Those moments when you look at something, and suddenly the world seems inhabited with beauty, and when it’s really great is when an applicable passage of poetry comes to mind. The one that recurs for me on a good day is seeing an aspen tree in fall, and having Spring and Fall: to a young child start running through my head.
Sometimes I remind people that when Jerry died I did get a job, see how that turned out? What makes it bearable, now that I am all but deaf, is that all of that swims in the back of my mind, and though I may not “hear” it so well I can hear enough to listen in my mind. Kind of a Zen thing.
Or not. As it may or may not be. Here. Whenever.
It did crank this up enough to find it remarkable.
I’ve found that roving slugs consider stomped on slugs a delicacy. I stomp on them as well. Since the PTB appear to have roughly the same MO, I’m thinking that pondering a scaled up version of that scheme could be a source of joy for me. Maybe something like that is happening now, I dunno…
Without them, I’m not sure anything would be make watching the world’s human-caused death spiral worthwhile, especially given the increasing derangement of most segments of human society, but also helping muchly:
All the wildlife (both fauna and flora!) around the house. Love watching all the birds and bunnies and chipmunks in the yard and when I walk through the desert. We have at least occasionally ravens, house and gold finches, several types of sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, mourning and collared doves, pigeons, starlings, hooded orioles, roadrunners, cooper’s hawks, kestrels, and I’ve seen what I’m pretty sure is a red-tailed hawk flying around but never actually landed where I could get a good look, and owls both large and small at night. Also bats sometimes at night. And super cute kangaroo rats, of the non-flappy night variety. Many kinds of lizards. Butterflies and moths, damselflies, dragonflies, all sorts of stuff. Currently have a giant desert ground squirrel inhabiting the yard.
And not to position myself as the anti-Willy (we don’t have a garden or slugs), but the little critters most people shy away from are actually really neat. We don’t do this so much any more, but in the previous decade we tried leaving doors and windows open at night for cooling, and wound up with a pet black widow in the bathroom. Eventually had to take it out so it didn’t starve when we started using the a/c more. Many many sopulgids, which are very cute albeit a bit scary looking, especially the bigger ones (and amazing to watch when the catch and eat something; the whole top half of their body basically opens up as a giant mouth). Bad thing about sopulgids is they will crawl on your face while you sleep, and I don’t want to hurt them but I tend to have a wake up and swat reflex before I realize what is going on when I feel something crawling on my face in the dark, which leads to badness for the suppies and then I feel evil. Once had a giant scorpion trot in at night, probably about 6-8 inches long. They are very fast when trying to get away, but caught it and carried it outside the yard and across the road. (this sort of thing, along w/the centipedes, which we also caught and carried out to safety, and at one point way too many widows to keep as pets, is why we no longer leave doors and windows open in summer; well, actually, the dog who can jump the fence would stop that anyway now; he can only go out on lead these days alas, though this has the advantage of keeping me in much better shape than I would be otherwise).
Coyotes howling at night is one of the best sounds in the world, and they are pretty cool to look at when you see them in the day as well.
We’ve had snakes show up a few times. The king snakes and gopher snakes we leave alone, and the red racers we couldn’t catch if we wanted to, but had to heard sidewinders or mojave greens into a box and carry them far out into the desert a few times.
Cool story: my wife started with a couple of bird feeders and now has quite a few (we have to chase the birds and chipmunks off, and at night the rabbits and kangies, before letting the dogs out, for their own safety; one of the dogs is NOT on lead and has successfully caught things before; she once snatched a dove out of the air and brought it to us; the dove was still alive, we got her to let it go, but then I made the mistake of letting her go too soon and she snatched it out of the air again as it was flying away; we again got it out of her mouth alive; since then we chase them off first), and some of the birds will actually come up to her when she is outside instead of flying off (they can tell the difference between humans; they still fly off when I’m in the yard). But the neatest was one of the chipmunks actually climbed up on her foot to get her attention recently, then ran over and put a paw on the water jug to let her know it wanted water. That was pretty awesome.
And I could go on (a long time, cause for all the unbelievable amounts of awful, there’s an incredible amount of wonderful as well), but gotta go now.
Will close by pointing out that for all I knock humanity and probably do qualify as a genuine misanthrope, there’s also lots of great tv shows, movies and music that definitely help make life worthwhile (no time to list any, maybe later), and some of my interactions with some of my fellow humans are pretty neat as well.
Hugh
Cats.
Webstir
Musically, I can’t overstate how “worth bearing” the Grateful Dead have often made some of my days.
Jerry + Tiger = The Voice of God.
A little Althea from the Oakland Auditorium in 1979 for your listening pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXbnHFJfzUU
Stirling Newberry
If you say so.
realitychecker
Nothing makes all this crap worth bearing.
We are profoundly dysfunctional for bearing it.
We are being turned into something much less than human beings.
Willy
Stomping on garden slugs, then watching the lamentations of their women/men.
Chuck Mire
Three grown children – all with advanced college degrees – all married with families that have given my wife and I nine (9) grandchildren.
nihil obstet
Those moments when you look at something, and suddenly the world seems inhabited with beauty, and when it’s really great is when an applicable passage of poetry comes to mind. The one that recurs for me on a good day is seeing an aspen tree in fall, and having Spring and Fall: to a young child start running through my head.
Tom W Harris
Sergio Mendes is one of my faves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HjWxjF13Gs
Barry Fay
Dogs.
paul
Realising that all this crap means nothing and will all go away.
Charlie
I’ll second cats. I’ve been taking care of five ferals and they’ve all warmed up to me. Funny how we need animals to make the world a nicer place.
Ten Bears
Eight grandkids, of only three of the four 😎
Sometimes I remind people that when Jerry died I did get a job, see how that turned out? What makes it bearable, now that I am all but deaf, is that all of that swims in the back of my mind, and though I may not “hear” it so well I can hear enough to listen in my mind. Kind of a Zen thing.
Or not. As it may or may not be. Here. Whenever.
It did crank this up enough to find it remarkable.
Willy
I’ve found that roving slugs consider stomped on slugs a delicacy. I stomp on them as well. Since the PTB appear to have roughly the same MO, I’m thinking that pondering a scaled up version of that scheme could be a source of joy for me. Maybe something like that is happening now, I dunno…
Robotpliers
Wife, kids, books, and a programming project that generates star systems (simplified, not a research level simulation). 🙂
Mojave Wolf
My wife.
My dogs.
Without them, I’m not sure anything would be make watching the world’s human-caused death spiral worthwhile, especially given the increasing derangement of most segments of human society, but also helping muchly:
All the wildlife (both fauna and flora!) around the house. Love watching all the birds and bunnies and chipmunks in the yard and when I walk through the desert. We have at least occasionally ravens, house and gold finches, several types of sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, mourning and collared doves, pigeons, starlings, hooded orioles, roadrunners, cooper’s hawks, kestrels, and I’ve seen what I’m pretty sure is a red-tailed hawk flying around but never actually landed where I could get a good look, and owls both large and small at night. Also bats sometimes at night. And super cute kangaroo rats, of the non-flappy night variety. Many kinds of lizards. Butterflies and moths, damselflies, dragonflies, all sorts of stuff. Currently have a giant desert ground squirrel inhabiting the yard.
And not to position myself as the anti-Willy (we don’t have a garden or slugs), but the little critters most people shy away from are actually really neat. We don’t do this so much any more, but in the previous decade we tried leaving doors and windows open at night for cooling, and wound up with a pet black widow in the bathroom. Eventually had to take it out so it didn’t starve when we started using the a/c more. Many many sopulgids, which are very cute albeit a bit scary looking, especially the bigger ones (and amazing to watch when the catch and eat something; the whole top half of their body basically opens up as a giant mouth). Bad thing about sopulgids is they will crawl on your face while you sleep, and I don’t want to hurt them but I tend to have a wake up and swat reflex before I realize what is going on when I feel something crawling on my face in the dark, which leads to badness for the suppies and then I feel evil. Once had a giant scorpion trot in at night, probably about 6-8 inches long. They are very fast when trying to get away, but caught it and carried it outside the yard and across the road. (this sort of thing, along w/the centipedes, which we also caught and carried out to safety, and at one point way too many widows to keep as pets, is why we no longer leave doors and windows open in summer; well, actually, the dog who can jump the fence would stop that anyway now; he can only go out on lead these days alas, though this has the advantage of keeping me in much better shape than I would be otherwise).
Coyotes howling at night is one of the best sounds in the world, and they are pretty cool to look at when you see them in the day as well.
We’ve had snakes show up a few times. The king snakes and gopher snakes we leave alone, and the red racers we couldn’t catch if we wanted to, but had to heard sidewinders or mojave greens into a box and carry them far out into the desert a few times.
Cool story: my wife started with a couple of bird feeders and now has quite a few (we have to chase the birds and chipmunks off, and at night the rabbits and kangies, before letting the dogs out, for their own safety; one of the dogs is NOT on lead and has successfully caught things before; she once snatched a dove out of the air and brought it to us; the dove was still alive, we got her to let it go, but then I made the mistake of letting her go too soon and she snatched it out of the air again as it was flying away; we again got it out of her mouth alive; since then we chase them off first), and some of the birds will actually come up to her when she is outside instead of flying off (they can tell the difference between humans; they still fly off when I’m in the yard). But the neatest was one of the chipmunks actually climbed up on her foot to get her attention recently, then ran over and put a paw on the water jug to let her know it wanted water. That was pretty awesome.
And I could go on (a long time, cause for all the unbelievable amounts of awful, there’s an incredible amount of wonderful as well), but gotta go now.
Will close by pointing out that for all I knock humanity and probably do qualify as a genuine misanthrope, there’s also lots of great tv shows, movies and music that definitely help make life worthwhile (no time to list any, maybe later), and some of my interactions with some of my fellow humans are pretty neat as well.