May 18: Invisible Electron, Lime Popsicle, School Concert

Catch it if you can.  The present is an invisible electron; its lightning path traced faintly on a blackened screen is fleet, and fleeing, and gone.

The present is something ephemeral, a lime popsicle on a July afternoon.  It melts quickly and is gone, leaving behind sticky fingers and a green tongue.  There is evidence of the present left behind, an afterimage on a dark television screen, as Dillard says.  It's here, moves forward, and leaves like a car on a highway.

I just got back from my daughter's final school concert of the year.  It was, as most school concerts are, a little uneven.  Some really amazing performances mixed with the elementary school chorus singing "This Little Light of Mine."  Everything was wildly entertaining.

As I sat in the gym, watching and listening, I found myself becoming quite emotional.  There were some girls who were seniors singing their last solos.  Some musicians who were seniors playing their last Chopin etude.  I watched my daughter play her flute, sing with the chorus, and I couldn't help but think of how close my daughter is to graduation herself.  In three years, she will be an invisible electron.  Fleet, fleeing, gone, as Dillard describes the present.

It made me appreciate the concert a little more.  Pay closer attention to each ensemble and drum solo.  I didn't want to forget anything.  Of course, when my wife and I met up with our daughter after the concert, she was in complete teenager mode.  A little sulky, walking fast so her friends wouldn't see her walking with us.  And the moment was over.

Saint Marty used to be cool.

January 1: Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," Partly Cloudies, Edged in Gold

Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then shadow sweeps it away.  You know you're alive.  You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet's roundness arc between your feet.  Kazantzakis says that when he was young he had a canary and a globe.  When he freed the canary, it would perch on the globe and sing.  All his life, wandering the earth, he felt as though he had a canary on top of his mind, singing.

Welcome to Tinker Creek.  This year's book will be Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  It's a book that I read on my honeymoon in Hawaii, on the plane, in hotel rooms, on a beach overlooking a coral cove.  It was a time of hopes and expectations.  The whole world open and fresh, like a fresh-cut lawn or the Pacific Ocean.

I chose Pilgrim because it's a book full of beauty and light.  All kinds of light.  Like the January partly cloudy Dillard describes above.  And I want a year of beauty and light.  There has been too much darkness in my life in the last couple of years.  As I sit here, typing this post, I'm looking out a window.  The sun is setting on the first day of 2016.  The branches of the trees are edged in gold.  That's the kind of year I'm hoping for.  A year edged in gold.

Now, I know it's a fool's dream to hope for an entire year of blessings and goodness.  Life has a way of circumventing those kinds of ambitions.  I will experience hardship in the next 365 days.  Sadness and worry.  The world is a broken place, and brokenness has a way of asserting itself.  But so does light.  Light seeps in through the cracks of a dark room.  Around the window shades.  Under closed doors.  Where there is darkness, there is also light.

So, I am going to be a pilgrim at Tinker Creek, along with Annie Dillard.  You can join us.  The writing is stunning, seeped with spirituality and poetry.  I guarantee you will be inspired.  Taken by surprise.  The world is full of strange creations, things that make you believe in everyday miracles.

As this day draws to a close, I am . . . content.  I guess that's the best word I can come up with.  I'm satisfied.  This evening, I will go home, spend the night reading and watching my daughter and her friend pretend they're just friends.  I could clean my bathroom and straighten up my living room.  But I'm tired.  I want a night of rest.  Of nothing.

Saint Marty just wants to listen to the canary on the top of his head.  It's singing, "This little light of mine..."

Thoughts on New Year's Resolutions