Today's Column (feedback welcome - scroll down for comment form):
STORMS END
Mark’s Musing Sunday Aug 2, 2009 today’s Musing written and published from south Calgary, near Fish Creek Park
Morning walk report: 17C/62F, burnt-orange ball blazed its way through slightly hazy/smoky calm stable air, hot air balloons sailed by (sharp contrast to strewn debris from last night’s storm) as Gusta and I walked our old ridge trail over in Evergreen for the first time in many months ... the change of scene was good for both of us, the storm felled trees and broke branches - they landed far from their mother tree’s loving care.
I think I’ll go for a bike ride soon . . then, if the weather holds, we’ll golf later, in between I’ll stroke a few more work items off my list . .
Beautiful morning but, too often the case, opening a newspaper headlined with painful stories (innocent people having lives ripped up or apart by weather or because someone had a whim - the paper no doubt a mirror metaphor for life) dampens anyone’s mood.
Headlines scream of someone’s pain, a family’s anguish - a stage collapse kills one and injures many, flying debris smashes a family to pieces when it crushes a child. Any city, any day, we scan these headlines and move on to the sports or crossword, our minds quickly removed to a gardening piece or travel article or the classifieds or the comics - but wait, go back to the main page, the front page where storm stories start . . .
Avoiding storms or shipwreck must demand steely coolness to keep one’s head when everyone else is losing theirs (or passing by unconcerned); but that is life, sailing on waves rather than shore-sitting, flying through the air rather than just breathing it.
Storms of all kinds pass, every night has a morning after, every week is followed by a new Monday and every misery has a place to stop, every bent over tree knows it will stand tall again - stronger from the test.
Every time I hear or read sad tales and sorry cases - across town or half-way ‘round the world - I am reminded these are normal every day occurrences. They go un-noticed. We notice only when things touch those we know or the community we are part of .... and then there seems no shortage of worry, lack of anguish or absence of pain.
But, all storms end; and then, in calm, we move along. Debris and clean-up rarely look the same as the last time, getting through, getting over, getting on ... is our job and life would be empty without our fair share. When things are happening ‘fair?’ or ‘why me?’, those questions bouncing like ping pong balls with ADD, the words of Mark Twain tend to clarify:
“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one’s head.”
Mark Kolke 329,660 197.2
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Responses / comments from yesterday:
August 1 Responses
August 1 - THE ULTIMATE - If you have not seen "DEPARTURES", you have to. Japanese with English subtitles. You will have material for your wordsmithing for months to come, IB, ?
August 1 - THE ULTIMATE - A fine expose of your writing muse. It brings to mind as well as the great works of literature the famous diary of Samuel Pepys, and also the ancient cave wall artists. Neither should we forget all forms of art, which are all personal expressions by those who bring them to us. And no doubt the same feelings moved the chantings of our preliterate ancestors. Social expression in some form is not limited to man either. All forms of life do it in some way. Indeed, communication is one of the signs of life, EG, Calgary, AB
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