Striking My Funny Bone

The things that elicit tears are not, for the most part, mysteries--loss, pain, ragweed.  But the sources behind laughter?  Their iterations are as varied as M&M flavors.  So, how do I explain all those giggles and guffaws from Friday night's co-worker Christmas gathering?

It wasn't one thing, that's for sure.

Turns out, humor, like a three-course meal, is a multi-layered thing, even if the results seem simple and pure.  And, like food, our personal tastes influence our reactions to it.

For instance, while I'm a nut for word play, physical humor and a well-told story, if there were a humor food truck called F Bombas, I'd likely drive on by.  Despite my ruddy, sturdy look, I'm a delicate creature when it comes to stimulating my funny bone.  A proliferation of swearing, like too much almond extract, is a turnoff for me.  Plus, it seems like cheap writing.  Although there has been one exception in that department--Hugh Grant's f-bomb rat-a-tat in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" cracks me up every time!

When I review the recipe for Friday night's fun, some common ingredients emerge--likable people, comfortable surroundings, good food, bad puns.  Interestingly, only one of those ingredients has its roots in humor.  Giggles, it seems, come more easily when mixed with some sort of behind-the-scenes bubble-inducing elixir--a baking soda for the soul, if you will.  Trust comes to mind as just such an ingredient.

A truly funny evening starts with a teaspoon of trust, ensuring that everyone--even the introverts (especially the introverts)--can have the stage at some point.   With trust in place, humor can flex its many muscles.

I've got a great friend--deeply respected in her profession and the larger community--whose dance moves leave me breathless and drunk with joy.  Another can rattle off a seemingly endless string of rotten puns--regardless of topic--leaving the rest of us vacillating between thoughts of violence and hopeless, joyful surrender.  And a well-timed sideward glance or eye roll?  Priceless!

Yes, there are limits (see F-Bombas).  And, while we are free to delve our own depths of weakness for material, we should be wary of such spelunking of others' lives.  Unless those folks are famous (see New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964).  Regardless of the target, though, mean humor runs its course quickly and leaves a person feeling kind of dirty and depleted.

The best humor lightens and connects us, like a perfect meal enjoyed in good company. 

Words into Being

Masting (noun)--The synchronous production of many seeds. 

So I wasn't dreaming!

Those swamp oaks at Woods Park really were cranking out the acorns this fall.  And now I have the word that has nudged my observations into being--masting.

Isn't that the way with words?  That things or processes take on life and meaning when there is a name for them?

I think of how excited I was recently when my friend Steve shared the article about masting.  Suddenly, my casual observations had hard science and an easy-to-remember word to back them up.  And I like that word, masting.  It evokes a sailboat to me, with its sturdy center pole transforming cloth and wind into engine.  An untethered sail, after all, might as well be a bed sheet.

Because I have a tendency to anthropomorphize everything, I readily assign trees brains and personalities, as well as the ability to communicate and feel (although, again, the science kind of backs me up here).  But, carrying over the sailboat theme, I can see trees as masts themselves--not only their sturdy trunks as mast (an easy comparison) but, now,  this periodic, almost gaudy overproduction of acorns--the masting--becomes  a kind of sail that propels these trees into the future.  And this act of masting clearly is about the future.

And the fact that masting is synchronous--that all of the oaks in an area overproduce during the same year?  Well, I can practically hear them chattering to each other!  German forester and biologist Peter Wohlleben calls that chatter--carried out by the fungal networks that move between trees' roots--the wood-wide web.  Ain't that a kick in the shorts?!   Granted, weather--specifically spring-time weather--also clearly is helping these trees to organize themselves.  And organize they must, since acorns don't just appear overnight.

Masting . . . it is a small word that ignited my imagination and made something real, even though it had already existed outside of my knowing it.  That gets me thinking about the incredible value of words, and what happens to us--or to nature or to anything else--when we possess or lack the words to name them.

Do things--or people--only exist when we know what to call them?  Certainly, it is easy to discount those things (or people) we do not know by name.    Conversely, there is deep joy in having mysteries unveiled in the naming of things.

I think back to Santiago, the first openly  transgendered student I'd met.  His was a journey I could not imagine, but when that name--transgendered-- finally appeared in our lexicon, it was no stretch of the imagination to predict the deep relief that must have washed over him, this name whispering him into being.  How many folks before him, spanning generations, had no name for themselves?

Name-calling is serious business.  Like masts and masting, this naming of things is all about how we move into the future.  We should take care to do it well. 

Gobble It Up

Thanksgiving always opens up an extra space or two in my heart.  (Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for my pants, which seem doubly determined to remain true to the pesky number stamped on the little tag inside them.   I find that confounding, considering that most of my jeans these days are more plastic than denim . . . ).

But this is not a post about confounding things.  Rather, it is a list of suggestions, things we can do to keep those heart spaces opened up all year long. The framework for these reflections comes from an old railroad ad campaign--Stop, Look and Listen!  Really, that's good advice, no matter which side of the tracks you come from.

STOP!

Stop doing. 

No, really.  Just stop.  Too often, doing gets in the way of simply living.  Blame it on our obsession with filled calendars or our need for peer approval, but,  for some reason, Americans have decided that doing is the same thing as succeeding.  But, thinking something doesn't necessarily make it so.  Thank goodness.

To break out of that mindset, then, some time this year, stop working--not forever, but for a day or two, just long enough to go to Thedford (see left), where you will be lulled by the loping Sandhills, wooed by the winding Middle Loup, transported by the hum of endless trains.  Honestly, my clan did almost nothing there, but all of us would count it as one of the best vacations of our lives.

And, of course, you don't have to go to Thedford (although I think you should!).  The point is to step away from what you know and move into something different, something slower.

Stop clicking.

My life certainly hasn't gotten larger or better by clicking more.  Sure, I've gotten closer to the Amazon guy, but I've also ended up with more cardboard and crap. And less money in the bank.  Better to buy local, where the store isn't always open and you may not find everything you think you need,  . . . which is a happy, if not backwards, kind of fairytale ending in itself.

And if, in clicking, you hope to learn more about the world, I'd suggest logging off and turning a page instead.  Read a book, buy the newspaper, thumb through the National Geographic at the library.  Often, information that takes its time getting to us is more valuable and more valued.

LOOK!

Specifically, up.

A few years ago, I saw this meme about our love affair with cell phones.  Had the cellular apocalypse not already been occurring, I'd have called the meme 'prescient.'   There is no greater shame for me than to be caught looking at my stupid phone when someone is talking to me.  Alas, that shame probably seems quaint to others, since the act almost has become second nature.  But, really, there is nothing natural about our relationship with our devices.

Besides, if you fall into the trap of living a hunched-over, digitally-filtered life, you miss everything that's happening above you.  And--oh, my!--the view is really something!

There is no better way to start my day (and, if I can just tweak my schedule a bit, I'd add "end my day") than to be outdoors, following the sun.  In general, I'm a fan of looking up.  And, if you have a stiff neck, watching a sunrise or sunset doesn't even involve that much "up," considering that both take place on the horizon.  

A sunrise reminds me of the steadfastness of the natural world, regardless of what's happening in the news.  Time in nature slows me down and puts me on alert, all at once.  And I feel changed--every time.  It's a fine do over.  Maybe the finest. 

LISTEN! 

I once sat on our front steps, the thick summer evening sliding into a cool, calm night, and listened to earthworms move dirt.  I sat there, gape-jawed and mostly silent (a person can't just hear something like that and say nothing!), stunned to hear all of that life just under my feet.

A bit of a talker, listening, for me, is like writing or playing guitar or cooking--it requires some practice.  But all of that practice eventually leads to more interesting stories, better meals, longer jams . . .  and a quiet joy within me.

In listening, I make room for others, and--ironically--I find my own life stretched and changed a bit.  The more I listen, the more varieties of life I can see in this big, beautiful world.   A robin's frantic call on a summer's evening leads me on an owl hunt.  A friend's deep sigh tells me to be patient and let things be.  That one note in the song from "Cider House Rules?"--every time I hear it, it washes over me and I am moved.

The haunting musical note, the peculiar churrr of dirt overturning, the aching tone of a friend's recollection , the Robin's sharp trill of alarm . . . We can't know the stories unless we listen to them.

It is the soft edges of our silence that frame and enliven them. 

It is in our willingness to stop, look and listen that we find our hearts filled to bursting.

As for the jeans?  Well, that's what the button's for.

Keeping it Small

In a time of tidal waves, I choose ripples.

In a time of blustering babble, I choose the tinkling of sycamore leaves.

In a time of endless war, I choose the hand extended.

I do not have the strength or the desire to fight each fight these days.  It is hard on my body and fatal to my soul.

Which is why, in a time of tidal waves, I have chosen ripples.

What a joy it has been to spend fall with teens, wandering the woods together, looking for snails and woolly bears.  What a pleasure it is to hear their laughter, as they scoop minnows from a quiet pool in the creek.

I know. I know.  Children in cages and presidents imploding and the earth is melting and and and

. . . and I listen as a young girl, embarrassed,  admits to me she sometimes hates her species, "so it's really nice to be in the woods today."

A tall young man falls back from his classmates, joining me at the end of the line.  "I got to go to Estes and the Badlands this summer.  Can I show you some photos?"

I dawdle with a spirited junior as he stops at a dead log and takes photos of mushrooms and lichen, set against the green backdrop of a hundred happy trees.  "I could stay here forever."

I know.  I know. 

Tell me again that the Platte is not filled with future oceans.   Tell me again that our young cannot stretch and open up and lose themselves in wonder.

Tell me again how the ripples do not change things.

Time and Time Again

In the past month, I've eaten in a thousand-year-old restaurant, skittered up a winding path to a 900-year-old castle, and finished a book that featured 500-year-old third-generation trees growing from 2,000-year-old roots.

It would be fair to say I've had time on my mind.

. . . and what I keep coming back to is this realization that the United States is a young pup, a petulant teen, often impatient beyond impatience.

I think back to my afternoon in Bratislava, Europe's newest capital, where Mark and I attended a walking-tour 400-level college course in Slovakia's complicated history, as told by our brilliant local guide, Nora.  Wandering the city's 18th-century Old Town, Nora told about her grandfather who, in the '60s, made a crack about the communists, only to have a neighbor turn him in for such dangerous fodder.  The sins of her grandfather fell upon Nora's dad, who was then denied the chance to attend school and sent to the uranium mines instead.

Nora also talked us through closed borders, Nazi incursions, citizen revolts, peaceful breakups, a new female president and free college and health care for all.  An hour later, over beers at an outdoor cafe, Mark and I sat in wonder, reviewing the long, complicated arc of Nora's storyline, a storyline that ended with hope and possibility for the people of Slovakia.

Slovakia's stories--compelling and memorable--were hardly unique, though.  Each place we visited and each tour guide we walked with carried stories of war and loss, hope and reinvention.

Aside from an H bomb our own military accidentally dropped near Albuquerque in the mid 50s, the United States has nary a pockmark of war upon its soil.  And yet, like a swaggering male teen, our country struts and huffs and throws out its defiant arms at the merest provocation.  Ironically, these days, most of those provocations are self-inflicted.

But back to the old restaurant and the "young" trees . . .

My experiences with both travel and books this past month have helped me frame this hard-to-endure chapter the United States finds itself in.  I'm reminded to be patient.  To put down deep roots in good soil.  To share food and laughter with others.  And to crossed the padlock-riddled bridge to see what's on the other side.  Ultimately, I'm heartened by all of these old places I visited and the very new people now walking along their streets, just as I am comforted by the shade of a tree that holds generations'-old secrets in its roots.

This world is both hamster wheel and kaleidoscope--the same old same old and a thousand unimaginable iterations of fractured light, both heartbreaking and beautiful all at once.   Hungry for a way forward, I plan on seeking the bridges and crossing them, hands and heart opened to whatever and whomever I may find on the other side.

Holmes Sweet Home

I love my walks at Holmes Lake.  Like a visit to the East Campus Dairy Store, they rarely disappoint.  Yet, I almost never walk around the whole lake.  Instead, my typical path looks like this:  Head up the dam, cross the bridge, follow a dirt path towards the planetarium, and bend my way back towards the bridge and dam.

How does a place that is so familiar to me keep me coming back, especially if I turn around, halfway through my walk, and retrace my path?  Where's the fun in that?

Here's the thing, though.  When I leave the upper meadow and head back to the bridge, that path is the only thing that hasn't changed.  Now, my eyes and nose are drawn to the voluptuous milkweed plants, their bossomy blooms having never looked--or smelled--better.  Above them, an eastern kingbird chitters wildly in its mid-sky battle with a grackle.

With the yawning sun behind me now, I watch the dam and grasses explode in deep, dark greens while my shadow--stretched long and low--falls across the front page of the local author's newspaper, as she sits at her kitchen table and plans out her day.   Or so I tell myself.

Walking past the low dip of land just east of the dam, the brilliant purple flowers of a native tall thistle catch my eye, and I stand there, gape-jawed, taking them in.  I decide to go off path to take a closer look, although Finn's attention is on a tiny vole as it dashes madly through the grass to safety.  Amazingly, while I can't see the vole, I can follow the jagged line of its escape path by watching small blades of grass bend under its weight.

Atop the dam again, this time I'm blinded by the sunlight, now flooding my view ahead.  Gone are the vultures that, 30 minutes ago, had gathered on the beach below.   Now, a mama mallard and her teenaged kids head away from the shore, while a fisherman casts his line just beyond its mossy edges.

Nearly an hour into my walk, there are more people, and more mosquitos.  Less appealing company, perhaps, but still different, despite being on the same path.

Maybe that's the real pleasure for me, then--the fact that there are new things to discover even when the way might seem old.   Always, by the time we take the slow path off the dam, I feel a connectedness that wasn't there an hour ago.  My senses are heightened, my heart rate slow and easy.  And I care not a whit that my path has been in the shape of a new moon rather than a circle, because it is always revealing something new to me.

A Dreamy Moment on a Timeless Summer's Day

I used to be a much more interesting dreamer.  Back in the day, I might disrupt sleep with outbursts of flying and mayhem,  or with a strange, toothless amble down a raging river.  These days, though, my dreams are more like visits to the local grocery store, filled with little lists and ordinariness, the occasional Jackfruit thrown in to keep things interesting.

Dreams, like so many other things, can let us down a bit if we are expecting only fireworks and Lord Fauntleroy.

So, how to explain the small smile I woke with this morning?  Surely, its source wasn't the tiny dream I'd been having, the one utterly void of action verbs.

But I knew otherwise.  It was, indeed, that simple dream that had washed over me.

In it, a younger me is laying on my bedroom floor, propped up on an elbow and feet crossed casually above my head.  A sketch pad in front of me,  I move my pencil across it, the fat, rounded nub working patiently.  Downstairs, my mom finishes the morning paper, both of us content in the morning quiet.   While I'm sketching, my mind moves to the books I've read and I'm filled with such love for them, for the places they've taken me, the people I've met.  And, for just a moment, I set down my pencil, overwhelmed that there are such things as libraries, all those stories free for the taking.

That was it, my dream.  A few minutes in a timeless space, filled with the beloved and the familiar--my mom, my room, some doodles and books.  Yet, the deep contentment that I woke with hung with me through the next few hours, its presence both warm and familiar.

I'd been between books when I went to bed last night, having said goodbye to Inspector Gamache and Three Pines earlier in the day.  After this morning's dream, though,  I knew exactly what my next book would be, one that is both magical and familiar.  The Wind and The Willows was written, no doubt, for a younger me, yet it is also deeply loved by my current self.

So, this morning, I said "hello" again to Mole and Ratty, letting my hand dangle into the river, while Ratty pushed off from the shore, with no particular place in mind.