Decade Ending

My wife bought me a crucifix and a statue of the Holy Family a couple of years ago at an antique shoppe, both made of porcelain and painted with blue highlights. Lately, I have found myself gazing more frequently and more intensely at the statue than at the crucifix. The idea of a heavenly mother is a novel one for me, and yet it is sensible and appeals to me. Since boyhood, I accepted what I was taught as truth, which was that God is a sort of single dad. Like so much of the rest of it, I chafe under the idea nowadays, and I fill notebooks with my musings about where I am headed.

I have long appreciated the Japanese custom of maintaining a family altar, an altar on which sits photos of dead loved ones, along with an incense burner. I see nothing of “worship” in such customs. I see continuity, and stage settings for the play that is forever being rehearsed inside me.

***

I have over the years developed a series of litmus tests to assist me in evaluating other men. Here is one of them: when a man recommends a book to me, does he include a phrase like “Now, I don’t agree with everything this fellow writes, but he makes some good points here...”? These disclaimers make me wince. Why recommend a book (or movie, or essay, or whatever) if you’re going to prophylactically distance yourself from it? Why the need for the asbestos underwear? Whenever someone recommends a work and does not use such a phrase, I immediately give greater weight to his opinions, even if they are at odds with my own.

***

I put up a new platform bird feeder today, attached to the deck. This is so that we can hopefully watch the little creatures feeding from our breakfast nook window. Today it was uncommonly warm, about 71F, and the birds were out in force. Cardinals, finches, chickadees, titmice, doves, blue jays, and even some orioles. The Carolina wrens sounded their alarms from the woods but didn’t venture down to the yard. The day felt like a gift, with nature parading her best wares past me. And I was in the mood to bird-watch and tree-talk and rock-notice. We watched a documentary called “Return to the River: Diary of a Wildlife Cameraman, “which contained some stunning footage of birds and wildlife in England. The filmmaker did share one unsettling fact, which was that water shrews have venom in their saliva. Hearing this gave me the heebie jeebies. Something unnatural about it, like when I learned that the octopus has a beak, similar to a parrot’s beak. A beak? Really? A gelatinous thing with many arms, arms with suction cups on them, and it can bite me? Brrrr….

Time to rest before morning. So begins the last week of the year, of the decade. Time to rest, time to lie down, time to think about where I am headed, about my cues and hitting my marks in this play.

~ S.K. Orr