Details, Action, And Progress

One of the things I am painfully reminded off, time and time again, is that I am not nearly the detail person I need to be.

To be fair, I have never been a detail person.  When I was young, the patience of building models well was beyond me.  I would do okay for the first part, but eventually get impatient or bored and rush to finish something; thus most of my plane and tank models ended up with less than well fit parts and glue marks that probably appeared on no actual real scale production model.

This aversion to details has followed me in many things and throughout my whole life.  Oddly enough, it not necessarily an aversion to facts:  I have somehow love to dwell in the minutiae of some items - most historical - and will happily memorize reginal lists or key battles or the history of empires.  But in most things, at best I seem to apply the peanut butter sandwich approach:  one or two quick swipes on the bread and then to eating, whether on not the bread is fully covered or the peanut butter is even.

This works okay for peanut butter sandwiches.  It does not, however, find application in every area of life.

I can always argue - and do - that the opposite is no better. There are some people that are so detail oriented that progress seems to be very difficult for them.  Wanting to get everything right, they are almost paralyzed to move forward when the details are not in place - as opposed to someone like me,  who will happily plough ahead on the road, catching the "Sharp Curve Ahead" sign out of the corner of my eye right as I hit the corner.

There is a balance, of course - but I am very far away from anything resembling that balance.  

Part of it, I suppose, is this reluctance to commit that has been dogging me most of my life.  A larger part of it, though, is that I mistake action for progress.

Moving forward to me is action.  Moving on to the next thing to move forward, to get things done. In point of fact, that is not the way that progress is made.  What happens in unrestrained action is that I continue to do something and do something and do something until it more or less comes together, after six or eight or ten tries - and at that, often a marginal product at best.

Progress is different.  Progress does require not just action, but knowledge and application - knowledge of the finer things and the patience and ability to check of those things as one moves forward.  It is going line by line even though one has completed the form a hundred times, or understanding the subtle difference between levels and speed of kata, or running one's stiches true even if one slows down in the sewing.

Progress is often slower than unrestrained action.  But the results of progress are often far more memorable than those of action.  All great works of art, all great buildings, all great products - these are the products of progress, of attention to some level of detail (while keeping a view of the big picture, of course) sufficient to ensure that greatness, not mediocrity is the result.

I am not as detail oriented as  I should be.  But I am at least at the point of realizing that action and progress are different in this context, and the context of the difference is spending the time on the details to truly get better, master, or make a better thing - not just to accomplish something and move on to the next.

Welcome Autumn

 With the change in weather from less Face of The Sun days and cooler evenings and mornings and that inevitable change of the angle of light, even I am forced to admit that Autumn may have finally arrived.

With Autumn - and October - comes the sprint to the end of the year.  I say "sprint" because that is what the last quarter of the year seems to have become over time.

Commercially, we have now entered the season of Halloween/Dios de las Muertas/Thanskgiving/Pre-Christmas/Hanukkah/Christmas/New Year's Eve.  If that looks like a run-on listing, it is because that is exactly what it has become:  more and more, it seems that websites and stores just "get it all out there" at once. I am sure this simplifies their advertising lives and they can just roll the unused stock back into the warehouse for next year as needed ("Giant Inflatable Pumpkins?  Done.  Giant Inflatable Turkeys?  Done.   Giant Inflatable Godzilla and King Kong with a Christmas Tree?  Hold on, two more weeks to run on those").  

I suppose as a plus, I can now secure Mallow Pumpkins, multi-colored Candy Corn, and Christmas Mints all at one go.  And Eggnog is now a drink available for almost half the year.

For work, I can remember a time within the last ten years where the rhythm of work was a lovely sigmodal S curve the gracefully descended into the Christmas Break, a sort of wind down after a year of activity, allowing employees to enter the holiday with almost a sense of the holiday.  Again, no more:  work is now a red-lined activity that would make my high school friend's 1969 Ford Mach 1 green with envy as those horsepower's are pushed way up to and over the 350 HP line, a constant driving stream of activity.  Conveniently goals are also tied to completion right before the end of the year, so that employees can not just greet the break with Joy, they can collapse into a heap and pretend to pack holiday celebrations into the 1.5 days before the holiday actually occurs.

For me - as kind of a change up from my usual "Stumbling on through the list of things to do", I am making a choice to carefully choose what I want to accomplish, acknowledging 1) The Work Schedule as listed above; and 2) the fact that it is a holiday season, and I would like to celebrate something.

For "Things I want to do", that list has become pretty focused.  This blog, of course (because, frankly, therapy is expensive and blogging is free).  The Winter Garden - which to be fair, is four to five hours of hard work, followed by maintenance.  Keeping with my nascent language skills, one for Iai (Japanese) and one for the upcoming 2023 trip (Greek).  Specific projects for the time off (I have my shirt pattern from Folk Wear; sewing over Thanksgiving, and cheese of course).  Regular training, gym and Iai.  Attending to the house and vehicle related chores I having been putting off because, well, they are not novel and therefore not "interesting".  Tying up loose ends for TB The Elder and getting The Ranch ready for Winter.

It is not a glamourous list of course, and I have never tried something this focused before - it means putting a great many "boy, I should do that" on the shelf, at least until the New Year rolls around.  That is not really a natural reaction for me.

But this year, for some reason I feel I need the focus.  Autumn and the entry of Winter and the holidays (and we have a splendid lot during this season, including the somewhat forgotten and Veteran's Day) should be something to be enjoyed and celebrated, not something to be rushed through because of the World and Work.  And if they are not going to slow down - and they are not - then I consciously have to.

The Leaving Of Nighean Gheal

At the side of my bed on the top shelf of the beside bookshelf (which designates it from the rather large number of other bookshelves in the house) there are a series of three photo frames supported by the Bibles I have kept collecting as family passes on and the books I consider "really important".  Two of them are handmade frames made for me to celebrate Father's Day or a birthday long ago.

The third is store purchased metal frame with a picture in it.

The picture is dated three days after the birth of Nighean Gheal and may very well represent the first full day she was home.  In the picture I am asleep in the bed with her in my left arm with her pink cap on.  Sasha The Good Cat is resting on me as she always did when the opportunity of a sitting or sleeping person presented themselves. The picture remains one of my favorites of all the pictures that we have taken over the years, the one I tend to trot out on birthday posts and "look how far you have come" moments.

I think of that picture a lot on Saturday as we drive Nighean Gheal  to the airport.

This was not the first leaving of course; she has left for college multiple years on trips where we would not see her during the usual holidays.  But this was The Leaving, the moving to The Big City to start her first official post-college adult full time job.

She had been packing over the course of the last week, trying to decide what to take with her and what to pack in her closet (her room is being "repurposed" to some extent in her absence, usually the greatest sign that someone is truly leaving).  The suitcase in the back of the car is likely well over the 50 lbs. no-cost limit and her other bag and carry on were full as well.  She was fortunate in that she had been living a somewhat nomadic life for some years now, and that house goods were already at her new apartment.  She needs only bring her things.

She and The Ravishing Mrs. TB chat away as we drive down in the dark pre-morning dawn; both are leaving in separate directions from the airport and conversation is about their respective upcoming trips.  There is little enough to say from me:  driving in the pre-dawn dark is stressful enough, let alone picturing what sorts of traffic adventures might be waiting at the airport.

And what would one say, if one were to say anything?  How does one address what is in some meaningful way the closing of one door and the opening of another?  If we are fortunate we will hear something of her life but I am realistic as well:  she will be busy with work and having adventures in The Big City.  I suspect most of the communication will come via the posting short pictures and videos that permeate social media. This seems to be the way the modern world communicates anymore, in pictures and images instead of words.  

We will see her this month for TB The Elder's funeral, and then likely for Christmas - but even then these will not be the same.  She will truly be a visitor, coming in for a short period and jetting back to her real life.  

Which is no longer here.

The airport is not quite as busy as it could have been but busy enough; the practice of dodging in and out of parked cars and trying to avoid people making their way through traffic always unnerves me.  I managed to find a parking spot; like everything with dropping off at the terminal, you only have a few minutes at best.  It is both a blessing and curse:  in both cases the limited time make a thing very easy and very difficult.

I heft the bags out (that suitcase was definitely more than 50 lbs.), and put them on the sidewalk.  I feel the pressure of having a parked car there and having to make my way back out; she and The Ravishing Mrs. TB the pressure of getting everything in and to the counter.  The goodbye is a quick hug and "See you in three weeks" and off they go.

Almost thankfully I have to actively plot my track through the remaining cars back onto the loop that leads to the main road.  By the time I give not hitting someone a thought, I am already well on my way.  

There is something painfully wistful as I drive home, something that I cannot fully define as I make my way back. Like most life changes, the thing has been a long time coming yet happened literally in the space of thirty seconds:  she was in the car with her things, and then she was gone, gone in a way that the young birds take the last flight from the nest go and the observer watches quixotically, knowing in their heart that this was the final flight yet somehow thinking that they will return.

The young birds never come back from that last flight of course.  They are off to make nests of their own.

Baptism

 "'Sanctify this water, that those who are baptized in it may be crucified with Christ, die with him, be buried with him, and rise again through adoptions.' - Apostolic Constitutions (4th Century A.D.)

Baptism is the total immersion in the choking water of death, from which we emerge in the joy of breathing once again, of 'breathing the Spirit'.  For the water, changed from lethal into life-giving, embodies the resurrectional power of the Spirit, of which it is a natural symbol."

- Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism

On Yogurt And Unplugging

 (By way of introduction, I apologize for my tardiness in responding to comments.  Apparently this platform has taken it upon itself to becoming "difficult" again.)

This week I made another batch of yogurt.

I have been making yogurt regularly for almost three years now, so far as I can recall.  It is a simple process (which is why I likely keep doing it, of course):  one gallon of whole milk heated in a Crock Pot to 180 F with a beach towel over the lid to retain heat, followed by allowing it to cool to between 90 and 100 F, adding either new culture or some yogurt from a previous batch (live culture and all), replacing the lid and covering with the beach towel and wrapping with a blanket and allow to sit all night, followed by 12-18 hours of straining through cheesecloth.

Voila! Yogurt.  Strained longer, it becomes thicker and more "greek" (and I like my yogurt thick).  I have no idea how much I yield in a batch, but I easily fill up one of those 16 oz. Cool Whip containers, sometimes with a small amount of overflow.  I have not been able to calculate yield by weight, but it is certainly more than the 1.5 lbs scale will measure.  Maybe 2 lbs?  Plus, I end up with 18 to 24 ounces of whey to drink over the week.

This amount of yogurt will last me about a week - yes, I eat that much, which is one reason I started making my own instead of waiting for trips to the grocery store to get more.  That, and by making it myself I pay about half of what it would currently cost me at the store - perhaps more, as a pound of yogurt here goes for $4-6 and I am eating at least twice that.

The only times I purchased yogurt in the last three years is when I go back to The Ranch - I could make it there (I have a crock pot, and culture is easy enough to procure), but it is a solid two day process and I would end up wasting some - a crime in my book, as all yogurt deserves to be eaten.

It is a rather small and silly example of some kind of unplugging from the system - I need milk to do it of course, and there is no way a dairy cow or even a goat is magically going to make it in the toasted stubble that has become my backyard.  But it is an example, my maybe one thing that unplugs me from that system.

Sometimes when we read of changing the world or unplugging from it or unplugging from it to change it, it seems like such a daunting task.  In reality, we can all start somewhere.  It is not the size of the effort that  counts, but making the effort.  Once a thing is done - the solar panel up and feeding energy, the side of beef in the freezer that we bought directly rather than through the commercial system, the vegetables are canned/preserved/dried, the sock darned - we realize that it was not as difficult as we might have thought.  And, the process can be replicated.

The rock breaks not because of the immediate strike, but because of the thousand strikes that came before.

The Moment Of Missing The Target

The moment comes - with almost everything - that you suddenly realize that some things are simply not going to happen.

Sometimes it comes after a short period of time.  Sometimes, it takes a while for the realization to make its way to the surface.  And sometimes, it can literally take years and hours of effort only to realize that a thing - the THING - is simply not going to happen.

The fact is, this moment always comes.  The real question is what one does right after that moment.

My reaction - my ordinary reaction - is to simply give up.  Sigh, settle my shoulders down, and somehow simply accept the fact.  

Which is probably a very human reaction.  Also, probably not a very useful one.  Which means I am trying to work on how to have a better secondary action.

I have never taken defeat well.  Why,  I am not sure.  It certainly is something I have had plenty of experience with it.  Maybe at one point I took it differently - fought back harder, tried to be more nimble and agile - but a lifetime of "Well, not this time either" can wear down at the soul.

Which is fine, of course - but frankly, I am on a clock now (We all are really; most of us never truly appreciate it until we are faced directly with our mortality) and cannot afford myself the luxury of just shrugging my shoulders and "settling" for next time.  Frankly, I may not have the time to generate a "next time", nor the energy to put a whole new structure in place.

So instead, I am trying to face those moments head on.  And adjust in flight to continue on to reach the thing.

It is hard - much harder than I imagined.  It is also not very emotionally satisfying, as most of this is an internal battle and argument with one's self:  "You can completely do this" - "Really, we have been down this path before and it did not work out well last time" - "Yes, but we are not giving up this time".

These discussion can rage, especially as I walk with Poppy The Brave around our urban neighborhood, undoubtedly getting looks in the early morning as I outright talk back and forth with myself.

There is no promise that I will do any better this time than any of the last ones.  What I can hold onto is this:  as long as I am still trying, I have not failed.  I have just found 1,000 ways not to do a thing.  And that, perhaps, is a target of sorts.

Orange Gourd Spice Season - Guinea Pig edition

 In the spirt of the Orange Gourd Spice season, I present here - for the first time since 2017 - two guinea pigs discuss the merits of the Orange Gourd Spice. This remains one of the most topical and meaningful discussions of the subject in my lifetime.  Run time 1:04.

A Passing Moment Of Cake

The main reason for going Downtown for a brunch this weekend was to celebrate Nighean Bhan's 21st birthday.  Perhaps somewhat strangely, she wanted to go to dinner with her friends rather than spend it with her family. 

I know.  Shocking.

After brunch, when we had driven home and gotten out the cake - which she made but to fair, she likes to bake - and opened gifts and were eating away, she randomly made the comment that this was likely the last birthday we would all spend together for a very long time.

There was a start in the room, and then we started doing math.  

Nighean Gheal leaves for The Big City and adult job responsibilities this weekend and, barring a cataclysmic event or just bad job luck, will likely not be back except for visits.  Nighean Bhan  has about 1.5 years of graduate school after graduating this December, and it is unknown where she will be next year in school, let alone after that.  And Nighean Dhonn will head off to college next August.

Have we not spent all the girls' birthdays together?  Of course - Nighean Gheal was gone for two years away to college before The Plague and so the last two years have been a sort of bonus round.  But indeed, the chances that something like this just "happens" again is almost nil.  Any future such events will have to be carefully planned.

They all laughed about it, talked to about flying out (or taking the train) to see each other, then carried on with birthday plans for the evening.  I, on the other hand, just ate my cake and thought.

Here it was - another one of those moments that almost always creeps past us because it has become so expected, so ordinary, that we take it for granted.  And then suddenly - usually after the fact - we realize that the moment was really the last moment, the last time that thing would happen.  There may be other things like it, but they will never rise to the level of being an ordinary event, something that just organically happens. They become extraordinary events, things that do not happen except with careful scripting and planning.

The cake was finished fairly quickly of course, and we were already on to presents and talking about where she was going to dinner.  One can only stand around awkwardly with an empty cake plate in one's hand, so after a suitable interval I excused myself to get ready for the rabbit shelter.  My presence was ancillary at best to the moment, not a requirement at that point.

Sometimes this moments simply get away from us.  I am grateful that I was given the eyes to see it for what it truly was:  the end of an era.

On Apartments Going Up

 This weekend due to a birthday brunch, we had to drive "downtown".

I do not drive "downtown" much - in fact, I do not drive down there at all if I can help it.  We are comfortably ensconced in the nearby suburbs and really, my world has shrunk to a radius of about 5 miles (except for Iai class, which is farther out).  I do not enjoy the traffic, I do not enjoy the masses of people, I do not enjoy urban sprawl or urban renewal (which are often the same in my mind).

That said, my trips down there are so infrequent that it is at least interesting to see the changes.

What I noticed is how many apartments are being thrown up.

Houses (actual houses) do still get built this close in (although most of that development happens far beyond these environs), but they are running out of room to put them on.  A ten acre plot seems to now hold fifteen to twenty houses, all smashed together in the now ubiquitous California "Zero Clearance" style (so named because in California, the spacing between new houses in the 2000s came to be a little less than one person wide on each side of the fence). 

As a result of the land diminishing, it simply is more valuable to build apartments.

These are not the ten or twenty units I knew growing up.  These are hundreds of units spread out over large acres, three to five stories up in the sky (or more, if you are downtown).  Banks of empty sockets that will become windows and possibly decks stare back as you drive by.

I shudder when I see them.

Let us assume a three hundred unit apartment complex, with three people average per apartment.  That is 900 people crammed into a space less than some small towns that have less populations.

The units, of course, are totally dependent on local utilities for electricity, gas, and water.  No "pull out a generator" or "borrow your neighbor's" when the power goes out in Winter (or worse here, in Summer where there is nothing but the face of the Sun).  Minimal ability if any exists to do something like provide some element of food for one's self in any way.  

Then multiply all of this.  By tens easily, but one could probably find 50 such projects going on right now. 

We lived in apartments the first seven to eight years of our marriage.  We moved after that into a house, and have been in a house ever since. Beyond just the fact that I have some level of space from my neighbors, there are any number of things I can do even on my limited piece of property, should I choose to.  But for those that will inhabit these towering hives, there is little if anything they can do.

It all works well of course - utilities, groceries, water - until something bad happens.  Something that takes down the power that heats and cools and powers the cooking and refrigeration units and drives the city pumps that move the water.  Then, things get a bit more dicey.

This is what truly terrifies me as I see these edifices going up.

Compact urban planning, like many things, depends on a number of factors to make it effective.  And it is not just space and willingness of people to live that way.  It depends on reliable food, fuel, and water to always be available, to always be delivered, and to only fail in the most limited of circumstances.  It relies on an economic system and supply chain that always functions and always prioritizes making sure supplies are delivered to the city.

Many probably drive by and marvel at the newness and sheen of the building.  I drive by and wonder "What happens when something goes wrong?"

Autumn-ish

It is beginning to feel like Autumn.

The temperatures, although still almost still "Face of The Sun" hot, are starting to drop down into a reasonably cool zone (high 50's - low 60's) at night, which makes for a pleasant morning walk, even if it does not really make the day any less heated.  The sunlight is beginning to acquire that slant which it only seems to hit in Autumn (Oddly enough, there is not a similar slant of light when we transition from Winter to Spring.  I have no idea why that is).

Commercially, of course, everything has already lurched to "Orange Gourd Spiced Everything".  This amuses me as it always does; growing up, there was no "taste of Autumn" and pumpkins were something we had as pie only.  Now, everything gets the "Orange Gourd Spice" moniker: for some things that works and many things that do not (as a whole, pumpkin spiced beer does not, although there is a delightful pumpkin beer that is often available at this time of year and is enjoyable - in small doses).  More importantly, of course, Mallow Pumpkins from Brach's now fill the seasonal candy section of store shelves.   A bag will eventually make it way to Taigh na Thoirdhealbheach Beucail where the amount of pumpkins will be rationed (two a day) and a second bag hidden somewhere else for consumption while the decoy bag is left out as a distraction.

I am feeling a bit Autumn-ish myself as well.

I have a sense - and I can give you no really meaningful reason for it - that things are winding down, somehow.  That crossroads or decision point I keep hinting at and gesturing to seems to now be encompassing me, even though I cannot fully understand what they are asking me to decide or which road to take.   Like Autumn, they are not "telling" me anything, but the leaves of my soul seem to start changing color anyway.

Is it some odd sense of needing to prepare, like the squirrels in my yard seeking to hide acorns for later in the season?  Yes, partially.  In that way, perhaps, Autumn is driving me to turn inward to look after those things that need to be attended to.

At the same time, it is not just as simply as "I need more Orange Gourd Spice supplies".

Preparedness for any emergency can take many forms, not simply the need to store more physical things.  It is also the mental and philosophical preparation of the mind and sometimes the body; the fastening of memory and thoughts and learning into the mind to be referred to in the dark of Winter. It is this sort of thing that weighs on my mind equally as heavily; perhaps even more so than just the collection of things.

It is one thing to prepare in Autumn for a mild Winter that one overprepares for.  It is a different thing entirely to not prepare in Autumn for the Long Winter no-one expected to come.

Clothed With Our Nature

"That God should have clothed himself with our nature is a fact that should not seem strange or extravagant to minds that do not form too paltry an idea of reality.  Who, looking at the universe, would be so feeble-minded as not to believe that God is all in all; that he clothes himself with the universe, and at the same time contains it and dwells in it?  What exists depends on Him who exists, and nothing can exist except in the bosom of Him who is.

If then all is in him, and he is in all, why blush for the faith that teaches us that one day God was born in the human condition, God who still today exists in humanity?

Indeed, if the presence of God in us does not take the same form now as it did then, we can at least agree in recognizing that he is in us today no less than he was then.  Today, he is involved with us as much as he maintains creation in existence.  Then, he mingled himself with our being to deify it by contact with him, after he snatched it from death...For his resurrection became for mortals the promise of their return to immortal life."

Gregory of Nyssa (330-395 A.D.), Catechetical Orations 25, quoted in The Roots of Christian Mysticism, Oliver Clement

A Simple Luxury

 Although on the whole I try to be economical and thrifty (often fancy words for "cheap"), there are a few luxuries I purchase for myself that literally make no logical sense.  Books are one of these, of course - not that books are illogical of course, only the rather sheer quantity I own and continue to procure.

Another is shaving cream.

Many many years ago - good heavens, looking back I see it was 11! - I wrote a post on A Good Shave.  I had converted over to using soap in a bowl and a bristle brush years before that, mostly originally out of an obstinate need to be different and vaguely British (while everyone uses the same cream, for some reason I associate it with 19th Century Britain).  And then at some point, I took a risk (most likely based on some article I read) and bought shaving cream.

I purchase my shaving cream from Truefitt and Hill, a British company specializing in Men's grooming (So, the British motif is still working for me).  It is certainly not the least expensive such thing on the market, but it has become one of my personal justifiable luxuries.  

On one hand of course, it makes no sense.  I could get the same thing much more cheaply in vast quantities at my local grocery store for what a single bowl costs (although to be fair, a bowl lasts a long time).   And yet, there is something about opening up the lid, working the brush in a little, and then putting the full-bodied thick soap onto your face, letting it sit there for a bit, and then shaving. It makes it more of a production, something to look forward to, rather than just something I have to get out of they way.

The original scent I purchase was Trafalgar, which was delightful.  My current scent above is 1805, which I think I like a trifle better. Also - because I got a gift card for Father's Day - I purchased a smaller tube of the West Indian Limes shaving soap.  This in particular has an amazing scent.

It can be said - and righteously so - that in an age of increasing expenses and instability, the concept of spending a rather foolish amount of money on something that can be procured more cheaply is silly at best and foolish at worst.  

If practiced for every item we buy, I agree.  If practiced in small ways, I do not.

We can always purchase things that are effectively the cheapest and the lowest common denominator, and if practiced over time, we will save money.  What we will not save and sometimes sacrifice is the enjoyment of very simple pleasures.  Something like whipping up a shave in the morning that is from a bowl and brush instead of a can is indeed a very simple pleasure for a practice millions do anyway; the difference is that something simple like shaving cream turns a daily task into something of a pleasure.

Arguably this sort of thing does nothing for my shave.  It does, however, do a great deal my larger life.  And if it is somehow improving that, it not just a justified expense - it is a bargain.

On Commitment

During the last of of Iai practice, I was confronted with the fact that although I know forms, I do not know them well enough.  

This is a bit problematic in that I am, by far, the longest student in the dojo at 13 years.  I should have a high degree of familiarity with the entire curriculum and the various other portions of training exercises that we do. Sadly, I do not.

It is one thing to leave class tired and exhausted. It is another to leave class questioning your knowledge of the subject matter.

As I mulled the facts over as I drove home (and then again, when I drove home again), what came to my mind is that there was a certain level of commitment lacking in my training.  I knew "enough", but I was not going beyond that to a deeper level.  And as I reflected on that, I realized that it is far too true in many aspects of my life.

It is an odd thing, as commitment to action is something we talk a lot about in Iai - one of the first things I memorized when I started all those years ago is the phrase "What is the meaning of drawn the sword quickly?  When you have made a decision, act immediately and without hesitation".  In other words, commit to the action when you have decided.  And swordsmanship, if nothing else, is all about committing.

So why is it, that I have this reluctance to commit fully to the things I am doing?

Part of it seems to stem from my never ending struggle to make a decision.  In so many ways, I act now like I acted 30 years ago:  making a decision is hard because it rules out other options (and, by the way, you may make the wrong decision).  That was fine at that time, when there was still a long way to go and many options existed.  The way is not so long now, and if I am truly honest with myself, many of those options do not exist in the same form or fashion as they once did.

Committing to a decision - truly committing to a decision to study this or that or practice this or that - is by default a restrictive, dividing activity.  It is not saying that one will not do anything else, but it is admitting that due to the time and effort of the commitment, one may not be doing many other things.  Add on a series of commitments - true commitments - and if one is honest, the circle becomes very small indeed.

Reflecting on it, it is a great deal like marriage.  One has consciously put aside everyone else for one's spouse, and has promised to do so until one ceases to live.  It is not that there are not other relationships that  enrich and enlighten, but the main commitment and focus and energy is there.

And this, in the other areas of my life, I have been fooling myself one.

It has prompted a review of all the things I am "doing", to see exactly 1) What it actually is; 2) What an actual commitment to it would mean; and 3) How much time that entails.  Just an initial high level pass already means that if I truly want to commit, the list drops off rather precipitously.

There is nothing wrong with being a Jack of All Trades - I am one, and it as a handy thing to be - but I do not think that should be substituted as a commitment to a few activities or things.  Without that commitment, one never gets to the deeper levels of understanding and expertise that one needs to truly excel in a field or activity.  

On the bright side, I suppose, one will also go home feeling not as quite a poor long term student.

Dead Tree Walking

One of the most amazing of the trees we saw was almost as we ended the hike.

Closer up, it did look like a dead tree walking!

 

One Morning, Two Realities

 Every morning when I get up, there are two realities.

The inner reality is right around me.  Poppy the Brave almost taking a nap, waiting for the sign we will take her morning walk. walk.  A The Cat in his awkward pre-morning "I missed you and all from the night, but I am a little angry and will be until breakfast".  The Rabbits, patiently eating away at last night's hay until breakfast.  The Guinea pigs, not so patiently waiting for breakfast ("Hey!  You!  Over there behind the couch where we cannot see you!  What are the chances that you can break out food a little early?").  

My coffee is warm, the Bible and whatever book I am reading - in this case, The Ladder of Perfection by Walter Hilton (14th Century meditation from England) - on the table.  My journal is there as well, ready to record the morning's thoughts; most recently a sort of diatribe about how I am either not using my time effectively or am not focusing the way I should.

The outer reality is right beyond that, not even beyond the walls but as close as the soft unheard click of a power button, reminding me that the world is - at best - unsettled in any number of ways.  If I make the same click on my work computer, I can find the same thing - unsettled in any number of ways, questions and comments and concerns and "Where are we?" and "Why is this not done?" almost as prominent as the actual e-mails that contain information.

Of the two worlds, I know where I fit in better.  The books and animals are far more of interest to me than almost anything that occurs beyond these four walls and as I am finding, the victories of the outer world are as fleeting as the philosophers and poets of old suggested, even if we ignored them when we were younger (as the young ever do).

And so I sit, think about things, then work to push the soft silent clicks away for a little longer.   The quiet sounds of life, the books with their wisdom, the coffee with its steaming warmth, are far more of life than "real life" seems to be.

September 2022 Grab Bag

If March in traditional Western culture "Comes in like a lion and leaves like a lamb", September this year seems to have stumbled in a bit like  Drunken Sailor; hopefully it will leave the same way without too much damage to the store or its surroundings.  There are a lot of small moving parts going on that somehow made it seem easier to just do a general update (while my mind and writing were still on the summit of Mt. Whitney, events continue to move right along.

1)  Fire Update:  Thankfully due to a very unseasonable rain, the fire fighting has made amazing progress. The mandatory evacuation requirement for The Ranch has moved back to an evacuation warning, and Uisdean Ruadh and his mother are safely back in the home.  The Cowboy and the Young Cowboy are still under evacuation notice, but hopefully that will clear up  in the next few days or so. The fire still continues to burn of course, and will do so for quite a while - initially estimates were containment (not putting it out) to the middle of October; we will see how much this weather improved things.

2) Nighean Gheal, the oldest, is about two weeks away from packing up and heading out to The Big City for her first official post-college career job.  You may remember that she graduated last year after one of the most ridiculous college careers in history (the first two years were okay, but then The Plague) and so took the post-graduation year as a gap year (she had a job offer, so it was all good) doing on-line tutoring, traveling a lot (internally in the U.S., to Morocco, to Costa Rica, to Europe, and to Africa), doing on-line courses to help her in her career, and teaching herself things like electronic music making and Adobe Suite.  It has been nice to have her around for the extra year (after all, she was gone for almost all of the four previous ones), but all things must end - and really, after all, this is why we raise them to be independent, right?

3)  Nighean Bhan, the middle child, is close to having a "Significant Birthday Which May Or May Not Involve The Legal Drinking of Certain Substances".  She is almost at the end of her college career (a mere two classes away!), graduating a semester early in December, after which she will start applying for graduate school (her chosen career field, Speech Pathology, requires it).  Thankfully she has moved home and college rent (for her, anyway) is now a thing of the past.  I would feel flush with cash, except...

4)  Nighean Dhonn , the youngest is in her final year of secondary education and starting to make her own set of schooling decisions (good, flush with cash feeling...).  

5)  All of this has culminated in the fact that for the first time in almost 3 years, I will not be making a monthly visit to the Ranch this week.

Part of it is simply that "evacuation warning" is not the same as "evacuation free", and there is always the chance that something could turn for the worst.  And thanks to the fact that the House is there, my sister and I have been able to offer it to The Cowboy and Young Cowboy and their families during their evacuation (because let us be frank: the house is sitting there empty and completely furnished and my father would have wanted it used as such).  I do not want to show up and crowd their lives if they have to wait it out longer - or worse, return.

Plus, given all of the factors listed above, it seems reasonable that I should be here right now with my family, instead of somewhere else.  And after all - given the last two weeks, it is not like anyone has not been checking on the property.

There is plenty to keep me busy here of course.  The Summer garden is pretty much done and needs to be ripped out and there is that big dead patch of grass in the backyard from this Summer that needs to be dealt with somehow.  I have Iai and weight training and the rabbits to take care of.

I will head out in early October to do my picture selection for TB The Elder's funeral, which was one of the activities I was going to do this week.  It will be shorter - but I will just take the time off completely from work instead of having to not work and then work.

Given the pace of the last two months, I would welcome a small break.

Free Falling (From A Plane)

 So there I was, falling from 10,000 feet....

This makes for either 1)  The worst writing prompt ever ; 2) An actual emergency; or 3) A skydiving event this weekend.

Thankfully, it was the third.

The genesis of this lies in my current employer's spot rewards program.  They have contracted with a company to give employees "experiences", from something as simple as a beer tasting or art lesson to something as complex as a helicopter ride.  One receives them at certain work anniversaries - I received one last year as part of my X work anniversary, which after careful deliberation was the two hour massage - and for certain noteworthy recognitions.  In my case, I got another one.  I had thought about skydiving the first time, but a massage to kick off the Christmas vacation sounded too good to be true.  When the second reward arrived, it was as if the universe was saying "Go do it".

Okay Universe, you win.

This was the second attempt that I had made - our first attempt two weeks ago was canceled by inclement weather after we reached about 7,000 feet.  To that extent I was already prepared as I had been through the pre-flight training and even going up before.

The jump team consisted of three:  myself, M - my tandem jumper (he described himself as an ex-army paratrooper with a degree in Computer Engineering that realized he would rather make a living jumping -, and C, who was acting as our camera person (yes, I paid for the pictures and the video. Who knows if I am going to do this again).  We pack into a small Cesna after the pre-flight video and up we go. C is next to pilot facing backwards, M sits across from her with his back the tail, and I my back is planted against the pilot's seat.

Prior to two weeks ago, it had been years since I had been up in a small plane.  One forgets the noise and the fact that a small plane moves around a lot more than a jetliner.  We climb up over the checkboard pattern of fields and small homes.  Once or twice the video goes on and I wave and give thumbs up, otherwise I am watching us go up and up and up over about 15 minutes. We start to not only go through the clouds, but top over them.

Probably two minutes prior to the jump I kneel before M and he attaches the harness - four connections points I remember, any one of which can hold 5,000 lbs.  I lean back against him.  He gets closer and, yelling, reminds me that we are completely attached and he is completely in control and has me and just to enjoy the ride.  I have a minute or so to digest this, then C moves to the door under the wing, pops it up and open, and then crawls out on the step above the wheel, grabbing the strut.

We move to the door, with me firmly planting my feet on the step above the wheel to prevent my feet from blowing away.  I feel M get in position behind me.  Am I ready, comes the call.

This was the only moment I projected I would have fear:  sitting on the edge of the plane, 10,000 feet up with nothing below me.  I give the thumbs up.  I feel M rocking behind me. One, two...

And we are out.

We are suddenly hurtling through the air as we the plane simply slips by us - or more correctly, we slip by it.  We do a complete flip over and suddenly I am upside down, looking up at the plane's fuselage as it passes over, then flipped back over facing the ground.   I can hear M shouting through his helmet, bellowing celebratory hoots.  I go to shout as well; not only is the sound ripped away before it can come out but my mouth becomes instantly drier than if I was sleeping with two plugged nostrils all night.  I am in the initial jump position:  Head back, legs curled under like a banana, both hands gripping my harness pretty tightly

The drogue chute - that little parachute you often see - deploys; we are now falling at the relatively "steady" speed of 120 mph/193 kmh.  C is now besides us and extends her arms; belatedly I realize she setting up for a fist bump.  I return it with the awkwardness of any 50+ year old, trying to be cool and failing miserably.  She falls away as we continue to drop down, ploughing through clouds like a knife.  M prompts me to release my harness and get my arms out; another round of pictures with me giving thumbs up and "Shout At The Devil" hands.  

We are only about 45 seconds into the jump.

There is a moment where suddenly I feel myself falling with M.  The main chute has deployed; with a start I am pulled back in.

The rush of noise has suddenly disappeared; we are floating above the mosaic we saw going up. To the North and East I can see small squalls of in the distance.  The silence is  complete, except for the vague blowing of air and the whistling of the folds of the parachute.  The weather, hot and humid below, is pleasantly cool.

M controls our descent with two handles, one on the left and one on the right.  Do I like roller coasters, he asks.  When I respond in the affirmative, he pulls down hard on the right handle - suddenly we are corkscrewing wildly down to put the speed of a roller coaster  to shame. I scream my lungs out, laughing all the way.

He passes the handles to me.  Now I am in control of the descent.  I am much less of a hurry; I slightly turn to one side and then to the other for the view.  The silence continues to amaze me.  I comment to M that I understand how this could be addictive.  He just laughs.

At some point he asks to take back control to land us.  I give the handles back; as he continues to guide us down, I just stick my arms out wide and float above the landscape.

Our landing is almost un-noteworthy:  I pull my legs up and out straight in from of me as M flares the parachute; we sit down on our butts and slide about two feet.   We are less than 10 feet from where we boarded.

Like that, it is over.

There is another round of pictures and quick video and then, apologizing, C and M run off as they have a line of customers eager to have their own experiences. I stroll back a little more slowly and disengage from my harness.  Almost like that, the experience over - beyond the wait, the experience was perhaps 20 minutes in total, and 15 of that was climbing into the sky.

I am asked, on the video and afterwards, would I do it again.  I answer yes - I am sure most people do - but I think I mean it this time.  It is not because of the adrenaline rush - which is palpable, and which I feel again even as I write this.  It is not for bragging rights - but those are real as well.  

It is for the simple reason that, knowing that I would have that moment of fear, I went ahead and jumped anyway.

There is a philosophy of thought that states that one reason we grow old and fearful is not just because our bodies find they can no longer do certain things.  It is that we reach the point that we no longer put ourselves in the position to challenge ourselves, to  put ourselves in uncomfortable situations and make ourselves adapt to the circumstances.  It does not have to be dangerous of course - and while skydiving is likely not for everyone, at no time did I feel that I was ever in any danger - but it does have to make us stretch.  To the extent that skydiving, or any other activity makes me confront a fear or discomfort, I will do it.

Growing old, as they say, is given.  Growing up to fit into that skin of growing old is completely optional.  Sometimes it is just as simple as putting your feet onto the step and rolling out.

Mt. Whitney 2022: Rule Of Five

 So likely this will be the last post on Whitney for awhile.

It is certainly not that I have exhausted my picture store - oh, there are still plenty of pictures! - as I have my immediate thoughts on it.  It is almost a month in the rearview mirror now, and while the changes are there in me, life is clicking along at a pretty good pace.  Smelling the roses is important, but smelling them only to the exclusion of other things does not move the needle in other areas.

With that said, here are the Mt. Whitney Rule of Five.

1)  You really can do more than you think.

This is probably self evident to my readers, but not always to me:  simply put, I often do not believe myself capable of things and so, do not attempt them. It is remarkable what one can do when effectively one has shut off all other avenues of escape - like, for example, being three days away from civilization and having no other choice but to go up.

2)  Tuning out is really a rather good thing.

Among all the things I did miss during my hike, the world was not one of them.  7.5 days of being "unavailable" to the world and current events was a blessing that I did not fully appreciate until it was forced on me.  True, having beautiful scenery and no other worries helps, but sometimes the world really is too much with us.

3)  We underrate the value of simplicity but forget it is built on complexity.

On one hand, we can get so trapped in the complexities of our lives and our stuff that we cannot accomplish much.  On the other hand, we can so simplify our life that suddenly we do not have the things we need to accomplish much.  All of us carried our homes on our backs for eight days - but that was because it was limited hike and we all had clothing and supplies that made having those few useful things possible.

There is a balance between simplicity and complexity, of having too much and not enough, that we need to keep in mind.

4) Isolating people from their environments makes things work better.

One of the noticeable things on the hike is that - by and large - we all got along pleasantly enough.  When we would interact with other hikers, they were pleasant interactions:  "Hi?  How are you doing?  Where are you headed?  How long have you been on the trail?"  The fact of doing an activity that was enjoyable combined with the fact that almost no-one actually had any idea what was going on "out there"  made for truly enjoyable interactions.  And there was almost an unspoken rule - at least in our group - that the outside world was not to be discussed, at least except for personal adventures.  Yes, once or twice it was violated (it always somehow is), but it really just died there, if for no other reason than no-one else engaged.

I wonder:  Is part of the problem of why in general we so often clash with people because of the fact that all that is around us is telling us how to react instead of ourselves?

5)  The world is big, we are small.

No mystery to most people that think or read those blogs to right, but the world is much bigger - and resilient - than we can possibly imagine.  We get caught up in our small views of world, trapped in cities or urban areas, and come to believe that Nature "out there" is just like Nature "here".  It is in kind, but not in grandeur or size or space.  I hiked 83 miles in a wilderness and still likely saw a very small portion of it, a far smaller portion than I would likely see if I drove 83 miles between one city and another.  Likely in that drive, I would become depressed by the similarity of all the urban centers I passed.  In hiking, I was continually amazed by the variety and scope of the landscape.

Seasons And Letting Go

 (Fire Update:  No specific update.  The fire has continued to grow but again, mostly in the opposite direction.  An unseasonable rain is expected this weekend, which is actually about one month early from what we usually see.  There is some hope that this will be significant enough to be a real boon to the fire fighting attempt).

Friend of this blog Leigh Tate at Five Acres and Dream has written eloquently and often about the traditional concept of the Agricultural Year - different than our traditional Western Julian Calendar or even the Asian Lunar Calendar - that follows the seasons rather than the dates on the calendar (her most recent writing on the subject is here).  To anyone that follows a more "traditional" lifestyle, there is a lot of sense to this - after all, life advances at the speed of Nature and its seasons, not the other way around.  This was a concept that Masanobu Fukuoka was also a great proponent of in his book One Straw Revolution - in fact, he has designed a whole calendar which allowed one to eat local foods all year based on their ripening and availability.

When I had commented on Leigh's post last week, I had noted that in New Home, it did not at all feel like Autumn was coming - it was still hot and humid.  This week, I am not so sure.

The gauging of seasons in Old Home and At The Ranch is somewhat more straightforward: Summer slowly winds down in September, followed by a brief return (usually) right at the end of September.  October cools and if one does not have one's garden in by the end of October, it is a gamble if one can get it in at all, as the rains start in October and the ground will rapidly become too wet.  From there, it is typically wet and cold with rain/snow through the end of February to early March.

Here in New Home, our Summer just sort of lingers - or the heat does, anyway - until sometime in late October or early November, at which point we will get the most glorious sort of enjoyable weather - for about two weeks.  Then, we roll right on into either the Arctic or mild weather that makes us the envy of everyone North of us.  That said, my garden will need to be ready about the same time, although certain things - sweet potatoes, for example - may well be harvested through the end of November or until the killing frost returns.

The odd thing this year - and the reason that Leigh's post gave me more than my usual pause and agreement - is that it feels like my own seasons are changing as well.

Part of it is the way of life, I suppose:  Nighean Gheal, the oldest, is about 3 weeks away from actually starting her adult life in The Big Big City - the sort of start where visits home are just that - visits - not longer stays.  Nighean Bhan will finish her college degree and work while applying to graduate school.  Nighean Dhonn is in her senior year of high school; next year she will likely be away as well.  

It is not quite an empty next, but it is clearing out quickly.

But even for myself, I can feel the change.

It is not a physical thing (well, mostly not - although my body has its own set of seemingly new complaints) as it is a mental thing.  My interest in a great many issues has waned in the last few years, much more quickly than I had anticipated.  The need to "be out" is almost completely gone, although the few times I do it makes it all the more enjoyable.  I find myself much preparing for a Winter that I do not quite understand what it will look like, other than the sense that I will come out on the other side of it into Spring.

It is odd, this almost sudden letting go of things into the wind where before they were clung to so tightly.  Perhaps in some small way, this is what the trees feel when they cast their leaves away:  no pain or regret, just a gentle release knowing that Spring is coming.

Vistas And Views

Random Vistas and Views I have not posted yet from the hike.