When I was a kid, I hated centipedes, just like most everyone else. Almost all bugs are creepy — ok, so we give lady bugs a pass, and butterflies can be beautiful. But most bugs have odd shapes and all sorts of crazy and vaguely threatening arrangements of legs and tentacles and body plates, they have weird eyes and stingers and other ugly protrusions. They seem like feelingless robots, as they fly with their buzzing sound or dart around on the ground. Centipedes take “buggyness” to the next level.
But a guy at my zendo once told me that centipedes are a good way to practice the Buddhist notion of patiently respecting all life forms, even insects. You’d have to be a really devoted Buddhist to ignore a poisonous spider or to “gently” remove it. And roaches are so overwhelming; they truly push you to the “me or them” point of survival. But as to the average house centipede . . . well, no doubt that centipedes are terribly ugly and creepy. You usually see one darting across the floor or up a wall, and your instantaneous mental instinct is to drop everything else and plot an “intercept vector” in your head, and then kill the dang thing, right now!
But my Buddhist friend told me that most house centipedes are not a threat to humans. They try to stay away from people, and » continue reading …
While looking through my stamp collection recently, I thought to myself “this arrangement looks pretty nice”. So I got out my camera and snapped a few shots, and have attached more of them below. I started collecting stamps when I was in grammar school, maybe around 1963. My mother had occasionally saved “plate blocks” of commemorative stamps since the late 50s; being a young space geek, I got interested myself when the 4 cent commemorative for Project Mercury came out. My mother thus let me walk down the street to the local post office with a quarter or two in my pocket.
Once I got thru the door and up to the counter (ah, I still remember the cool and slightly musty air and the grim seriousness of the décor), I would ask Mr. Stanton, the regularly assigned postal clerk, if he had any new commemoratives. Sometimes he did, and I » continue reading …
My office recently started bringing people back on a regular basis, although for now most are alternating between a week from home and a week in the office. Most of us were ordered in mid-March to work from home until further notice; I lasted to March 20 before I was told to go home. But now the place is coming back to life, even if it won’t be at full speed anytime soon. Even though I occasionally stopped by my office for an hour or two over the past 3 months, the place mostly seemed like a “dead ship”.
Now I will be there for full days, even if not 5 days a week. So on Monday it was time to get my office calendar updated. When I arrived, I noticed that I hadn’t changed the calendar page since April. It’s as if time stood still. I took down the pages for April, May and June, and then wondered — where did the time go? It’s like COVID just sucked them up and made them disappear. Before I threw out these sheets, I took a pic, as a tribute to the “lost months” of 2020.
It’s the end of another day, the sky is just about dark, and the moon or Venus might already be visible. You’re walking towards the west, along a road going over the top of a minor elevation. Hopefully you have a flashlight, because you’re not in the city. Everything around you is dark and murky and quiet. And yet, you notice something through the bare tree branches, far off in the distance. A faint red-orange glow outlining the silhouette of the western hills. The last bit of fading light from the day that just ended. Goodbye to another day. You’re reminded of the line from the poem “Today” by the Victorian English author Thomas Carlyle —
Out of Eternity this new Day is born;
Into Eternity, at night, will return.
When I was younger, I felt a “twinge” in my mind from sights and thoughts like that. It was some sort of a deep reverberation about the essence of life, something to do with the pure feeling of being. Your eyes might even start getting just a little moist. Whatever happened to that feeling? Where did it go?
The other night I was taking an early evening walk, and I happened upon such a scene. I stood there for a moment beholding it. And I almost felt the “existential twinge” once more. I wondered it if was OK to feel anything like that, surrounded as I was by a world in a pandemic. Despite all of the bad news coming at us almost constantly, I still felt something of a sentimentality for the passing of another day. Goodbye May 13th, or whatever it was that we called you. Thanks for letting me be a little part of your story, and thanks for becoming a little part of my own story.
Let’s take a look at the lines from Carlyle’s poem that follows the famous “Eternity” couplet —
Behold it aforetime, no eye ever did:
So soon it forever from all eyes is hid.
There’s something about the transition from day to night that evokes a sort of un-named emotion. Even the word “twilight” has an almost mystical air about it; it would sound profound even if you didn’t speak a word of English (I think).
Here’s a pic showing the purple twilight of a different day, taken from a different place. I hope that you too have had moments like this when you have felt “the twinge”.
Spring has arrived here in the suburbs, and the flowers and green leaves are returning. Daffodils are usually the first big wave of the tide that brings the return of daylight, color and comfortable weather, a tide that heralds the end of winter. And yet, this particular spring equinox seems very muted and even a bit melancholy, quite uncharacteristically.
We now have to deal with the recent arrival of COVID-19 and a lot of unanticipated changes to our lives because of it. This disease is a real threat to the survival of many people; unfortunately, our national leadership did not do enough up front to contain its spread (as the South Koreans appear to have done), despite at least 6 weeks of warning. We now need to change our lives and our means of survival in order to limit the possible loss of life.
I myself intend to fully comply with the various directives and restrictions and practical changes that the COVID-19 contagion now requires. But like so many of us, I regret the prospect of so much economic shutdown and social isolation. So many things have been cancelled, hopefully only temporarily — although it will be many weeks and possibly even months before life as we know it can return. It almost seems as if the Spring season itself has been cancelled (or greatly delayed).
It almost seems as if these newly sprung daffodils know what is happening amidst their human admirers, and share the somber mood, despite their usual sunny disposition.
One more pic before we start the 2020’s. Actually, this looks more like a tribute to the 1920’s! It looks pretty industrial, maybe even a nuclear power plant! But no, it’s just a mechanical room in a government office building. I used the word “just”, but this is the equipment that keeps several hundred people warm in the winter and cool in summer, and gives them electricity and running water. Without this stuff, the whole office wouldn’t be possible. Maybe someday, technology will eliminate the need for offices, and we can all work and communicate from home or where ever else we are. But until then, or as long as people like the idea of working together under the same roof, we’re gonna depend on relatively low-tech stuff like this to keep our society going.
This is just my friend Rick taking a break while at a local museum, surrounded by some nice Hudson River / pre-Impressionistic works from George Inness.