Time and Reality

This morning, there is a layer of frost melting nearly as fast as the sun rises above the trees. The spider webs are lines etched in the air. The grass, after months of quiet, has shifted into a race toward the sun. The bulbs are reaching out to take in some of that energy and showing us their color. This hyacinth has aged one week- the older one was taken moments ago.

Time does take on a much different perspective as we have more weeks to compare. It seems like a week now is just a blink of the eye. This is such a trite saying and that many, many people have written that before... guess it's great to be one of the thundering herd who've said, written, and noticed this. As I was sitting on the deck watching the sun rise and the birds arrived at the feeders; the robins called out. In a flash it was decades ago and I was outside hearing the Robins call. It was no longer Alpine, Oregon but Oak Harbor, Washington. In a flash I experienced the severing of time and immersion in the past as if it were really this moment. Another person might say that it wasn't "real". That it was only a memory- a flash of recall that was imbedded in our neurological net- that it was only a subjective distortion of the current reality. Is reality something outside our perception of it?

In that moment of cool air, sunshine, robin calls... for a moment, wasn't that reality? Everything else fell away- there was no job, car, Aisling, Susan, I was in my youth. The unfortunate person who is captured in the world of Alzheimer's- is the world they inhabit not real? Maybe as someone who stands from the outside looking in, we could say it is a fantasy world... but it is real to them isn't it?

We are in a dance with the world. Our understanding of life is based on our experiences, culture, family influences, hopes, and fears. What we see is filtered through those many lenses and we make judgments based on those things. Someone will see a purple flower, someone else: a hyancinth, another person: Hyacinthus orientalis and another person will know of the love between Hyancinth, Apollo, and Zephyr. Are any of these any more real than the other? Any more right? Not to me.

There are some conventions and absolutes that are important that I won't others to buy into as being right: compassion, love, kindness rather than anger, hurt, violence.

I wish everyone agreed to do it my way, but that won't happen. People interpret love and kindness differently. Some people think that physical punishment is kindness... something that I can't see. Last weekend we walked along the road and dug up some native plants to repopulate our land with: wild iris, madrone, Douglas Fir, and reeds. In some religions/cultures there is such a reverence for life that they meticulously dig up the soil so that a creature isn't harmed. We tend to be more "expedient" and in the meanwhile, harm and kill numerous little living beings. So, who is "right"?

A final image from last week came from deep inside the bark chips that have been fermenting for almost a year. These fungi were found within the pile of chips that I was shoveling to cover weeds. It was like a hidden world- somehow these was this cavern within the bark chips.


LATE BREAKING NEWS!
Susan just came in and said there were three woodpeckers doing a courtship dance... sure enough there were three Red-Breasted Sapsuckers doing what they do in their courtship. Here are a couple of photos... Time for me to go get my pants dirty.