June 22, 2002

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  My Philosophy of Life

  
  

  This one is tough… but not because I hesitate to reveal myself and be open to the sometimes less than tender mercies of my sharp and incisive, highly opinionated, often cold, preachy, mean or judgmental fellow Xangans.

  
  

  Whoa! If you’re thinking, “Hey! I’m not that bad,” I agree. I’ll take your word for it. All those words I used were meant to describe all or nearly all of the ways any of us might make it hard for each other to spill our guts. Maybe one or two of those words applies to you, eh? If not, okay, because none of that is why I find it difficult to complete this little exercise I’ve set for myself, to state my fundamental beliefs.

  
  

  

  
  

  Yaaaah!

  
  

  There’s the rub, the hangup, the hook. My most fundamental belief right now is that my highest goal is to transcend belief. How’s that for a neat little loop of a hook, huh? This is a mind that loves puzzles and paradoxes.  That does make it a trifle difficult to discuss my beliefs. Each time I root out, remember, track down and articulate a belief, *poof!* It’s gone, turned into a theory, a hope, a rumor or something… anything but something taken on faith alone. This mind needs to know.

  
  

  

  
  

  Lessee… where was I? I was out for a bit there, walking around the neighborhood with the digital camera, getting a load of shots of the solstice sunset. Not much of a sunset–prettiest ones are in winter when the southern sky is peachy or flame. This time of year the sun sets in the north, and it’s a long walk from here to anywhere north of here with an unobstructed view of the sunset. From here, it’s all trees. But the sky was interesting, a variety of clouds all around. And mosquitoes, in increasing numbers as the light faded. Two seasons we have: mosquitoes and no mosquitoes… or snow and no snow if you want to look at it another way. There will be dragonflies soon… probably are a few now, but I haven’t seen any yet this year. They don’t emerge until there are a lot of mosquitoes around for them to eat. Neat the way that works, isn’t it? Good plan. Just when we need them most, dragons to the rescue.

  
  

  

  
  

  But I digress. I was going to pour out my heart and soul here. Okaay. First thing to come to mind about which I have unequivocal knowledge, beyond all faith or doubt, is beauty. I sit here in beauty, and it’s lying over there on the floor in my dog Koji’s fur coat, big black leather nose and soulful brown eyes. I can hear the beautiful sounds not only of my own fingers on the keys of this laptop, but of Doug’s on the keys of the other machine with the modem that will convey these thoughts to you and all of cyberspace in the morning. That tappity-click has a restful rhythm: a beautiful dance for four hands.

  I’ve been out there walking with two beautiful cats, Pidney and Grammy Mousebreath, in a beauty so profoundly overwhelming it took my breath away, stopped me in my tracks a few times, with the way the birch leaves trembled and flashed in the wind, or the clouds shone white in blue spaces between the black spruce. Beauty is good, and that’s the truth.

  
  

  What else do I know? I know love. It is written that God is Love. I love. I am loved. Some part of me, an essential core of my consciousness, is love and a lot of people believe that is God. I like that idea. I fills me with joy. Joy is something else I know. It’s a feeling I recognize by its contrast with the other side of things. And those “two sides of things”– I know what that’s all about, too.

  
  

  

  
  

  I know it is not more nor less than perception, based on bilateral symmetry, in a bisexual species on a planet spinning on its axis as it revolves around a light source so that sometimes it’s light and sometimes it’s dark. I don’t perceive any of this in its absolute essence: the isness of it. All that my senses can register are the differences, the borders, the contrasts, the relativity of one thing set up beside another. From a distance it may appear black and white, but up close it is all shades of gray, and red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet….

  
  

  

  
  

  That’s enough to know, for me, right now. I’d hurt my head if I were to strain beyond this for another scrap of knowledge tonight. And I was playing hooky anyway, when I started this blog. Behind this window is one with notes on some research that I’ve only just started, and the book on which I’m taking notes is due back at a library in Arizona about two weeks from now. I know a few things about time, I think… and I’ll keep thinking about it as I read and take notes, and I’ll get back to you on the time idea, some other time.

  
  

  

  
  

  **As I proofread this a final time, I caught some motion out of the corner of an eye. Out the window, a wolf loped by. If it was a dog, it was one of the big wolf hybrids we have around here. It looked wild… no, I’d swear it was wild. Koji agrees. The start, the quiet “whuff” and soft growl that escaped him is what our dogs do when a wolf or a bear is around. For stray dogs, it’s all “RURURUROOOF!”, a get-out-of-my-yard shout, not the soft, “Mom, there’s something big out there,” warning I just heard. It’s marvelous living here.**

  
  

  These images were captured around 11:30 PM, Alaska Daylight Time, June 21, 2002.

  
  

  

  
  

  Two hours later, I saw the sky begin, without having grown dark, to brighten with dawn, but I was asleep before sunrise.  I wouldn’t have gone out in the bugs to catch it, anyway.  I take far more photos in snow than in mosquito season.  Sourdoughs will tell you that our skeeters don’t carry diseases, but times and climate are changing.  I heard from a public health nurse that they have seen a few cases of a new strain of malaria in western Alaska.

  • 5:58 pm
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