Month: February 2023

LAST DAY OF FEBRUARY,2023

The short month. Two months into the new year. The kitchen butcher block rolling table always seems to have crumbs on it. I’m probably the culprit, slicing bread, making a sandwich.

I was going for the light to the carport last night, hearing Diane Harrison pulling up and about to step out into darkness. I knocked over her orchid and smashed the vase. I saved the orchid.

I was in Tampa at Joe’s office by the little inlet. Outside, before coming in, I stood and looked west toward the pink clouds over the darkening water.

There was only gentle old Alex, Venezualan, Joe M., whose office it was, and me. Just the three of us. Prayer.

Where do I go from here? I keep going to the same place. That nowhere place.

Looking at condos earlier in the day. I don’t want to move. I just want Diane to be happy. And me able to live with integrity, with peace of mind.

The condo area, down by the lake, was very nice. But — move again?

True, there is much to fear living in a vinyl and metal place in a place of violent seasonal blasts.

I walked today — past the ibis and muscovy ducks. It was very nice. It was after 9 a.m.. People here and there talking to their neighbors.

I see my old broadcast group up north will get together March 14. I won’t make it, of course. I wish I could.

The year goes. And goes. Pray. Work.

I participated in the Emerson “Pizza&Politics” zoom session today. People from coast to coast speaking on my desk. I’m glad I do this. It was all about Ukraine. Where will it end over there? What will happen to us? To the world?

Happy? Old Saying: your happy as you make up your mind to be. Plus which: it’s decidedly ungrateful to be anything but happy. Especially me: I’ve been given so much.

Today’s gospel, as we edge along in Lent, was Matt 6:7-15 It contains the Our Father.

Finish your writing. Sacrifice. Concentrate. Pray.

Welcome March. The year goes. Lent goes. Repent. Realign. Real-ize. Whatever it takes to improve the game and the vision.

THE STONE IN THE STREAM

February has been light on entries. In fact, I believe there’s only one, being my visit to the Last Mile Lounge.

So, with apologies for offering something so slight to my phantom readership — this recollection came to me today: how after returning to Massachusetts for my junior year in college after a summer in the Sierra Nevada Mountains working at Kings Canyon National Park, I had brought a Sierra stone back with me. Just a nice little stone that, over many years, maybe centuries, had formed in the California wilderness. It wasn’t gold, it wasn’t precious. Just an ordinary stone — but special to me because it came from the land of the Sequoias. And one day in the woods of New Hampshire — I could not tell you exactly where — I came upon a stream. Alone, reflecting on the massive continental distance between the California mountain woods and these New England woods, I took the stone out of my pocket and dropped it in the stream bed.

I assume it’s still there, that little California stone that crossed the country — still there in that stream. Stones don’t wear away for generations, right? Perhaps even for millenia. And this was deep in woods where few have visited regularly or construction would seem unlikely to displace anything.

I just got thinking about permanence. I could go on — permanently.

No, I couldn’t. And the stream, flowing water, has been known to wear the earth down to canyons — grand canyons!

Well…that’s enough of that. For now. I’ll probably go on thinking about my stone — occasionally. This February Friday night Florida, with light rain expected and a beautiful gray cat spotted in the back yard, seemed like a good night for it.

I hope it was for you, too. Think of that stream, still flowing. Think of the tall, deep forests from which it came — a National Park. (And, of course, you really aren’t supposed to take anything out of a National Park, are you. Oh, I’m in trouble now. It was 1967. Is there a statute of limitations? Yes: death.)

And I hope that’s not a kidney stone I feel coming on. I pray not.

Once again, let this stony meditation end here.