The Potency of Words- A Conversation With a Young Scientist in a Spring

Tags

Black and White, Brine, Change, Conversation, Florida, Hope, Humanity, Inspiration, Introspection, Nature, Photography, Quotations, Sea, Story, Writing

I am not a conversationalist.  I go through life as monosyllabic as possible.  I greatly prefer to listen.  I lead a mostly silent existence.  Just the way I like it.  Mute and demure.

Ages ago, when I was wee, however, I fancied myself a micro David Attenborough and would wax on about all things Nature- to any poor sap that would listen.  Happily, I quelled that odious impulse as a craggy old adult.

But I was rattled, recently.  A rambunctious lad, the nephew of a friend, challenged my stance of stolid silence.  Oh, he did all he could to crack through my laconic exterior.  And now, since then, things have not been quite the same…

It had been another blazing day in the furnace, I mean Florida, when we picked up my chum and her nephew (an unexpected addition) for a jaunt down to the nearest freshwater spring for a swim in the scintillating, gemmy waters amongst the gars and the manatees.

The Lad, a boy of nine years, was quite a force to be reckoned with, and was also armed with a gargantuan bag of sweets…a child-shaped tornado, thus, swirled around in the backseat all the way to the spring.

Right away, I saw the child was bent on destruction and found imitating a demolition truck to be his favourite hobby.  When released from the car, he immediately set out to ravage the local plant-life and spurt apple-piece projectiles at squirrels.  Then the child became distracted by something shiny and sharp and moved on to that.

Here he is, attempting to tear off this innocent manatee’s flipper

Well, I had to divert his attention, somehow.  His auntie (my chum) was hopeless. And Sir was terrified of the child.  Sir, wide-eyed and staring, quivered there like a soldier just returned from the trenches.  Up to me.

The human-shaped tempest then plucked up a massive palm frond and began poking at people, plants and now insects.  A palm frond is very stiff and sharp, I will have you know.  It is a joy to be prodded by one.

“Right, time to go gator-hunting,” I said mildly, handing the lad my pack with two giant lemon-and-black flippers poking out.

“Wear this, it will make you look like a pro-snorkeler and very cool,” I said.

He put on the pack and applied the goggles I had handed to him and we trotted toward the aqueous solution up ahead.

“Drop the palm sword and you can wear the snazzy flippers,” I said as we mounted the cold metal stairs.

He agreed and we lapsed into the refreshingly cool depths.

Of course, he picked up another, later…

After I inspected the fish-life darting about the shallow spring bed, I showed the lad how to get within a few inches of a massive, half-blind, leopard-banded gar fish.  Then I showed him where gators had made depressions for sleeping and where a snapping turtle was most-likely to be found.

Then we swam to the spring-head, where the gurgling waters splashed the deep, crumbling sides of the blonde limestone surrounding us.  I took him into a misty alcove where the walls of the limestone were black and especially dank and murky- and where the spiders loomed.

“That one is bigger than my hand!” exclaimed the lad in bulbous-eyed terror.

There is no greater joy than scaring innocent children.

I rambled on and on, by that point, about the flora and fauna of the spring, not realising that I had not blathered that.much with another human being in years.

It was in that moment that I noticed something was different- the tempest child was no more.  He had been replaced by a polite, soft-voiced micro-scientist.  He was transfixed by my babbling nature lecture and was not only respectful and courteous, but absolutely fascinated with the wonders surrounding us.

…Huh?

In that moment of realization, I was reminded of a quote from David Attenborough-

“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.”
– David Attenborough

My chum and Sir were long abandoned by this point, unable to keep up with the two science-heads conducting their research up and down the spring, as it bled into the tea-stained river at one end, and gurgled up, fresh and clear, from the inner depths at the other.

We chattered incessantly, analysing and absorbing every detail of our surroundings, until a coy mist swathed the now chilly waters.  The solemn light slipped away and we were forced to clamber up out of the watery wonderland before a canoeing ranger could pummel us.

As we dripped back toward the exit, the young scientist suddenly stopped and turned to look up at me and said something quite disturbing.

“I have never met anyone who thought science and math were cool, before,” he said.

I stood agog.

“What, not even your teachers?”

“No, they hardly teach anything about it, and no one thinks it’s cool.  But I think science and math are awesome!”

And that is what left me rattled.

My thoughts recently turned back to those words when I was reading the blog of a blogging chum, Rebecca Budd, and I came across a tribute she wrote to a pioneer of animal rights- Humanity Dick & The Donkey

I found the article affecting and enthralling and wrote a comment to Rebecca, to which she left me this grand reply-

“What I found most interesting was that Richard Martin’s determination to fight for animal rights had its genesis in his childhood. His mother’s love of animals ignited the spark of compassion in a small boy. It is a reminder that one generation transfers ideas, values, dreams to the next. Our actions and conversations DO make a difference now and in the future yet to be formed.”

I do not know if what the lad and I discussed that day left an indelible mark in his life but his words certainly affected me profoundly.  He cracked through.

Perhaps, adding a few more syllables to the conversations in my life, here and there, will not kill me, after all- every now and then.

Home at last

“No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced”
– David Attenborough

Happy wandering,

Autumn Jade

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Embracing the Squirrely Kitten Within

Tags

Beauty, Exuberance, Healing, Hope, Inspiration, Introspection, Kitten, Life, Pets, Photography, Quotes, Reflection, Thoughts, Youth

“Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”
-Victor Hugo

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“What happens when people open their hearts?”…
“They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

(Saga captured whilst out kitten-walking amongst a sea of squirrels)

P.S. More of the model, Fyodor Kitten, in Sir’s lovely and charming blog post here:  The Kitten That Rescued Himself)

Many jubilant cheers,

-Smiling Toad

A Briny Blunder

Tags

Al Green, Beach, Black and White, Blunder, Carpe Diem, Clumsy, Falling, Florida, Frank Sinatra, Humour, Hurricane Sandy, Inspiration, James Dean, Jocularity, Laughter, Misadventure, Nature, Nina Simone, Ocean, Pablo Neruda, Photography, Silly, Story, Writing

It had been an animated and tempestuous day. My brooding attire seemed to match the weather, jeans soaked to the knee, suit-vest fluttering in the grave wind, the sky above an infinite blanket of dreary blue cloud. We were on our way home and I had receded into happy brooding, the wild weather so fitting for it. And then it happened.

The sun suddenly dissolved through, and the cloud cover began to disperse into a fantastic mackerel sky. Radiant gold spilled out and illuminated the soggy city. Everything glittered. Already near the beach, we hurried along toward the ocean, keen on one last photo-shoot.

After parking, I catapulted from the car. Sir sort of loitered behind. I was soon hoofing along through the dank and rippled sands toward the seethe. The sky was aflame. Patches of cloud beamed a rose and orange sherbet. The waters were cast in a lambent champagne pink. Everything was glorious.

A great oooing and ahhing crowd had amassed behind me, clustered on the boardwalk. It seemed a mutual song was playing amongst them- Nina Simone’s version of “Feeling Good” perhaps. I found myself in the throes of a wee jig, myself, to that fabulous tune. The creamy moon that had vanished in the clouds was beginning to crown at the top, and cast lovely splinters of silver light onto the surf.

And then it happened. A wee little line of water began to wheeze toward me. I noticed it, but was snapping photos, and was half-deciding to let it swath my already dank track shoes. Yet, as the water slipped closer, I found I was also in motion. My body was moving back to escape the water, but my feet hesitated and stayed put. And so the center-of-balance was yanked out of place. Gravity languidly began to tug at my spine. I realised taking a tumble in the water was not extremely healthy for a camera, so I attempted to flail. Flailing, in theory, can help regain balance. I was unsuccessful, however, and discovered I was ever so slowly falling just like a great, cumbersome fir being felled by a smiling, spritely little beaver. Eventually, I landed on my back, completely flattened. The little coy dribble of water had expanded from one inch to seven inches, and managed to completely sluice my entire body, from toe to nose, and even crawled all the way up my erect arm dramatically holding the camera above the onslaught.

Some sanderlings squeaked and quickly scuttled by. Bubbles crackled in my ear. I had just been completely conquered and overthrown by a gentle flow of ocean bubble-bath…

This did not do a thing to my jubilant spirits, other than elevate them. I leaped up as the water quickly receded and I was back upon a glass surface of shimmering sand. I found myself doing another wee jig as I suddenly became conscious of a rather eerie wheezing sound. I turned. It was my audience, er, I mean, the sunset-gazing crowd. A great long gasp had erupted from them in elongated synchrony. All eyes were widely agog, mouths ajar.

It was a strange moment; it was as if Babe Ruth had swaggered up to the bedrabbled plate, and missed the first two pitches to build tension, but on the third pitch, he points and grins, swings, and then promptly falls down, as the ball tumbles somewhere behind him. The crowd’s reaction I imagine would have been very similar indeed.

This pained me. I never like to see an audience, crowd rather, swathed in sorrow. I began to plod along through the dimpled sands toward the stairs. Sir joined me stunned with few words. I noticed that I was in fits of laugher, a bit of an uvid camera poised in my right hand. I could hear voices now.

“His camera!” a woman bugled.

His camera?

“Oooohhhh my GAWD! He’s gonna be so mad about his camera! I bet it’s totally ruined!” a young lass squealed.

He’s gonna be so mad?

“Yep, his camera is definitely shot,” said an older gentleman with conviction.

(An Aside: I could not help but notice all the male pronouns. It is true, I do slightly resemble James Dean, but still, I think it’s rather obvious I’m still a lass…oh right… I understand. Only a bloke would be so clumsy, eh? Well, I’ll have you know I’m the clumsiest lummox I know, and proud of it. And I am entirely lassie. HMPH!)

Well, I danced up the stairs, Sir following behind, and then soon vanishing to the car. I lingered a moment on the boardwalk, grinning amongst the luctual crowd. The song “Feeling Good” had definitely ceased, and was replaced with Al Green’s “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”. Or rather, “How Can You Mend a Broken Camera?”

I was wringing out the edges of my suit-vest, smiling to myself recollecting how I had purposely worn all cotton today, just in case…something damp and soggy was in store. Peculiar how one can sense these things, sometimes. I believe I was even laughing out loud when one kindly woman bravely stepped forward and spoke for all the haggard and grief-stricken onlookers, “I just wanted to say, I’m soooooo sorry about your camera. You must be devastated. It has to be ruined.”

I noticed her eyes were glistening. (My goodness…don’t tell me that is the shimmer of tears…great scott! What a serious lot this is!)

In my usual annoying custom, I chimed at her in a bit of an Irish brogue accompanied with a series of animated hops, “Oh nooooo lassie!! No fretting, no worrying yer heart out, there now! ‘Tis fine, I say, absolutely grand! This ol’ camera here will be just fine, indeed!”

It is true, the camera was definitely in a bit of a drizzly condition. But blast, I was determined to cheer this crowd that had clearly missed out on one grand chance for a chortle. I mean, you observe a squirrely lass take a spill after a great onslaught of a few inches of gentle water, and your first reaction is sorrow?! WHAT?! If it were a poor little girl pushed over by some picaresque and nefarious bully, I would understand, but come now! Well, I thought it was funny, and I was not going to suppress that.

I proceeded to chortle, immensely.

“So…” the lady began again, “your camera is going to be all right?”

“She’ll pull through!” I boomed.

A faintly, friable smile began to tremble upon her lips, “Oh, that’s wonderful!”

“Aye, arg, fabulous! Haw, haw, and how ridiculous that was, eh? Just think, of all the times I should have fallen, it had to happen when I least expected it. Such is life, eh?! I was wading IN Sandy’s surf, earlier today, wind roaring in my ears. No hint of gravity to take me down. After that, I decided to scrabble along some slimy rocks as torrents of water continuously slammed them. Not a slip. So, then I clambered right up a very slippery, dead mangrove tree that rocked violently right over the water, gust of hurricane winds slamming against me as I snapped away with the ol’ camera. No hint of slopping into the drink below. I even became grossly entangled in some ghastly thorny vine, and all the Fates should have dictated that I go tumbling right down the hill and into the brackish waters slapping the shore, but NO I managed to free myself unscathed! Even when I went skipping onto the world’s ricketiest, most water-slicked dock, sloshing in the water like a bath-toy, not a bit of it, not even the tiniest threat of falling. Then I come beetling over here, wander onto this seemingly tranquil and non-threatening beach, and I find myself, well, we found ourselves, rather, if you count briny camera here, completely flattened by a little trickle of harmless bubble-bath. Such moments, AYE they make me adore life indeed! TOO funny!!” I exclaimed.

Well, that did it. I noticed, at last, the lugubrious tone of the great, grieving crowd was ebbing away at last. Smiles began to creep out. Still in shock, a bit, but beginning to appreciate the humour, I could tell.

“Oh I hope someone got that on film!” I guffawed as I began to depart from my friends.

“Oh yeah I did,” I thought I heard someone mumble.

Yes, I left the crowd with a different tune, now. Frank Sinatra’s version of “That’s Life” was blasting away as we pulled out of the parking-lot and receded into the darkling antitwilight, on our way home.

A word to future onlookers- always laugh before you think. What a crime to take up worry when one could be laughing.

Mirth is important, aye! As our Pablo Neruda would likely say right now, possibly whilst puffing a wee stogie, a bit of a ludic smile playing at the edges of his lips ‘neath that pencil mustache (I think he had a pencil mustache…), “Laughter is the language of the Soul!”

Carpe Diem, and cheers,

Autumn Jade

Thrive

Tags

Cocoa Beach, Florida, Gandhi, George Eliot, Hurricane Leslie, Inspiration, Life, Loss, Memory, Mourn, Nature, Photography, Quotes, Rain, Sea, Sebastian Inlet, Surf, Surfing, Waves

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” -Mahatma Gandhi

These moments eternal, abiding with you, to Memory now transformed; but never I, to mourn, knowing, onward shall they thrive, a part of this emerald sea that is the life in me.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” -George Eliot

Wanderlust

Tags

Colour Photography, Compassion, Coquina, Environment, Inspiration, Life, Lighthouse, Mindfulness, Nature, Photography, Quotes, Sea, Seascape, Sunrise, Sunset, Sustainability

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

-Douglas Adams

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

-George Bernard Shaw

“The Poetry of Earth is never Dead.”

-John Keats

“Everything you can Imagine is Real.”

-Pablo Picasso

May we have the Desire to cursitate about this splendorous Planet,

and the Courage to embrace the Passions instilled Within,

to Abide in Compassion and Mindfulness,

Dancing this Life of Beauty that is Conscious and Sustainable.

“We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it as a living organism.”

-Paul Brooks

Chortling More than the Birds

Tags

Blundering, Florida, Grins, Humor, Inspiration, Laughter, Light, Mistakes, Nature, Peace, Photography

Mirth at one’s own ridiculousness is a phenomenon I highly value. If I was unable to utter even the minutest chuckle at my own ineptitudes, a dour and dismal life I would lead. Grateful I am, thus, that I do not vise myself with seriousness. I simply accept that I am an unintentional lummox and aquatic baboon most of the time.

I find occasion to laugh at myself multiple moments a day. The inane way I word something, for instance. “Aquatic baboon?” What …? Some shaking of the cranium and some chortles are likely to ensue here.

Another common humiliation I find a bit of hilarity in- my falling habit, intentional or involuntary, no matter.

Sometimes (or often), I decide to take a spill, ardently keen on a particular angle of some “majestic” little scene to snap with the old camera. An individual observes Photographer up, ambulating about one moment; completely flattened, chin kissing the loam, the next. Observer gambols over to assist.

“Are you okay? Oh, you’re photographing something? That’s so nice! What it is?! It must be very interesting to make you crawl around on the ground like that!” cries Observer.

I get up and reply, “I was photographing a twig. Would you like to see it?”

And the preposterousness never ends there. A new acquaintance and I will be enjoying a most lovely conversation about a little snowy-white bird with a long, curved bill known as an ibis.

“It’s so cool,” he says licking his lips and looking to the right, picturing the dainty blue-eyed, crimson-billed bird in his mind, “how they sometimes hang out in huge groups, it’s like, so awesome, and they are so social, ya know?”

Here, I become excited, and what bugles from my thin lips is a habitual phrase I never become free of, “MOST indubitably!”

Eyes become glazed, body stiffens. Not mine, his. Every blasted time, the individual to suffer the onslaught of “indubitably phrase” disturbingly believes I have suddenly lapsed into a posh, stuffy, insipid, vodka-drinking-rich-old-lady type of superiority. Oh dear.

So, instead of sitting there mindlessly cackling, I decide to try and come to my own assistance, for social reasons, after all, “Yes, it is just fabulous! Is it not grand, too, when they emit those uncanny honks as they squabble about for a bit of crust? They must be the cutest birds on the planet!” Here, polite laughter should follow. (Why does that still sound like an insipid, vodka-guzzling snob?)

So, reader, you may be convinced now that the author is quite a sea of incessant.

Incessant blunders, I mean.

Just look at the wreckage of the way this post has been written. I think this may be the most annoying thing I have ever crafted. Ah, but at least I am grateful. I rather like this daily entertainment, whether it is the way I talk in an aggravating nameless accent from nowhere (people always inquire what country, what planet…), or my constant losing of hats, glasses, ties and phones, there will always abide my inner peace. Better to Accept, with great bowls of guffaws, I think, than to self-berate, always in fear of lurking mortification.

(Great bowls of guffaws?)

Many good cheers,

Autumn Jade

The Wilde Ocean

Tags

Dog, Florida, Inspiration, Love, Ocean, Photography, Pipe, Selfishness, Surf, Surfer, Waves

The following quotations are from Oscar Wilde.

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

A glorious day of impressive waves at Sebastian Inlet, Florida.

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

These darlings were barreling down with 12-16 ft walls. Days like these, I also feel in tune with Mr. Wilde about procrastination- why procrastinate until the morrow, when it can be left ’till the day after?

 

“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”

Is This Surrender?

Tags

Bitterness, Hardship, Hope, Inspiration, Optimism

(The following is a small narrative based on true events.)

It was a cold, gloomy February day when I saw the picket signs piercing the sky, rhythmic, up and down, swaying, all around. Ardent, pinched faces screamed into the deaf air. Six weeks into the semester, and the professors were on strike that threatened to consume the rest of the semester.

From a student aspect, this might be a bit disturbing. I had a choice as I returned home. How would I deal with this situation? Would I merely see loss before me? Would I adopt a hardened, cynical, entitled attitude as a result? Would I project these feelings onto others? Onto fellow students? Adopt all the feelings of injustice? Was I going to allow this event to tarnish my spirit? Was it going to be yet another series of traumas to calcify my heart, enhancing the tumor of bitterness within me?

I clenched my jaw as a small, penetratingly calm voice said to me, “No!”

Temptation into the realms of victimization and drudgery and bitterness evaporated. I decided to not go straight home. I drove onward to the prairie, where I could amble in the reticence and somber beauty of this melancholy season ‘neath a granite-grey sky, listening to that inner voice I had been so long estranged with.

I got out and climbed that first knoll of the swaying prairie. I turned my collar up and absorbed the strange beauty all around. The murmur of the town below dissipated, and I was finally alone. That voice returned to me, “I am opportunity, I am Life itself.”

I needed to find something edifying to fill this void with. I had been struggling for so long with “idle time”, as I saw it. I wanted to run away from stillness, as I perceived it as idle. But really…the truth inside said, “You crave chaos, like an addict, to distract, to consume all your time, because, you are afraid, afraid of doing something bold, something powerful and terrifying, afraid of the dramatic change in your life that you need.”

I needed something better. I could not evaporate into the tide of college life this time, to escape the demons, the troubles that have been fraying my life.

“It is time to give,” the voice said, “I am your Opportunity.”

Suddenly I stopped, and watched, marveling, as a tiny wren balanced delicately on the long, brown stem of a dead, decapitated flower. The beauty of that moment filled my heart. The small almond-brown bird was so tiny and so full of life and joy. Her eye shimmered so brightly, and then, with a gust of wind, she was on the wing, yet again, vanishing.

“I will volunteer, I will exude a positive attitude, I will open my mind up to the whole world of possibility,” I said to myself, “I am not a victim, and I don’t crave vengeance and battle. I seek peace, now. I will go out into the community and do all I can to serve, and find myself again. I am not going to be idle, or bored, I am going to do something of substance. I am going to give of myself. I am going to relinquish judgment. Everyone deserves to be helped. I will help the strangers of this town, and see them as friends, even if they are mean and bitter in return. I cannot go through life this way anymore…I am not a victim. I am not unreliable. I am not sick, and weak. I am strong. I am thriving. It is time to work on myself, and find a comfort with stillness again, and find my purpose in life, again, without fear or narrow-mindedness, without distraction or masochism or victimization. It ends now, I am changing, I have changed.”

These new beliefs overwhelmed me, and I felt an onslaught of intense feeling as I fell to the ground, so cold and lovely, and I cried. Suddenly, opportunities seemed to fly into my mind. I had a future! One of my own making! I could do whatever I wanted with this life! There was hope in doing something creative, innovative, and new with my life. I was no longer a victim. I could do something, anything, for the good of my future, and others. I was so excited, I wanted to kiss that dull, brown earth so frozen beneath me. How enthralling everything seemed. How vibrant and lovely was life, now!

“Is this surrender?” I asked, “Is this acceptance?”

The voice merely said again, “I am opportunity, I am Life itself.”