Solitude as Hyper Fib...

how
it
calls me
from other
points on my life path
where to find wabi sabi now?
in the wild where solitude rests forever alone

If we extend the fib concept for another line, we have the "hyper fib"-- which may, in fact, ruin the terseness of the form, but can still be fun to play with. I suspect blogger will play havoc with the shape of this and give me a few extra line wraps, unfortunately.

Solitude: so rich to roll around the mind. Inner solitude is often available. But for physical solitude, I turn to thoughts of deep woods, especially those of the northeast U.S. where I grew up. It was never obvious to us as children that it was tame. Trees gave the illusion of solitude, getting lost in the backyard. Here, midst the playground of a major metropolitan area, solitude in the "wild" can be tough to discover. What do the kids do for solitude in such an environment? More haiku on Solitude at One Deep Breath.

Perhaps when the time comes that
there is no more silence and no more aloneness,
there will also be no longer
anyone who wants to be alone.

--Joseph Wood Krutch

For the rest of this quote, a larger excerpt at least, please visit Romantic Naturalist.

Season of Baby Birds

Along with summer here, I missed the “baby bird” season, at least the early part of it in July. Caught the tail end of “begging food from parents” season, a truly precious time of year. In August, though, the babies are grown enough to come to the feeder by themselves, and we see hordes of young scrub jays, finches, baby towhees, even doves looking for food. The parents almost seem to have disappeared, but perhaps we aren’t looking closely enough to distinguish them from their nearly-grown offspring.

The scrub jays are hoarding, not eating, and would empty the sunflower seed feeder several times a day if I refilled it. Many years ago, observing our scrub jays this time of year, I put their story into limericks. Can this be a more effective way to do environmental education? Painless, even? It’s certainly more fun!

The Circle of Life

A garrulous bird is the Scrub Jay
He sits and he cackles all day
     For sunflower seeds
     To meet his winter needs
Then hides them wherever he may.

From sunflower seeds put away
By Scrub Jays against a cold day
     And never recovered
     My yard is now smothered
With sunflower plants gone astray.

If Scrub Jays could plan while they play
I’m sure they’d be happy to say
     These sunflowers reseeding
     Are going for feeding
A new crop of Scrub Jays next May.

Scrub Jays were an early topic of this blog, when I started it in March. For photos, see Lining up for breakfast, and for a jay adventure, see A Scrub Jay in the Hand.

Apropos of Nothing...

Why have I not been blogging of late? It’s hard to say, tough to figure out. Maybe the busy-ness of summer, maybe the fact that I am, after years of wishful procrastination, getting organized. Trying to transform my so-called “study” into less of a deep storage cave with a narrow path to the computer, and more of a pleasant work space where I can pursue the passion du jour.

I got a labeler… a used 5-drawer file cabinet, THREE new bookshelves, several boxes of file folders (at the same time!). So why not have high hopes that, this time, I’ll be able to find things without launching a week-long search?

The labeler is especially for the file folders, so one may spontaneously create an appropriate folder in seconds each time the mood strikes or a piece of paper simply must be saved for future retrieval. This morning I thought I might also make labels for each new shelf in hopes of being able to find the books as well as the files. How about simple one-word informal names for the 13 new shelves? The first three led to this haiku:

“green … garden… spirit…”
captures my true life in books
labeling new shelves.

I deeply appreciate universal chaos; perhaps even more than the next person. Why get organized this time, after years of reading self-help books and striving to make time for same? I think because I realize that time is more constrained looking ahead, and can ill afford to be wasted, and I know I have wasted weeks, perhaps months, of the last decade merely looking for misplaced information or objects. Also, facing a new project that will be complex and demanding necessitates better organization and efficiency.

The book that got through to me, I guess, is a borrowed one I read while traveling this summer: Get Organized! By … See, just spent several minutes looking in my notebook for the place I wrote it down! Perfect example of why I needed it. There you go.