. Spinning .

An ostrich sticks its head into the sand, fooling those around him into thinking he is hiding from the world, seeking refuge, a comfort of the mind at least.

I follow him in theory because I think that may be best at times like this. Soon I learn his secret and find it not the pathway of escape, but rather focus; even the smallest grain of sand is of the earth, and faceted with simpler sides to crystallize the view. A microscopic world in comprehensive form. The earth and all its mystery seen close and clearly as it can’t be seen above the surface with its moving, running, flying, buzzing, screaming things that intrude upon the melody of humming life–that is all we need to recognize and hear.

Lifting out, emerging from our little telescope into the world, refitted with glassy clear sand spectacles, we then can see the world a different way. We then can walk its crust in confidence because we’ve seen what lies beneath and trust it to be real.

Let me tell you something that I’m learning, and see if you have found it out yet for yourself, or disagree: The importance of fiction in its story form and poems, is the value of the maybe, the could be, and the what if that it offers and allows. Only in their concept and in their execution in fiction do these ideas need have depth and yet the possibility of flight. There is only meaning to them when allowed to freely weave among the willows of a structured narrative line.

Reality is real, and maybe and the rest don’t really count at all because whatever is decided, happens, and automatically becomes an is and then steps back to recede into the past as was. The future, the realm of the unknown and where these thoughts survive, is never, ever real.

While either fun or worry to wonder, the only real thing we need to know and care about is what exists as truth as we accept it. The greatest scientific theory at its stages until evidence proves it as an existing thing, is, until that point, purest fiction.

I do not mean to disabuse us of our hopes and dreams, but they exist for most their lives and sometimes all their lives, as fantasy. But reality can be enough and more if we truly see it. There’s more in that alone to fascinate and agitate the mind. And for the quiet times, there will always be the open door of fiction to take us further than we can even think to go.

The war is being fought on many fronts, the skies are lit on all the points of compasses in every language. Eternally, the past runs concurrent with the future, and the present is a spontaneous combustion spark that feeds itself into a bonfire–though it doesn’t last as long. Wails are ails in any tongue and all the same. Except perhaps if they do indeed exist on the rocklike surface of the moon. I would suspect its craters catch the earth cries to echo them long and lonely back into a universal blackness. What is here is there as well, and what I am, I was and that I am forever still. Time will make one groan in deeper tones, but somewhere from the fields, the high, thin cry of a child will hit the moon.

Early on, as was predicted by The Weatherman the night before, the clouds hang as twisted sheets upon the clothesline of the morning sky. Grey and dingy, somehow old and worn but serviceable still. Bleaching lies to whiten only weaken threads that hold it all together over time. Comfortable, the color suits me well. The freshness still upon the scent of breezes traveling over one world to another, and another until each man upon the earth has felt the touch. The endless circle around a globe that wants to spin against the wind. Moving at a destined speed to bring an end that never comes and yet it ever will to each and every one. Reluctantly we must at last lay down at end of day and sigh and rest beneath the clouds, the nightlight of a star to guide us into sleep.

All I need to know of life I learn in my backyard.

This morning I watched as the daddy cardinal came to the feeder, but stopped to chirp at me first from the bush close by. I told him I’d just filled it, and he swooped right in. The feeder is on a pole, but alongside a hydrangea that is overgrown from lack of a spring trim, and now, heavy with rain, covers the feeder with it’s soft leafy growth. A second later, a hummingbird swoops in behind him, stopping short when she realizes this is not her favorite restaurant, then buzzes over to the nectar-filled station that’s the hummingbird hangout. Perhaps she is one of the young, first flight out on her own. Perhaps last month she was only an egg.

The sky is a blank sheet of paper, where answers come by with the clouds. These are more in response to questions of the heart, questions of the soul. Simple in their complexity and range.

Sometimes a book is needed as a necessary accessory to the lessons learned out there. But it is only an extension, for the air of freedom I breathe and the natural chirps and hums of living things around me are the space, and that is the most essential of all.

Yes, a laptop would make the classroom complete, I suppose; to be able to go beyond in my studies. To strive for and achieve the ultimate degree. To say I have lived and learned.