Calhouns Can(n)ons

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for December 17, 2009

‘Tween Time

Enough is as good as a feast
John Heywood (1497-1580)

It is a season out of joint. In the back yard, the great grape vine can’t make up its mind. Half of its vines are bare and settling in for a long winter’s nap while the other half are filled with deluded leaves reaching for the last rays of the sun. The eternally optimistic nasturtiums have put forth a burst of growth only to be bent hard by an unexpected early frost. It rains, but an inch down the sand is dry. We are in a damp drought and entering a warm cold unpredictable winter.

And in the season of the ancient solstice, wise and serious men and women are meeting in Denmark to discuss the destruction of the earth. They will make passionate speeches and pass fine resolutions and then return to their respective countries where too little will be done too late.

Too late because Mother Nature has already begun the process of killing her ancient children and fashioning new ones for the new world that is coming into being. It is a dance as old as time. The only difference here is that this time we humans were the tripwire. And it is not known if we will be among the disappeared. Or whether we will have the wit and will to avert the worst scenarios and bring our world back from the brink.

Given that humans are hard-wired with delusion as their default position and have great difficulty thinking past the length of their noses, the chances aren’t good. It will be a supreme irony if our epitaph turns out to be a petard.

I would despair of all of this, but despair is a sin of the ego. The world will be what it will be, not what I wish or want it to be. It is written nowhere that polar bears, tree frogs or glaciers must belong in the world any more than thunder lizards, wooly mammoths and dire wolves did. So, I can’t despair, but I can grieve.

And hope, of course. There’s always that in a season that’s turning from dark to light, a season of traditional renewal, of carbon-burning Yule logs, and wasteful Christmas lights bringing joy into the dark night.

And songs and wooden nutcrackers put out on the mantelpiece again, but this year they will share a place next to a large blousy, absurd rubber Henrietta Chicken dog toy, a gift from friends far away. And standing in the yard on Christmas Eve to muse under a star-studded sky, the silhouette of the limbless, dead pine tree out near the front street looms in the darkness like a dark sentinel. The stars are distant and indifferent. To them, we’re a dim, empty planet lost in a limitless cosmos; Nothing special, nothing precious, just one among billions.

But this one particular planet on this one particular day has friends and family and enduringly inedible fruitcake and undrinkable eggnog. And always, always the touch of my dogs’ cold noses on my hand to remind me again that time is passing. That joy is always an option. And that the leashes are ready and that the best Now of all the best possible Nows is a walk in the cold winter air on a frosty morning of a new day.