September 1st

It's always momentous: September 1st. Australians call it the beginning of spring. Poles, back in the days, designated it as the first day of school. Here, at the farmette, I think of it as a huge turning point: for me it announces the arrival of autumn. Habits, vision, outlook -- they take on the imperatives of the next season and indeed the one after as well. For a northern gardener, there is spring and summer, and quite separately there's the half year that gives us autumn and winter. And as always, I'm happy to see it coming.

I'm back to going to bed late and getting up early. And since I have no kids here for the next few days, I'm back to thinking about broader issues (rather than musing about this child doing that, and that child doing this, and wondering what it all means and where it's all heading). And as I sift through the events of this past summer, the recurring thought is that everything that happened, everything that was said, and that will be said is a repetition -- thoughts, feelings, words -- excited or disappointed, anxious or happy -- it's been done a million times over, no, a trillion times over, so that no feeling is unique (snowflake my foot!), no expression is novel. 

We are a bunch of repetitive sheep, thinking ourselves to be somehow special, entitled to attention for what we feel and how we express emotion, whereas in fact, we merely repeat what others have said and done countless times before us. Indeed, by the time you get to be seventy, you realize that repetition is there in your own back yard.  It is what brought this on for me in the first place -- I'm noticing, at seventy, a certain familiarity in what I hear all around me and in what I, myself am feeling. Those words? I've heard them before. Emotions? Recycled. 

So what's a person to do, knowing that there is nothing original left to be felt, said, expressed? 

There's a comfort in knowing that good feelings come around again and again, but also in knowing that horrible words are merely a repetition of utterances spoken for millennia. Bullies are a fixture, mopers moped and will continue to mope long into the future. Tune them out, walk away, don't bother challenging them -- they wont go away. A drumroll of negativism will continue long after you and I are stardust. 

Wait, so we are doomed to suffer the indignities of listening to foul speak? 

Since I was really young, like teenager young, I have wanted to live without anger and criticism and all that goes with it. But it took me this long to finally accept that you just can't avoid it, not at all, there are few safe harbors that offer calm, because we as a human species are easily triggered and we seem to enjoy fighting, in the same way that our cats here at the farmette seem to get some pleasure occasionally hissing and clawing at each other. Had they the ability to utter nasty words and critical expressions, they would use them, in addition to the claws and hisses. Peace is a very temporary state of affairs. 

So this sounds pretty pessimistic, no?

No. Quite the contrary. Knowing that it is unavoidable puts the burden on you -- the person who cannot stand argument and nastiness -- to actually not mind it. Ed has been coaching me in this for years now (he, like me, finds argument, disappointment, aggression, negative emotion to be pretty useless) but I've not been listening. I kept thinking -- I can run from noise. Avoid it altogether. I know I can. But it's not true. Noise is everywhere and all you can do is not be bothered when it comes your way, knowing that there is nothing new about it -- it's been said, done, thought, uttered again and again and again by all those trillions that have come before me and you and so it will continue. Your peace is what you construct in your own world of thoughts and pleasures. It's there, but it's within you, not within the world you inhabit. And do remember -- life is packed with good repetitions too. Keep your eyes open for them!

After those thoughts, I walked through the garden, fed the animals and sat down to breakfast with Ed.

(pot near picnic bench)

And then I went to the eye doctor.

You're supposed to see your surgeon a year after having cataract surgery, but I had one eye done in April of 22 and another in October of 22, so I picked this mid point and went today.

Good, good, she said. (Remember? This is a doc who really likes her own work, and honestly, with good reason!) However, you do have a new cataract in one of your eyes.

Can that even happen? I thought once you were done, you were done! So, more laser zapping is in store, though there's no rush. Eyes were the event of 2022, knee replacement -- 2023. Let's return to eyes sometime in 2024!

And then I drove home and pulled weeds, getting the beds ready for winter. (Yep, for winter. The prep starts now!)

In the late afternoon Ed suggests tennis. No, not ready for tennis. Maybe disc golf? No, I'm terrible at it. How about a hike along the Ice Age Trail? Third try's the charm! We set out.

And it's exquisite.

Calm reigns. Good feelings abound. 

In the evening I cook fish and corn because it's already September and though our freezer has a bunch of fish chunks, the corn, that fresh Wisconsin corn picked just this morning (or a few days ago) will soon be gone.

Happiness fluttered into our living room like a butterfly set loose in a prairie.

With love...