Last night I attended a film in South Portland, Maine. “Cowspiracy; the sustainability secret”. I fully enjoyed watching the film and I learned an awful lot about the priorities of various organizations that are causing pollution and global warming and hastening the end of the earth as well as those organizations that are camouflaged as whistle blowers but are misdirecting or misreporting on those who are the culprits. It turns out that animal agriculture is the main problem but no one is reporting it as such. Those who have been reporting it have been assassinated. Scary business.
As a result of watching the film I am more inspired to move toward a vegan diet than ever before. I cannot explain any of it because the subject is quite complex. I invite you to watch the documentary when you see it come up in your life. I think you will be convinced.
I sat at my computer with coffee, an ultra-marathon pancake, and extra blanket wrapped around me to separate my body from the chill in the house. The mornings are getting cooler and I still have no heating oil tank to supply my little heater. When the temps get unbearable I throw a few pieces of wood in the stove and burn them. This morning I just grabbed a small blanket and wrapped myself in it and now I am recording my thoughts on things at hand. One is my progress with installing a heating oil tank. Yesterday my friend Tony Finocchiaro called to inform me that he had four more timbers cut; that I could pick them up at his mill. That makes seven since I got three from him in the beginning of this week. I’ll need two more for nine because the box I’m building is three high all around. I go pick up the timbers, 6 X 8 inches by 8 feet long pine, and I bring them home and apply a deck stain to preserve them. I will construct an interlocking box held together with rebar and filled with gravel to support the heating oil tank high enough off the ground to gravity feed the oil heater in the house. The outlet of the tank needs to be 28 inches above ground level to accomplish this.
I went to get another gallon of stain at Grover’s Hardware in the Harbor yesterday. I thought I knew which one to buy to match the one I bought the day before. Well, I didn’t. I was stumped and I asked one of the clerks to look at the slip on my account to see what I bought. There were no details so I gave up and went on my way. When I got home I examined the can I have in the shed and I memorized the words in the description so I can look smart today when I go back. Poco a poco se va lejo is Spanish for “little by little we go far”. Poco a poco se va lejo.
I went to Tony’s and loaded the timbers into the old Dodge pickup and brought them home. Today I will try to get them stained and stacked for cutting and shaping. Until I get the oil tank installed and filled with K-1 I will sit and shiver and gain inspiration about things to write.
I started to read a biography of Ludwig Beethoven but the thing was terrible. It is the only book on Beethoven at the library and I was extremely disappointed in it. After about 12 pages I closed it and took it back. I researched biographies of Beethoven and I discovered an author, Alexander Wheelock Thayer. Thayer wrote “Life of Beethoven”. Now get this. Thayer was born in 1817 and he was an educated man who traveled to Germany to correct the prevailing romanticized biography on Beethoven. Thayer interviewed people who knew the composer and he was able to come up with a definitive history. Years later his manuscript and book were examined and corrected with information gained over the past hundred or so years and now there is a book available, “Thayer’s Life of Beethoven” edited by Elliott Forbes. I’ve ordered it from Amazon. You can see it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OH2RYG/ref=pe_385040_30332200_TE_item
Actually I am checking out a copy of this book from the inter-library system and this book I ordered I am donating to the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library when it arrives.
“Summer grasses, All that remains, Of warrior dreams.” Basho
That is simply a beautiful poem. Basho was a prince of sorts who lived in the 7th century. He eschewed the life of ease for a life traveling the roads of Japan, sleeping under the stars sometimes and living close to the earth. His poetry was what he saw and experienced along the road. I was reading about Basho this morning in the chill of my little house by the water. As usual I was looking out the window being observant of the world in motion. There are two roads in view. One is the paved road that cars and walkers travel on and there is the river. The river is always moving. It moves in three dimensions due to the tides and the winds. It is a dynamic companion to my morning musings.
Well, reading about Basho and pondering the events coming my way today as well as what is right in front of me inspired me to ponder the river and the road. Later this morning I am calling a good friend Rachel. I love talking with her. She has experienced a million things that I haven’t and her concepts are so bare and raw sometimes that I am breathless. She enriches my life. Anyway, the river and road are so on schedule for me. I want to tell Rachel about them.
Here is what I wrote this morning.
TWO ROADS BOTH TAKEN
Two roads I see,
One more attractive,
One more utilitarian.
Two roads I see,
One sings a song,
One sits quietly.
Two roads I see,
One is fluid,
The other static.
Two roads I see,
The one fills my heart,
The other awaits.
These roads I see,
One sings my dreams,
One carries me there.
Two roads are there,
One clarifies,
One realizes.
Two roads I feel,
One imagines,
One makes.
Two roads I have,
The river,
The road.
Two roads I see,
I need
both.
George Goodwin
October 3, 2014
Playing Fair and Being Kind 