Cool cat

I woke up at two in the morning a couple of nights ago. I walked into the bathroom. The sink was full of moonlight. So bright, so beautiful, a cool pool of luminous milk. I lapped it up.

Imagine

This says it. Arundhati Roy.

What might stop us? Avarice, stupidity. Fear. Believing that we can return to NORMAL, which is to say the status quo, the same old same old.

I thought of how so much of our experience has been reduced to sound bites: our heroes, we’re all in this together, blah, blah blah.

This can be a portal or we could walk right back into the same old cul de sac.

I don’t know how to fight for a new world, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I am ready to imagine a new world. I am ready.

Covid consciousness

I am feeling a deep sense of dread. Yesterday, Robin and I babysat for Wilder all day. We aren’t usually called upon to do a 9-5, but Emily was working and Joe had an opportunity to earn a little money doing something he loves. Win–win, right?

Wilder wanted to go to the splash park so despite the smoke in the air, we went. We had a ball. There were a number of water features–misters and a huge bucket that filled and then emptied over a score of screaming kids. Even I got into it.

We stayed for about an hour and a half and then left when more people started to come.

We went home, napped, played in the pool, read books and watched Clifford the Dog. We left around five, miraculously made it on the ferry and got home by 6:15.

Later that evening…I was exhausted from running around and went up to bed around eight. I was roaming around in my head thinking about what a great time I had with Wi, and this and that and then POW, I thought of the Delta variant and how I had spent an hour and a half with my grandson who has asthma with a bunch of screaming jostling children, out in the open air, granted, if you want to call this still smoky air, air.

How stupid am I? I was completely appalled at how easily I just forgot. I just forgot. What the fuck.

I forget my mask sometimes, but I usually have one in my purse. I wash my hands. I don’t go to the movies or to restaurants, but playing in the water with kids, I forgot.

Pray god to keep him safe, to keep all the children at that park yesterday safe. Help me to stay aware at all times. Scanning for danger. That is all we can do right now.

The Ferns in my Garden

There are two ferns out in my garden tucked behind some shrubbery. They appear to be dancing, turning this way and that if there is the slightest disturbance in the trees above.

I looked into this phenomenon and apparently it has something to do with the way the fronds are attached to the plant itself, something about a petiole or some such.

How absurd. I much prefer to think that they are dancing the light fandango, dipping and bowing and turning this way and that in tune to a music only they can hear.

This is what is happening in my neck of the woods. What is happening in yours?

This is the mimosa pudica and this is the explanation of why it responds to touch stimulation: the movement of plants caused by touch stimulus is known as Thigmonasty. In this mechanosensory response, water within the cells and other cell contents apply a certain amount of force against the cell walls of the plant; this is called turgor pressure.

I much prefer my explanation that the ferns are dancing in the wind.

This was written at 3:00 in the morning and after I went upstairs to bed with a cup of warm mild, I couldn’t settle down.

This is what I was thinking about. I was thinking about when we talk about sentient beings. We have such a limited view of life, who has it and who doesn’t have it. There are so many ways of being sentient—the octopus who has cognition in his tentacles, the plants who can respond to stimuli. Everything responds to stimuli—-we respond to the sun, the moon, touch, smell, sight, sound and vibration.

I think I am a more seeing god in everything sort of person. For one thing it populates the earth with a lot more examples of life. It makes the world go from humdrum to wonder. I believe that is called pantheism. All life vibrates, celebrates.

I need to not write at night.

Ain’t it wonderful

I know that that the reddish appearance of our light has been altered by firestorms and smake in our area. * But I wanted to know why. Now I know why. There are scientific physical reasons why.

So, light from the sun shining through a clear atmosphere gives an expected visual. Light shining through smoke, or fog is affected, absorbing some of the light rays, deflecting others distorting the appearance of objects on earth. In our area right now with so much smoke in the air, this means that we are seeing mostly the red spectrum which changes our perception of color. This is because red light is scattered less than blue light. The red light reaches the observer’s eye, whereas the blue light is scattered out of the line of sight. Now, after absorbing this little nugget, you might wonder why I didn’t say why. Well I did. But I couldn’t really understand the reasons and so I decided just to accept the ideas as given.

What I don’t know is why some people accept the evidence and some don’t. If you can accept the fact the light waves are affected by smoke, why can’t you accept that vaccines help, or that the earth is round or any of the other mind blowing facts about our great planet and our lives upon it.

The facts that we are on a roundish globe spinning in space, kept in place by gravity are miracles. The idea that we can change the outcome of our lives on earth by the intervention of science—vaccines, masks, carbon uptake apparatus, whatever, is also mind blowing. We have the capacity to change, to imagine, to create a healthier world if only we would.

I’m not saying a blind belief in science is necessary but faith that fair minded and brilliant thinkers might be able to offer us a path out of this dark, damaged world. Let’s listen to our best and brightest. Let’s pay attention to the world around us and say to ourselves, we must act, we must change, we must create new ways of doing things.

Let’s get a kick out of understanding how things work and the opposite, how things fall apart, and devise strategies for survival.

• You’re probably wondering why I didn’t change smake to smoke. I just didn’t feel like it. I went off on a tangent—smoke-smake-smack-snack, and then I went out and got one. So just let it be.

Gardening bits

I don’t know what it is about the light this morning. Rob thinks it’s because I’m looney. Maybe its smoke in the air or moisture. Whatever. All the colors in the garden are accentuated and there is a bit of a red cast even though the sky is grey fading to blue. Very strange. Rather hallucinogetic. The grass is greener, the oranges look lie they’re about to burst into flame, the yellows, the blues, the reds. My squash blossoms look about ready to take a bite out of me. It’s the Little Garden of Horrors.

I tried to capture the rapture but I am afraid it eluded me. My camera can’t seem to capture the kaleidoscopic moment.

Here is a sample.

Here comes the squashblossom

Okay, I know the weird effects I talked about didn’t transfer. You’re going to trust me on this. It was otherworldly. Either that or I’m just trying to drum up some excitement in my life. Either way, accomodate me would you.