Light, News, Digest

The sun shimmers in the ripples and waves of the bay. The moored sailboats and small wooded island provide anchors for vision on its journey toward the horizon. The wind might blow the light as its descends from the sun, causing it to dance across the water and play against the lens of the eye as it passes on to the retina and further to the optic chiasma until some remnant finally reaches the optic centers of the brain and allows us the gift of an image- though it would be difficult to tell. These are easy sensations to ingest and digest, the light on the water, the sound of waves crashing, gulls screeching. However, the words produced by news outlets these days are fried jalapenos dipped in mayonnaise and chased by a pint of vinegar. Staggering and numbing in quick procession, they intrude upon the senses and linger in the mind, heart, feelings and memory off gassing as they painfully and slowly break down and assimilate themselves in the depths of our consciousness and manifest as anxiety and fear and anger and sadness. If the consequences were not so tangible, it would be comical, fun and worthy of mockery and jokes. As it is now, however, the news we read and hear constitutes a weighty proportion of our daily nourishment. We ingest the world and all it provides, whether images or words, prismatic light or melodic song, hot dogs or kale- the world provides the sustenance and the very substance of our being. In turn, we have to digest all of this as well, food and drink as well as the constant bombardment of sense impressions of today's world. I wonder what the future will bring as we carelessly create and ingest stuff we do not recognize or understand. Our digestion will have to mature and evolve- the occipital lobe as well as the intestine. Occilating us from grateful and full of wonder to staggered and numb, the world is currently providing tremendous opportunity for development, equanimity and aggressive nourishment. Can we provide the future with the tools, the strength, the courage, the dynamics to digest, to assimilate it all? The beauty, the grossness, the enormity, the humanity. The oars of my boat leave symmetrical ripples for moments after I pass- an army green helicopter roars above leaving unseen ripples in the light and wind.