This Day

I think the best years of my life are coming.

That is hopefully our common automatic thought, but personally I think falls into the category of politely meaningless, empty American middle-class platitudes: mundane small talk with the neighbor on Saturday over the fence. It lasts through the happy Sunday glaze of a good meal and football or whatever you relax to, only to fade on Monday morning when the alarm buzzer goes off. In the shower you itemize your week's task list mentally and all of a sudden the "best years etc." become "same-o, same-o".

But really. Seriously!

There is a good sky overhead and an excellent feeling in my heart. We are headed towards good things. Good Things!

Right now, I am in the process of being bombed by acorns from the massive oak tree that shades my deck. It is late afternoon, and aside from the intermittent but annoying drone of my neighbor's weed-wacker, it is an amazing fall day at the start of a four day weekend.

I have been looking at a small, humble tree across the street in my neighbor's yard. It catches tissue-paper strands of late afternoon light in its branches; the red and orange leaves glow like the golden letters of a medieval manuscript page. It's branches are unusual but eclectically balanced- the overall effect reminds me of a complex Chinese character. If it possessed all of it's leaves, it could replace that movie logo of the lightning -struck tree alone in a field- but it is flawed by a perfect and diametric asymmetry- the top of the tree is bare while the lower half is full.

What does that mean semiotically? I dunno.

I'll settle for a simple declaration that the tree is beautiful and that I am glad I was sitting here to see it. It wasn't even a Satori moment. Just a "cock head to the side and Hmmm.... I don't think I've ever actually SEEN that little tree before."

Sometimes, you just have to SEE things. Unfiltered, raw, SEEING. And then, you discover beauty in ordinary objects.

And with that....

 My neighbor shatters the reverie of the quiet neighborhood by murdering the weeds against his house in a casual vegetal recreation of the Valentines Day Mafia Massacre. *Eyebrow lifted* (Brother, when WAS the last time you mowed your lawn?)

Time for some new work and completion of the old.

The wind is shifting, and I like this change.

(my neighbor's tree is back to its shabby, mundane self. The light shifted during my final editing of this piece and the magical moment has passed. However, I will never see that little tree quite the same again.)

The tree below is NOT the one in my blog today, but it is an consistently amazing tree that captured the sun in  its branches earlier this summer one July evening.