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I admit it. One of my attractions to solitude is the free pass it provides – a free pass from should. When you live in solitude, no one cares if you’re naked or nocturnal – as long as you’re self-supporting (sometimes tough in solitude) and not bothering anyone (extremely easy in solitude). Why would anyone [...]
According to one friend, my October Balance post was a clear expression of my astrological sign: Libra. Well – perhaps. Personally, I file astrology under occasional
fun, entertainment – and maybe an attractive piece of jewelry. I’ve never had my chart done, I rarely invest more than a passing thought or occasional glance at my horoscope; but today, for some reason, I decided to do a little follow-up research on a comment from my youth (by a hopeful suitor). After all, the vast annals of Astrology.com are just a few clicks away now.
My birthday means my sun sign is not simply Libra. Having been born near the change date from one sun sign to the next, I’m actually a Libra-Scorpio Cusp. According to my suitor (way back then): “Libra-Scorpio Cusps are well-balanced sex maniacs.”
My reply: “If one is going to be a sex maniac, it’s probably best to be well-balanced about it.” Whether this fellow and I further explored this interesting label is none of your business, and whatever happened was billions of years ago anyway.
My online research today was a quick check to see if there is any astrological basis at all for the sex-maniac comment. (I’ve long been aware of the Libran balance part of the equation.) Here’s Astrology.com’s initial paragraph about Libra-Scorpio Cusps:
Libra is the seventh sign of the zodiac; Scorpio is the eighth. After Libra’s intellectual exploration of other people, Scorpio’s interest is in discovering other people’s emotions and how they respond to the world around them. Scorpio is the sign of sex and death, the beginning and ending, and they explore these ideas from an emotional standpoint. Libra/Scorpios strive to create balance and harmony between self and other through investigation and probing. They are often strongly intuitive and penetrating. They have a need to be liked.
So since Scorpio is the sign of sex and death, and Libra goes for balance and harmony, there is some astrological legitimacy to my date’s synopsis. Of course, I might be a well-balanced death maniac – but that was less relevant to my date’s objective. No, I do not remember what his astrological sign was, so who knows if we were astrologically compatible – which probably didn’t really matter to either of us. I also don’t remember his name – take that little nugget of information off to wherever you wish.
Like most healthy human beings, there was a phase of my youth in which hormones and curiosity combined to rank sex quite high on the motivational priority scale of my life. I don’t think I was ever particularly maniacal in its pursuit, though. I think my sexual philosophy was then and is still quite well-balanced:
I don’t think I’ve ever been particularly maniacal about anything really: not sex, death, money, love, politics. I lean toward the well-balanced side of the cusp – which is undoubtedly astrologically verified by the fact that my birthday’s on the Libra side of the cusp not the Scorpio.
Astrology.com”s “need to be liked” sentence seems a little off. Sure, I like to be liked, but I think my love of solitude takes me at least one rung down from NEED.
Ah-hah! Maybe I’m maniacal about solitude?
Nah – I’m even a balanced hybrid in the hermit arena.
My wanderings into astrology today confirmed that the descriptions are general enough to apply to (and flatter) almost anyone who’s curious enough to follow the path – a worthy choice for an hour’s entertainment. I am not passing judgment on those who are serious astrology buffs. I realize there is much more to the whole deal than simple sun signs and birthdays. If that’s where your interest takes you – go for it.
An interesting curiosity surfaced though: one of the most astrologically compatible mates for a Libra-Scorpio cusp is a Sagittarius-Capricorn cusp.
Coincidentally, my true-love, Griz, is a Sagittarius-Capricorn cusp. How about that? Worth a ponder…
“In the magical universe, there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.” – William S. Burroughs
"Discovery Park" by Kathy Kimball
When including a link to my friend, Kathy Kimball, in that last post, I made a conscious choice to link to her page at The Carrot Revolution Art Company site, rather than to one of her faculty profile pages at the University of Washington. I’m sure there are people who work with Kathy every day who don’t even know she is an artist. She teaches in the Department of Education – not Art.
I think the above oil on canvas is a great reflection of Kathy’s potential as an artist. I’m no expert, I just like what I like – but I think anyone who has been to Seattle’s Discovery Park in autumn will recognize Kathy’s gift.
One of the reasons I like to pressure Kathy to reevaluate her schedule is I’d love to see what happens when she starts giving the artist a bit more time. To quote Robert Heinlein:
“Creativity demands leisure.”
I sent a crude first draft of the following poem to my friend, Kathy Kimball, last week for her something-or-othert birthday. My intentions were good, but (as usual) I lost track of time and I decided hitting her birthday was more important than any undone refinements. Kathy’s one of those friends who honors my crudest drafts as if they are gold. Friends like Kathy are the gold.
The poem’s still imperfect and will remain so eternally – unfinished like life and good friendships. But posting the poem allows me to sneak in another opportunity to pressure Kathy into reevaluating her schedule.
Friendship never really fits
Inside a purchased card.
Cards may brush the truth
With quips and clever punch
But cards’ unexpanded tales
Miss friendship’s mortal soul -
The bond beyond the quip,
Unique between two friends.She’s short and voluptuous
To my tall and not very
And we both love our walks
In nature and not
So we value our knees and our legs.
But when walking as two,
Her innate shorter stride
Hurries quick-time to mine.
Though she never falls back
And not once has complained
Burns more calories perhaps
Something always worthwhile
For carrot cake fests
And sticky bun loves
Dependent on chocolate
For solace.
When walking and laughing,
And walking and crying,
And walking and laughing again.We first walked as neighbors
Near daily patrol
The banks of Shilshole Bay
A life aboard sailboats,
Sailors soldiering through
Feisty elements marine
On long laundry hauls
And facility showers.
Jelling friendship with
Walking and laughing
And walking and crying
And walking and laughing again.How perplexed we could be
Over confounding, alien ways
Of our logical, linear men
Who’d unwittingly retreat
To their logical lines
And offer them up to us mates
Who most needed their hugs
And not logic, of course.
So as friends we would hug
In sorry console,
Sharing a bottle of wine or two,
A fine mug of grog and a dinghy ride.
“What do you do
with a drunken sailor?”
You laugh,
You laugh,
You cry from time to time
And then you laugh again.Both loved as children,
A particular cross
In this culture of the good excuse.
But our fine childhoods’ grew,
Another bond from our roots
Common libraries of family songs,
Old tunes and carols
Serendipitously sprout out
In spontaneous duets
On some of our walks -
Surprising each other
And any audience about
(‘Cause we’re not very good).
But granting to us
Another reason to laugh,
Walking and laughing,
And walking and singing,
And crying from time to time,
And walking and laughing again.But have I told her often or lately
How much I admire
Her grit and resilience
Through passionate loves
And deep, deep loss.
Her ceaseless momentum,
Education devotion.
(She taught on her knees once
In pain’s compensation.)How appreciative I am,
That she scours her schedule
Fitting adventures with me in the mix
Sidelining striving enough
So I’m privileged to be
With this woman at rest,
In her natural state
Doing goofy and giggly
Like they matter most.Not enough time for herself,
Her life’s tightly-packed,
Bulky, day-timer ruled,
Which is baffling to
Someone like me
Who does time at arms length
Keeping calendars blank,
Clocks often unwatched,
Something baffling to her
I know.She endures all my jibes
When I tease about stress
And she rarely jibes me back.
But it’s with affection deep-felt
I remind her again:
“That third chapter starts NOW
Retire and paint.
Let the goof rule your day.
Every day.”No longer neighbors,
Our circles disparate
An hour or more apart
Our bond never hits that
Old, always-there thing.
But we both know it could
And without pause it would
If the need ever surfaced again.So now, frequently weeks,
And often some months,
And one time even some years
Vanish between our meets
But we jump right back in
Where we last left off,
The dialog never ends.
For now when we walk,
Our good union includes
This long tale to review,
Depth-filled with laughter and tears
Where fears of the world,
And aging and change,
Are allayed by the joys
Of true wisdom and worth
Of fine transits well made.
Walking and laughing,
And walking and laughing,
And walking and crying at times,
And returning to laughter again.
All evergreen trees drop some of their older needles in the fall. But on the western red cedar (thuja plicata), the leafy needle structure makes this autumn shed more visually obvious.
In a drought year, like this one, the cedar’s red shed is particularly dramatic, especially on the cedars growing higher on our sloped property, and those with a clear southern exposure (less water).
This routine thinning partially accounts for the western red’s success at growing big – less wind resistance over the winter. It may also be a factor in the cedar’s slower growth rate (compared to our region’s commercially-favored timber crops – western hemlock and Douglas fir). My experience suggests that when high winds do overpower the cedars, they are more likely than the others to relinquish only their tops (15 to 25 percent of the tree) rather than fall down. (Although even one-quarter of a large tree can wreak a bit of havoc in its flight path.)
Western red cedars, though not as large as California’s redwoods, were the giants of the old-growth forests in our region. They are called “the tree of life” by Northwest coast indigenous tribes who traditionally used them for lodges, canoes, totem poles and many other utilitarian, artistic and spiritual purposes.
Perhaps it’s my anthropological knowledge of their spiritual tradition, perhaps it’s just their quiet majesty, but I have something of a love affair with our big cedars, many of them 60 to 75 years old. It is impossible for me to stand beneath one and not appreciate its connectedness, timelessness, and endurance.
There is a certain innate wisdom in a giant tree. At this time of year, our western red cedars remind us to comfortably give in to nature’s flow – to routinely practice shedding the unnecessary (foliage, stuff, outdated ideas, bad habits, toxic relationships) as a path to reduce stress, promote health and prepare ourselves for the next round of buffeting winds.
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Griz and I have had mobile phones since the days when they were big and clunky. They’re an invaluable tool, no doubt about it – especially for a household with disparate careers, pressing family commitments and frequently a lot of highway miles surrounding it all. Modern-day schedule juggling – a phase from which Griz and [...]
I found Eremite Mike’s Blog after Mike left a comment on this blog. Though Mike didn’t leave a link to his blog (perhaps because the blog is quite young), his comment revealed a clear empathy with the hermitic path, so I searched him out. I am continually impressed with the profound beauty and depth of his [...]
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One of the best farewell greeting cards I ever received was this one by cartoonist Kevin Pope in the early 1990′s. I actually did quit my job (though I never did wear live [or dead] animals on my head). Griz and I took off on one of our periodic sailing-into-the-wilderness adventures aboard S/V WaterBrother. By the time we returned, Griz [...]
Anyone who loves sailing or fantasizes about cruising to faraway places, should follow the blog of Fred Roswold and Judy Jensen Wingssail. Fred and Judy were neighbors when Griz
and I were living aboard at Seattle’s Shilshole Marina. Griz and I enjoyed the sailing lifestyle and became reasonably decent cruising sailors, but sailing for us was secondary to our pursuit of a life close to nature and away from people.
FRED AND JUDY ARE SAILOR’S SAILORS. In Seattle, they raced their Serendipity 43, Wings, weekly in all seasons. For the past 12 years they’ve been cruising the Pacific and still particpate in regattas wherever and whenever possible. Their blog not only has great photos, but Fred’s descriptive posts include good technical information, a realistic view of the vagaries of cruising on a budget (working along the way), and beautiful philosophical prose about his passion for sailing. This from his June 2 post:
“But even after a thousand times, 10,000 times, each day on the water is a thing special, a day important, a day which restores life into a sailor.
We must have it. Or we die. We die anyway.
But at least this way when we eventually come to our end we will have followed a compass of our own devising; the only compass which we know how to follow.”
