THE WAY OF DAYS

The dance of the light-- what a performance to behold each time, as it plays down the mountainside in motions of green and gold toward the dark of the waters that stretch to the far side of perception, every wave, like every leaf and blade, performing the movements that only nature can command... 

The clouds in the distance do their part, rising and advancing in their opalescent finery, the straight blue line of the Lake horizon dividing the scene into perspectives that artists range their lives on-- all the tints of blue, all the hues of green, the shades of thought, hints of memory and of yearning spelled out there in aspects beyond the reach and grasp of eyes alone, all going on from light into dark as the heart goes on, holding and letting go--

The hinge of the heart understands these things, shares their echoes with those who want moments to go on, life to go on as it is, but that is not the way of days, or of beauty...

                                               
                                                             --Dedicated to my dear friend John Velie, fondly remembered.

WATCHING RAIN ON TELEVISION

I was watching rain on television the other day like a modern person, you can still just slip into that mode sometimes without thinking. At first I didn't realize the bizarrity of the fact, but then it hit me: I was watching rain on television to find out whether it was raining outside. 

It was raining outside, but only on TV. The TV rain was falling on some other outside that was standing in, as it were, for what could actually happen here, i.e., rain. And then where would we be, we ask ourselves in silence,  we've got to get some umbrellas or something, we've got to act, look at what might occur, and right where we are! Water falling from the sky on us walking along!

Fortunately, as I've indicated, the weather on TV is almost always somewhere else, raining on some other unfortunate city, because if it's raining here, then of course, like most news, it's not news, because then everybody knows it's raining, especially since a lot of folks are right out in it already, what can you do, word gets around, people bring the info home with them, which makes it primarily pointless to get your weather from a weatherperson indoors on tv.

It used to be that if for some reason we couldn't turn our heads to look out a window, we just opened a door and stuck a hand outside, but the days of hands outside are long gone. And good riddance, many unweathered smart alecks say, though I often miss the old ways and time they took to make things come true...