Owls

Last night I slept with the windows open, and outside I could hear an owl hooting. Hoooo, hooooo, hoooo! It was somewhere outside, not too far away. Hooting beneath the crescent moon. There's something comforting, something tremendously right about the sound of an owl hooting in the night.

Then there were two owls hooting. The one owl, nearby, hooting in lower tones. And another owl, afar off, with a more high pitched hooting. One owl would sound, and then the other would answer. One and then the other. The wonder of two owls hooting and answering on a clear cool night, beneath the light of a crescent moon.

Mind and Heart

If anyone has been following my blog, they'll notice that every now and then I've been touching on the topic of what's wrong with the blogosphere -- in particular, what's wrong with the angry, rigid, hectoring, antagonistic portion of commenterdom.

Yesterday on his blog the Orthodox priest Fr. Stephen Freeman quoted Archimandrite Meletios Webber on the distinction between mind and heart. I find this distinction relevant to the dysfunctions I so often witness among blogospheric commenters:

In order to be right about anything, the mind has the need to find someone or something that is wrong. In a sense, the mind is always looking for an enemy (the person who is “wrong”), since without an enemy, the mind is not quite sure of its own identity. When it has an enemy, it is able to be more confident about itself. Since the mind also continually seeks for certainty, which is a by-product of the desire to be right, the process of finding and defining enemies is an ongoing struggle for survival. Declaring enemies is, for the mind, not an unfortunate character flaw, but an essential and necessary task.

Unfortunately, being right is not what people really need, even though a great deal of their lives may be taken up in its pursuit. Defense of the ego is almost always a matter of trying to be right...

[In contrast] the heart is quiet rather than noisy, intuitive rather than deductive, lives entirely in the present, and is, at every moment, accepting of the reality God gives in that moment. Moreover, the heart does not seek to distance or dominate anything or anyone by labeling. Rather, it begins with an awareness of its relationship with the rest of creation (and everything and everyone in it), accepting rather than rejecting, finding similarity rather than alienation and likeness rather than difference. It knows no fear, experiences no desire, and never finds the need to defend or justify itself. Unlike the mind, the heart never seeks to impose itself. It is patient and undemanding. Little wonder, then, that the mind, always impatient and very demanding, manages to dominate it so thoroughly.

Oatmeal

Lately, with my health being on my mind, I've changed over to eating oatmeal for breakfast. Oatmeal, in place of toast and sausage. Especially I'm hoping that oatmeal in place of sausage will be an improvement.

And when I say oatmeal, I mean oatmeal. No prepackaged semi-oatmeal concoction, with sugar and spice and all sorts of additives... well, additived in. No oatmeal with all sorts of sugary unhealthy glop mixed in. This is just plain old oatmeal. Oatmeal and nothing but. Dump it in the bowl, add some water, and to be honest I'm surprised I can get away with heating it up in the microwave instead of cooking it on the stove.

How I Spent My Labor Day

Okay, I had to work most of the weekend. So I was especially looking forward to taking Labor Day as a holiday, off from work, nothing I need to do. Late Sunday I run into a neighbor, he gets the bright idea that possibly I might come along with him and his wife when they head out to some flea market 60 miles away on Labor Day.

Oh great. Been working already all weekend, now roped into something like that.

Fortunately the outing never materialized, and I spent Labor Day sitting around. Watched some DVDs a friend lent me, some old British TV series called Sapphire & Steel. Very low budget, something like The X-Files, something like Doctor Who.

And now it turns out I also get to take today off from work. So I'm getting, you know, a belated Labor Day weekend of sorts.

Fall in the Wings

Slept last night with the windows open. It got cool out, but it's monstrously humid, so it didn't feel cool. But wait for a cool night that feels cool: that will come soon enough.

Fall is in the wings.

To the Doctor

So, the other day, being back from vacation, I went to the doctor for the first time in incredibly many years. Actually had hit the clinic a few days previously for them to collect blood and urine samples.

The good news is, I'm not going to drop dead any time soon. And there are a few health items in which, despite family history, I'm in wondrously good shape.

But there are a few other items in which I'm not in such wondrously good shape. Numbers higher than normal. The kind of numbers which, if we hadn't caught it, could've led in the long run to, well... real trouble.

So, the doctor prescribed a few different kind of pills for me. (Pills. Am I the only person who rebels at that prissy neologism, "meds"?) And we will be spending the next few weeks or months bringing readings down into the normal range, adjusting dosages if necessary, and all that good stuff.

I find myself unexpectedly feeling a sense of relief: now I know. And it's all manageable. Somehow I'd expected to go reeling from the doctor's office in dizzying panic. No, I feel like now I know where I stand. A few emotional ups and downs when I first got up this morning, but that's par for the course.

Though... on pills at last, for the first time in my life. I'm not bulletproof after all. Memento mori, and all that.

Summer's End

Where has the summer gone? To me, summer ends with the end of August. Or with the coming of Labor Day weekend. When I was a kid summer ended when we went back to school. By any of these yardsticks summer is now drawing to a close.

And already -- in the waning days of August, even -- we've been seeing lows at night which have been unheard of now for months. Before long the leaves will start turning color. Indeed, at this point we could be only a couple of months away from the first snowflakes of the season.

Summer has always been my favorite season of the year. Sic transit gloria mundi.