9.4.2021 – satisfying first

satisfying first
the needs for understanding
compassion respect

Adapted from the book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

Yet it was more than a little disingenuous for the airline to deny all knowledge of, and responsibility for, the metaphysical well-being of its customers. Like its many competitors, British Airways, with its fifty-five Boeing 747s and its thirty-seven Airbus A320s, existed in large part to encourage and enable people to go and sit in deckchairs and take up (and usually fail at) the momentous challenge of being content for a few days. The tense atmosphere now prevailing within David’s family was a reminder of the rigid, unforgiving logic to which human moods are subject, and which we ignore at our peril when we see a picture of a beautiful house in a foreign country and imagine that happiness must inevitably accompany such magnificence. Our capacity to derive pleasure from aesthetic or material goods seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional and psychological needs, among them those for understanding, compassion and respect. We cannot enjoy palm trees and azure pools if a relationship to which we are committed has abruptly revealed itself to be suffused with incomprehension and resentment.

Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton. I discovered this book entirely by accident. When searching for books online, I will use the term ‘collections’ and see what turns up. I figure that someone who has taken the time to gather together the etexts of any one author to create a collected works folder is enough for me to see what this author might be all about.

In this case I came across the writing of Alain de Botton. I enjoyed his use of language very much. Much of the words he strings together lend themselves to what I do.

As for his book, I recommend it very much though written in 2009, it misses the added layer of travel under covid but still the picture of the modern airport is worth the read.

8.19.2021 – taking out the trash

taking out the trash
into the Carolina night
warm dark overallness

Karen Blixen as Isak Dinesen (or Isak Dinesen as Karen Blixen) wrote in her short story, “From the Forests and Highlands – We come, we come” about living in Africa that, “The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air.“

Having lived the first 50 years of my life in the great state of Michigan, I say that the chief feature of the landscape was also the air.

The COLD air.

Living up in the cold.

It wasn’t an Alaskan, Jack London, type of cold.

But an annoying, I forgot a sweatshirt, my feet are cold, nagging type of cold.

Always there.

Always lurking just below the surface of the warmest days.

And taking over the night even in the middle of summer.

My weather friends tell me that West Michigan is the 2nd most overcast region in the continental United States.

50 shades of gray dreary damp unoutshone only by Seattle.

Gray, dreary damp cold.

I am not enamored of the somewhat cheerful term of ‘sweater weather’.

The term ‘sweater weather’ was created by realtors or Canadians who endeavored to present a picture of a fun, if cold, lifestyle.

I now live in South Carolina.

I was outside last night.

It was in the mid 80’s both temperature and humidity.

Walking outside the dark warmth closed around me like a blanket

The type of blanket known as a comforter.

And I was comforted.

Lest you think I had forgotten my roots, the cold weather of Michigan was much on my mind.

I left my apartment and walked first into the building common stairway.

This part of the building has South Carolina air conditioning.

South Carolina conditions its inside air much like the city of Atlanta but on steroids.

As far as I can tell, air conditioners are installed and the settings are locked into the lowest possible temperate and left on forever.

Someone wrote that one of the benefits of Great Lakes beaches was that even in summer you could dig a shallow hole and bury your beer to get it cold.

In South Carolina, all you have to do to cool your beer to is leave it in the hallway.

I walked into the hallway in my shorts, T shirt and flip flops and tried to breath.

In my mind, it was Michigan in February.

Congealed is not a pleasant word.

Then I got out of the hallway and into the night.

My mindset had shifted to Michigan Summer nights.

No disrespect to Bob Seger and his sweet summertime, summertime.

Even at its warmest in Michigan, you can feel autumn moving in.

I was ready for chill.

I was ready for thinking why didn’t I have a hoodie on.

I was ready for thinking why didn’t I have a socks on.

Warm, thick socks.

And then, I didn’t think those things.

I didn’t because it wasn’t cold.

It was warm.

A thick delicious warmth.

The dark was so deep I could touch it.

I literally stepped out INTO the night.

And there was a light breeze.

There always seems to be a light breeze at night.

Just enough to keep the air moving.

After all the reading I have done of sea stories and navy adventures, I should have had expected land breezes and sea breezes.

They are real.

When the sun sets and the land stays warmer than the sea, a light breeze comes in off the ocean.

It was a delight.

It was delightful.

I was full of delight.

I had to laugh.

I had to laugh out loud just for the sake of the delight in the dark warmth.

Ms. Blixen also writes, ” … you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.”

I know what she means.

And while I can say that, I still have a hard time believing I am in South Carolina.

But be that as it way, here I am, where I ought to be.

Ms. Blixen also writes about Africa that, “Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequaled nobility.”

Not that I can say exactly that about the South Carolina shore.

But I will say this.

Everything I felt in the warm dark overallness (so I made up a word) made for me, greatness and freedom, and unequaled, well maybe not nobility but can I say satisfaction.

And I was just taking out the trash.

PS – Yes the short story, “From the Forests and Highlands – We come, we come” is better known as Out of Africa but had I wrote that everyone would be reading my essay in the voice of Meryl Streep as she used it in the movie of the same name. A voice that not too outrageously had me waiting for her to say beyork beyork beyork like the Swedish Chef in the Muppet Show..

6.9.2021 – it was a dawn to

it was a dawn to
remember on your deathbed
life lived within life

Adapted from Sundog by Jim Harrison, 1985.

It was a dawn to remember with a smile on your deathbed.

The sky was a vivid red as if the forest had caught fire. I drove through clumps of pink fog, re-crossing the river of the day before which lividly reflected the sky.

The roadside and small clearings in the forest were covered with a white blooming dogwood, around which misted coiled and released like unraveling white satin.

I stopped the car and shivered, imagining that I might HAVE died and this was some sort of afterlife designed by H. Bosch and Magritte, much less vulgar that Dali; or it was life lived within a brilliantly colored seashell for which one might not emerge.

I added emphasis to HAVE.

‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Hieronymus Bosch.

I would give $199.25 to find out if Mr. Harrison couldn’t spell Hieronymus and in those innocent days before the google, had no easy way to look it up.

5.27.2021 – floods of yellow gold

floods of yellow gold
gorgeous, indolent, sinking
burning, expanding

Adapted from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman

Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.

Sunset over Pinckney Island and Skull Creek at high tide on the north end of Hilton Head Island.

1.10.2021 – state, inclination

state, inclination
of the day, we judge by
the sky’s complexion

Adapted from William Shakespeare from his play, Richard II.

Big Bill writes in Act II Scene 3;

Men judge by the complexion of the sky
The state and inclination of the day:

Jesus said, recorded in Matthew 16:2-3:

When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’

The old rhyme in my head goes:

Red Sky at Night
Sailor’s Delight
Red Sky in the Morning
Sailor take warning

Of course to be complete I have to include:

Red Sky at Night
Sailor’s Delight
Red Sky in the Morning
Your Barn’s On Fire!

Jesus went on to add, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

I have very pleasent memories of the many, many meteoroligiists that I had the pleasure of working with in 20 years of online news.

When most most folks see Allison Chinchar now on CNN they see a top notch Meteorologist.

I think of how Allie would burst into my office and empty a bag of Mini Reese’s Peanut Butter cups on my desk before she asked for something she needed online.

I think of Paul Ossmann one time when I was chatting with the weather team at WXIA in Atlanta.

Paul was hunched over his computer and kept muttering profanity.

I asked what was up?

Paulie responded that no matter what model he ran, Atlanta was smack dab in the middle of an upcoming massive snow storm.

His alarm was real.

The storm he saw coming is now known as the Blizzard of January 2011.

I never got out of the house for the next week.

They are a hard working dedicated bunch of scientists and broadcasters who enjoy their role and embrace the public trust in their masthead to inform their audience.

But still, as folks say, everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.

How often do they get it right?

How often do they get it wrong.

And yet Jesus said that we DO know how to interpret the appearance of the sky.

So we got weather forecasting right.

And we know that record.

How can we every expect to even imagine we might be able to get anything in the future right.

Or as Sir Humphrey Appleby said (In Yes Minister) about unforeseen problems, “If I could foresee them, they wouldn’t be unforeseen.”

Lucky for us Jesus still has the anwser.

It is in Matthew 6:34 that Jesus says this:

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

It was a clear white sunny morning today in the Low Country.

No sailors need to take warning.

My barn isn’t on fire.

Heading to the beach.

Tomorrow is scheduled to arrive in 24 hours.