Life is Absurd, Beautiful, Backlit, and Passing

      These are our thoughts in the final days of November.  Though there is no escape from the final absurdity of life, I may with open eyes take the courage to see--consciously see--the particulars of our world.  
     Stopping to watch a creek, some dragonflies, backlit leaves, seeds, and a stone is like looking at pieces of art in a gallery. The demand is stillness.  And like individual moments of perception within a small canyon, art stops time just long enough for  my attention to catch up.  A piece of art, like one of these images, encourages a conscious attention to a moment brought to stillness so that this attention can maximize the experience of this one particular subject. The next moment is the next item in the gallery. 
     Camus said, "the point is to live."

     Four days ago on the last Sunday afternoon of the month, Harlin and I watched as several mated pairs of dragonflies attempted to deposit eggs on the surface of what may have appeared to their many-hundred eyes to be a surface of reflective water. It was not. And doubts remain as to the viability of Sympetrum corruptum eggs on top of a discarded piece of polished granite.

Variegated Meadowhawks (Sympetrum corruptum)

          And then the motion picture version: 

      Harlin sent us these next two of late-year butterflies and a flower:

Bordered Patch butterfly (Chlosyne lacinia) 
on a Cowpen Daisy (Verbesina encelioides)

Vesta Crescent (Phyciodes graphica)

     This is either the navel of the world or a smooth hole in a large chunk of limestone beside the creek.

World Navel or a rock

     These are light.

     A couple months ago on September 20, my father died.  The day after Thanksgiving, in the afternoon, I buried some of his ashes.

.

Small Patch of Light

4:18pm, November 10, 2012.  A falling column of cool autumn light catches a small patch of grass beside the road leading through our place and down to the Creek.  

Rorschach

Here above is an image created by the ants' trails leading out of the main nest.  These ants are mining tunnels down into a hard-packed gravel road near the front gate.

The devil in the garden is a white worm eating us from the inside out.

Election Day

     Who wins today's presidential election is obviously important, but when we try to decide on a candidate, we are left mainly with having to choose based on larger philosophical principles because the details (of healthcare reform, the economic bailout, or solutions to the debt problem) are really too much to fully understand and debate meaningfully.
     So we use broad philosophical reasoning to choose a candidate who is most likely to push forward detailed programs generally consistent with those philosophical principle we carried with us into the voting booth.
     And some things will change following the election.  No doubt.  But some things will not.  That's something we would do well to remember as we argue our way (and spend six billion in political advertising) leading up to the election and then in the hangover period immediately following it.
     That Thanksgiving follows this unnecessarily long and expensive process is somewhat appropriate.
     If sunlight still shines on a small hill country stream, I will remain grateful for that as well.


Please click here to see who your vote will spend its time with while it rests in the ballot box.

If design govern in a thing so small

(Fall colors in central Texas.)

(I like this boulder.)

November 2, 2012.