ON THE MIND'S BACK PORCH


Some evenings, when the time and the weather are right, I love to go out on the deck, have a glass or two of wine and sit on my mind's back porch (it's a fine porch, by the time you reach my age) watch the broad sky unfold its right-now tapestries and let memories play on that high blue screen...

It's always surprising, what's showing there in spontaneity, the many things in my past that I bookmarked subconsciously in their moments – faces and events, places and emotions that turned out to be more important or magical than they then seemed - aspects I hadn't thought I noticed or remembered, even thought much of, at the time; but now that I relive them, how impressive, surprising and refreshing they are-- and how unknowingly observant I was being, even in the darkest times.

It's as though in the swift currents of the early heart I hadn't the experience to perceive all that those feelings and moments meant to me, but in some place older than myself I knew what they would mean one day, and stored them away. And now that I have time's gift, as well as the leisure in which to ponder and treasure - and sometimes regret - these distillations of a life and times, I am nourished as much by my failures as by my successes.

I suppose that is one of the many functions of the past, after all: to brighten the skies with the treasures of a lifetime, some far evenings on the mind's back porch.

SOMETHING AKIN TO SPRING

Freewheeling down the mountain these early mornings through the old dun landscape of winter - and in the old dun mindscape of winter - I suddenly sense a change ahead, something there... new... around the curve... the light on the leaves is different... I slow--

I round the bend, to behold a startling brightness laid out right on the ground where there was no such thing yesterday; "it's the same color as the sky," says my old dun mind, "with some sunlight and clouds in it..." it's a flooded rice paddy, the first of the year! And there's another patch of sky over there, shining on the dark earth... and one more there in the distance...

Each morning I go through the same new startle to the old winter mindscape as more and more patches of light are added to the quilt of sky piecing down the mountainside, day by day transforming the mountain into a creature of Spring-- and greenleaf summer to follow, nature willing.

There at the bottom of it all shines the Lake, aquamarine set among brown winter mountains and faceted with light in the same way as the paddies - dappled with clouds, now and then stippling in the morning breeze - and I feel in myself something akin to Spring, new life rising from a winter mind. In my day-to-day awakening, I too mirror the season and its sky.