“I think that tree is touching the sky,” she yelled on our evening walk around the block. She was wearing a white princess dress with tulle and rhinestones, topped off with a faux fur vest. Drips from her purple popsicle ran down the front of her dress and covered her cheeks. She stopped every few feet to smell a flower or point out a beautiful color. “It’s like a forest,” she said as she walked under the same towering Maple tree as it curved over the sidewalk. I tried to watch from her perspective as she raced ahead of us to sniff another flower. She is that much closer to the blooming tulips and lilacs. And the budding trees just seem that much taller. Plus, she doesn’t have my thirty plus
When I decided to wear black and white to the Symphony, I chose not to wear my great grandmothers jet beads and wore, instead, a black pendant with a white elephant. It’s a favorite because I value the way elephants relate to and take care of each other. I know that no one would be aware of my message. Maybe that’s what put me in the mood to pay attention to the way we relate to each other in our human herd. A young couple with two young boys boarded the train. The younger boy was proudly wearing a wide brim hat that might have been his dads’. It might have been his own prize possession. His broad grin and the way he was enjoying himself, constantly tipping it, pulling it down over his face,
It’s dirt time again and that makes me happy! There’s very little chance of frost and there are lots of bedding plants at the nurseries and hardware stores. I love the conjunction of shiny hard tools and soft rich soil, old roots and rocks with fragile young plants. So much color. So much promise. So much completely unknown. The only promise I’m certain the garden will keep is that things will change. Maybe the soil amended with manure and compost will provide just what my new perennials need, and maybe not. Perhaps the rains will come at favorable times and perhaps not. Oh yes--this is the familiar refrain in my life--maybe yes, maybe no; maybe a happy surprise, maybe a big disappointment.
Heraclitus, (540 bce, died 480 bce), Greek philosopher remembered for his cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material principle of an orderly universe. Viewing fire as the essential material uniting all things, Heraclitus wrote that the world order is an “ever-living fire kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures.” In other words, the universe is dynamic, living, growing, evolving just like all other living things! I love to read Heraclitus early in the morning. He also said, “You cannot step into the same river twice. (My loose translation.) Life is the river that is always moving. It is fitting that I dub, Heraclitus as the patron philosopher for the summer quarter of t
