Strawberry

 The Strawberry Moon was riveting.  I gaped at the sight through binoculars, and the brilliant searchlight stared back at my wondering eyes.  The orb hovered in the summer sky, a sight both comfortingly familiar and eternally mysterious.  The landscape was ancient, great lava plains barren save for imaginary echoes.  Astronomers of Old fancied them to be seas, and named them as such.  "Sea of Crisis.  Sea of Tranquility.  Sea of Clouds."  But there's nothing there, except for the loneliness and cooled basalt.    

  The night breeze rustled the holly tree behind me, and grew to a chorus in the nearby forest.  Unseen animals rummaged through the dry leaves, and the night was alive, brimming with potential, restless in the fresh air.  Luna gazed down, and I stood in the dewy grass, awestruck.  

Scorpio Moon

"Modern Man does not see God because he does not look low enough."  - Carl Jung 

 The Moon is in Scorpius.  It hangs low in the early summer sky, a giant gold balloon, caught in the treetops by an invisible string.  Ruddy Antares, alpha star of Scorpius, blazing with the intensity of the June days that preceede it, glitters in the background.  The starlight reaching my eye is old. Columbus was sailing around tonight's photons left the star, 554 years ago.  

  A Barred Owl hoots in the distance, and the dog next door fusses at some critter unseen.  I gaze up from my front yard, the dewy grass transformed into an observation deck into Infinity.  It's a sight many can see, but few notice.  

  I work with old people.  Actually, I today I worked with people.  You see, Time is a strange thing, how it renders us frail.  I think it's easier to treat people as residents, or the Elderly.  Working at an assisted living home forces me to confront the tempoary nature of my relative youth.  I helped a 96 year old version of myself the other day.  He had his suspenders, and his home built table.  He needed help getting a screw unstuck, so there I was, pliers in stronger hands, doing what he couldn't.  I helped him because it was the Right thing to do, and perhaps I'm putting a favor in the bank for the not-too-distant future.  I left his room glad to have assisted, and with another reminder of perspective.  It makes sense that people my age might treat the aged as something unrelated to their lot.  It's just easier to avoid the thought of how quickly time passes.  

  Today I played cribbage with a resident friend.  I dropped the Ms., and just called her Jean.  

  She lost her husband a few months ago, and really doesn't come out of her room.  I've been twisting her arm to come play cards, and we're having a blast (and she's coming out of her room.)  For a few minutes today, I forgot that she was old, and that I was going to be.  I think she did, too.  It felt strikingly normal at the table.  We yelled and bickered and talked trash.  "Sixteen for two."  "Sixteen isn't fifteen, Jean - what are you talking about?"  "it's a PAIR of eights, son!  Geeze."  I started to win, and gloated heartily.  

  She wasn't a grieving widow. I wasn't a staffer providing an activity for residents on the second floor.  I was...losing.  Again.  (I've never won, actually.)  We laughed and bickered some more, two people enjoying the Miraculous "Ordinary."  

  This phenomona is all around...Just like the Moon, a great golden balloon, with it's string caught in the summer forest, smiling down from Scorpius.  I guess these observation decks into Infinity abound.  

  

  

 

  

  

Sleepwalking

 1:33 AM's dim yellow numbers softly lit the room.  "Huh, I wonder if the sky has cleared" I mumbled groggily to myself, stumbling out of bed.  

  It had!

  There's something delightful about a well-practiced eccentricity.  The phrase "man, I could do this in my sleep" applies especially well in these situations.  Still only half awake, it seemed a good time to test out a new arrival in the growing arsenal of telescopes.  I had actually built it for a friend, but it had returned after about a year when they weren't getting proper use of it.  (Telescopes should collect starlight, not dust - that's a maxim 'round here and with my buddies.)  

  The summer Milky Way flowed high overhead, a soft glow of innumerable stars.  And there, peeking out behind the tall pine tree, a cosmic lighthouse shone out along the shore of this celestial river.  Saturn!  

  But, the pine tree was in the way.  Lugging the telescope this way and that, playing the game of strategic angles and not waking the neighbor's dogs, I stole through my front yard like a total weirdo.  It was great.  

  Finally, I had a shot!  For the first time since the winter, Saturn swam into view in the eyepiece.  Of all the things to observe in the universe, this ringed planet is unparalleled in its perennial you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me punch.  Every time.  Especially if one hasn't seen it in a while.  (Or before.  Showing this with "sidewalk astronomy" outreach has been a highlight of my life.) 

  So there I perched on the side of a small hill in my yard, the neighbor's dog still asleep, the telescope threatening to fall off the edge, my logical mind suggesting sleep would be helpful...and Saturn, a tiny dancer with a hula hoop, the palest yellow against a velvety sky, pirouetting in a timeless dance on the shore of the Milky Way, almost 800 million miles away.   

Wow.  

I drank my fill of this sight, put the scope back, and drifted off to sleep.  High above my slumbering roof, the stars twinkled and Saturn spun 'round and 'round. 

  

  

  

  

The Singing Trees

 

(Excerpted from my weekly "Letters from Josh" publication for my senior buddies.)

Letters from Josh

The Singing Trees                                                        Letter 57    5/30/21

    Howdy, folks!  How ya feelin’ over there?  I’m a bit dusty and sweaty, and the bathroom has no walls.  That’s right, I took a sledgehammer to ‘em tonight, preparing for a complete renovation. While that’s worthy of metaphor and philosophical discussion, I’d like to take you on...a bike ride, or at least an imaginary one. 

That’s right, “all of the sights, none of the sweat.” 

It was my dad’s birthday.  He wanted to go on a trek with his sons, so despite the 90 degree weather, Sunday afternoon found the four Urban men rolling down the hill, crossing Duke street, and setting out on a three hour adventure.  “Click click click” went our gears, downshifting to tackle the overpass flying over Telegraph road.  The May sun bleached the sidewalk, and a few cars drifted lazily on the highway below. 

There’s a certain solitude that lives amongst the bustle, and is one of my favorites.  A warm wind washed over my face, calling me forward to experience the Unknown in the Familiar.  If the flow of the city is a great river, a bicycle is a leaf swirling in the eddies in the unnoticed pools by the shore.  We wound under railroad bridges and through thickets, marveling at the din caused by Brood X, the trillion-strong cicada mob.  They flew through the air, littered the pavement, and throbbed incessantly, great hordes a few blocks away, and then right above. 

“Click click click” went our gears, shifting off the busy street, plunging down a leafy path to meet Holmes Run.  A million little kids played in the questionable water, yelling with the invincible joy of summer.  “Oooga Oooga!” I cackled as I sounded the clown bike horn bought expressly for the occasion.  (I can be a pill, although a jolly one, I like to think.)  Families strolled with picnics, dogs sniffed the wayside, and an angry young woman stalked by, wrestling with something in her mind.  I hope she succeeds, and commend her for starting in the first place.  Ahoy!  A monster hill!  Who puts a stop sign at the bottom?  “Let’s blow it!”  The graffiti on the railroad underpass barked slogans from unseen hands, and a tunnel lurked even deeper down a flight of stairs, a door to the underworld, or at least to the other side of the tracks.  Warehouse doors lined a quiet street, sleepy faces readying themselves for Monday.

The cicadas sang on in the warm May afternoon, and our gears went “click click click” in reply.  Oh, how I relish an adventure.

An Observation of Venus

Hey folks!  I have a new astronomy community over at Locals.  Come join the fun! 

An Observation of Venus

Memorial Day ‘21

“See these eyes of green?  I can stare for a thousand years.”  

  Hear the roar of the crowd, pressed together like innumerable matchstick men, ready to ignite at the right words.  Dizzy with vertigo and pressure, the stage flexes slightly as you stride across it to take the microphone, peering down into Times Square, New York City.  A special convention has been called to hear your thoughts.  The world is waiting.  What do you say?

  Most of the time, I come up empty.  That’s bad for a blogger and podcaster.  But tonight, I should like to share with you an observation of Venus.  It’s an evening star this time of year, looking like an airplane following the liquid silver of the Potomac river, mirroring a clear sky at dusk.  

  Crunching along the gravel road, my brain throbbed.  It was a day in Hell.  The old people I work with can be mean or pleasant, uplifting or heartbreaking, just like any of us.  I think the focus is sharpened for me, because they invariably die, sooner rather than later, and often go insane, scratching at chronically bloody faces and sobbing to go home.  “My parents are calling!  I need to go meet them!”  (This is not a metaphor for death, simply a wish of a mind wracked with dementia, believing me to be the obstacle of seeing a cherished relative approximately 138 years old.)  Mix that with 90 minutes of “B-13….I-27” and you’ve got a lot to think about.  

  A chorus of gray treefrogs greeted my wondering face.  I plopped down on an ancient millstone, once worked with enslaved hands, my back to the plantation house. Gazing out across the now-still fields, sprinkled with early fireflies, my eyes settled on the Virginia shore.  The gathering twilight settled over the land like my great grandmother’s popcorn comforter, soft, authoritative.  Blinking red beacons signaled to airplanes that there was more there than met the eye, and I had to concur.  

  Life sure can be complicated.  Taking the view in front of me, I pondered:  I’m moving soon, across this very river.  The past and it’s memories faded like the sunset, and the beacons signaled a path forward towards new lands.  I’ll be sitting this summer out, getting ready for the journey ahead, yet previous summers whispered of good times and regrets only half realized in the murk.  White clover blossomed pale in the evening, scenting the air as bugs danced a strange courtship in the air, and one crawled up my ankle.  

  And there she was - Venus!  Blazing in the sunset, beautiful to behold from a distance, toxic in person, not unlike some celebrities.  Why do we gaze to the heavens, or at least to the opposite shore of the river?  What captivates us?  

  I was watching Bevis and Butthead the other day on YouTube.  I thought I should do something else, so I watched a talk on Heidegger, the German philosopher.  (Then I watched some more Bevis.)  He talks about the mystery of Das Sein, or “being” in English.  It’s weird it all exists as it does in the first place, and then one leaps to the Zennish question “well, who’s watching it?”  Consciousness sure is weird.  

  My gaze traveled 150 million miles to Venus, and then five miles across the river to Fort Belvor.  “ZIP!  ZAP!”  Back to Venus, and it’s pearly cloudtops, hiding the surface upon which metal spacecraft endure only a matter of hours before melting into puddles.  Now back to the clover with it’s gentle scent in the night air.  “Who’s observing?”  Perhaps the act of noticing the Universe is to experience our capacity for doing so, and to engage one of the profound mysteries of Das Sein.  Extending one’s hand out to touch a wall defines the house and our body.  To quote the other YouTube viewing... “We’re there, dude!”  

  At the end of the day, so what?  I got up from the millstone, and shot a glance over the plantation house’s roof.  A light shone from an empty room, and a star called Arcturus twinkled orange 36 light years away over the dormers.  That house holds a lot of baggage, as empty as it is.  

  Crunching back down the now-dark cedar lane, the thoughts continued.  Do these questions even matter?  I stated long ago that “I’ll never figure “It” out.”  After spending many years on the Search, I’d have to agree.  But a new idea bubbled up this evening.  

  A definitive, all-encompassing, popsicle-stick simple motto might prove elusive.  Indeed, it’s often frustrating and futile, trying to cram everything into oversimplifications like “Life is Good.”  But what if the Search moves one closer to the answer, and that’s preferable?  The Ultimate answer may be unobtainable, but vicinity to the Truth seems preferable.  Milton defined Hell as a distance from God.  Making progress on that gap sounds prudent.  

  I’d prefer not to die (I think.)  Too bad.  I’d definitely prefer not to spend my final days tearing at open wounds, seen or unseen, surrounded by wadded up tissues and ghosts.  Perhaps I have some say over that, and perhaps not, but I’d like to look at where I’m going.  

  As such, I’ll continue to pay attention, to notice, to search, to observe.  Venus dances over the silver ribbon of the river, a haunted house broods silent on a hill with a single light burning, and my footsteps crunch on along the road.  Hey, looks like it’s going to be a beautiful night for stargazing.  

Clear skies,

Josh 

Nailpolish Stories

Hey there, crew!

  Well, I stumbled across a marvelous place the other day...Nailpolish Stories!  There are two rules for writing:  1. Base your story off the color title of a nail polish.  2.  It must be exactly 25 words.  

  Oh man, I had to try!  

  My grandmother asked me a question the other day. "Why do you want to move?"  Sometimes 25 words says it better than 2500.  

  I'm flattered to be featured on the site.  Check it out - it just went live.

https://nailpolishstories.wordpress.com/

Dr. Electro XV: Sadistic Santa

 Previously on Dr. Electro:  Henry observes a sinister meeting taking shape, and is startled by an unseen door opening behind him.  Dr. Electro and Crew get a move on, while Mabel and The Old One hit the road, walking deeper into the mystery. 

Dr. Electro, Episode XV: - Sadistic Santa

  “What the?!” Henry exclaimed, his outcry becoming quickly muffled.  With a quiet thud, he was down and...inside a giant cloth sack, the zip of tape sealing hopes of escape.  The opening door he had heard a split second ago was the squeak of bad news.  “Ho ho ho!” boomed an alarming voice.  “Who are you?  Why am I in a bag?” yelled Henry.  “Just call me Santa Claws, pops. Take it easy, and stay on the good list, OK? I take the bad kids to the North Pole.  Watch out I don’t hit you with a candy cane, capisce?”  With another maniacal laugh, this sadistic stand-in started to drag the entrapped Henry across the roof. Bump bump bump over the cracks and wires, scraping the threshold, and thankfully, into an elevator instead of stairs.  “Who’s there?  Who’s that?” Henry yelled, still muffled inside the bag.  “...Elves, boss.  Shaddup.”  A sinking feeling in his gut matched the motion of the elevator, and Henry guessed correctly that they were headed...next door.  A blast of wind and rain hit, signaling the open door, and the alley pavement bit up through the sack as “Santa” dragged Henry across to the Tower, and the waiting League meeting upstairs. 

Fake Santa failed to notice two sets of eyes that weren’t sleeping, though.  Mabel and The Old One lurked behind convenient garbage cans, galvanized like the will of the two women who watched this abduction with alarm. The door of the Tower building snapped shut, nearly licking its chops, and the spectacle was gone. “Who’s in the sack?  And...why Santa?”  “I’m not sure, Mabel.  But something will turn up.  Can’t you feel it in the air?”  Mabel had to admit it - there was a certain...electricity.

Just then: voices. “Blimey, the whole city is dark, old chap!”  Mabel tensed, some menial worker deep in her brain warning “Ma’am, you’ve heard that before.”  “Rutherford, I think this must be a cover for something” Electro suddenly spat out, clearing the alley where the women watched from behind the garbage cans. Mabel recognized the group now, and sharply whispered a pet name for our venerable hero. “Sparky!”  The men froze.  “Mabel?”  “Over here!”  “...Sparky?!” With a muffled guffaw, his compatriots pointed first to the trash cans, then to the mortified Electro, dimmed down in front of the boys.  Murphy was especially gratified, feeling part of the crew at last.  His expensive shoes were properly scuffed beyond Club standards, and now he wasn’t the only one with a weakness. Settling into this delicious new role of sleuth and Ordinary Man, he strode with the gang to rendezvous with the unexpected allies and Electro’s sweetheart.  To Be Continued…