Yellow redbud trees, orange maples

Death is not the biggest fear we have. Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive: the risk to be alive and express what we really are.

-Don Ruiz

A poem for today, just written. It is October, 8, 2011.

The lake is a myriad of surfaces
A weaving of wind-rippled sections
Clots of green algae, turned over
the bottom has come up. An inversion
a primal funk, now sitting on the surface

But where the wind doesn't touch it
Where the liquidity is still
The water disappears. A mirror, instead, of the trees behind
Undefined; no definition of leaves
Only pure replications of color
A patchwork of golds, orange and green
runny crayons scribbled on the water by the one with no name.
Where the swallow dives for a mosquito,
Where the fish breaks the surface
No image. Just blue brown water
No picture. No reflection. A void.
Be still, so I can have my living painting
Breeze don't blow, don't ruin my alternate universe
The smeared trees, like tears
Running down the face of the lake
The fisherman casts his line, and with the lure
My painting disappears.

-SLG

Mink goes Hunting

I saw something I never would have expected to see. I saw a mink hunt down and kill a young rabbit.

I didn't even know we had minks on the property. I had seen the elusive Mustelids a few times, but I thought they were weasels or ermine (weasel's fancier name). Who knew they were coming back. In the whole of my 50 years, minks have been so trapped, so pursued for their fur, I didn't think many were running around here wild.

But in rural Noble County, along the ponds, I have seen many. They bound like otters, but are smaller, with cute little heads and that beautiful brown fur. Last weekend, I just happened to glance out the window when I was preparing food, and I saw a sweet bunny hopping through the yard. And behind it was a little cat-like creature, which I realized later was a mink.

The bunny would hop, and then the ferret-like mink would hop up, kind of mimicking its movements. I just don't think normally a mink would hop like that - as I said before they kind of bound along, more stretched out. I saw it take two or three bounces near the innocent rabbit, which never did take off running - and then moving very near by, the mink pounced.

Its posture was totally different then - it reminded me of the way a cheetah strikes - pouncing and then rolling its prey over, biting its throat or spine. The mink held the bunny tight, biting it, and striking its stomach with its sharp back claws.

The mink just stayed in this position a minute or two, holding the bunny down, I guess while it finished dying. Then, like a mother cat carrying a kitten, it picked the bunny up by its neck and carried it down to the water. I didn't see either one of them after that. It either swam off with it or carried it somewhere past the cat tails.

That was real hunting. No shot gun, no retriever dog. It was kind of an honor to see that, when one thinks most of the wildlife has been marginalized. You go, mink. It was so much more fun to see you that way, instead of part of a coat.

No animals in this Circus

Tomorrow's life is too late. Live today.

Martial

We saw the Cirque du Soleil show "Quidam" at the Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne Saturday night. Amazingly, there were lots of empty seat in the large venue. The show is just so good I can't believe more people weren't there to see it. Perhaps ticket prices are causing people to hold back in this economic climate. What a pity - I wish everyone, or every child, could see this show.

The gorgeous costuming, the music, is wonderful. There is no dialogue - and certainly none in English. Imagery is used to tell the story. A child whose parents are preoccupied with the adult world begins to play and enters an imaginary world - with fantastic circus performers of all kinds. Asian yo-yo twirlers, jump rope masters, people climbing and hanging in fabrics. Clown directors that recruit audience members to put on a performance communicate in pantomime only.

There are archaic, iconic sorts of figures. There is a headless figure walking around, the top of his empty sports jacket a dark black emptiness. He's eight or ten feet tall. There are suspended ghosts of sorts, in shrouds, that don't really move. Are they corpses? White moths seem to fly out of one of them.

Of course, the performance has breathtaking gymnastics, tumbling, and people launching people up to shoulder stands. The costumes are so dreamy, the fabrics and ropes luxurious, not a detail is unattended to. The music I noticed particularly - traces of French carousel, gypsy, and Middle Eastern or Arabic themes all mixed together. Haunting, melodic, minor mode switches back and forth with major mode. The band was there on stage, in the background, in costume as well.

If you have a chance to see a Cirque du Soleil show, I think you will be glad you did. I'm ready to catch another one.

a fog poem

In dense fog

what is being shouted between

hill and boat.

Basho

There are only eleven words in this simple Haiku poem by the great Zen poetry master Basho. But in these eleven words, a great portrait, a story unveils itself to me.

The objective observation, the neutral position of the writer. The backwardness of the sentence, as compared with the Western way of structuring it. We would frame the sentence with the speakers: "A person in the boat and someone on the hill were shouting .."

So the story has to come together in our mind like a puzzle, in which we envision the thing - an unseen boat, a foggy day, the possibility of crashing into shore in the fog. What are they shouting? What is the cargo of the boat?

And since it is not framed as a question, another way the story falls for me is that they might actually shouting literally, "what?" "what?" between the boat and the shore at some part in the exchange. It seems very plausible.

I find myself imagining Basho himself, whom I have not yet googled. Is he the poor monk, alone meditating on the hill in Japan, who experiences this personally? Did he set out to write a poem that day, or not? Yet, here it is, all eleven words of it, hundreds of years later surviving so that in 2011 I am typing it into a keyboard and expounding upon it by means of the Internet. Basho, could you ever have possibly imagined?

As it turns out, he lived between 1644 - 1694, and was likely born in the class of samurai families. He was primarily a teacher and an intellectual. After gaining some recognition with the academic elite, he later spent many years on his own traveling and exploring, observing nature to write and perfect his craft.

We have occasional fog in Indiana, and it was heavy here a couple of days ago. The day will start out foggy like cold pea soup, and then be bright and sunny in the afternoon. No coastal stuff that can hang around all day.

It certainly can be dangerous, though, so let us be patient, careful and eventually, we know in time the fog will lift.

blue flowers

Summer days are running down to the end here in northern Indiana, 2011. Tomorrow is the first day of Autumn. I shot this photo of a wildflower and bumblebee last weekend. Since then the edges of some maple trees have begun to turn crimson.

Bees of all kinds are very active at this time of year, and I saw some aggressive ones yesterday, when I recycled materials at a community recycling center. This one was located on Schwartz Road Just south of the Leo-Grabill Road, and across from Riverside Park. The self-service recycling center has two cache bins: glass, and commingled. I had to slide open bin doors and read a graphic sign to accept this, but then the whole process was quite simple, but also kind of smelly and messy.

The problem was, the place was attracting the local yellow jackets or ground bees or hornets. I'm not a bee expert, which species they are, who knows - these bees which are notorious at this time of year anyway at the nearby Grabill Fair, were out in droves. An unfortunate woman who had parked in the lot before me was timidly feigning off an attack of a few of them - they wanted her plastic containers that had held strawberries. I have been stung once this summer but doggedly got out of my car determined to cast off my truck full of stuff we had saved from the landfill.

So while she was still trying to avoid the bees (I had no spray or anything with me that could have been of help), I quickly unloaded my newspaper, then plastic, etc. and just kept walking through the bees. Actually in hindsight, I don't think I would recommend doing this. One or two landed on my shirt, one on my hat - they were pretty aggressive, as I said.

The other woman decided she was not going to be able to dump her stuff. The bees had landed in the trunk of her car which she had left open and were sitting in a container of her recycling stuff there. One was also in the car front - the lady needed help.

She decided she was not going to unload - I helped her lift the one bin on the ground back into her trunk, then helped her waft and fan the bee inside the car out - she jumped in and left - so that was not successful. She said she was going to drive down the road to the attended recycling center on Maplecrest Road - windows open - if there were no more bees in the car. Poor thing.

So there you have it. Enter at your own risk. Lucky you if you have town curbside recycling, no extra charge. I sincerely hope all the efforts put into the three Rs are helping. Have you ever seen the movie Wall-E? This is a family movie worth seeing, and I won't say anything to spoil a surprise, but check it out. As far as the new site, it was nice not having to sort the recyclables (except for glass, which is easy to do). I don't know how the town solves their bee problem, but it is a problem.

Please don't get water up your nose

I can not tell a lie. There has been something on my mind, and I am going to share it with you.

It is the brain-eating amoebas lurking in U.S. lakes and rivers. Yes, three people have died this past summer from the Naegleria fowleri: a single-cell organism that commonly floats around in warm bodies of water - mostly in southern states. Every year, apparently millions of people swim among these things oblivious to the risk of infection, and rarely get sick. Scientists say they have known about the rare condition of human brain infection for decades.

Swallowing or contact through open cuts apparently has no effect, but when people get water forced up their noses (which happens a lot diving, doing cannonballs, etc.) occasionally one gets more up the schnoz than what one thought. That innocent nasal injection could be laced with the dreaded amoeba, which then can possibly find its way up into the brain.

People thus infected suffer from terrible headaches, fever, vomiting, and other symptoms. There is no known cure, although scientists are working on some trials. A person is much more likely to die in a car wreck or by simply drowning at the lake than getting infected by the amoeba. But still, between one and eight people in this country per year have died from the amoeba brain infection since it was discovered in the 1960s.

Why do I care about this? Because I have spent a lot of time swimming, skiing, and boating in United States lakes and rivers. I would like to continue to do so. I jumped off a dock a few weeks ago, and playing around unprepared I didn't get my nose pinched off with my fingers. And a slight amount of water went up (I'm sure you have all had this happen to you) but this time, I was a little alarmed! I had read about the amoeba deaths.

Well I am fine, of course, but at all the water ski tournaments we were at this summer, and things such as that - kids are splashing around, rough housing, jumping in, and probably getting the occasional nose shot. And, the water got extremely warm even in Indiana this summer. Do we need to worry any more about this?

Probably not, but I think I'd like to help spread the word, and encourage kids to hold their noses or wear the nose grips some competitive swimmers wear - the less accidental nose shots, the better. and you Netti pot users - make sure the water has been boiled and cooled or whatever. I think someone in New York City had an issue with that very thing.

Some consolation is the fact that chlorinated pools and salt water areas (such as the river inlet in Florida pictured above, where we saw Manatees swimming) are apparently free from the amoebas. So we can swim with the dolphins and do OK. But water skiing is another issue for me - sometimes getting pulled up out of the water, or falling, one can take a nose shot. Do we have to worry about that? We'll have to start collecting more data. Let's all be careful out there.

Mood quick fix on a ski

I have experienced what feels like a seasonal low pressure zone - I am unusually tired early fall, after the long hot summer and all its activities. When I feel sluggish and unmotivated, and I find myself daydreaming about lying down in the afternoon to take a nap - I know I need to find a way out of this paper bag.

Exercise is good for it, but it takes a while for most forms to re-energize me. There is a sudden solution to these doldrums -it's a bit like electroshock therapy for people suffering from debilitating depression. It is: putting on a wetsuit, jumping in the cold water and going water skiing.

One has to be prepared for this. The layering depends on the degree of cold. Today it's a thick wetsuit top, and a 3/4 farmer-john (sleeveless) over that for the hips and legs.

I know the water is going to feel extremely cold, but I don't shiver in anticipation of it. My warm body does not know the shock it is about to feel. It works well because there is no slow warm- up, no easing in - it's jumping off the back of the boat and plunging into the cool lake. Immersion is instant. There is no going back. One last check of equipment is needed. The rope is hooked on the correct length loop. The speed control is set. I have an orthopedic insert in my ski boot.

Water ski gloves are important. Clinchers - with a cheater dowel in the grip are popular, but I prefer Pro Wraps, which have a Velcro connection around the wrists. I'm breaking in a new pair, so the next day I will feel extra soreness in my triceps.

Vest tight, handle in hand, I hop off the back of the swim step. Cold water slowly, then more quickly, invades my wet suit.

In a few seconds the rope tightens up and I am pulled out of the water. There is pressure on everything - my arms, my hands, my legs - I'm weight lifting, I'm playing football - in an instant. The cold water has made me instantly awake, all my senses stimulated - I feel alive again, when I couldn't make myself wake up and shake off the funk.

The feeling stays in my body after I'm done. It has warmed my system, has made the juices flow. There really isn't anything that duplicates this feeling, this rush of energy. I will feel tired but better the next day, even with my aches and pains, sore shoulder, etc. If I didn't have this, I'm not sure what would take its place for me. Do I have some form of clinical depression? Is this just a normal cycle of ups and downs, the human biorhythm? I'm not sure, but I resist trying to find a pill for it. The sun is coming out, and it's going to be a beautiful day. I hope you, as well, have a passion for something that re-energizes you when you need it.

Where was once gravel is now concrete

The men wade in the concrete in rubber boots, less walking through mud as through butterscotch pudding. It laps in ripples around their legs, as they stand wide, smoothing the thick pool with their squeegees.

Neighborhood children pace the adjacent street anxiously, hungrily, wanting to touch it, to cleave it with a stick, to leave their marks upon it. They hang and ring around like vultures, one driving a mini John Deere gator, its motor and tires whining as badly as its driver. He outlines the edge of the street, inches from the drive, leaning in.

A dark-haired fellow on his bike, getting a tow from the gator, is also trying to get a touch. They are rebuffed, driven away, by the woman with a broom whose back is turned, looking through her third eye. No concrete demarcation for them.

The men, a generation removed from Amish, are rapt to their work. They wield their tools like spatulas, more focused than grandma, forming the concrete cake. They ice, they trowel, they spread and smooth. Pudding puddle no more, the dug up ground with all its buried treasure is a memory, invisible, preserved under the hardening composite above. A worker's cigarette butts smoked down to the filter, small leaves, gravel bits start to collect on the surface.

One neighbor child is hopeful, and has brought and offered freezer pops as a reward to the concrete crew, but the gleam in his eye dashes when kidded about the loss of a finger if the surface is compromised. He had badly wanted to write in the goo, and took off dejected. When will he ever have a chance to touch virgin concrete? Woe is he.

The children stick toes out to it, and sticks, testing. Later they try quickly jumping on and off, as if that, perhaps, would leave less of a mark. The drier, the whiter it becomes. Later, spinning, dust-smoke saws are brought to cut grooves to keep

it from cracking later.

No marks, no names, no autographs were left behind. Faceless, ageless, the concrete will stand, anonymous, no memories of families, no hands for children grown to touch later, no ghosts to see, no urges indulged.

Time to think of New York

A good craftsman leaves no traces. -unknown

One of my best memories of the whole summer of 2011 is of my time spent at the Indiana dunes lake shore by Michigan City. The colors, the light in the sky was spectacular the day this photo was taken, and the day before, in early August. Yet, the light didn't look the same away from the lake.

The shoreline in New York City will never look the same, but it has become time to reflect upon it. This coming Sunday will be the tenth anniversary of the attack on the United States on September 11, 2011. Our country has gone on to rebuild, face new problems, and come back around to reflect on what has happened since. Osama is gone, and the World Trade Center site is being rebuilt - and that's been a tremendous process.

Design contests. Interconnected, complicated authority, security, environmental, human memorial, considerations. Creative tension on a huge scale. The amazing synergy that is New York City. I stand in awe from Indiana. I had the privilege of being there one time, in about 2003, before the wreckage was even completely all gone. Security around it was tight then. But we walked into nearby Trinity Church, which had miraculously been spared of destruction that day, and many visitors were there praying and paying homage.

In the nearby financial center building, we also saw various mock-ups from the memorial design contest. They were beautiful models, dioramas or what have you, and it felt hopeful to stroll among them. I love the option that was chosen - the two reflecting pools in the Twin Towers' footprints, with tiered waterfalls cascading down inside.

The names of all the people killed in the tragedy will line this area somehow - the names will appear black by day, and lit by night. A landscape of trees and oak benches will surround the footprints - a peaceful park. The new skyscrapers will be in other places - nothing will rise in the space of the twin towers. I love the two beams of light that have beckoned out in their place - who thought of that? How perfect, as a memory.

It will be a while before the new skyscrapers will be completed, and that's a story for another day, but there's some fascinating architecture going on as a result. So many things proposed and scrapped, and so much to do - a new metro transportation center first of all, and I recently learned of the new performing arts center there somewhere also - I look forward to going back.

Meanwhile we remember and watch the news, and learn about the people again. Children born without fathers are turning ten soon. Let us help them find the joy somehow. Let us all find it. Peace be upon you.