Perspective

The Fairy of Eagle Nebula, Ten light years tall and spewing radiation much hotter than fire.  The Greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is an evaportting shell of gas and dust inside of which is a spectacular star nursey.

My daughter Erin posts NASA photos regularly on her blog, Thought and Memory, and I find myself dazzled and amazed by their beauty and scope.  All our mythology and religious dogma seems pale in comparison to these breathtaking glimpses of the cosmos.  This particular one was discovered by a man named Jean Phillippe de Cheseaux in 1745. It is in the constellation Serpens (Serpent).  It is 6,500 light years away from us.  Our first images of it came from the Hubble telescope in 1995, when it was named The Pillars of Creation.

Since light travels 186,000 miles a second, a light year is 5.88 trillion miles.  So this beautful Nebula is 39,000 trillion miles away from us and yet we can see it.  Or so we think.  It is 9.5 light years tall, 1 to 2 million years old and a nursery to 460 stars whose luminosity is 1 million times that of our sun.   

The columns that look like stalagmites are full of interstellar hydrogen gas and dust and they act as incubators of new stars.  Inside the columns and on their surface are knots of denser gas called EGGs, or Evaporaating Gaseous Globules.  Someone had a good time with that.  This is where the stars are being formed, as we speak; maybe. Because there is some evidence that the Pillars of Creation may have been destroyed in a supernova explosion 6,000 years ago. If so, the new shape of the pillars will take another 500 years to reach us.

How we know or surmise all of these events is quite naturally beyond the scope of my education. Apart from the Hubble telescope and its pictures, it is incomprehensible to me.  But those images have been the source of great awe and wonder. 

They cause me to think how insignificant we are, but also how easily the cosmos and mother nature can replace our efforts here with a new model, if we fail to right our planet.    

 

 

The roof kittens have grown up and they return, not everyday but many mornings for a meal,  all but one.  The beautiful black and white cat with the wide blaze and sweet face has not been here for days, maybe weeks.  I am hoping that she is off in a safe corner with her kittens and that one morning she will return. I was away for a month and no one fed them in my yard.  I think they found other friends as they are sleek and lovely.  Upon my return they all came back to the roof and watched me solemly as I watered the garden or hung up the laundry.  That day our routine was restored and most mornings they wait for me.

                                                                                               



But these roof dwellers never come down into my yard, because I have two dogs who live here.  Never mind that they would never hurt them, they would bark and chase and run in circles.  I know they wouldn't hurt them, because even in the middle of the night when they are beside themselves to go out and chase whatever they clearly know is in the patio, they come back satisfied no blood spilt. And when I go out to look, there sits in the garden a baby possum, slowly making its way out of the yard, unfazed. So, two new kittens have come to live with us, the dogs and me, in the house.  One found us when we were on our morning walk.  He was starving and motherless and totally unafraid of the dogs. He crossed a major road and marched right up to us. His voice and ears were most of what he had left and his desperation was so complete, it overcame fear.  I scooped him up and brought him home.  He was sick for two weeks and so small I could carry him to the vet in one hand.  He's grown into a sleek, spoiled beauty, still fearless and now a little imperious. Taking to wrapping his paws around my ankle to stop me in the kitchen when he wants more to eat.  Underfoot so much that finally it occurred to me that another kitten was the cure for this needing constant attention problem. And as the karma of the creative universe would have it, another appeared.  A small and perfectly beautiful kitten.

And here they are.....

For Bandit & Future & Hannah et al

Nothing will break your heart quite like a dog. Maybe it has to do with how you can just pour love into them and they pour it right back. It’s one of the most uncomplicated and unconditional things you get to have in a lifetime. You might believe that you take care of them, but without fail, and whether you realize it or not, you are just providing for them while they take care of you. It’s why in spite of their old age or illness, if we can’t let them go, they won’t let go either. They will stay with us past the point of their own comfort just because they know we need them so.  It’s why if they absolutely can’t hold on, they wander off to die so as not to burden us one last time. They protect us for as long as they can. It’s why when we lose them, and always too soon, it hurts in such a specific way. Because we love them, very simply. But also because they forgive us for everything, long before we can forgive ourselves. Because on the days that we fail at all of it, fail to even get out of bed, they stay by our side. It’s like they have a secret way of seeing people that looks past all of the knotted flaws and defenses. You are always the best version of yourself to your dog.  They are generous and unstinting and they redeem us. It’s why the time they gave you outweighs your broken heart and somehow you still know how lucky you are to have known them.

                                                                                

My Backyard

I have posted some pictures of my backyard, but let me explain.

First there are the bumble bees in all their finery. They inhabit my orchid blossoms just as they did last year, burrowing into each blossom with a diligent gusto. I would like to know what rapture they find there, or is it merely duty.  I posted here about these bees last year. There were five blossoms last year and every morning a squadron of five bumblebees arrived to hover, one for each blossom.  My question to myself last year was how they knew to send just that number? Were they communicating bee to bee to bud.

 This year there are 8 blossoms and a bee for each.  I am now happily convinced that they have some special ways. They count and organize and open these blossoms in a matter of a very few days.  And then this magical ritual is over.  The blossoms are spent, the bees are elsewhere.  That is until next year. I think that we humans completely underestimate or maybe just ignore the wonder of how smoothly the natural world operates without our intrusion or participation.  It is humbling to see it in this small yearly drama.

But it is also true that had I not written about it here, on this marvel of technology last year, I would not have trusted my memory to report with confidence that these little furry fliers had indeed showed up again in the right number for their buds. And that funny little fact, that the universe has so carefully designed an existence for these buds and bees, supports me in my daily round.  It is sensible this lovely backdrop called the earth.  It is not random, it is infinitely detailed and gloriously arranged so that buds will open and bees will answer their call.  How could I be lost in the stars?

And here are the roof kitties. Actually there are four, maybe five and they live on the roof across from my house. I have had a rule that feeding these guys was not a good idea, unless I could trap them so that they wouldn’t multiply to numbers that would no longer fit on the roof. But this year I have succumbed.

This little litter sits perched on the roof watching me weed the garden and hang the laundry.  They look right into my eyes and don’t scurry backwards from the edge unless the dogs have come out to complain and remind them this yard is not theirs.  As if they would venture down. They are a motley crew.  The four you see here and another very shy little tabby.  So now every morning and every evening when they come out to watch me in the garden, I put a bowl of food on the bodega roof and I watch them.  They parry and dodge, nudge and wait, but finally, I think they share more or less.  Their mother comes by at times, but sits back, as if she knows this food is for them.  She does not eat it. Their future is a little uncertain, there is danger in the world for them, but I have succumbed and with that surrender comes commitment.  I will do my best.

I got a call this morning from the Harrison Street Café.  A very presentable young man was calling to tell me that my daughter Erin’s cell phone was left there at the café.  He said he figured mom was the best number to call and so he did.  Harrison Street Café and my daughter are thousands of miles and a day’s travel from here.   How lovely that I can email her or call her sister and tell her where to find her phone. A beeline of a sort, thanks to human ingenuity.  How small is our world or how big is my backyard?  We are definitely not lost in the stars.

 

If it’s true (and I’ve been told it’s true) that all these particles that make up this thing I am (and the thing that is you) were forged in the furnace of some dark dark night, were made in the belly of some distant star, is it any wonder I feel so unmapped? Uncharted insides with valleys I can’t see the bottom of, maybe tiny glowing fish swimming through the lowest reaches, somewhere down past my toes. And maybe my freckles are not freckles, but pin-points on a globe, places where the things I said to you once bubbled up from, where that one dream about the ocean occupying a corner of my bedroom came from, places where something has been discovered or uncovered or lost. And if we spin as fast as they say we do, is it any wonder I’m often so dizzy, dazzled and uncertain, unsteady on my feet as we careen through so much unknown matter and space between matter. I want to know and I don’t want to know, curious but so in love with mysteries. How lonely and harshly lit might it be if everything was suddenly revealed, forever stuck being exactly what it is?

"I grow old"

When people think of old folks do they imagine Seymour Glass’s fat lady, sitting on her front porch in her rocking chair, swatting flies, probably ill with some old person’s disease, listening to her radio turned up loud? Or J. Alfred Prufrock, questioning whether he dare disturb the universe or eat a peach: “I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” But that’s not it. That is what I thought of old age when I was young and looking at it from afar.

Now, I think instead that being old is more like life was when I was young and I could call up a friend to say, meet me at the high school parking lot with your bike and a sandwich. Let’s go exploring. Or when I could wander up to the grade school ball field and find a pick up softball team. Possibly short in the outfield, but so what. Alone, yes, in that I went home to my own room and only shared some of my thoughts but with plenty of good and invigorating company.

Of course summer would come and we would claim to be bored at times, but still it flew by. But those days then and now, when we claimed boredom, were so still and hot that simply gathering and breathing seemed sufficient activity. We shared the air, the day, our passing thoughts. Then as now this self-same sensation lives in me. Of a day passed in good company to no effect that the world will notice, but all the same, sweet and shared.

And then comes the day when we are on the merry chase for a new experience, a road trip, a day in the country, a movie, a new project. Fully aware that the project is ephemeral, an enthusiasm that we enjoy, but will not save the world.

This is the benediction that is well-spent on the young and the old. We are here to discover ourselves, our surroundings, our commonalities; it does not require tangible results. It requires a mind at work, sifting, musing, and gathering sense, breathing deeply the cause of human existence. Still hoping that things were turn out alright, but now not just for ourselves, but for the world entire.

Why are blank pages so terrifying? Come to think of it, why are most things so terrifying?

There’s really no way to start but to start. Maybe a sharp intake of breath, squeezed eyelids and one step. Like blank pages. Like the running leaps we took out of the hay loft as children, time to barely notice the dust motes swirling in impossible patterns, the bright bars of sunlight, before the jump, the nothing, just your banging heart. I try not to think too much of the future these days. I know it is not promised. I’ve seen it snatched away. It’s easy to build castles in your head. It’s less easy to try and wrap yourself around this very moment, the only one you have, no running commentary, no safe distance, no smirk. Just you. The feeling of falling. Your banging heart.