A life update, and some personal thoughts

The final day of May this year is proving a hot and humid one, which probably describes more days in the last thirty-one than not. A thunderstorm is in the forecast for later, of which we've had a few this month. That said, a lack of rain has left the streams low, and the soil in most places dry and hard-packed. The wave of oak-pollen that annually sends my nose into distress seems to have peaked, so that four days have now gone by without the need of allergy medication, or of a fresh tissue near at hand. The relief is welcome, and makes long walks in the evening more enjoyable.

Some further observations. The foliage in the forest has waxed in all its spring-time glory, shedding most of the flowers that dominate the early part of the season, instead taking up the dense foliage and lush greens of summer.  From dawn to dusk, bird-song fills the air, and while the cherry blossoms have come and gone, now our garden is alive with roses red and pink, and strawberry plants heavy with fruit.

First strawberries of the season.

Landscapers, plumbers, painters, pavers, tree-trimmers, general-contractors, and others fill the neighborhood going about their work, spreading mulch, installing upgraded water-heaters, and laying cement to a new stretch of sidewalk.

Swim-clubs are now open on the weekends, and the Spring season for most high schools sports is at an end. Soon we'll see "congrats grad!" banners in windows and written across the back windshield of cars, and see articles in the paper on the best ways to pay for college. At night, the smell of smoke from fire-pits will likely be on the air, as well as the sound of popular music filtering over from some nearby pool party. On a quieter night, one can listen to the crickets and bull-frogs pandering their songs to the stars.

Venus and the Moon.

From a personal point of view, May has been a strange month in a number of ways. I won't discuss them in a specific way here, but mention them in passing because of the broader ideas they elicit. Foremost, I believe that mental health is a feature of experience that I, at least, too often neglect. The landscape of thoughts and images in the mind seems to be a central feature of how one appraises and experiences the world. To a considerable extent, it seems to dictate what we notice, how we feel, and what weight we give to certain things that happen to us. I've heard it said that thoughts define our reality, and while I'm not certain of that statement's truth, my conscience at least doesn't rebel at its claim.

Of late, I have often thought of that line in Hamlet that reads, "...for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Of my own situation, I've preferred to take a neutral point of view--that what has happened these last few months is intrinsically neither good nor bad, but will be defined and contextualized with the passage of time. This is what seems to happen with historical events more broadly defined: their significance is determined not by how it felt in the moment, but by how it shaped the years and decades and centuries that followed. Our present selves may deem what happened today as having extreme significance--that after today, "everything is different." On the other hand, our future selves will have lived through the day after, and the-day-after-the-day-after, and day after that.

For better or worse, I think those future selves will be in a better position to determine how good or bad some decision or moment turned out to be than I am today. Significance, perhaps, requires context, and context requires distance to see a thing in a broader sense. To paraphrase Machiavelli, seeing the mountain requires going to the plains, and seeing the plains requires going to the mountain. In that sense, I prefer at present to suspend judgment.

What the future holds I cannot say, but the month of May at least has proven interesting. Pretty soon we'll have blueberries to pick out back, and mosquitoes to dodge on our evening walks. Likely there will be plenty of work to do, friends to visit, and projects to take up. Lately I've taken an interest in computer science, and am curious to see where that takes me. I'm  also looking forward to a little travel later in the summer, and perhaps performing a bit on the bassoon. We'll see how all of that goes.

For now, I think I'll go and make some lunch.

Happy Sunday :)