Happy Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day, take your pick. Either way, it’s a stretch to say Columbus discovered America, if by America you mean the land that became the United States. He discovered the Bahamas. Although from there the Spaniards got to us because we live on a hard-to-miss land mass. So, I guess it’s okay to give Columbus his due. In either case, the indigenous peoples were in for a hard time with the coming of Columbus.

I was sitting outside yesterday afternoon, in the shade of a deck roof with a big fan spinning. The air was soft with a hint of fall. Short days and cool nights have chased away the worst of the summer heat. There was music being made by a man of magic and we were all enthralled, having heard the songs many times before, but never tiring of the tunes.

My life has been upside down the last few weeks. It’s so unsettled I can't remember the date it started, only the moment a deer came out of the grass and my car knocked it into next week. The deer and my car both went to their final resting places. Losing a car is a bad deal for a single old guy living in the country. My insurance company gave me a rental, but you can’t walk to the corner grocery store and buy a car so the rental runs out before the new car will get here.

My brain is an untidy place. Unlike some, who can quote long passages from books or complete poems, I mostly remember the sense of the thing. I can never say, so and so, writing in such and such, said this, and then offer up the quote. Sometimes I can’t even remember who said something. The books I’ve read are just a list and the information in them, the stories and observations, are accreted to my brain in bits and pieces as though it were a patchwork quilt.

Well, durn. A classmate.  High school, 1964. Has died. Speedy Sparks. I can’t say I knew him well. But I knew him. I was editor of the paper and his was a name I came across quite often. I ran into him in person many, many years later when we were gathering for a reunion and I was on the organizing committee. It was Luckenbach. I was there with my two sons and grandson to hear the Texas Tornados. He played bass. We had a cordial chat, and that was that.

We drove through Hunt and Ingram on our way home Sunday. The power of water was on full display. The cliffs were washed clean, and only the biggest trees remained standing beside the river. The works of man were ravaged, too.  Cars beaten flat sat beside the road. Houses emptied or swept away dotted the landscape. The slate was wiped clean and it was difficult to see what stood where.

I am home from a camping trip that reminded me of camping trips of old. At several points there were seven children all under the age of eight, running through the camp, splashing in the river, and making joyful noise. The fourth generation. And we were light at least one family who is away in Virginia, with two more children. Of course, there were bumps and bruises and a tear or two, but it was the normal stuff of little learners, learning.

I was thinking yesterday about the imagination of our ancestors, those early humans who trod the landscape figuring things out as they went along, learning. They lived short, brutish lives but they found ways to make them longer, and safer. Of course they made mistakes along the way, and we’re still making mistakes, but we’re still learning.

I took a short walk yesterday in the early evening hours. The moon was well up, sitting high in the sky in its first quarter phase. It felt close as though I could reach out and touch it. The unlit half of the moon was clearly visible if you looked long enough, and I had the time. As I looked, I thought about all the people before me who had looked, especially our earliest ancestors, as they walked around making sense of the world.

There was a time when I dutifully squeegeed the water off the shower glass and walls. Then that time passed. I am now paying for my sins. For the last week I have stood, fully clothed, in my shower, working with vinegar, lemons, and elbow grease to remove the built up scale off the glass. It is, to say the least, tedious work. But I am emerging victorious. To a degree. There will be no perfection, but it will be better.

Love is in the air. At least for my orb weavers. Two female garden spiders are hanging out at my place. One is in the dog run, and the other is out by the pool. Each is flanked by webs spun by their male counterparts. I don’t know how they decide to get together or who comes calling on whom. All I know is the victorious male will die shortly after the deed is done. I wonder if he knows that? Does die happy? The female will then lay her eggs in a nice sack and probably pass on sometime after the first frost.

I just found a burr in my hair which makes me think I might be sitting around too much. Although, I do a lot of work outside and it’s possible it just blew in there yesterday, or maybe it caught on one of my gloves and I scratched my head. At least I hope that’s the case. I’d hate to think I walked around all week with that burr in plain sight. I’d rather not be one of those old men who looks like he just rose up from the dirt. I have a better self image than that.

I’m in a pickle. I have a spot on a back lot where I want to create a little garden area. I’ve set up some old fence panels to act as a trellis. I’ve got seeds for vines to grow there. I have numerous flowering plants at my disposal. In the center, however, I want a tree, but if I want it to grow to any size while I’m still alive, it will have to be a fast grower, and I’m more a fan of slow. The latter are sturdy trees with fine grained wood, and long lived. The former are brittle, drop branches, and die quick.

My time traveling self went on an adventure last night. At about 3:30 this morning, I found myself back at my first job out of college. I wanted to give my young self some advice. But I knew it was too late, so I just felt sad and spent a few moments wandering around looking at the awards on my office wall, wondering why in the world I felt so self-assured, and thinking about the mistakes I made.

I think I have a neat and tidy life. Everything well ordered. Everything in its place. Then I clean a closet and mysteries unfold and worlds come unlocked. There’s a box full of small dolls my wife collected, featuring a geisha under glass that I bought in Tokyo. The Wilson family bible once again sees the light of day, a book most liked printed in the 30s, a compendium of births and deaths. A program for the first game ever played in the Astrodome in 1965 sits in its protective envelope.

I have a bobo on my forehead. I hit it with my trunk lid while putting a sack of topsoil in the trunk. I felt very much the fool then, and I still feel very much the fool. Apparently, fully opening my trunk lid is a skill I have failed to master, even at my advanced age. I compound the sin by having done it before, reaching in to get my golf clubs. You’d think I’d learn, but apparently it is not a lesson my brain wants to register.

We have a dedicated wildflower garden. It was beautiful for a number of years. But an over abundance of red ants and wind combined to turn it into grassland. What seeds the ants failed to take into their burrows, were blown on the wind to other yards and fields. I can’t do anything about the wind, but I’ve dealt with the ants, and yesterday I reseeded the garden. Today, I’ll do a light topdressing of soil, and then it’s the winter-wait for spring.

I got my flu and Covid shots on Friday. One in each arm. Both arms hurt. No reaction otherwise to speak of from either shot. I feel protected now. But there’s no telling how any of the bugs might mutate, so I’m still avoiding crowds in tight spaces if I can help it. I’m in the old demographic, and have no desire to join the dead demographic. Besides, I’ve got plenty to do around the house.

I have six glass balls, each a little bigger than a baseball. They’re clear with bubbles in them. Two are tinted gold, or maybe orange. They are flattened a bit at a point so that they sit steady when placed and don’t roll away. They used to have bases that lit up, with a light shining through the ball. There’s only one base left. It, with its ball, is on the mantle. The rest sit on window sills to catch the light of the sun.

I was visiting with a friend the other day and we were talking about music and listening, the type of listening you have to do to really hear a symphony or a concerto and he made an interesting observation. He thought a great many people simply listened to music just to drown out the silence, because they were afraid of the silence.