Author: Bev

What’s the difference, indeed?  Well, there all kinds of differences.  We look different from one another.  We talk differently.  We live different places.  We think and we feel differently from each other.  We have different ways.  We have different religions and different values.  We want different things from the lives we lead.

Matthew Engelke said, “While anthropology wants to document difference – and often to be a witness to it – it also wants to make sense of those differences.  Anthropology seeks to explain.”  A hundred years ago, I taught Introduction to Sociology and Cultural Anthropology.  That study of anthropology must be where I got my need to explain.

I particularly liked teaching several sections, among them was Assimilation vs. Differentiation or the Melting Pot vs. the Salad Bowl.  Assimilation spoke to European emigration to the U.S. in the 19th century, when the goal was nation-building, and one nation, under God was the ideal.  This is from whence many of you, and I hailed.

People thought at that time, the nation would be best served by a people with one identity, therefore, the various immigrant nationalities were expected, or forced – depending upon one’s perspective, to set aside their unique national heritage and identity for the sake of becoming American.  We were a melting pot, or a soup cauldron.  James Baldwin put it this way, “The American ideal, after all is that everyone should be as much alike as possible.”

You’ve heard the idiom, “It’s the same-difference?”  Same difference comes from a melding of the word same and the phrase no difference, and it first appeared in 1945.  Well, we’re not the same, although “There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference.  The little difference is attitude” (W. Clement Stone).

As to the differences between people, I like the way Bill Clinton put it, “Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.”   However, we can all likely agree with Vincent O’Sullivan that “If you’re different from the rest of the flock, they bite you.”  Don’t they just?

I’m okay with soup, but its consolidation of a bunch of flavors, textures, and solids into a smooth, singular sensation leaves me wanting.  In fact, the soups I prefer are chunky, not a pulverized, smooth amalgamation of nothing in particular.

I overwhelmingly prefer salad.  The crunch, surprising changes in flavor, and discernible differences in ingredients are what satisfy my palate.

Differentiation speaks to more recent emigration to the U.S. and a “we are the world,” multi-culturalism.  The salad bowl metaphor depicts our culture as one in which a flavorful, colorful, crunchy mixture of unique cultures work separately and together to freely form a diverse people into one union – unity within diversity.

Personally, I think the crunchy part of the salad is the most telling, culturally.  Crunchy is what differences between groups produce.  Other ways than my ways make me bristle and frankly the clash of cultural or ideational textures sometimes “rubs me the wrong way;” just like the sensation of wool on my skin.

Some folks just don’t want to fight through our differences.  It’s easier to just stick with the easier route of spending time only with those who are like us.  I guess if you prefer not to distinguish between a burro, which is an ass, and a burrow, which is a hole in the ground, then you’ll never know the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground.

We have our differences.  Think on these thoughtful quotes:  Marty Rubin said, “the sea and the shore disagree, it’s only natural.”  I would add, but oh when the two meet!

Another one is, “The heart and mind work together but make decisions differently (Ehsan Sehgal).”  This is the very definition of wholeness.  You can’t separate the heart and the mind, they work together, making us whole.  Finally, “We all see the same thing, but interpret it differently (Sukant Ratnakar).”  Rasheed Ogunlaru said, “We are one at the root – we just part at the branch.”  I’m all about trees and branches, and such.

Now, I segue to The Tower of Babel, which I always understood was about God’s judgment on a narcissistic bunch of unruly, mean-spirited people; a people with one mind and goal – setting themselves above God.  Thus, the tower they were building, was intended to gain a one-up on the Almighty God.

Rabbi Sacks (Not in God’s Name) parlays another, more plausible truth of the matter of The Tower of Babel.  He reminds us that Genesis Chapter 10 tells of seventy nations with seventy languages – God-given differences and each respected for their uniqueness, working at nation-building.

By Genesis Chapter 11, one imperial power imposed its monotheistic will on the seventy nations, making them follow one God, one truth, and one way, and speak one language.  This now, one nation was orderly and compliant (a primary goal of nation-builders), but bland and devoid of life and color.

God – the Founder of Monotheism, when he confused the language of the builders of the tower (Genesis 11:7) was not pronouncing judgment, but restoring the nations to their distinct, unique, cultural identities.  Sacks (Not in God’s Name) suggests that the whole of the Hebrew Bible is God’s attempt to show humankind the way out of our “fundamental human dilemma” of difference.

No matter what our differences, if we remember that we all have something in common – the image of God inside us – that glimmer of commonality can point us toward peace.  No matter how ugly, beautiful, sinful, saintly, grotesque or majestic we look or behave; we have a common feature: God’s image.  Remember, “One who is not in my image is nonetheless in God’s image” (Sacks, p. 202).

“Vive la difference!”

“Oh, my word, is it just me or is it really humid today?”  “Is it just me or was that pizza really salty?”  “Is it just me, or is that man really staring at us?”  “Is their music really loud or is it just me?”

Nobody wants to be alone in their perceptions.  We all need confirmation once in a while that what we think we’re perceiving is indeed what’s there.

Also, nobody wants to be alone in thinking something’s wonky.  The reality is, everybody has to put up with some nonsense from time to time.

“No, it’s not just you.  You’re not alone.”  That’s all we wanted to hear and then most of us move on to what’s next.

Unless you’re a victim.  Then you can’t move on, you’ve begun to identify with being wronged, and you want others to join your pity party, pat your back, and feel your pain.

Has someone ever told you, “Don’t take it personal?”  When someone treats you badly, how do you not take it personal, and avoid becoming a victim?

There are victims of crime and there are victims of circumstances, and there is a victim-personality.  There are so many victims these days, who have to blame someone or something  for their pain.

Once upon a time there was a victim of a crime.  A young man was senselessly murdered by another man vested with authority, which he doled out badly.

Almost immediately, that criminal and his cohorts were divested of their power and authority, and soon thereafter their freedom, as is usual in the first steps up the ladder of the American justice system.

But, before anything orderly or coherent could progress throughout the system, “the system was hijacked” by victim-hood, confusion and hate.  Powered by fear, greed, disadvantage, hurt, and uncertainty, a storm gathered victim after victim until a great fault divided the shores, valleys, prairies, and mountains of this land.

When I think about victims of crime, circumstances, or even those who might have a victim-complex, I associate them with scapegoat-culture.  Since, the word victim derives from the Latin victima, meaning sacrificial animal, I began to muse on the concept of the scapegoat.

My scriptural memory store associates the scapegoat with the story in Genesis 22, of Abraham heading on a journey with his young son, Isaac, up a mountain at the behest of God, to sacrifice his boy, of promise.  After having prepared the altar and strapping Isaac to it, out of the wilderness, wandered a ram.  God prepared a substitute for Isaac; a scapegoat.

So, scapegoating is the practice of singling out any individual or group for “unmerited negative treatment” or “blame.”  There has to be someone to blame for my poor self-esteem, my declining mental health, my crappy circumstances; for things turning out “wrong,” in my life.  Or does there?

Sometimes you just want everybody to move on and live their lives.  Many “victims” can’t do that.  They’re always churning up chaff.  I think people who are members of “victim-culture” are metaphorically allergic to wheat; just tossing chaff, or blame, into the air willy-nilly, for the rest of us to choke on.

Can you think of any individuals or groups in the world today, or in your own world, who serve as scapegoats, undeservedly bearing the brunt of blame for wrongdoing, real or imagined?  Holy moly, the list is as long as my arm, yours and a whole slew of arms joined together.

It’s a blame-game culture, me thinks.  Not to mention a culture chock-full of victims, who repeatedly cry out, “The system is unjust.”  “I’ve been wronged.”

How can we stop this cycle of madness perpetrated by this “they?”  I wonder if it’s forgiveness.

In the Hebrew account of the scapegoat, once the scapegoat was sacrificed, effectively taking on the blame for another, all parties are forgiven.  End of account. 

I hear echoes of “that’s not fair.”  Fairness is relative and it can’t be measured on a scale.  It’s also a rather childish notion, compared to the grown-up concept of forgiveness.

It’s a tall order, forgiveness.  Most of the time, forgiveness is undeserved, just like scapegoating.

Shall we give a modicum of credit to Christians, most of whom believe, Jesus was the ultimate scapegoat.  Was that fair?  Fair or not, his sacrifice ended it, if you believe.  He sealed the sacrifice by saying, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

 

 

 

When responding to an invitation, I was tempted to say, we will be there, “if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise;” (1955 Jerry Reed) because you just never know what that day may bring.  Then I rethought that and just said, “we’ll be there.”

English grammar rules are fraught with exceptions.  This makes our beloved language one of the most difficult languages to learn for the non-English speaker.

Grammar mistakes circulate through families, as does “good grammar.”  Exceptions to the grammar rules are also handed down from one generation to another.  From a young age, we learn language through example and our teachers are those with whom we spend the most time.

If your daddy said, “I seen a bear in the woods today,” and your mama said, “Well, I saw a wild turkey during my walk along the trail,” it’s possibly a toss-up whether you’ll inherit your dad’s grammar mistake or your mom’s crisp understanding of the rules regarding the word, see and its variants.

Most of us remember from school, an oft-used spelling ditty involving a familiar spelling rule: “I before E except after C.”  But there are over seven thousand words in the English language that defy this rule.  As I said, there are so many exceptions in English.  We native English speakers have learned to accept the rule that “it’s this way, except when it isn’t.”

We accept most exceptions. For example, the homophones in my previous sentence have got to be a conundrum for non-native speakers.  To “accept” is to receive without question, but to “except” is to exclude.

Have you ever been the exception, been excluded for some reason or another?  Have you ever been the other, or an outsider?  If so, then welcome to English-based civilization.  I think we’ve all been the exception at one time or another.

I’m not necessarily a rule breaker, although there has been a rule on the books that stipulates not to use contractions in writing.  But I write how I talk.  There is another rule, not to start a sentence with but.

I really like that there are exceptions to the rules just in case I’m not all that keen on a certain rule in the first place.  From a writer’s perspective, it seems like the rules sometimes restrict personal expression, creativity, and even clarity.

About song lyrics and the story of “ain’t.”  I was under the impression that “grammar rules be damned,” originated with song lyrics, such as the one quoted in the first sentence of this tome.  Music is a famous vehicle of rebellion, communion, antipathy, and agreement, all balled up in one very influential enigmatic medium.

But when I did a bit of research, I found that the “word” ain’t was used way back before the 1955 hit, “Ain’t that a Shame” sung and popularized by Fats Domino.  What’s with the bad grammar in these 1955 songs?

The controversial word, ain’t is one of the most pervasively non-standard English language vernacular words ever used.  And, incorrect usage of don’t for doesn’t and seen for saw, pervades our cultural landscape in songs, rhymes, and everyday conversation.

Ain’t is used widely in song lyrics, presumably because it rhymes better than the more cumbersome but grammatically correct, is not, are not, isn’t, etc.  For example, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” wouldn’t quite cut it as “He Isn’t Heavy, He’s, My Brother.”   Nor would “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” sound right as “It Isn’t Necessarily So.”

There’s a certain flow to familiar phrases such as “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” “you ain’t seen nothin yet,” and “say it ain’t so, Joe,” that their grammatically correct counterpart can’t achieve.  The word usage of ain’t may not be grammatical but it is acceptable in certain instances.

Ain’t is okay nowadays, but like it or not, it is sometimes associated with the non-standard speech of the less educated and is socially unacceptable in some situations.  In fact, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries the word, ain’t became stigmatized as the perfect example of a shibboleth, a word used to determine inclusion in or exclusion from those who were educated.  “Ain’t that a shame?”

General Douglas MacArthur said, “rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.”  Well, ain’t that somethin’?  I guess the good general adapted well to the myriad of English language grammar exceptions.  I think I’ll go and lie down after I lay this piece to rest.…..

With reference to the 1980 Blondie song, “Call me on the line, call me, call me, anytime,” I ask, really, anytime?  Have you answered a call on your life?  Do you have a calling?

Having a strong inner impulse toward a certain vocation, profession, or action is sometimes referred to as a calling.  This use of the term can be traced to the 1550s, although it originated in the biblical book of I Corinthians 7:20, where it refers to a position or state in life.

In the mid-13^th century, the noun, calling, referred to a summons or invitation.  In this sense, if you were called to appear before someone, it was not unlike our modern-day legal summons to appear before a court official, and it isn’t a request, it’s more like a demand.

In 1882, to call, was Middle English, to stand at the door and call out.  This reminds me of a familiar scripture from Matthew 7:7-8, ask and it shall be given; seek and you will find; knock, and it shall be opened. 

The thing about asking, seeking, and knocking, is that they are action verbs.  When you take these actions, you rightly expect a reaction for your effort.  However, expectation is key here.

When you ask, you will receive, but you might not receive the answer you expected.  When you seek, you might find something altogether different from the thing you sought after.  But, with an open mind, you just may get something better than expected.  The Rolling Stones put it this way, “you can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes, well, you just might find you get what you need.”

When you knock on a door, the one that opens to you might be surprising.  What’s behind your door may beckon you inside a maze of paths that lead you in a direction that is not a part of your five-year or twenty-five-year plan.

Don’t be disappointed at your unexpected outcomes.  In fact, I’ve encountered a few busy signals in my day.  Many times, when we call, we can’t get through.  Or we’ve been called, didn’t or couldn’t answer and when we return the call, the line is busy.

I can’t tell you how many true crises we’ve been through that have led to opportunities and an easier course, forward.  “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” comes to mind.

This reminds me of a story in current affairs.  Let’s say you were called to become a princess, or duchess as it turns out.  You expected to be adored worldwide.  You thought your job would be to dispense goodwill, dress extremely nicely, wave and smile a lot, travel, and receive thanks for your efforts.

Instead, your job is work, constant, thankless work, helping some folks who don’t care, are ungrateful, and who criticize you to your core.  You found that there are plenty of people out there who don’t like who you are and they’re not afraid to shout it to the world.

The nice clothes are fun but somebody somewhere says you’re a cow.  Your waves and smiles are said to be fake and some of the travel is just plain dirty and you’re expected to eat some pretty gross stuff, with thanksgiving, trying not to let your face betray your disgust.

Suddenly your dream of becoming a princess has come crashing down around you and your self esteem is damaged, perhaps beyond repair.  Your mental health has nosedived and all you can think is you want out of this mess you’ve been called to.  You think, “If this is what my calling to be a princess is, I quit.  I’m hanging up from this call.”

As a princess, you’ve got the power now to exact revenge on the people who made you a disillusioned princess.  Will you wield that power with your eye toward the folks who appreciate the good you are capable of, or will you try with all your might to hurt those who called you to this gilded cage?

Untempered vision is a dangerous thing.  Rejected counsel is another.  Whole-hog action without a juried plan, is folly.

Be all that you can be, as that princess.  It truly is your calling.  Become pliable clay in the hands of the one(s) who called you to this task, this place, this job, this family; they know what this calling takes.

The thing about “calling” is that you’re compelled to follow it whether you like it or not.  So, learn to like it, some how or another.  Be teachable by your fate.  You might be surprised by what you’ll learn, I know I have.

Over the last few years, the scarcity of paper and paper-based products has plagued the world over.   I’m sure that someone’s brilliant solution to this shortage is, “go paperless.”

Nearly every bill I’m obliged to pay every month, practically begs me to “go paperless.”  I tried this with a number of bills over the last years, with mixed success.  I apparently need a piece of paper as a reminder that there is something I’ve got to take care of.

There are certainly many categories of things which doing less of or having less, is doable, if not beneficial to one’s personal economy, health, wellness, prosperity, or the public good.  White sugar, animal fat, salt, smoking, inactivity, bad attitudes, hatred, bitterness, and all manner of strife, we could do with less of.

Less stuff has got to be better than more stuff.  Piles of stuff are rather chaotic.  As I cleansed an old rolodex on my desk, I ran across a little piece of paper with an apropos quote: “Peace means destroying the authority attached to chaos.”

I’m all about peace these days, so what say we take some authority over the chaos of stuff, and purge dear folks, cleanse, and breathe….  Speaking of purging, and considering less is more, there is the happy occurrence of being in your own home, braless.  Braless is not just an historically feminist mantra of the 60s or 70s, but an annual summer necessity for many a modern woman of every shape and size, creed and color, ideology and political bent.

Back to the shortage of paper, our business requires it, specific kinds of it.  It’s not as simple as the inconvenience I feel being out of paper plates on which to microwave my turkey bacon the way I’m used to doing it.

And there is my refusal to pay $8.95 at my favorite discount store, for a small packet of said paper plates.  There is always Amazon, but dear Lord haven’t we given them enough business, already?

Seriously though, the paper shortage has become critical in printing-related businesses such as ours.  Again, somebody out there is suggesting we go “paperless.”

Your suggestion has been noted.  In fact, we heard your plea more than a decade ago.  Digital downloads have been a part of most businesses of our type for many years.  However, not to get too specific, method books for music teachers on how to play this or that instrument, are usually too voluminous to be accommodated by a digital file.

As mentioned above, if you do your personal business online, which many of us do, you have been offered paperless options for your bills.  But, my peeve with “their” concept of paperless is that it’s paperless for them, but you usually utilize the Print tab on your computer screen and from your printer, obtain a paper receipt, if not in addition to the paper bill which you printed earlier.  It’s never really paperless.

“Less,” as a suffix isn’t as simple as doing with less of something.  Like, meatless, it’s doing without meat or whatever word precedes the suffix, less.

At this critical time, paperless for some businesses is trying to do with massively less than is necessary to conduct our business.  We’re used to being creative with our resources but creativity can only make up for so much lack of supply.

The supply chain crisis, worldwide, seems to be manipulative toward the masses with a goal of conformity to a new norm.  It’s a bit dictatorial if you ask me.  That was rhetorical because I’m aware that nobody is asking me.

It’s like we’re living in a penal colony under a correctional system of government and we’re being punished and squeezed until we comply with the new regime’s vision of things.

So, just like sleeveless, shapeless, speechless, careless, fearless, ageless, breathless, lawless, useless, helpless, restless…., there is paperless.  It’s not a meaningless thing. 

Well, it’s probably endless to keep writing about how I can’t do without paper, but I just won’t do without sleeves; it’s a thing for me.  And it’s rare for me to be speechless, although it may have happened once or twice in my life.

I forget to take care from time to time, but I don’t recall feeling helpless more than once.  I have a constant need to stretch my legs, which I used to think should be called “restless leg syndrome,” but it’s not.  I just need to move, because being motionless is torture.

So, I admit, I can’t “go paperless.”  It just can’t happen.  How about you? Bless you, by the way.

Is your life full of distractions, like mine is?  I catch myself once in a while, realizing that I’ve spent hours dealing with peripheral personal business while the “real” business of the day waits on the back burner until I can just muster enough mental and emotional energy to eek out what has got to be done.

I click on my email in the morning and I seem to move from one distraction to the next before I get to the main event.  And the Internet is notorious for one distraction tumbling after another.

You can intend to do a simple Google search for something that matters to you and off you go.  If it’s not click-bait on your Google feed or Facebook feed, Instagram or Twitter, it’s legitimate movement from one bit of “research,” that leads to another bit or bob that leads to yet another, until you nearly forget about your original point of interest.

Click-bait is essentially internet advertising masked as information, or gossip about celebrities and their secrets to success.  Most of us, out of curiosity, click on it at some time or another. Someone once said that advertising is 48% distraction, 48% manipulation, and 4% information.  They got that right.

Distraction is a matter of contemporary culture, offering information overload from politics, to entertainment all around the globe, to cute kitties, dogs, babies, weddings, sales pitches, and gossip.  It’s nearly impossible to stay focused on what’s important, when distractions, even worthy ones compete for your attention.

The lyrics to a song called, Breathe 2 a.m., by Dido, which is included on my jogging track, speaks to those daily distractions which are a major part of our modern lives.  “…you can’t jump the track we’re like cars on a cable and life’s like an hour glass glued to the table; no one can find the rewind button now, so cradle your head in your hands and breathe, just breathe, oh breathe, just breathe.”

I think, poignant to the song, Breathe, is that the artist sings whole sections without taking a breath.  It seems that our culture, like that song, is about movement from one thing to the next, with barely a moment to take a single breath.

I need one extra long breath some days when dealing with all those distractions.  It’s peculiar that when I’m doing my own thing, stuff goes swimmingly.  But the other things that I’m stuck doing because of somebody else’s mistakes, minute by minute, hour by hour, suck the smooth right out of some, or if I’m honest, most days.

Don’t even try to fix their errors by yourself online because there are safeguards built into the system so that if you don’t go with their program, they bounce your bum right off the website.  Then you attempt via the old-fashioned telephone, to first explain the mistake to a human being, once you’ve swum through the morass of selections laid out before you.

After you’ve explained the situation to the first person, chances are you’ll be forwarded to another department or if you’re lucky, their manager or supervisor.  Then when you ask if the manager is aware of your issue and/or if they have your account number in front of them, they give you the duh-silent treatment and you have to go over it all again.

Meanwhile your distraction-meter is ticking up to the red-overload zone.  Okay, so now you have the supervisor on the telephone and you’ve repeated your issue.  You have hope that this person is qualified to settle the matter and this distraction will be over for today.

“I’ll have to research this and get back to you,” they say.  “Is this the best number to reach you?”  Day one passes as does days two and three.  Meanwhile the bill is due tomorrow, but the mistake on the bill has not been resolved.

That in itself presents another issue, that of confirming your identity.  Oh my, this might be “driving me to distraction.”

It seems time to re-set, re-boot and re-focus.  If one prevails, the distractions eventually wane and you get to do what you intended to do all along.  So, I guess the best antidote to distraction is a matter of the old stick-to-it-rive-ness.  Perseverance will get the job done every time. 

Besides information overload, emotional or physical messes create distraction, which reduces your power to concentrate on the bigger picture.  You can as easily get trapped in cleaning up a mess as a fly gets caught in a spider’s web.

Cleaning up this particular mess reminds you of another mess, and in the midst of that mess is yet another reminder that something else needs tidying, until you’re truly lost in messes. This is what T.S. Eliot meant when he said, “Distracted by distraction by distraction.”

Another phenomenal distraction is loss.  If you’ve lost something or someone, have you noticed that you have a reduced ability to focus on much of anything else?

Then there is the “wonderful distraction.”  When your mind is overfilled, distractions can be a positive trick to unloading and diverting traffic to a happier highway, so to speak.

If problems threaten to overwhelm you, any distraction will provide blessed relief.  The problem may not go away; then again, a bit of time away from it all may allow the issue to fix itself.  I’ve observed that making allowances for distraction is doing yourself a great service of self-care.

But, on the other side of the double-edged sword of distraction, I totally see Thomas Edison’s point when he said, “To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge the imagination without distraction.”

Distractions are here to stay, folks.  So make the best of them and think on these things: truth, nobility, justice, purity, love, good reports, virtuousness, and anything that is worthy of praise – see Philippians 4:8-18.

I sat, in repose, on a big rock – taking a break from my walk in the woods.  In retrospect – if it can be retrospective, with only fifteen words under my belt – “sitting in repose on a big rock,” to a person over the age of say, twenty, seems an oxymoron, soon to be revealed in the degenerative disks of the aging back, numb butt and tailbone, of said person formerly at rest on a rock. We have quite a few of these natural accoutrements – big rocks, and woods, in our rural Pennsylvania environs.

When I’m in the woods, I’m often compelled to sit a bit and contemplate what it is about our forestscape that I’m repeatedly drawn to and which makes me exhale such peace – in startling contrast with my work-world that I left below, in the valley.

A while ago, in one of those moments of respite, I sent a text to my sister-in-law: “Just chillin’ in the woods.  Birch bark is so smooth and beautiful.  Meditating on what it is that I love about these woods. Textures abound in chaotic, natural randomness.” 

In our business I am Managing Editor, and I manage and control pretty much everything in my life.  When I come to the woods I can just breathe and relinquish all control to God and appreciate the uneven, unexpected, natural terrain I encounter. 

 

I noticed that in describing my beloved woodlands, I use a lot of un-words: unmanipulated, untrained, unplanned – and the two un-words above.  As thoughtful English grammarians know, un is a prefix, meaning not or negative, or an opposite force in adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. 

For me, when I describe what I feel when I enter the woods, it’s a description of what it is NOT.  My woods are NOT manipulated by humankind; not planned to death, not trained to be a certain thing to humankind – they certainly are not even or expected.  I like the French word for not, “pas.”  Right about now I could go for some pas de plan, pas de structure, pas de control, etc.

This reminds me of Paul Cezanne’s comparison of Paris, “nature, starched and tormented” with Provence, “nature, unspoiled.”  I could just as easily compare our domesticated rural communities with their neighbor, the woodlands.  One is configured and tortured to the bounds of human perfection and the other is left to an ultimately lovelier, divine, loving-kindness –an environment in which one can literally palpate the presence of God, untempered by human meddling.

This doesn’t discount the fact that Paris and other grand cities of its caliber possess an appeal of the senses, because they clearly do.  I found Paris aloof but alluring and it drew me into its “starched’ core in spite of itself.

Similarly, our pristine rural communities are the compelling reason we live where we live.  Just short of the English formal gardenscape, complete with boxwood hedgerows, pruned, barely escaping their lives; our rural environs of trimmed, tamed, symmetrical landscape, collectively make up the pretty place that we identify as home.

Without this primarily German and French atavistic attempt to perfect nature, to domesticate, prune, sweep, polish, and control it, we wouldn’t want to live where we live.  In fact, the few properties in our communities owned by people without the overwhelmingly contrary tendency to tidy-up or pretty-up their parcels are misunderstood, at least; fastidiousness, not running in their ancestral-line.

However, there is for me, a constant entreaty from the woods – an invitation from nature that begs me to temporarily leave the mimicry of my cushy neighboring community for its more unknown offerings.  And, when I can’t accept the call to nature, I feel unbalanced – like an essential nutrient is missing from my diet.

There is something about those entwined vines/branches, which I call “twisted sisters,” that I run across in the woods, that make my heart leap a little bit when I see them.  What is it about those twisted apparitions that are surely mistakes or flukes of nature, but just as surely send comfort to my core and balance to my soul?

Maybe it’s because they’re already twisted – misshapen, irregular, bent and mangled.  They therefore pose no expectation of perfection from me.  They’re fixed, finished, albeit imperfectly.

Natural curves in the landscape are much more interesting to me than the straight lines of human-made structures.  Is there anything linear in nature – without bumps, bends, circles, winding, combined, unanticipated, multi-directional?

My dad, an old-school carpenter, helped to build the house of my oldest brother.  As I recall – and I’ve been wrong before, so don’t quote me – Bill insisted on building his garage at an angle to the house.  Also, as I recall, my dad told Bill that if it wasn’t square, it wasn’t right and it would never work.  Witness – my brother’s angled garage, which works just fine, to my knowledge.

Similarly, I’m not a fan of ultra-modern architecture in homes – the style leaves me cold.  This might have to do with the lack of fluid chaos, disorder, unplanned, asymmetry of the warm, natural world.  Or, it might be that ultra-modern design utilizes little wood, stone, or plant material, the stuff of the forest, preferring glass, metal, and human technology for its aesthetic.

Nary a braided or tangled texture would be found in an ultra-modern human being’s environment.  Me and my “twisted sisters” may live in a modern world and I’ve adapted to and even enjoy a bit of metal, glass, and a lot of technology in my home, but the woods are never far away.