I should leave it at that

As I head out the door this morning I pass by the hall closet and grab a jacket off its hanger. Finally, a cool summer morning. It feels good, right even, to this Pacific Northwest native son. As Timothy Egan writes in The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest:

From June till September, nearly every day is perfect, with the 10,778-foot volcano of Mount Baker rising from the tumble of the Cascades to the west, blue herons and bald eagles crowding the skies, killer whales breaching offshore. The water is exceptionally clear, the result of a twice-daily shift-change in tide, when it sweeps north toward the Strait of Georgia, then back south toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In some places, the rip tides create white water like rapids on a foaming river. Being is bliss.

Being is bliss. Making time to be present for that awareness, though, is not always easy. It takes effort to pull back from (as Walt Whitman calls it) "...the procreant urge of the world."

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
     - Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself (1892 version)

I love Whitman for many things. Chief among them are his ability to distill, in his writing, the act of being present, and his ability to be wholly and apologetically comfortable with himself.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.
     - Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself (1892 version)

When summer cools down for a few days, like it is doing here now, I find it so soothing. As if I was suddenly aware of something that had been bothering me, but only through the awareness of its sudden absence.

Yet have I drawn a lesson from the spot,
And shrined it in these verses for my heart.
Thenceforth those tranquil precincts I have sought
Not less, and in all shades of various moods;
But always shun to desecrate the spot
By weak repinings, sickly sentiments,
Or inconclusive sorrows.
     - Henry Timrod, from The Summer Bower

So I'll leave it at that.


Today's Commute Playlist:

• Sherlock Holmes (audiobook read by Stephen Fry)

Early morning dark, rain falling, weekday-getting-ready routine, mildly melancholy-infused thoughts

Like a small campfire under a heavy canopy of conifer trees, the living room end table lamp creates a hub of visual warmth and light once I switch it on this dark early morning. The light radiates outward across the living room in fading concentric circles. Out the apartment window I can see cars moving slowly and quietly through the intersection of my little Hollywood-set-esque "downtown." The occasional pedestrian, hood up and slouching against the falling rain, shuffles sleepily in and out of the Starbucks across the road. Somewhere outside I hear a dog barking energetically for a few seconds, then back to the relative silence of the street and rain. The street lights glow, just like my end table lamp, and reflect in the rain puddles and the shimmering wet of the cobblestone-like street below. Most of the storefronts are only partially illuminated, still closed until an hour of morning yet to come.

In a future that feels almost like a past I’m positive is there—
But where? I think my life is still all conversation,
Only now it’s with myself. I can see it continuing forever,
Even in my absence, as I close the windows and turn off the lights
And it begins to rain.
   - John Koethe, from Ninety-Fifth Street

Celebrating our differences is one thing, living them is still something else. We are still sorted and described by the things that make us different (which, I suppose, is what the whole notion of "difference" is all about). As Kermit so famously sang, "It isn't easy being green." Kermit also sang:

Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide
So we've been told and some choose to believe it
I know they're wrong wait and see
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me
   - from, The Rainbow Connection, written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher

Early morning dark, rain falling, weekday-getting-ready routine, mildly melancholy-infused thoughts, I suppose. What is the freedom of choice? "...an individual's opportunity and autonomy to perform an action selected from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties." (Wikipedia's definition works as well as any I've seen). But, really, what isn't "unconstrained by external parties" in a connected society? Every free choice is a negotiation with some sort of cost or consequence, maybe very small or maybe large.

Still, my grandmother takes my hand downtown
pulls me right past the restaurants that have to let us sit
wherever we want now. No need in making trouble,
she says. You all go back to New York City but
I have to live here.
    - Jacqueline Woodson, from what everybody knows now

Life is nothing, if not complicated.

But I like a rainy tuesday early morning like this one. I move to the kitchen and turn on the back right stove burner, the smallest burner where my little espresso pot, already set up last night with finely ground yerba mate, waits. I microwave a cup of whole milk, and wait for the pot to build up pressure and force the water up through the mate and into the upper chamber. Combine: my mate latte is ready. The only latte choice remaining is whether to take the time to enjoy it here or pour it into my thermos and enjoy it when I get to campus. I grab my thermos.