. Spinning .

There are tigers in the woods behind my house.  They tell me no, but I don’t believe it because they say there are bears but I have never seen one there so a tiger or a lion never seen is just as likely as a bear. 

There is a bird–a homely one, I can’t remember which–that if I close my eyes and only listen makes me believe the lawns and maple trees are in reality a jungle.  Or at least, the jungle that I consider when I think of jungle learned from movies and tv.  Close your eyes and try it; live within the boundaries only of your self and seek out your environment through the sound alone and what you know of it. 

Besides the tiger there are elephants who hide beyond the yard in day and romp together within the fenced in tundra of the neighbor’s field at midnight. Why not?  They are somewhere out there just beyond our vision and maybe they are closer than we think.  What we cannot see a thousand miles away is no more unseen than that beyond the treeline. And there must be giraffes I think, because the trees are tall and fresh with leaves for browsing, and you could hear their silence if you listen well. 

I sit and look out deep into the woods behind my house and watch and hope to someday see the tiger living there.

The ethics of lawyers, the loyalty of friends, the honesty of family, all coming into question yet who am I to judge?  Understanding the image of right is not same for all, but rather perception and viewpoint and personal understanding and benefit all play a part.

Seeking answers from men in white robes and sandles, for present builds upon past.  Yet where is the sharing in philosophical study, except in furthering its value in teaching it is singular in goal of soul above mortal, of individual pathway to a state of pure truth and goodness above what mere earth can present.  In no readings to date have I read exhortations to risk body and soul for another.  Socrates, in the hours just before his death turned away his family, his wife; they were of the worldly, secondary to his primary loyalty to personal attainment of perfection.  Willing to share with others his death, only in that they could comprehend and follow his teaching, the friends, the learners who would be teachers.  Some sense of caring then, for not in their physical form but in their higher state of essence.

What then, is the compromise between self and unselfish?

The backyard is alive with the happy chirping and flitting of mating birds.  No longer just streaking by left to right, right to left at all different altitudes, but up and down in a crashing of wings and back and forth until somebody gives.  It’s annoying.

The female hummingbird is perched on one lilac, keeping her eye on the red globe of sugarwater hanging in another.  She looks nervous and edgy, looking this way and that and then her man zooms in for a drink.  She zips over to meet him and while late in the season he will viciously stab at her to keep her away, he greets and meets her in an up and down dance then they disappear from my view, seeming to fall to the ground. 

I go over and peek–nothing there.  But I imagine her laying in the soft dewy grass, a smile on her beak while he stands nearby slowly exhaling a stream of cigarette smoke.

Friend Neha is coming over for lunch tomorrow, smarter now with a certificate to prove it.  Fresh from graduation at Seton Hill, on her way in fall to Baltimore to get smarter still.  Have to make a special lunch, or pick up the house, one or the other.  Maybe I should impress her with Golabki; stuffed cabbage to acclimate her palate for next week’s trip to Poland.

Last evening the door opens and my father-in-law is standing in the kitchen, supported beneath the arms by his son.  "Do we have a belt?" Jim asks me, "His pants are falling off."  He holds him steady in the doorway as I bring a belt I’ve found and thread it through the loops in a circle all around him, lift the pants up to his waist and buckle it in place.  "Grand entrance!" I shout–he doesn’t use his hearing aids any more.  He laughs, forgetting the indignity for now.

"This is good," he says, eating well because he likes homecooked, especially beef, and this is hash with very few evil carbohydrate-laden potatoes, and there is yellow squash. 

"Where’s the rest of the meat?" he asks.  "What do you mean?" says Jim, and turns to me.  I see the desperation in his eyes.  "The meat–where’s the meat?" dad asks again.  There is a bit of anger in his voice, but in his eyes I only see the fear.  He knows and yet he doesn’t know what’s wrong, but something is.

"I used it all in the hash," I answer.  He smiles at me and nods his head.  My answer satisfies more than his spoken question.  Jim pats my arm.  I’ve had many years of experience with my Mother’s Alzheimers so it is easier for me to understand, even these more sudden changes brought about with medication and nursing home boredom.  New levels of communication, of relationships are formed.

There sometimes comes a time in life, particularly of those who feel they’ve left no mark upon the world and faced with leaving it as such, turn round to even note their footprints washed away behind them. Where spurred by an event, they will react in tune with a new thinking—or rather, an old banner they’ve laid gently down in answer to the natural call of living, raising family, earning to survive and peace of mowing lawns.

Static state of mind is noticed as their comrades fall around them, when the march of battle that has numbed the mind and ears begins to hear the independent footsteps of those soldiers left still on parade. Idealism shines once again within the moist glisten in the eye of passion and one small stand against the mindless acceptance of a wrong is laid out on the field.

Forgotten in the remembrance is the ultimate result and weary bones are half the match despite the wisdom. Taking up the cry we fight for justice, disremembering that the laws are mere man-made, challenged through to change in constant motion. Nevertheless some few of us are strong enough and fierce enough to follow our beliefs, able to withstand the dreadful costs. And some of us are not, and so with less the pain in tearing of scabs healed over than from the bleeding wounds once freshly made, we turn back face forward to the end of story, less burdened too by need to leave more than a stone moved from its place.

Reluctant in the leaving there is no dishonor as in youth.  There is no complacency when one can say instead, "Just let it be," and choice not circumstance allows the chance to walk away.  The first time around is bitter disillusion.  The second, affirmation and redirection once again.