Waiting

I’ve been trying to write as a practice or discipline, but I’m afraid I don’t have anything to say. Nothing to say? That’s never stopped me before. Often if I just begin, my pencil (or my keyboard) kicks in and takes me someplace unexpected. But I’ve fallen silent. I’m overwhelmed. We can’t seem to wake up from this ongoing nightmare, and and it seems to become more convoluted every day.

Nevertheless, there was a gorgeous sunset yesterday, and I even saw the legendary green flash of the finale. I never knew if that was an actual thing, but now I can say it is. On the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (a mission more urgent than ever) it’s explained this way: The green flash is a phenomenon that occurs at sunset and sunrise when conditions are favorable, and results when two optical phenomena combine: a mirage and the dispersion of sunlight. As the sun dips below the horizon the light is being dispersed through the earth's atmosphere like a prism. As the light passes through the familiar Roy G. Biv of the spectrum, sometimes a flash of green can be seen for a few seconds.

I wasn’t quick enough to take a picture. You’ll just have to believe me. Monte saw it too.

This week we cracked and sorted macadamia nuts, a very fulfilling task. And we undertook the challenge of weeding through files, a rather daunting and ambiguous one. (The tyranny of paper!) I’ve tended to some correspondence, gone for several long walks, and laughed heartily at the antics of our funny little grandson via computer and video. I’m ingesting too much information, perhaps doing too little about it. But maybe recognizing how little we can do is part of this experience. The quest perhaps is to do less, to hold back, to defer, to restrain, retrain, and recalibrate.

I strive to be an instrument of peace and light, but I live on the cusp of fury, which makes it sort of hard.

We are waiting for certain key events, and sometimes it seems that the world is ending, but we can’t quite shake that old habit of hope, even when it’s too flimsy to write about. We are waiting.