Yesterday I drove from Vermont to down-east Maine on Route 2. During the first part, my friend Bob guided me through tiny back roads from Vermont into New Hampshire to Route 2; if you ever have to follow another car like that, it helps if it is a fire-truck red pickup truck that you can’t lose out of sight easily. That bright red truck was the beginning of the color game for me when I later sailed across gentle hills east, east, east for seven hours. Since I took up Chinese brush painting in January, my eyes are drawn by lines and colors.
After the bleak, beautiful scenes of the two barren, forbidding deserts we visited this year – Namib and Gobi – I reveled in the green landscape that sustains me - body and soul. Green were the meadows, the lily pads on the ponds and the forests of maple, pines, firs, spruce and sumac. Saturated, satisfying green.
A few colors were sprinkled into the green canvas: rows of orange Turk’s cap lilies, a patch of tall yellow sunflowers, a surprising line of bright red tractors at a dealership, pink roses and big swathes of rosy fireweeds, an occasional blue mailbox and clouds of dainty pale blue flowers that might have been hardy geraniums, the subdued red of barns, brown male flowers uppermost on green cornstalks, the purple loosestrife that invades the boggier areas, the black ruins of a burnt-down house, and of course the white houses, steeples and picket fences we all expect from New England. Natural colors and man-made colors – but all insignificant against the green on the hills and in the valleys.
Many of the small towns along Route 2 were decorated with American flags red, white, blue, making a contrast to nature that seemed to say that the “United States” is a concept, and idea that deserves effort and commitment rather than growing organically out of the soil. Something that easily could be swallowed by fertile green if we don’t pay attention.
Gentle rain and creative fog formations wrapped the land, nourishing and renewing. We know, of course, that Nature can come upon us with force and destructive. Not here, not yesterday, though.
Green, of course, is our most wholesome food. When I arrived at the log cabin, tired and hungry, I began cooking a pot of fresh cat food for Otto from ground beef, chicken livers, some rolled oats and dripping wet dandelion greens from the garden. Then I thought the better of it and saved a few pieces of chicken liver for the humans: I browned two big onions in coconut oil, added a sliced Braeburn apple and a handful of green dandelion leaves, and pepper and salt. Last I added the few slivers of chicken liver. A meal for the gods!
During dinner conversation, my friend Matt said the sentence: “I make sure that most of the time I am not too far away to touch a tree.” Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
What Stays
August 8, 2011
Coming from another funeral - this time in Europe - the question lingers: What stays if we have to die anyway?
In this case, love stayed. Love stayed long after the body of the loved one was felled by a series of strokes. For a dozen years the spouse cared for the loved one, with a thousand fears and doubts and difficulties, but never faltering. After all those many years, the loved one died at home, with the family by the bedside. - We all wish for such a death.
And such a love. Not asking what is in there for me. But asking what is the needed thing to do now. - We hear too much about who should be allowed to marry and who not. We should hear more what marriage involves. Not figuring out what he/she does wrong, but what he/she needs now. Whenever I feel sorry that I am not getting what I want, I feel a distances from the people I am with. When I ask: What can I give? What does he/she need now?, I feel close - and rewarded.
(It goes without saying that I don't condone cruelty, abuse, and the myriad of vices that make a marriage unbearable.)
We all know too many examples of the contrasting outcome: The spouse divorces the ailing partner, and runs away with the money, to a better life.
A better life? I cannot think of life and time better applied than caring thus. Read More
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Geronimo!
August 1, 2011
This morning, I woke up to a report on the radio of the capturing of Osama bin Laden.
After the enemy had been killed (without a trial), allegedly the attacker shouted three times the code word: Geronimo! Geronimo! Geronimo! I was lying in bed, asking myself if I had heard what I just had heard.
Geronimo (1809-1929) was the Apache leader who was at the forefront of the battle against the invading White Man – in a lost battle, as history showed. The “superior race” pursued the Native American tribes, expelled them from their lands, waged a war and broke uncountable promises and treaties.
To invoke Geronimo’s name as a code word was bad taste, to say the least. More likely, it describes the true spirit behind our war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. I protest the insensitivity. Perhaps I am hopelessly idealistic but there will be no health on this Earth, as long as we are not respecting minorities and still wage conquering wars. If for no other reason than for the Golden Rule (Don’t do unto others …), we should understand that we are all One and in the same boat. Read More