Peace

I don't see all the people I love nearly...remotely, as much as I would like to (this net is more vast than you can imagine so count yourself if you have bothered to read this), so I am starting this blog. If in all other respects I am just contributing to the white noise, then so be it. My purpose is simply to share my thoughts, emotions, opinions and goings-on in my life so those who don't see me as often as they would like can still know on any given day wh-what's going on. And, I will have the chance to do something I enjoy most of all, I will have a chance to encourage you.  

I haven't settled on a format yet. I like a good theme. At present, I am content with rambling.

Now, for a topic...

Let's start small with peace. I close most every message I write with the word "peace." In my head, the image is the hippie peace sign. Those of you who know me best know I subscribe to the merely superficial tenants of the sixties Hippie movement, actions and postures most associated with the word "frolic" and the lyrics of "Going to California" by Led Zeppelin. The life of the Shire appeals to me (lack of shoes and green grass most of all). The movement hasn't moved for a while so I don't feel any real need to catalogue the ideas with which I do and don't agree. If anything, I have and will always have a scholarly curiosity and distance with this particular socio-cultural American effort whose "pacifism" engaged politics through music and poetry. I'm not going to pretend I know what Lennon meant when he wrote "No one I think is in my tree" and I read a lot of existentialist literature! I'm not even going to pretend he knew what he meant. However, "Strawberry Fields Forever" speaks to me and I don't think you need LSD to know some things seem more real in one moment and some things feel so foreign in others. We have these eyes we are constantly opening and closing and little of the adjustment needs to involve seeing. Close your eyes. You're still there.

George Harrison was an avid gardener and deeply invested in Eastern philosophy. His first solo album was titled "All Things Must Pass" and he is pictured sitting in his garden surrounded by garden gnomes. In one sense, I agree with the title's sentiment. He said this:

“Sometimes I feel like I’m actually on the wrong planet. It’s great when I’m in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think, ‘What the hell am I doing here?”

I wonder what felt most wrong to him. What about his garden gave him peace? Most days, in between TV shows, we have to put on shoes and walk outside the gate and ask ourselves "What am I doing here?" Robert Frost in his poem "Mending Wall" wrote "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." If you haven't read the poem, the story consists of two farmers who replace stones in a wall which separates their orchards. They don't how the stones have fallen, they just do. Each Spring, they simply and dutifully go about "mending" the wall. The one farmer insists there is wisdom in a saying "good fences make good neighbors." The narrator, the other farmer, is more questioning of their behavior. And when I say "peace," I think what I mean is don't pick the stone up and don't put it back. See if you can move the gate a few inches by letting it roll. Maybe, good meadows make good neighbors.