Campfires are fascinating. Clearly they stimulate fancy, especially if you follow the focus the fire provides while the daylight fades and night encroaches. By the time the milky way stripes the sky overhead like the back of a cosmic skunk, it’s often as though the dead have joined in, if only just beyond the periphery of the fire’s glow.
Falling into the temporal world of a campfire is aided by observing the burn and feeding in more wood as needed. The need of the fire becomes our new focal point in the world. The concerns of our life seem to gather with us into it’s presence and each problem is reshaped in the process. As reverie takes hold, the problems loosen their grip on us. I find they never quite sink their claws in the same way again.
Clearly we need ways to unplug from our often self imposed hectic schedules. Nothing works quite as well as the nightly ritual that carried man to the dawn of history.
I learn very little from the Weather Channel that I can’t learn from a glance at the sky. Still, I do get regular e-mail updates for our locale. They are most useful when I’m traveling. Severe weather alerts inform me when the family is in the midst of harsh storms. These alerts often prompt a call home and the reason is a sense of helplessness. The “what if?” scenarios get bleak real fast.
What fascinates me is that the Weather Channel is clearly good business. It focuses on one thing we can all agree that we have no control over. In that way, it serves as a metaphor for a difficult fact regarding our relationship to reality. The presentation of the complexity of variables provides a fascinating image of why life often seems so chaotic.
Living in a rural locale I encounter farmers that still exhibit an innate sense of the weather. They read signs like the dew and frost, the wind direction and the cloud patterns. They know what to expect over the next week with only a view that the rim of the sky provides. They’ve witnessed patterns for decades and their experiential database tells them when to plant, or cut their hay or harvest the corn. They act based on what the signs tell them. It’s serious business too; miscalculations can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
See, the farmers in this valley are just tuned into a weather channel of a different order. And it’s a skill we all had only a generation or two ago. Checking the weather through the media has become an ingrained collective habit. I think the reason is simple. Regardless of the forecast, the report comforts us. Someone is keeping a eye out and telling us what to expect now that we’ve lost the ability ourselves.
We see this scenario played out over and over again. A family on a day trip, or at the store, or perhaps the park. Maybe they are relatives visiting. Or maybe they are at a public gathering like a fair or concert. It doesn’t really matter where.
The point is that the family has become the center of attention because the toddler has lost it. Screaming at the top of his or her lungs to the dismay of both parents and the horror of any older siblings who would give anything to simply disappear into the floor to get away from the public scrutiny, the toddler has unleashed a force to compensate for the lack of language. The only problem is that once that button has been pushed, it’s pretty hard to find the reset button.
Now that our daughter is entering her full toddler potential, the lessons learned from our initial journey with her older brother come back quick. Note to self: to avoid the above scene, three essentials must be always be met. No schedule, no errand, nor family function can interfere with these: hunger, thirst, and the need for rest. Insure these are satisfied and it’s clear sailing. Let one of these balls drop and the result is predictable… an a capella aria that can start a stampede.
Lifestream Digest for July 18th
Walking at Grandparent's Place
While Bowling
Active Imagination