This Is Not A Love Song

There was a time when I would have gone to see No Country for Old Men at the movies with friends. Or by myself. Or as part of a class in college.

And perhaps I'd think about it, talk it over with people.

The fact is, I'm intrigued by it.

For one, I love Cohen Brothers movies. Raising Arizona remains one of the funniest movies I've seen of all time.

But I've also heard how violent it is, even from people who watch violent movies.

I was so intrigued that I watched the first five minutes of it - just enough to watch to young Sheriff (so young, apparently, that he doesn't put his detainee in the prison, he leaves him sitting behind him, so he can't see him) get snuffed in under 20 seconds.

And then I took the movie out.

I'm done with these movies.

I don't know about you, but I have a ton of hatred in my heart. There's bad guys I want to see strung up by their thumbs... And not just the bad guys you'd think of, but those politicians, businessmen, and rulers who lie and cost people their lives financially or physically.

Watching a mass murderer doesn't mean anything to me, except that I'm watching an aberration of society. Fact is, I don't really care to have a look at how Hitler became the colossal madman he'd become.

I just had to start asking myself, "Why"?

When there's so much work to be done in the world, with famine, hatred, intolerance, and disease, it seems myopic to stare at these glaring man made errors in a darkened movie theater.

I know I'm sounding a hell of a lot like those Sally Do Gooders I used to abhor so much in high school and college. But I'm able to admit I'm wrong. There's some art for art's sake, which doesn't make much sense to the cognizant, thinking person.

Maybe this in fact is a great Cohen Brothers flick. And all I have to do is make it through "strong graphic violence" to get to it. But I'm not going to do it. I've seen torture scenes, then had to listen to the description of how we treat men in Guatanamo Bay. Or how the Japanese treated Asian Comfort Women. When I hear such stories, of how humans brutalize one another, it breaks my heart for all of humankind. At that point I don't know if we are above dogs, bears, or even the lowest of the animal kingdom. At that point we have debased ourselves, we've lost control of what someone has given us which could only be called a soul.

There are better, higher things to do than watch this movie. Lest we all forget that this is entertainment.

I would suggest to you that instead you listen instead to Father Boyle, who lifts up men from streets of violence and gives them something so much more.

That's here.

And I bid you goodnight.

Insert Sad Face

It's funny, I've been a writer forever and a gardener for so few years, that it's odd I spend so many waking hours thinking about the latter.

And how working with the soil just a few hours a week can change your viewpoint.

I was having a discussion with my brother a few months ago who turns out to be a "man is not the cause of global warming" person (or just being a naysayer to irk me). Being smarter than me by a long shot he can rattle off all sorts of facts he's read and remembers at his finger tips.

I'm not good at arguing. And I am woefully slow. But when the US government's own Environmental Protection Agency (who has been heavily influenced by an anti-environmental Bush presidency) puts out this Q&A on their site,

Q: Are human activities responsible for the warming climate?
A: Careful measurements have confirmed that greenhouse gas emissions are increasing and that human activities (principally, the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use) are the primary cause. Human activities have caused the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane to be higher today than at any point during the last 650,000 years. Scientists agree it is very likely that most of the global average warming since the mid-20th century is due to human-induced increases in greenhouse gases, rather than to natural causes.

After our own government doing so much to negate such statements for the last many years, how can this not move you to get on board,?

My wife had this brilliantly simple (but not simplistic) thought:

If I'm right, and human influence is heating up the earth and potentially going to kill us all, then cutting back on carbon emissions may save us.

If you're right and the pollution we toss into the air isn't doing anything to warm the earth and we cut back, we'll just have cleaner air.

Not really a loss.

When you put it down to that simple statement, it sort of makes sense, doesn't it?

Mind Weeds

I remember years ago listening to this Zen Buddhist monk speak about mind weeds.

I love that he chose an expression so rooted to the earth to explain a simple, pervasive phenomenon.

Everyone knows what mind is and even the person who has spent their life in Manhattan knows what weeds mean to farmers.

The funny thing for me is how intertwined these two can become when gardening. I go out to the yard to take care of things on a Saturday and suddenly all I can see is weeds.

And my mind starts whirling, "Where am I going to start?", "Look at this mess, how the hell did I ever think I was going to tackle this without a gardener?"

I should take a moment to remind you (and myself) that most people who talk to me about my yard think it's beautiful. They don't see the weed patches the way I do. Or, if they do, they mean little to them in the big picture.

But I am so caught up in these weeds because they mean something to me, they actually set off many different parts of my mind. This dandelion over here says that I'm lazy. That volunteer fennel tells everyone I'm sloppy. This huge patch of grass tells the whole world that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing out here.

It's inescapable, actually. Well, almost. I've learned only over the last month or so, that two cups of coffee before working in the yard is one cup too much for me.

Wendy's perfect solution was to only concentrate on one little patch of weeds at a time and tackle them.

Bird by bird, Anne Lamott might say.