So far, today is looking cloudier than most in these parts, so I may be able to make it through without wearing my sunglasses. If so, it will be a rarity — and a welcome one.
The world is greener and more luxurious when I don’t view it through tinted plastic. But my eyes appreciate the barrier when faced with a searing sun.
Best of all is glimpsing pools of light from inside the green cocoon of the rose arbor. It’s filtered light that spares the naked eye. And it’s beautiful, to boot.
It was almost 10 last night when the editor’s email arrived. I found it on my last check of the day. Could I read over my essay, which he had recently accepted and edited, and send him fixes as soon as possible?
Receiving a work-related email so late in the evening reminded me of the old days, when I’d get similar requests that didn’t feel as warm and fuzzy as last night’s did. Last night I felt plugged in and stimulated rather than tired and overworked.
And no wonder. This time, the words in question are ones I’ve written for myself, not for others. I write them to share, as I do the words in this blog, but they are not words for hire.
The difference gives me pause, and makes me grateful.
Yesterday, a trip to Virginia Beach for a wedding. On the way, a bridge and tunnel, with views across the Chesapeake Bay all the way to the Atlantic.
It looked gray and cold, this ocean, although it was the same one I saw only a few weeks ago from the other side.
There, I could look down on it from above, could see the shades of turquoise, navy and cerulean. I could walk a trail up and down cliffs that hugged the coves. I could see the flowering cactus up close. Here, I could sense the vast expanse, waves lapping all the way to the Old World.
The same sea, different shores.
As the world economy continues to slump, the dollar and euro have nearly reached parity. Although this may be good news for American travelers in Europe, it’s hardly a happy situation. It does make me think about the euro, though, and how I felt about it when I was over there.
The smallest paper currency is, of course, the €5 note, which means that denominations smaller than that, including €1, are coins.
I felt the weighty difference when I was traveling. Does it cause one to spend more or less? The former, I think, since one might be tempted to treat the €1 as a quarter. But it is more honest. The dollar buys so little these days it may as well be a coin.
So it gave me pause, these differences in currency. Think how much heavier our pockets and purses would be if we were to adapt a similar model. But would it make more sense in the long run? I think so.
Being under the weather, as I have been this week, helps me appreciate the details. I woke up thirsty this morning and have been enjoying sips of cold, clear water as I answer emails and read the paper.
Having a comfy couch or chair on which to recline as I do these things … that’s another detail to enjoy. As are the rhododendrons that bloomed while I wasn’t looking.
It’s no secret that being restricted narrows the lens, helps us focus on what we still have. I’m trying to let this flu bug do that for me.
One of the more effective meditation metaphors I’ve learned is to see the calm mind as blue sky and the worries and troubles that beset us as clouds in that sky. They come and go; they obscure our vision. But the blue sky is still there.
It reminds us that even when tranquility seems to have vanished, it actually has not. It’s there all along, and we can restore it by resting the gaze, stilling the breath, and seeing the clouds — the worries and troubles — for what they are: distractions.
This doesn’t mean I put this metaphor to practice, but it’s top-of-mind enough that when I look out my office window at thick clouds and an ever-shrinking patch of blue, I remember … and take heart.
A burst of warm weather is greening the trees and fast-forwarding the azaleas. But two days ago, you could still take a walk around Lake Audubon in full-bore sun; almost none of the leaf cover that normally closets and cozies that trail was out on Tuesday. Which made for some strangely open vistas.
It was a different kind of experience. I admired the views, but I felt exposed.
It made me think that we grow accustomed to certain sceneries in certain weathers, and not having them unsettles us.
Perhaps it is during these off-kilter times, in these unsettling moments, that we see things clearly.
Sometimes, the best way to start the morning is by reading an obituary. Not just any obituary, though. It needs to be one like that of Arthur Riggs, 82, who with a colleague, Keiichi Ikatura, developed synthetic insulin. Riggs died March 23.
I learned that Riggs and Ikatura developed a genetic technique that led to the first human-designed and human-made gene that would function in any organism. This paved the way for the creation of synthetic insulin, a “lifesaving development for millions of people with diabetes,” the Washington Post said.
Before this discovery, people with diabetes relied on insulin from cows, which had a high rate of allergic reactions. The synthetic insulin avoids this risk.
Dr. Riggs lived in the same house for 50 years, drove “modest cars,” said the obituary … and quietly gave away much of the money he earned from royalties on patents — $310 million — to the institution he helped to found. The name of the institution: the City of Hope.
(Ikatura and Riggs in 1978. Photo courtesy City of Hope.)
When I wrote yesterday’s post I hadn’t yet realized that I’d missed the biggest Oscar news to happen in years. Bigger than when Moonlight’s Best Picture award was momentarily and mistakenly given to LaLa Land in 2017.
When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock to defend his wife against one of Rock’s jokes, he ignited a storm of controversy that hasn’t let up yet.
What I thought not just after watching clips of that episode but often throughout the three-and-a-half-hour show is how the Oscars —and the world, too — have changed in the last couple of decades, how things have grown darker, starker and meaner.
At times like these I remind myself of what art can do when it’s at its best: how it salves wounds, promotes understanding, draws us together. What Ralph Ellison wrote of the novel can sometimes be applied to other arts: “[It] could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic idea.”
A raft of hope! … I’ll cling to that.
A few days of unseasonably warm weather meant I slept last night with open windows and the early spring air flowing through the room. It reminded me of warm days to come and the freedom of being at one with the outdoors.
It’s another story this morning. Colder and more seasonable air has moved in and the newly popped daffodil blossoms are shivering on their stems.
A good reminder of the halting, sidewise, untidy course of progress.
(Snowdrops along Reston trail.)