office and observing the unbridled quest for knowledge and achievement some folks have I found myself reflecting on the words of Chinese philosophers.... and offer this contemplation:

A drive to know too much leads to recognition of too little.

The greatest understanding comes in the quietest moments of life.

You need not be a master of anything.

Even a single drop of water affects an entire pond.