Tag: Human

Maybe I’m not so bad after all

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He recognizes that when we forgive ourselves for being flawed and human, we naturally spread that forgiveness to others. Forgive yourself every morning, every night, every few minutes, if that’s what it takes….You tell yourself again and again: I am doing my best. And in fact, every life is an impossible tangle of mistakes. Flailing confusedly, craving more love, more safety, less loneliness isn’t just human; it’s the signature move of every human alive.

What’s incredibly sad but ultimately hopeful is that by the end of his book, Mr. Perry seemed to be waking up to the simple joys of gratitude, connection and empathy. He seemed ready to forgive himself for not living up to his own perfectionist standards….

His honesty in the face of his enormous pain should remind us that all human lives are formed from a tangle of mistakes. We will all mess up, today and tomorrow, but forgiveness shapes us into something less punitive and more sublime, a person who offers love instead of demanding it, a person who seeks peace instead of vengeance, a person who has the courage to say what Mr. Perry finally says to himself at the very end of his book:

“I look out at the water, and I say very quietly, ‘Maybe I’m not so bad after all.’”

— Heather Havrilesky, from “Matthew Perry Told the Truth About Everything” (NY Times, November 3, 2023). Matthew Perry, 54, died October 28, 2023.

Matthew Perry Portrait from People Magazine, October 29, 2023: Matthew Perry Once Said He’d Give Up Fame and Fortune to Avoid Facing Addiction: ‘I Would Trade It All’

We belong here, possum and person alike

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The Virginia opossum who has taken to sleeping beneath our family room may likewise have only one surviving baby, but the one we have seen seems to be having a grand time figuring things out. On our trail camera, we see it climbing onto our back deck from time to time. My husband, who likes to sit out in the dark backyard and look at the moon, once heard something stirring at his feet. When he opened the flashlight app on his phone, the young opossum was sniffing a box of crackers that my husband had set on the ground.

I’m not anthropomorphizing here. To understand that we all exist in a magnificent, fragile body, beautiful and vulnerable at once, is not to ascribe human feelings to nonhuman animals. It is only to recognize kinship. We belong here, possum and person alike, robin and wren and rabbit, lizard and mole and armadillo. We all belong here, and what we share as mortal beings is often more than we want to let ourselves understand. We all have overlapping scars.

I think the ever-present threat my wild neighbors live with must tell us something about the nature of joy. The fallen world — peopled by predators and disease and the relentlessness of time, shot through with every kind of suffering — is not the only world. We also dwell in Eden, and every morning the world is trying to renew itself again. Why should we not glory in it, too?

— Margaret Renkl, from “The Nature of Joy” (NY Times, June 26, 2023)

DK Photo of White-Tailed Deer, 5:30 am. June 25, 2023. More photos from morning walk here.

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Life is soupy, mixed up, and tumultuous. Muddying the waters is precisely the point because it’s from such nutritious streams that life grows… [KP: How would you start to answer this vast question of what it means to be human? Perhaps, how has that evolved how you might start to answer that question?] What it is to be human is such a small thing…in this universe, right? Just try to be nice, be kind babies, be kind. As Vonnegut wrote. That’s the only guide. Try to be good and try to do the least harm and be kind. That’s the only human bit. But what it means to be more-than-human, that’s something else. That’s the bigger question, I think, for me is what it means to transcend that narrow frequency of being human in this time here to perhaps partake of something far greater, something more-than-human. That is actually the more deep or meaningful connection to everything around us… Every time we train our most sophisticated tools upon the central questions of our existence – Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? – the answer comes back clearer: Everyone and Everywhere… —  James Bridle, excerpts from “The Intelligence Singing All Around Us,” an interview with Krista Tippett. Onbeing, March 2, 2023.
Notes: Portrait: Quantum

Walking. For A Thousand Years.

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Here we go again. Daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. 760 consecutive (almost) days.  Like in a row.

The narrator @ Audible is pumping “Independent People” into my head, a novel that won the 1955 Nobel Prize for Halldór Laxness.  Not sure what’s up with my fixation on Iceland and Icelanders: Laxness, Ólafur Arnalds, Of Monsters and Men. Something going on here…  Something.

So, I’m walking, and listening to Laxness…

“Had the brook lost its charm, then? No, far from it. Clear and joyful it flowed over the shining sand and pebbles, between its banks white with withered grass, its joy eternally new every spring for a thousand years; and it told little stories, in its own little tongue, its own little inflections, while the boy sat on the bank and listened for a thousand years. The boy and eternity, two friends, the sky cloudless and unending.”

Thousand years the brook flowed.  Thousand years, the tide I’m staring out at, receded, and then rolled back in again. Thousand years of nights, twilights, and sunrises…

Laxness continues: “Nothing in life is so beautiful as the night before what is yet to be, the night and its dew.”

I walk.

It’s 5:01 a.m., twilight (aka near dark), and I notice the tracks. Tracks running from the shoreline to the top of beach. WTH is that?  I walk to the top, wary of what I’ll find; God knows, it could be a badger from New Hampshire that lost its way — hiding behind the bushes waiting for its next victim. Continue reading “Walking. For A Thousand Years.” →

Walking. Being A Little More Human.

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Monday. 4:48 a.m. Why so early? There is some logic, disturbing as it may seem to some, to catch twilight, or daybreak, or first light or whatever you may want to call it — I have to leave the house precisely 60 minutes from Sunrise. And since Sunrise changes every day, and I have no clue why, my rise-and-go changes daily. For this machine is wound as tight as a Swiss Clock. Precisely (Mostly.) Daily. (Generally.)

So back to the walk. 747 consecutive days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row. (Almost.)

64° F, feels like 62° F. This is from the Dark Sky App. No bloody chance in hell it’s even close. Wind gusting up to 20 mph. It feels like a brisk 49°. And thank the lightening bolt premonition before I left the house — I put on a windbreaker or this would have been a damn short walk this morning. And be damed, if I’m still not cold.

So, back to the walk. It’s 4:50 a.m. and I’m getting out of the car. There’s only one other car in the parking lot. What sort of other lunatic is up at this hour? In case of a future need, this may be a match for bone marrow transplant, or white cell transplant, there’s gotta be some bone-to-bone connection here.

I sling the straps of my backpack over my shoulders, synch down the straps, lock the car, and walk.

And walk.

And there he is. The owner of the other car. He’s approaching. He’s carrying a white cleaning caddy in his right hand. Two toilet brushes, cleaning supplies, rags. The white of the caddy, is as white as my egrets. It illuminates the darkness.

Continue reading “Walking. Being A Little More Human.” →