Like most people, when I awake to a clear sky and morning sun, I think to myself, “What a beautiful day!” Here in the San Diego area, there are many days like that. I take my dog Sadie for a walk every morning.
Sadie enjoys the sunny days. Probably unbeknownst to her, the golden morning light makes her golden doodle fur even prettier than the midday sun.
Sadie enjoys the rainiest of days as well. She watches the water gush into the storm sewer, enjoying the interplay of gravity, inertia, cohesion, and friction. Often large water droplets fall onto puddles and make large bubbles. Sadie snaps at as many as she can. Perhaps she imagines they are small silvery fish. Perhaps not.
Sadie also enjoys foggy days! Sometimes, it feels as though the joy is more a product of Sadie than it is of the weather.
Sadie enjoys days like this morning–gray, cloudy, drizzly. It hasn’t rained enough to cause flow a darksome torrent. But the moisture from the drizzle enhances the aroma of the earth and all the life that tracks across it.
The San Diego area has famously good weather. Flowers blossom forth all year round. I like it!
But that doesn’t mean it never rains. In fact, I’m glad it does rain. Without some rain, it would be much less pleasant. Fewer plants would grow which would mean fewer friends from diverse parts of the Great Tree of Life: fewer butterflies, fewer lizard, fewer rabbits, fewer crows, fewer hummingbirds and fewer bees just to name a few of the critters I see almost every day.
On the other hand, I was supposed to play tennis this morning and that had to be canceled. We can’t really let the dogs out by themselves to play in the garden because now it’s too muddy. I have to take them out for a walk even when it’s raining. It seems to me that houses should be built with multi-species toilets that would allow humans, cats, and dogs all one place to go without causing a mess. It doesn’t seem that difficult a design problem.
But in our actual house, the toilets are only for humans so it’s important to take the dogs out several times a day. And that means I end up walking in the rain.
It’s wet. My feet often get wet. If it rains hard, I get wet on my head, my back, and my legs as well. As for the dogs?
They love to go out—rain or shine.
Sadie, who is now nearly three years old, often looks up at the sky when we begin a walk. I talk to her about the weather, the airplanes she spots at night, the moon, the stars, the planets. Perhaps she doesn’t understand every word, but, honestly, neither do I. I don’t know “why” there is gravity or how it relates in some way to the strong and weak nuclear forces. I’m not even sure there is a “why” to it.
What I do know is that Sadie does not just tolerate the rain. She loves the rain. She cannot change the weather. So why not love it?
Nor, for that matter, can I change the weather.
When it rains hard, the nearby storm sewer provides a mystery: a never-ending rushing gush of water! She looks up at me as though to ask: “Where does the water go?”
“The ocean,” I explain. To Sadie though, it remains a portal into another universe.
On its way to the sewer, the water rushes down the gutter and the raindrops cause bubbles to appear in the stream! Bubbles! Sadie snaps at each bubble and destroys it. Perhaps she does this in case they are tasty fish, but I think more likely she does it for the same reason I used to like to pop soap bubbles: sheer joy.
The moisture changes the intensity of smells and provide her with unusual odors. She likes to drink the water on the street which I discourage since the water probably contains more gas and oil than is good for her. Soon, I think, my water supply too may be too polluted to be healthy.
The passing cars make more noise in the rain. If it’s a hard storm, the wind blows the trees which she often looks up at as well. She does not wear shoes or boots and seems not to mind at all splashing through the cold puddles on her way to the next novel aroma.
These days, I’m not a big fan of the rain. I’d rather play tennis. I’d rather take pictures of the flowers in the sunshine. I’d rather not get wet.
But Sadie helps me remember an earlier time when I desperately wanted to go outside in the rain. I loved to splash through the mud puddles and wade in the just-born streams of the gutters. The deeper the stream, the better. I tried not to let the water spill over the rim of my boots—not because it was unpleasant to have the water suddenly soak my socks but because I knew my parents would be quite upset. Sometimes, I came home and managed to hide the fact that I had waded into too-deep water. That, in itself was a pleasure.
Even though I’m not as much of a rain fan as are Sadie and her younger brother Bailey, I’m something of a fan. The raindrops on flowers are beautiful. I enjoy Sadie’s enjoyment of the rain.
Why not love it?
Yes, we do teach our dogs.
We teach them tricks.
And, the dogs teach us.
They teach us to love and to live and to sing of the rain.
Our morning walk began, appropriately enough, in heavy fog. No sun. Cold. Damp. A slight but persistent icy wind.
How appropriate, I thought. No sign of a sunrise. Not near here.
Sadie, however, seemed oblivious to the fog, the damp, the cold, the politics. Before our walk began, I told her we’d try walking without the shoulder harness but she’d have to do “Good Walking” with no Pulling. She’s strong and pulling hurts my back and knees but especially my ankles and arches. The harness helps prevent her from pulling, but doesn’t really eliminate it.
She did good walking.
And I noticed that, up close, she is still as beautiful as ever. No gold or red from the rising sun, but still beautiful.
Indeed, the fog shrouds what is distant, but up close? Bright signs of beauty still beckon. If we bother to look.
Looking more distantly–ominous, if not downright evil.
Even so, the lonely mourning dove coos on her thin wire perch.
Soon, the sun does begin to shine. Darkness, like cancer and greed, always eventually loses.
One of the most pleasurable “chores” I’ve ever had is walking our goldendoodle Sadie twice a day. It’s exercise. It’s a chance to see nature’s beauty. It’s a chance to interact with Sadie and informally explore her mind. She likes to vary her route. She likes to return to “known” spots and also to explore new places. She knows when we are “headed home.” And, once we begin heading home, she typically begins to engage in a variety of “procrastination” behaviors. She stops and licks herself. She stops and looks back to see whether any of her neighborhood friends—human and dog—are headed our way. She suddenly finds an incredibly interesting scent to track down.
Her procrastination is something I completely understand. I did the same thing as a kid. And my kids did the same thing. And their kids did the same thing. While I sympathize, it also gives me a chance to think. What does it mean to be heading home? Can one ever go back home?
Undo and Home Base
Early in my career as a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction, I had an opportunity to contribute to a set of “Guidelines.” Although the New York Times once erroneously ascribed the “invention” of UNDO to me, I did not invent it. It seems to me that the concept is actually quite old. I did, however, mention in the guidelines that UNDO should be provided as well as providing a “Home Base”—that is, a way to go to a state where you could begin again.
To Sadie, and to me, our home is our home base. Like other home bases, we conceptualize them as being a return to an unchanging safe space. Relatively speaking, and roughly speaking, that’s a good characterization. It’s relative because no place on earth is absolutely safe. Disasters can come in many forms: extreme weather, wars, crime, and disease to name four. Also, even if disaster doesn’t strike, we can be sure that home will never be exactly the same as when we left it. Everything is constantly in motion and in flux. It can be comforting to imagine that home stays the same, but it doesn’t. Nor does Sadie. Nor do I.
Sometimes, a moderate amount of change is nice. I like to take photos in our beautiful garden. I end up sometimes taking pictures of “the same” plant or flower several days in a row. I also tend to take flowers when they bloom, year after year. Sometimes, these pictures look very similar on successive days or on successive years. But in actuality, they are never exactly the same. The plant itself changes day to day (as do I; as does Sadie; as do you). In addition, the light changes from day to day. The surrounding plants in the garden also change from day to day and year to year. In addition, when I take a picture, I’m not in the exact same position. The software on the iPhone changes over time as well. The lenses on the iPhone change over time. Even if by some industrial strength replicability dream (nightmare?) I could take exactly the same photo, you wouldn’t perceive it as the same because your eye/brain system is always changing, both organically and by virtue of your other visual experiences.
Another Sunset
There are characteristics of sunsets that we see as similar over time. Here are three sunset shots years apart.
Another “Another”
Are there any replications? In my mind, sure. In reality, no.
A rose is a rose is a rose, but not only are two different roses ever identical. Even one rose is not the same day after day, hour after hour, or even second by second.
Another Trip Around the Sun
What is more steady than the movement of the earth around the sun…or the sun around the earth. In the Medieval times, the Europeans wanted to describe in perfect circles and put themselves at the center of the universe.
Now, we are more sophisticated and know that the earth actually orbits the sun. Our seasons depend on the relative position of the earth and the sun. But while we are aware of our trip around the sun, earth does not return to the same spot. Today is November 1. Next November first? The sun will have traveled through our galaxy 6,942,672,000 kilometers. That’s a far piece. I’ve run a number of 10K races. The galaxy travels a lot faster.
Another Homecoming? Is it possible? Can we use time machines?
Can we go back to the 1950s?
Can women simply forget that they were once treated as human beings?
In order to work effectively, today’s technology presumes a whole set of other technologies, skills, infrastructure, attitudes, processes, laws, rules, regulations. If we actually tried to go back to 1950, we would miss.
By about 500,000 years. Every so-called primitive tribe ever studied has customs, rules, practices, and rituals. Going back to the 1950’s by destroying the rule of law won’t work no matter how loudly people scream for it. You can’t scream your way to the moon. You can’t scream your way to Mars. You can’t scream your way to happiness. You cannot make two plus two equal five, no matter how loud you scream. Sadie can’t bark them into equivalence. A snake cannot hiss them into equivalence.
You can typically get yourself home. But no matter how hard you “insist,” home will not be in precisely what it was when you left. And, it definitely won’t be in the same place in the universe. Not even close. Going back is a mental exercise and never a physical reality.
Life on planet earth is over 4 billion years old. There are also no known “skips” in life. In other words, each generation of life, N comes from the previous generation N-1 and generates the next generation N+1. Every living thing on earth today, so far as we know, has the same unbroken line of ancestry dating back 4 billion years. We all share ancestors.
Vertebrates appeared about 500 million years ago. This means that we humans share 7/8 of our heritage with every living fish, bird, reptile, amphibian, and mammal. Indeed, fish have a heart, a brain; they mate; they eat; they have blood; they move; they learn. They flee danger. If someplace is a good source of food, they hang out there.
Early humans must have intuited that they were very like (as well as somewhat unlike) other animals. Otherwise, they would not have learned how to track them and hunt them, let alone train them. In the last few hundred years, however, we have learned much more about how similar we are to other animals anatomically, physiologically, and behaviorally.
I happen to think this branch of science is fascinating.
But it’s more than that. To me, it’s also heart-warming. It’s comforting in many ways.
First of all, I am in awe of our extended family. Life has survived for over four billion years! It hasn’t just survived; it has evolved in a million different directions. Our family includes trees that live thousands of years and grow hundreds of feet tall. Our family includes animals and plants too small to be seen by the naked eye; birds that migrate thousands of miles; whales that weigh 300,000 pounds.
Second, it is comforting to me to know that the Tree of Life is secure against the short-sighted greed of a small number of humans. Ecological disaster, atomic war, pandemics are certainly damaging human life and comfort as well as destroying whole species. But the Tree of Life is vast and more importantly, incredibly diverse. The self-destruction of humanity is possible and would be incredibly sad. But the Tree of Life? We won’t destroy that.
Third, it is comforting to see, hear, and interact with the biome. The way that life interacts with other life is beautiful to observe. I view it as a drama, a symphony, a tapestry, all rolled into one. When I go for a walk, I walk through life; I walk through my family; I walk through a work of art and become reminded that I am one with it.
Birth and death become the same: turning a page in a marvelous and endless story. That’s not to trivialize or belittle it. Turing the page of a story is actually a big deal! Pages make chapters. And chapters make books.
Christopher Alexander was an architect who wrote much about architecture, including the well-known book, A Pattern Language. Later, he also wrote about “The Nature of Order.” He posits 15 properties of natural beauty and good design, the first of which is “Levels of Scale.” I was thinking about that today as I admired our Jacob’s Coat Rose bush which blooms about 3-4 times a year here in San Diego.
Most of us see the flowers of the rose as beautiful. And indeed they are. They are beautiful from afar. They are beautiful up close. But so too are the other parts of the rose plant. At least, sometimes, the leaves are also quite beautiful.
Even the thorns are beautiful.
Beyond this surface level, the rose, like all living things, is beautiful inside. Like all living things, it’s survived four billion years of evolutionary time. The way cells are arranged and the way they work–this is beautiful as well. Moreover, the relationship that roses have to humans and bees are also beautiful. Imagine having the faith and hope to depend on a completely different species to reproduce. Imagine being so beautiful that human being across the globe spend their time and money to keep you thriving.
Did I mention that, like other green plants, roses remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide oxygen for animals like us?
Roses are so famous that they play a part in history and pageantry. The War of the Roses. The White House Rose garden. Destroying part of the Rose Garden is also symbolic. The Rose Parade. Individuals give each other roses. They are variously symbols of love, friendship, and peace. Roses appear in poetry, songs, paintings, and both first and last names.
Weather in San Diego is typically nice almost every day. Today is no exception, but that doesn’t mean that the weather is boring. There is a lot of natural variation. There is variation in the humidity, in the wind, in the position of the sun, in the heat, in the (fairly rare) precipitation.
Reflecting on this reminded me of another kind of natural variation: the variation in organisms of the same species. Without that variation, evolution would be far less effective.
It also reminds me of several of the characteristics of natural beauty and good design that Christopher Alexander writes about.
Things that have zero variation are mechanical, predictable, repetitive, and generally not very pleasing aesthetically. Mindless, endless repetition is aligned with death. Variation is aligned with life, freedom, creativity, growth, and joy.
Among things that are non-living artifacts, there is still a variation in how variable they are. Walls made of stone, are by their nature, “rougher” and more variable (and more beautiful) than walls made of bricks. Walls made of bricks are more irregular and beautiful than one made of solid steel. Similarly, at least to me, fences made of wood are more variable and beautiful than fences made of metal.
Building elements that make up a wooden deck show grain and irregularities in the surface of the deck. In addition, however, they even have interesting variability below the deck as shown here.
You can also see in this photo below a variety of materials. The stucco, by its very nature, more interesting and variable than steel or plaster.
In these photos, you can see variation within leaves, among the leaves of a particular plant, and also among the plants themselves. Each plant and each part of the plant grows in accordance to its genetic blueprint. Except a “blueprint” is itself too fixed and unbending to be an appropriate metaphor. The growth will depend on the context–water sources, light sources, nutrients in the soil, other nearby plants and rocks will all play a part in how, precisely, a particular plant grows.
It would be absurd for one plant to say to itself: “Every plant should be just like me! I have a plan based on what works for me and everyone should do exactly what I do!”
(First appeared as part of The Poetry Exchange’s Featured Poet, Spring, 1997 under the title: “Deforested”)
Gray day wasted while the whippoorwill Wishes that the slushy city sewers Had not replaced the only lonely home he knew. The groggy foggy unfocussed hurly-burly rushing Of splashing autos on the gray macadam roadways That gnarl through the neighborhoods Is vaguely deja vu. Silhouetted smokestacks shadowly seen, Limned in gray on gray-green, Remind the mind how poor people pass the day after day. Where no home fire hearth lighted cabin In the winter woods beckons, beacons, hearkens Heartily a red sunset glow on white snow For a day’s work done.
One hardly knows.
Here, where machine clouds of steam unsentiently sip, sap the soul, You wonder as the rain water wanders, Then rushes through the gurgling gutters, What foul trick man played upon his own brave soul, To have forsaken all the fiery emotion that makes life great To sit at desks, to stand in lines, to wait. Where are the country color and The rich thick loves hidden Beneath the inventions, interventions, and pretensions of society?
We wander in our own gray-glass cages In a lurching kind of mock-precision, Like the nightmare dream of a psychotic technician. And the only color the commuter encounters In his travels to and from, Is the scarlet and the gold of a raccoon Too stupid to stay off the highways of modern civilization.
————
Pet Sematary (A relevant book by Stephen King which was a partial inspiration for the poem)
petersironwood 