Thursday–The Autumnal City VIII

Today a friend says to me:  “It is such a nice day today.”  Warm sun was melting the snow which had fallen heavily on Sunday.  

I was reminded of a festival a few years ago up in the hills a couple hours from where I live.  Though it was late spring, the weather had been cold and rainy the entire weekend–extreme even for the hills, which are always a bit wet.  Then the last morning came up sunny and warm.  
Everyone was smiling and marveling, remarking what a shame we should have good weather only at the end, when we were all packing up to leave.  I said nothing, not liking it at all.  No, it is not that I like cold and damp.  There was something wrong with the warm sunlight.  For one thing it was too humid.  For another . . . hard to describe; it just did not feel right.  We packed.  We left.  

The tornado came through the hills that night.  

This winter feels like that.  

There is a summer lethargy to my thoughts.  It is funny.  Last summer I was humming with activity: Every free, waking moment had a clear sense of purpose.  The project I was working on then is not finished, rather, I completed a stage.  Now my thoughts scatter in several directions, in vagueness.  Which things are going to matter?  

Even the political news is diffuse.  Cheney shoots a hunting companion.  It’s like something out of a Stephen King novel–except that it wasn’t even real hunting.  Horror is replaced by low comedy, and the realization that even the Mafia manages these things better.  And yet, as Congress falls in line behind another outrage, one gathers that key members have been invited hunting . . . It reminds me of Raed describing two years ago the clowns in the Iraqi puppet government.  Proud American, thinking we should get (will get) better puppets!  

What I am supposed to be writing about today is the correct relationship of life and death.  Would that I knew my subject!  Yet it matters, because without that, civilization is a boat with no rudder.  This is why fine-tuning capitalism will be of no use to us.  Sustainable energy is possible (at much lower per capita levels) but not for us, not while we cling to the idea that you can take without giving back.  If we try it we will find ways to repeat the same mistakes.  Our basic economic notions are just wrong-headed.  We ignore the costs we externalize just like we ignore death, not realizing that they merely wait for us, ever patiently.  And more:  They define what we are doing right now.  This is opaque:  It is not easy to see, even assuming we should want to.  It makes it hard to live without regrets.  

But to live without regrets is precisely the point.  

Another friend is moving to England.  Good for her!  I think I have decided on a going-away present.  During the last full moon instead of sleeping my mind was spinning with geometric considerations.  Yesterday they turned into the design for a mandala.  Will I be able to construct it before the party in a week and a half?  

I don’t think I will see her again.  

It is not spring that is coming.  Something else.