Simple Moments

Did you ever just sit back in a lawn chair, kick back in a hammock, lay down in the grass, put your feet up on the table near the garden and close your eyes for a moment - take a deep breath - exhale - and then open your eyes to find things are different than when you left them...? It happens most easily when you're sitting somewhere quiet, with few distractions, sun shining brightly on your face and your head tilted back about 45 degrees, so your eyelids can sort of droop like half drawn curtains over your eyeballs. It's a moment in time when nothing else matters but the moment itself.

Nothing can steal the moment because it's all yours and yours alone. No one else can steal it from you because no one else can see it, no one else can feel it, no one else can sense it. It is yours. You can be completely selfish with it, consumed with it, controlled by it.

It's yours.

It's a thought. It's a dream. It's a crazy idea. Sometimes it's just the realization of how little control we have over the natural world, how little we actually know about the life that is all around us. We are small, insignificant. We live it. We breath it. We touch it and smell it and seek it out. We desire to know it. We desire to have answers. We desire to know the secrets that were never meant to be known. They drive us mad.

In the moment though, nothing else matters.

In the moment, those questions, those answers don't matter. You can simply sit back in quiet relaxation and not care. You can appreciate what is right before you in the now - in water, in nature, in air, in life. It's the simple beauty of a flower blooming atop a fragile stem, help up only by water really, which the flower harvested from the earth. It is the bumblebee dancing from flower to flower gathering as it may, content to bless other flowers with it's dust. It's the tree in the background whose roots are buried deep within the confines of the ground, ever seeking new territories and new nutrients, which by the way are only there because flowers died last year and gave of themselves back to the earth from which they came.

It's an appreciation for life that in the moment simply doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how each of these things works. It doesn't matter if we know how the flower made it's colors, or how the roots grow through rock and shale and concrete. It doesn't matter that we have no idea how a bumblebee can fly at all. What matters is the moment. And that moment is all about the creation. The moment of creation is when we let go of questions and we attach ourselves to the answers.

It's simple, beautiful and true.

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Never Seen It Before

There is a first time for everything. Let's take this morning for example. It appeared to be a normal morning, well normal is relative these days I suppose. A six week old baby is anything but normal. Still though, let's pretend that everything is mostly normal.

I wake up and roll over towards my wife in order to snuggle her, wrapping my arm around her and enveloping her in a stank of bad breath that could kill most living organisms. Normal. My ears are alerted to the steady beat of Leo's tail (pictured above) batting against anything and everything within a 4 foot diameter. It's a vicious tail. Being the good dog owner that I am, I exit our bedroom and step into the friendly confines of Leo's temporary prison. You see, Leo had his second knee surgery a couple of weeks ago, so we have to confine him in this way, else there will be a third surgery before you can say "bankrupt". Normal.

So, now I'm in the pen, stroking Leo's head and telling him in the sweetest of scratchy, morning voices what a good boy he is. Of course, this doesn't mean anything to him. He just wants two things right now - food and a place to go urinate. Normal. I oblige and carefully lead him to the kitchen, where we find his empty bowl next to the door leading out to our garden. I reach down into his dog food bag and scoop out his normal allotment for breakfast. Normal. Now, excuse me while a digress for a moment...

...you see, Leo is known the world over for his ability to consume food. He is equivalent to the greatest industrial vacuum even known - he sucks down anything within nose reach. I don't know how to even explain his ability to consume food. He rarely chews food, after all, that would be a huge waste of time. You know those "indestructible" toys they make for dogs...? They have never tested them on Leo. The guy likes to eat and chew and destroy, so when it comes to eating breakfast, there is little time to waste.

...Back to the story. Remember, the food is in the bowl. The vacuum in the form of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever is hovering over the bowl. Normal. Now, here is the part that leads me to this entry. He puts his face into the bowl and then stops, turns, looks me straight in the eye as if to say "what is the world is this...?" I encourage him to try it and he obliges. He crunches a few times and this time quits completely, walking back to his pen in disgust. Abnormal. I've never seen this before.

I can only attribute it to the fact that he simply doesn't get the attention he used to get - that he is depressed. He misses the absolute devotion of two dog lovers without a six week old baby to get in the way. Poor dog. I hope he decides to eat.

Who is Johnny...?

I'm not sure how it started, but I've been fascinated with Johnny for years now. I think some friends used to use the term "Johnny" for people who annoyed them at the time. I have the perfect example.

My wife and I were on our honeymoon in beautiful Kauai, minding our own business, taking full advantage of the many outdoor activities to do on such an island. Snorkeling, swimming, sunbathing, running, hiking and eating outside on perfectly sunny days take a lot of energy away from you. You want to take a nap. We lay down on the first day of our trip sometime in the afternoon for what is destined to be a much needed and refreshing nap, when out of nowhere comes this terrible sound. I know you have heard it before. It's a two-cycle engine. If you have heard a moped, or a waverunner, or a snowmobile or a scooter in Amsterdam, or a lawn mower - these are the glorious sounds of a two cycle engine. Anyway - just as we about to sleep, this horrible noise screams by our window. Ok, no big deal, it woke me up. I flutter off into a dreamy state, when next thing I know, I'm awoken by this crazy racket again. And again, and again, and again. This guy is riding this very annoying dirt bike, up and down a path right outside the hotel. It's his right I say to myself and just get up from bed. All hope is not lost, as we're still in Kauai - what could be better?

It's now the same time the next day and we are once again lying down to take a nap, exhausted from our morning ritual of Hawaiian coffee, some snorkeling and nice lunch on a beach somewhere. It's a rough life. I'm just about to fall asleep, when, you guessed it, here comes the dirt bike again. I can think of no other thing to say, besides "Oh no! Here comes dirt bike JOHNNY!"

The ULTIMATE description

So, I've been playing Ultimate Frisbee lately... for those of you who know what it is, this description may help you... and for those who don't - Check it out:

Clearly you do not understand the glory of frisbee-throwing and why the hero loves it so. I will take the liberty of explaining it to you:

Hero does this thing because it offers him an opportunity to leap through the air at an object that is moving just barely slower than a trotting Kenyan. The frisbee flies through the air and all on the field scream and yell at it, and one –only one- can be the hero. To Quote Conner McLeod; “There can be only one…”. This affords the catcher a moment of extreme happiness, euphoria, and glee because they have CAUGHT the frisbee. Not to mention being the center of attention of 'extremely happy people'. To a lesser degree the person who threw the frisbee will also experience some degree of happiness and glee. Often the thrower and the catcher will acknowledge each other’s prowess of tossing and receiving by either executing a ‘high-five’ or ‘hug’ accompanied by ‘back-slapping’ depending on the how important it was to catch the frisbee at that particular moment.

During my very brief experience watching the game I was able to glean some understanding of the glory of frisbee-tossing between smoking weed, drinking beer and long naps: levels of glee can be boosted by executing a particularly daring catching manoeuvre. Usually this involves waiting patiently until the frisbee is near you and also low to the ground and initiating a ‘dive’. If you catch the frisbee while sliding on the ground on your chest you are deemed a hero. Similarly if you slide on your side, back, face, or ass; all of these are considered ‘dives’. If you don’t catch the frisbee you have still slid on the ground and you are ‘somewhat of a hero’
affording ‘somewhat of glee’. Another way to optimize your frisbee-tossing glee is execute a ‘high leap’. Again you wait until the frisbee is high in the air and ‘leap high’ to catch it. This does not raise glee as much as the ‘dive’ and by the same token not catching the frisbee during a ‘high leap’
does not look as cool as missing the low frisbee.

Now.

Frisbee is a NON CONTACT game. Any, pushing, shoving, slapping, mauling, kissing, hugging, holding, kicking, checking, grasping and sodomy is performed AFTER the game when all players on BOTH teams recount the amazing ‘dives’ and ‘high leaps’ they executed during the course of the ten minute game.

Another aspect of the game is hollering. Like curling -in which players scream like castrati hyenas at a rock moving slowly along the ice- the players of frisbee-tossing holler at each other and at the frisbee. This hollering does little to affect the languid movements of the frisbee, however it can be used as a fierce weapon to confuse your opponent and tell your team-mates what position it has in the air. By hollering either “High leap!” or “Dive!” you can cause your peers to execute either one of these manoeuvres regardless of where the frisbee is. Hollering is also used when the frisbee is caught, missed, thrown, slapped, or bounced of the head of a player. It is also done when a point is scored; that being when a person ‘high leaps’ or ‘dives’ in the endzone (inre: football, rugby or any other real sport).

Now. I have just recalled that frisbee-tossing is in fact officially called ‘Ultimate’ which to me is like calling curling ‘Awesome’, lawn darts ‘Wicked’ or ptong ‘Excellent’. I assume this is a way of legitimizing what is essentially frisbee-tossing with ‘dives’, ‘high-leaps’, and ‘hollering’.