Tag Archives: Change

Grounded

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“I don’t know who designed that complex, but if I ever meet the guy I want to ask him why he’d put that hospital wing parallel with the airstrip. You know, it’s one thing to be grounded, but to lay there day after day and watch those guys climb into the burning blue, not knowing if they’ll come back…not being able to go with them…”
Bob stopped abruptly, mid-sentence, and sort of gritted his teeth a little and he held his breath in and his face began to flush. He picked up a teaspoon and banged it around the inside of his mug even though he drank his coffee black. He cleared his throat several times, then quietly growled, “In fact, if I ever meet that [expletive deleted] I’m not gonna ask him anything…not gonna say a word. I’m just gonna punch him once, square on the nose, and not feel bad about it.”

– Captain “Hopping Bob” Shannon
(excerpted from “Hopping Bob: memoirs of an unlikely, unwilling and unstoppable hero”)

To be grounded can mean many different things. Some good, some bad.
As kids, being grounded was like going to jail. Same is true for a pilot.
If you’re in a boat, being grounded is considered an emergency.
If you are an electrician, not being grounded is an emergency.

As I fumble my way forward in my new life as a widower, I realize the great extent to which my philosophies and life view are grounded in reality. They are built on timeless foundations. The Moon and stars, Mother Earth. Clouds and birds, sun and rain. I have likened myself to a chip off a grain of sand in an unimaginably immeasurable cosmos.

Evening Flight

Change can be difficult. It is by definition unsettling. Even when we encounter change that was not entirely unexpected, we seek out and cleave to those things that are not changing. As I have navigated the changes of this year, I am deeply grateful that my spirit is built on things that remain constant, and things that persevere beyond the grave.

Sunrises and sunsets. Clouds that dance across the sky. The whistle of wingtips as birds course over me. The smell of rain and taste of the wind. Sun on my skin, the buzz of the hummingbird. The rumble of thunder as a summer storm reminds me how small I am, and how large the world. The white butterfly, wandering gleefully along a meandering course, reminding me how large I am in the scheme of tiny things. Reminding me how delicate is the balance in a world that has bone-jarring thunder and gentle butterflies at the same time.

Change always sounds scary. Like everything we know is ending, and we shall be adrift in the great sea of this world. Sometimes the changes are big from one perspective. Sometimes, if we can zoom out, see our lives and worlds in their entirety, we see that change is simply a part of it. Like shifting sandbars, the ebb and flow of the tides, the passing seasons, the phases of the moon. Changes come when their time comes.

Sometimes we find these are times that help to forge us. To be put to tests, to weather storms. To find strengths we were hitherto unaware of. Truths we have been blind to, sometimes all of our lives. The real and lasting value of that which we hold and have held, the joys of recollections, the sweet sting of awakening’s tears.

And if we’re lucky, we find our second winds, our inner lights, our driving cores, and charge through the change, holding to the ever-present, the long-standing and the firmly-rooted.
Holding tightly on to one another.
Securely grounded in those things that will carry us through to the very end.

Seek peace,

Paz

Circles

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In some ways I’ve been directionless this year. Unmoored. I’ve carried on the day-to-day business of the Ark, and administered as Executor to my father’s estate. The dog is fed and walked and loved, the cat is fed and stroked and loved. The Ark herself has not done without special attentions in several areas. A few rearranged bits of furniture, a little more light and air in her rooms.
Increasingly, I find myself spending time with an old love. We met when I was about 13, and fell in love when I was about fifteen. We’ve had a long relationship, sometimes taking a back burner, and other times brazenly public.
Since the loss of my wife last December, I’ve spent a lot of time with an old, old friend. One who has shared many laughs and high times, and has always been there when things were down. This lifelong mistress is the magic of music. In some of my worst times, I would be known to “shut yourself up in your room all summer singing ‘boo-hoo’.”

It started, this time, with a little poem my dog Chuy had written over on his blog, chowdogzen.com. It was called Wish, and spoke of the most precious things in our lives, from a dog’s perspective. It’s no leap for a human to imagine oneself cleaving to these admonitions, as things like beauty and home and love are universal.

This song took a curious and circuitous path from concept to creation. At first it had a tempo and chorus that dragged a beautiful thing down nearly to a dirge. Then something happened, something from that magical ethereal realm of the musical mind, and an entirely different chorus composed itself. Phrases that were polar opposites of the sadness and indignant resignation of the prior iteration. It lifted me, this magical mistress of mine, and threw open the shutters, rang in the light. I have been locked in her embraces long and often, and this I offer as way of explanation for my absences.

Then Circles happened. There was a poem that, to me, was scraping the bock from the barrel of despair, so low was it. It was written in the summer of 2020, when the world had gone mad, and my wife and father were ailing. A long slow death in ordinary days. A reader interpreted it differently, and saw it as words of encouragement, to carry on, as Churchill would say.
Again, from the magic place our thoughts are forged, another chorus wrote itself. I suppose it’s no coincidence that these graces have been visited upon me at just the time I needed them. At just the time I had determined to seek them out.
Circles have been a part of my philosophy always. The cosmos itself is designed in physical circles, and life as we know it is described as a circle. I view my life as a series of concentric and overlapping rings, like raindrops falling on a pond. Each drop joins in concert with many and they sing their splashy song, and in a moment, the ring is gone.

And the Circle goes. The Circle goes.

And the circles grow, the circles grow.

And The Circle knows. The Circle knows.

A circle closes.

This is what we call a “scratchpad” version, not a polished and mastered recording. It’s a few ideas jotted down to conceptualize the song, so imagine it’s the quality of your cousin’s band playing in the garage. I’m on a manic productive binge for now, so the polish will have to wait. (This version even has the “tail” at the end where it should fade!)

Circles

I rise, unsure just why,
But here am I, awake and alive.
Breathe and step. Step again.
To where? Ahead. Beyond where I have been.

Look and see. What is there and what is not?
A past, the future. A time forgot.
Moving still. A back to break.
An iron will. Dreams to forsake.

And The Circle goes.

Sun and rain. Clouds to love.
Floods below, storms above.
Feed the machine, because we must.
Over and again until I am dust.

A sparrow lights to share my bread.
What’s mine is yours until I am dead.
A fleeting glimpse? A parting glance?
For who knows how long we shall dance?

And The circles grow.

Sun is setting. Darkness falls.
Yet light persists in hallowed halls.
Rest and sleep. To dreams awake.
A dream of dreaming for its own sake.

The new day dawns, wipe sleep from eyes.
Once again,
And who knows why,
I rise.

And The Circle knows.
A circle must close.

We’re gathering every Wednesday for Tuesday Night Music Club. (It’s a traditional name and day, but Carl plays billiards on Tuesdays). I leave you with a quote forged and written by another poet graced with the love of music, whose song Closing Time we are learning in the ensemble.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Take care. And I mean that.

Paz

Rounding The Turn

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September Sunset

The blue globe turns, the axis shifts, time is measured in length-of-days.

Each evening now, the sunset chases me down. Two weeks ago there was an hour after work for walking the dog, tinkering outdoors, putting the sun to bed from atop Nishan Hill. Now we race to see who will arrive first at the Engleville Tick Ranch, me or the sunset.

Yesterday sunset won, and Sassy June and I walked in near-darkness.

I’ll marvel a lot about the crisp, clear air. I’ll ooh and aah on the morning drive, through misty sunrises. I’ll stand stock still and agape as Canada Geese make their annual sojourn, flying so low over our heads that we hear the wingbeats, and the whistle of wingtips.

I’ll shoot hundreds of pictures of colored leaves. Same leaves as last year. Same colors. I’ll bet you have all the same leaves and colors if you live in any temperate climate.

This is the essence of the change of seasons. You’ve waited a full year for this to come around. Between its rarity and your anticipation, how can it help but be exciting? Yes, exciting. Every year for 58 years. Same trees. Same geese. I never tire of it, nor am I ever less-impressed.

This applies to all of our seasons. The Big Four, plus all the mini-seasons in between, all the harbingers of changes coming. All the new and unique things that were not there yesterday. From the first Colt’s Foot of spring to the first snowflake, and back around to ice-off on Engleville Pond. There’s the first Robin of spring, the last sighting of the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird for this year, the Snowy Owls of February and the Red-Winged Blackbirds and their soundtrack of summer.

Circles within circles bring these things to me year after year. Like birthdays, I am always looking forward to the next. A dozen birthdays a year.

There is a comfort in the constant, fondness of the familiar. These things which repeat themselves. These clockworks that can be relied upon. No human intervention or invention can stop them, slow them in their tracks or hasten them along. It is as if they come to visit me, like grandparents from Florida, once a year.

And we embrace.

I wish my arms were 32,000 miles across so I could hug the whole world.

Take care and keep in touch.

Paz