Graduations and Reunions

While I thumb through an old volume of The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, trying, as always, to find historic significance in a new invention of a colleague of mine, I watch the plants, insects and animals in, on and above the patch of land I call a yard (which, of course, is more than a yard (or is it?)).

Ever lived in the woods, on the plains, or pretty much anywhere not in a peopled place and notice the general quiet? Very few sudden, loud sounds.

Plenty of sights, sounds and smells, though. The air here is thick and heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and wet forest earth.

A hermit. A monk. An amateur philosopher.

This morning, I repotted plants dug up by night creatures. I put out a handful of cat food for a wild cat who grows more accustomed to me everyday and vice versa.

Lightning bugs hang in the air.

Ferns and moss grow in front of my eyes.

NRFU Enumerators, CLAs and CLs put their incomes to use in the local economy.

I am a man of a deciduous forest, not a monoculture.

Is your personality one geared toward silently performing for an imaginary audience?

This year, my nephew graduates from secondary school and my secondary school's graduating class celebrates 30 years of living out in the real world.

Subcultural generations are measured in 1, 2 and 5-year increments. Breeding generations are measured in 12, 15 and 20-year increments. Cultural movement increments vary by calendrical distances between major historical events.

The cost of the cause (or the cause of the cost) of living.

How many attempts will it take to finally establish a permanent peopled colony on another planetary body? Will we ever see ourselves as we are now reproducing somewhere other than on and around Earth?

Would a tree agree that part of it is called a leaf?

I am never the same person twice.

Two times my secondary school classmates have planned and joined each other in gatherings - at the 10-year and 20-year post-graduation marks. Two times I have not gathered with them.

I am not the person I was 30 years ago. Very little of what I looked like back then remains - eye colour, body height and skin pigmentation being about all that's left of who I was during secondary school. The same applies for my classmates.

In this current cultural movement, which includes the integration of electronic devices onto our persons just about 24 hours a day, an exteriour extension of our thought process called software, in a software application called facebook, exists the continuation of the social relationships my classmates first established over 30 years ago.

Although I can socialise with most anyone, I do not regularly attend social events in my area. I do not seek out weekly activities for the sake of hanging out. Instead, I (or my wife and I) randomly go to restaurants, shops, sporting events or tourist attractions when we feel like going (we rarely go to religious centers or friends' houses anymore).

My only daily habit is writing about the thoughts that my body generates in response to my surroundings.

I consider myself unimportant. Although I, like most social creatures, seek attention sometimes, I find satisfaction in connecting disparate thoughts and opposing actions in the world around me and writing about them in a space like this.

If you can't travel the world, is it just as satisfying to visit a zoo to see animals from other parts of the world you'd like to see but won't see in their "normal" natural environments?

Secondary schools are a type of zoo to me, so we can artificially create learning environments where increased noises and compressed learning cycles are imposed on young people whose brains and thoughts are considered more malleable than adults.

My zoo days are over. My classmates have found their own "normal" natural environments in which to live.

Because I am unimportant, having nothing to show for my existence as a member of my species - no children, no grandchildren - what do I have to show or share with my former classmates whose current living environments are like foreign landscapes to me that I will never, if ever, see?

I use this space to make myself transparent, writing about all my likes, dislikes, dreams and disappointments so I can reduce the presence of the artificial self in the environment and see what's really going on around and through me at the same time.

I watch a large ant walk on the laptop computer power cord snaked across the garage floor in loops and remember an Escher print of ants parading across a Möbius strip.

Sometimes I can't figure out why all I want to do is sit here, think and write. I have no personally great visions or dreams that drive me to build skyscrapers and rocketships. Mainly, I talk about the visions and dreams of others. All I do is observe and report, observe and report, observe and report, ad hominem / infinitum / nauseum.

This simple existence of mine, combined with the information gleaned from my reading of classmates' facebook postings about their post-secondary school lives, tells me more than I needed to know or socialise about in the moment - I cannot convince myself to make plans to attend a reunion of my classmates.

However, I will watch my nephew receive his secondary school diploma and wish him well on his journey out of the zoo and into the real world to find an environment to his liking.

Then, I will return to my kind of environment, with the birds, lizards, spiders, ants, trees, ferns, vines, and occasional noisy interruptions by the peopled world from which I came and into which I periodically foray with or without my wife.

I am an example of myself to myself first and foremost. If I don't live up to the example of myself, perfectly imperfect as I am, then why live?

I am a hermit/monk in the middle of the world of people, no longer the attention-seeking president of the drama club in secondary school 30 years ago. I know that many people still see the old me in the current me (and sometimes I can't help but encourage that view - old habits are hard to break) but they do not see the example of me I am trying to be.

I am an old guy who chooses not to impose his views on other people. Instead, I reflect and/or magnify the views of others who seem best to improve the long-term survival of our species and other life on this planet as they seek new extraplanetary ground in / on / over which to breed.

My life is simple and my yard a nearly perfect microcosm of the universe. No reason to complicate matters today.

Is it possible to find "life" in another part of the universe that is not integral to an "eat and be eaten" environment? Doesn't seem likely since life comes from and goes back into the surroundings. We should remind ourselves of that in every breath and every step we take, huh?