Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The Pot Of Gold At The Beginning Of A Rainbow


The outside door located about four feet to my left is wide open. The Sun shows up through the scattered clouds frequently. The temperature is not balmy, but its headed that way and predicted to be that way tomorrow and the foreseeable future. Green stuff and blossoms are all over the place. I guess Spring has sprung. Ole!

As regular as clockwork I am is predictably surprised by the arrival of spring each year. It seems like I oughta realize it's gonna happen, and I do. I guess its the fact that once the red bud maples start showing up in the edges of the swamps we're surrounded by here on the coastal plain, the urge can only be stymied, not stopped. When its Spring, its spring over the entire Northern Hemisphere. It makes homo sapiens seem so puny at the same time they think they're basically invincible.

When back to back hurricanes came through here some years ago I lived in a pine forest of fairly large trees, and I was the envy of many an apartment dweller. The first hurricane tore down a few trees, but more pointedly, the rain associated with it soaked the ground so thoroughly that when the second hurricane came through two weeks later with even more rain and even stronger winds I didn't live in a pine forest any more. It was very sad.

There were maybe twenty pine trees left out of the thousands that came down. Many of them just broke in half. That let more direct wind on the inner part of the pines that were sorta protected by the pine trees next to the open fields and highways. I guess they weren't used to swaying back and forth as readily, and many of them broke off half-way up at about thirty feet high. My idealic homestead suddenly looked like a war zone.

Ten years or so later the trees that survived the assault of the dragons have somehow managed to survive. Every one of them are now standalones the birds use check out what's going on in the neighborhood. Particularly hawks and crows. The hawks appear to use the tall trees for preying on their prey below them. The crows seem to use them for gatherings. Noisy beasts.

Beasts? Beasts, you say? Crows are beasts? How rude! Hey, I don't make the rules. Wherever a cacophony of crappy, disturbing noise happens, you got a gathering of beasts. Need I remind you that all the birds are all that remains of the dinosaurs? Beasts! Shall we talk about noisy motorcycles and the ... ummm... people... who ride them. Noise = beastliness.

Noise that makes music, on the contrary, is associated with truly wonderful attributes. Angels and heavenly choirs. But, that can be offset by pipe organs. The noisiest noise that ever wuz. I might deliberately set about to get myself sent to hell, if the option was a heaven that played pipe organ music constantly, or maybe at all.

Occasionally I reflect on how death would have treated me if I hadn't lived long enough to understand the hypocrisy I felt my childhood mentors displayed. How was I as a child supposed to understand that adults don't grasp the fact that they'll displaying hypocritical behavior patterns that innocent minds are confused by.

Old age progresses like Spring does. Once the signs start showing up, the arrow of time won't turn back and propel one toward youth again. That's why hope sells. After a certain age all hope gets impossible expensive, and never gets the results one pays for.

I don't know what happened in Coretta King's situation. The news got out that she was pretty sick. I kept seeing and hearing little bits of news over time that things weren't going well. I don't know why I paid particular attention to her case. Probably because of the fame of her husband.

The next thing that caught my attention was the news that she had gone to Mexico to a quack , and then she died. She had been in her last throes for a long time before she went to Mexico. No blame for their trying a last ditch effort. The end was inevitable. The medicos were made into ghouls, but she and her relatives were chasing rainbows with money. Mythically, isn't that supposed to work the other way around?