Clarity

Not much is clear these days. In fact, quite the contrary. Obscurity, obfuscation, evasiveness, deception abound, while clarity seems to be dwindling away. What’s gone wrong?

One of my favorite television shows is “CBS Sunday Morning.” It never fails to illuminate people, ideas, or events by shining its klieg lights and cameras into dusty corners, allowing us to see what is often unobserved or overlooked. Just yesterday, it aired a feature on a blockbuster exhibition of Johannes Vermeer’s masterpieces at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: 28 of his 37 known paintings, the largest assembly of Vermeer’s work ever presented in one location. Don’t bother to apply for tickets: all 450,000 tickets were sold out within a few hours. But don’t despair: there is a free, interactive online exhibition called “Closer to Johannes Vermeer” that is the next-best-thing to seeing Vermeer’s work in person.

During his lifetime, Vermeer was only a moderately successful regional genre painter who specialized in scenes of everyday life. He worked slowly and used expensive pigments that exquisitely rendered the light, color, texture, and detail of everyday life in 17th Century Holland. But he died in relative obscurity, leaving his wife and children in considerable debt. It took two centuries for his work to be rediscovered, but now, thankfully, Vermeer is considered to be one of the two greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. The other is Rembrandt.

I am hardly an art historian, but to me, Vermeer’s genius is his ability to render everyday life with stunning clarity. Water in a gutter glistens. A pearl earring shimmers. A fleeting expression is just that: fleeting. A gesture or a hint of movement—a woman sewing, another sweeping, a third and fourth scrubbing—gives life to the most mundane of moments. Cracked plaster and bricks are warmed by the sun. Leaded window glass wavers. Milk dribbles from a pitcher. An oriental rug captures and holds both afternoon light and shadow. A glass globe reflects a room and the objects within it allowing the viewer to see both into and out of simple domestic life.

Vermeer has been accused of using a device—something akin to a camera obscura—that enabled him to go beyond painting and embrace his subjects with almost photographic reality. That theory has been debunked and scholars and x-ray technology now point us in the direction of something called the pin-and-string theory that might have enhanced Vermeer’s uncanny ability to render perspective. Was he cheating? I’m not qualified to say, but anything that enabled him to see more clearly is OK by me. I like clarity, especially when its’s almost five-hundred years old.

Which brings me back around to my starting point: we’ve lost—or are quickly losing—the ability to see things as they are. Clarity is suspect. Artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, Voice Mimicry and a whole host of sketchy algorithms have loosed the hounds of deception, making truth and clarity susceptible to all manner of lies and falsehoods. There has never been a time when we need to see clearly more than now, but for some reason, we’ve never been more manipulated into seeing not what is real, but what someone else wants us to see. Vermeer’s genius, even if it was enhanced by using a camera obscura or pins and strings, is nothing compared to what bombards us daily on today’s platforms.

We believe what we believe at our own peril.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is musingjamie.net.

I’ve been thinking recently about all the things I used to take for granted: food on the table, a roof over my head, a comfortable bed, all the comforts of life. Friends and family. Big deals like my five senses, and little deals, like the ability to bend over and put on my socks. Nothing lasts forever, not even flexibility.

We live our lives out on a thin, tenuous branch. At any moment, a mighty wind, or, for that matter, even a light zephyr, could come along and knock us off our precarious perch, sending us tumbling onto the forest floor far below. No soft landings down there, just rocks and scree, bumps, bruises, and broken bones. Shattered dreams.

When we take something or someone for granted, we fail to properly appreciate the importance of that thing or person in our life. Overfamiliarity. We assume that what’s there today will still be there tomorrow, and no matter how many times we learn the harsh lesson of impermanence, we still cling to the hope that in the end, all will be well. That’s often true, but not always. Sometimes, bad things do happen to good people. Or they just happen.

The antidote to taking something for granted is, of course, to separate that something from the herd, see it, touch it, smell it; appreciate it for the gift it is. The reality, of course, is that we move through our days at such a pace that we don’t have time to stop and be thankful for what we have. It’s easy enough to rue what we don’t have, much harder to pause and see the beauty that surrounds us daily.

Munro Leaf’s classic children’s story “Ferdinand the Bull” tells the story of a bull who would rather sniff the flowers in the field than fight in the bullring. Published in 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War, it may have had a political agenda, or it just might have been a story for children. I prefer the latter interpretation because it offers children a way out of the dilemma of life. Because he is so astonished by the beauty of this world, Ferdinand is able to rise above his own beastly nature and be more than just another fierce bull in the arena. It’s not a giant leap from that interpretation of a simple story to seeing Ferdinand as a metaphor for the ability to transcend his instinct and nature by seeing and appreciating the beauty of the pasture. Ferdinand takes nothing for granted; he inhales sweetness, completely content with who he is.

I know: gratitude is a luxury. Try and tell the people of Ukraine they should stop what they’re doing to survive and go smell the roses. Or the people in the heartland who have been battered by storms, or who are homeless, or suffer from depression or other illnesses. Gratitude really is a luxury, but maybe it’s an affordable one. The thin difference between contentment and despair may be nothing more than perspective. At the very least, gratitude has the capacity to lift us up, and, if only for a moment, to restore our faith in what is right and lovely in our own fields—the wildflowers, not the weeds.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is musingjamie.net.

Mother was a Connecticut Yankee. I was born in Pennsylvania, but I earned my Connecticut stripes over the course of eight years of formative education in the Nutmeg State. Back then and up there, March didn’t have even a whiff of spring in it. The best that could be said of that bleak and blustery month was that it was the month before Mud Time, and after that annual assault, it would finally be spring.

My how times have changed! Whether it’s our lower latitude or the inconvenient truth of climate change, spring made its entrance down here on the Eastern Shore in the last days of February this year. The redbud splashed bright pink paint among the bare branches of trees along the highway; the daffodils in my neighbor’s front yard were already swelling, about to erupt; and if all those signs of spring weren’t enough, Eggman, my local weather watcher and spring prognosticator, spotted his first redwing blackbird perched in its usual bush and then, only a day or two later, heard his first osprey keening overhead, at least a week or two ahead of schedule. The planet’s wheel was turning not only quickly, but sooner than usual as well.

At least for us. One look at the national weather map told a different story. Our friends in California were scratching their heads about blizzards and white outs in the hills above Los Angeles; my niece in Tucson posted photos of snow in Tucson. Other good friends who live out in Oklahoma texted to tell us about life in Tornado Alley. Rain was drowning my friends down south, while college chums in upstate New York and New England were bracing for a second round of bone-chilling cold and waist-deep snow; their snow-blowers were out of gas, their fingers were frozen to their snow shovels.

But down here in the Land of Pleasant Living, we seem to have been spared all that. Nestled as we are between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, and with the Bay shielding us from the worst of the winter weather, we have found ourselves a cozy little niche in the middle of a benign micro-climate that seems unbeholden to the storms raging all around us. (I write this, you realize, in a whisper so as not to arouse the weather gods who seem to have overlooked us, and who could change all that with just a flick of a pitchfork.)

The other day, my wife wistfully said she wished that we had experienced one good snow fall this winter. There was a time when I might have agreed with her, but these days, I’m well aware of my shoddy limits. Back when I was a school teacher, I didn’t mind an occasional snow day or two. I slept in, had a second cup of coffee, and happily hunkered down with a good book. Someone else shoveled the campus driveway and walkways so I was spared the sentence of hard labor that mounds of snow imposed on us. But those halcyon days are long gone and if there were a snow dump tomorrow, there’s no “someone else” around to clean it up. I didn’t remind my wife of that; I just pointed to the buds on the rose bushes in the yard and said, “Look! You’ll have roses soon.”

There’s the old saw about March coming and going with its lion and lamb. These days, it sure seems there is a lot more of the latter than the former. That said, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised or disappointed if winter rears its ugly head one last time before it’s time to cut the grass again. After all, the geese may be gone, but this is Maryland, not Connecticut.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is musingjamie.net.

 

 

A few days ago, I had minor surgery. For a man of my age and ilk, those two words—minor surgery—might be an oxymoron, akin to jumbo shrimp, or a crash landing, or (my favorite) a civil war. Sometimes, life really is bittersweet.

The word ‘oxymoron’ is, in itself, oxymoronic. It derives from two words in ancient Greek: “oxys” meaning “sharp” and “moros” meaning “dull.” There’s power in this duality. It reminds us of the inherent yin and yang of the universe, the opposite but interconnected forces that make our world go ‘round: positive and negative; male and female; odd and even; darkness and light; harmony and chaos; and, of course, goodness and evil.

There is much to rue these days: a second year of war in Ukraine. Terrible storms battering California and toxic fumes floating over Ohio. Never-ending gun violence. Our own political house divided. While I acknowledge all these tragedies, I find that the only way I can get through my own day is to focus on what is good and beautiful and just within creation. That’s not to say I stick my head ostrich-like in the sand; rather, I choose to admire and, when and where I can, to emulate the good.

Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you just have to be patient and to trust that, in the end, good will outlast evil. I know that patience and trust may be only palliative—they relieve painful symptoms but do not deal with the root causes of the underlying condition. And maybe that’s why patience and trust are in such short supply these days, and why all the quick-fix alternatives that line our shelves only serve to deepen our divides. Reactive behavior is readily available, but reshaping our negative or inaccurate thought patterns—cognitive behavioral theory—takes both practice and time, and we are biologically programmed to react. Fight or flight.

John Lewis, an icon of the Civil Rights movement and a man who lived and understood the paradoxes of life, coined his own wonderful oxymoron: good trouble. Those two little words were the sharp end of Mr. Lewis’ stick, and they still echo after he’s gone. The world needs their tension.

For better or for worse (there they are again; our old friends yin and yang), I’m a believer in the munificence of the universe. I have no idea why, but I’m guessing my perspective has to do with my upbringing and the security that came with it. Back then, I assumed everyone grew up happy and whole, but now I know how lucky I was. A friend of mine was given to say that “good things happen to good people,” but that’s only a half truth. The other half is that bad things can happen to good people, and that’s the sad half of the same truth. But just imagine for amount that if the universe is indeed abundant, then maybe there’s more reason for us to hope for the best even when things look their grimmest. 

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

Yesterday was President’s Day, and somewhat to my surprise, I found myself thinking not about Washington or Lincoln, nor about F.D.R., Kennedy, Obama, Biden or even you-know-who. I had Jimmy Carter on my mind.

Three days ago, Mr. Carter (who is 98 years old) chose to forgo any further medical intervention and to spend his remaining days at home with his family receiving hospice care. It’s a brave end-of-life decision by a man by a man who has devoted himself to public service and the well-being of others. He may have been a controversial President, but his post-Presidential years have been a beacon to us all.

I arrived in Washington in the spring of 1979. The Carter presidency was riding high after the success of the Camp David Accords which would eventually lead to the Treaty of Washington, the first peace treaty between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors. For ten days in September of 1978, President Carter had “jawboned” Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin into signing two frameworks for peace that would set the stage for the eventual treaty that was signed at the White House on March 26, 1979. It was the beginning of hope.

Believe it or not, Washington is a pretty small town and that year, I found myself within two degrees of separation of President Carter. Nan Powell, wife of Jody Powell—Carter’s Press Secretary—worked in the DC Public School system and was my children’s kindergarten teacher. To this day, they revere her. Back then, it was heady stuff for the new kids in town.

There are, of course, two threads to Mr. Carter’s story: his Presidency and his post-Presidency.

The Panama Canal Treaty was, to say the least, controversial, and it wasn’t long after the success of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the jewel in the Carter Presidential crown, that Khomeini’s revolution arrived in Iran, and, with it, the fall of the Shah and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. That crisis eventually became the straw that broke President Carter’s back, and within a year, he had lost his bid for reelection to the highly telegenic and oratorically gifted Ronald Reagan. The post-Presidency of Jimmy Carter had begun.

Jimmy Carter was, in many ways, an enigmatic man. He was a nuclear engineer and US Navy veteran, but a peanut farmer at heart. He was deeply religious, but his faith was quietly personal, not photo-op public. In an age of ego, he was a truly humble man who, upon leaving the White House, worked with Habitat for Humanity, helping to build homes for others. His labor was sweaty, bandanaed, and tool-belted, with even a black eye and a few stitches, but he neither asked for, nor wanted, any public approbation for his days on the job. It was enough to be doing God’s work. He put it this way: “To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others.”

It seems that Jimmy Carter has only a few more days to live. May they be peaceful and filled with the love of his wife, family, and friends, and marked by gratitude from a nation he so faithfully served.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

Until a few days ago, I hadn’t given much thought to Burt Bacharach and his music in many years. But now that he’s gone, all those melodies and lyrics have come rushing back on a flood tide of memories. Joni Mitchell, another of my own music icons, was right: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

Burt Bacharach was one of the most important and influential composers of our time. His music was characterized by unusual chord progressions, influenced by his background in jazz harmony, and notable for his uncommon selection of instruments for small orchestras. He arranged, conducted, and produced much of his own recorded output. His accolades included three Academy Awards, six Grammy Awards, and an Emmy. Bacharach’s songs have been recorded by more than a thousand different artists, and seventy-three of his songs made their way onto to Billboard’s “Top 40” music charts, including “This Guy’s in Love With You,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “Arthur’s Theme,” and my own personal favorite, “That’s What Friends Are For.” Rolling Stone magazine ranks him at number 32 on their list for “The 100 greatest songwriters of all time.” (Who’s number 1 you ask? Bob Dylan.)

But back to my favorite Bacharach hit: “That’s What Friends are For.” The movie “My Best Friend’s Wedding” included a schmaltzy version of the song, complete with dancing lobsters, but even that silliness couldn’t hide the musical genius and the heartfelt message of that song. We’ve all been there: asking for friendship to comfort us in times of crisis or need or sorrow; sharing treasured moments; even just being present in the warm glow of friendship.

I know this because I count my friends among the most important of my many blessings. I have known some since childhood, grade school, prep school, and college. Some are more recent, but by no means less dear. Even as I’m writing this, I’m spending a golden week in Jamaica with four close friends and four new friends who, by the time this week is over, will, I’m sure, be added stars on my personal wall of friendship.

And, sadly, I’ve lost friends. Some to time or distance, some to diverging paths, even a few to death. I rue their loss; sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it was theirs. Maybe some of those friendships could have been saved if only I had been more kind, patient or understanding, but I take comfort in the knowledge that for all the friends I’ve lost along the way, I’ve been able to replenish the supply and then some. As we come to know ourselves better, we find new stars in the sky to help us steer our course.

Maybe you’re reading this on Valentine’s Day. I know that February 14 has been coopted by Hallmark and its minions to celebrate those we love, but why not expand that circle to include all those we hold dear? Sometimes, love, by its intense nature, can be a blaze that quickly dies, but friendship—true friendship—lingers beyond time and passion, warming us over the years, holding us in the delicate balance between past, present, and future.

So here’s to Burt Bacharach and to all my friends, far and near, old and new. I know just what you are for.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

 

A few days hence, my wife and I will celebrate the 11th anniversary of our arrival in Chestertown. That hardly qualifies us as “from-heres,” but I think it’s safe to say that we’re no longer newly minted “come-heres.” It’s an important distinction in these parts, and while we’ll never be of the former ilk, we’re no longer the new kids on the block. We straddle the distinctions, and I’m OK with that.

The first time I came to Chestertown—it was 1995, I think—my daughter was in the car with me. She was a high school junior, and we were coming to look at Washington College. We pulled up to the Admissions office, and I climbed out of the car. Dana didn’t move. “Can we go now?” she said. Dana was—is—an artist, and she knew she needed a bigger canvas for her paintings than Chestertown. I wasn’t so sure, but she was the one looking at colleges, not me. I got back in the car and off we went.

There are two renditions to the next chapter in my Chestertown story: my wife’s and mine. According to her, we came here to take a look at a property on Washington Avenue that two of her sisters and their husbands owned as an investment. Winter was coming on, and we needed to check the furnace. It might even be time to sell the property. My wife is a realtor, and, for her, that kind of thinking is hard to resist. So, according to her version of the story, we came to Chestertown to take a professional gander at a house, nothing more.

My own version of that day is a little more nuanced. In my memory, I had awakened one day a month earlier, and had one thought on my mind: I wanted to visit Chestertown again. I felt it deep in my bones. That long-ago aborted college visit with my daughter had left a long shadow in my brain, and something had summoned it back into the light. So when we were invited to look at a Chestertown property, I saw my chance and hitched a ride.

The events of the day 11 years ago are still quite clear in my mind. We took a look at the furnace in the big house on Washington Avenue and decided it was time for lunch. I ate Moroccan chili at Brooks Tavern. After lunch, we decided to drive by a few other listings “just for fun.” Somehow, we ended up on Cannon Street where we saw a “For Sale” on a small row house next to a wonderful restaurant. The house appeared vacant, but was listed “By Appointment Only.” We decided to take a peek at the back yard, and while we were snooping, a lovely woman came out of the house and asked if she could help us. Mortified, we admitted we were interested in the house—we were?—and she invited us in. Her husband had bought the distressed house the year prior, the renovation was now complete, and the house was back on the market. The bait was on the water. 

Two details closed the deal, at least in my mind. There wasn’t much furniture in the house the day we saw it except for a small table in the living room on which there was a Pittsburgh Steelers Kleenex box. Pittsburgh is my own “from-here” town, and the Steelers have always been my team. It was a sign from God! And then I saw a large empty wall, one that would perfectly accommodate one of my daughter’s largest paintings, my personal favorite. I could see it there that day, and that’s where it still hangs today.

That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. We didn’t just buy a house, we bought a home. Friends. An entire town. We call our home Standing Room Only because it really is that small. But it’s more than enough. Does it really matter why we came to town that day? We’re still happily here.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

There’s a rhythm and pattern to our lives here on the Eastern Shore. For that matter, to all life, but it’s this life I’m contemplating today. Seasons come and go, time passes, the world turns. The Byrds (Rest in Peace, David Crosby) reminded my generation of this truth when they turned a few verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes into a rock anthem: “To everything/Turn! Turn! Turn!/there is a season/Turn! Turn! Turn!/ And a time to every purpose under heaven.”

Now, we’re on the cusp of that time of year. Yesterday, as my wife and I were driving home after a lovely brunch at the home of great friends, we passed several mega-flocks of geese gleaning the cornfields. I marveled at the sight, but it took me a while to realize what we were really seeing: the prelude to the geese’s northbound flight. Theories abound about how geese know when it’s time to fly north: instinct and experience, celestial cues from the sun and stars, even an internal compass triggered by Earth’s magnetic fields. Whatever the reason, the geese squawking in the fields the other day surely sensed that it would be time to head north, and, for us, maybe that’s the first true glimpse or whiff of spring.

Which brings me, with your permission, to this personal reflection: my first Musing was published in these pages 364 consecutive weeks ago—that’s a full seven years!—and during that time, I’ve come to enjoy—no, love—my little happy discipline. My first essay was entitled “Groundhogs and Geese,” and it considered the proposition that geese were better predictors of spring’s arrival than that burrowing rodent who lives up on Gobbler’s Knob near Punxsutawney. Geese just have an avian perspective that leaves poor somnambulant Phil in the dust, or, as it were, in the ground. Much to my delight, my initial essay appeared in The Spy the following Tuesday, and the rest is literary history, writ small. Thank you, Spy publisher Dave Wheelan. And, by the way, the image that introduces this Musing introduced that seminal one seven years ago; I use it on this anniversary to mark the turning of my own writing world.

This is hardly a perfect planet. There is much to rue and regret. Nevertheless, life, whether under, on, or above the seasonally frosted ground, still has much to offer: love, friendship, natural beauty, even groundhogs and geese. I can’t overlook the ugly in life—war in Ukraine, gun violence in California, outrage in Memphis—but neither can I ignore the gifts we are offered daily. It’s a delicate balancing act, but I carry my tray carefully. To lose it now would risk tumbling down a rabbit hole or a groundhog’s burrow. I want to stand here, awaiting the moment when all those geese will lift off and head back to their thawing Arctic tundra. I wish them God speed.

So I say again, there is a rhythm and pattern to our lives, just as there is rhythm and pattern to the lives of geese and groundhogs. I am persuaded that to the extent we are able to attune ourselves to these constants, then maybe our own internal compasses will point us in the right directions at just the right moments. We’ll know when it’s time to lift off and just where to land. That knowledge is within.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.  Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.net.

 

Last night, I had vivid, wacky dreams; maybe it was all that delicious green Thai curry I had for dinner. Usually I can’t recall my dreams, but for some reason, this morning I remembered three. In the first, I found a cardboard box with a hole in it. I put an old blanket and a bowl of water inside, hoping a bear would come along and decide to hibernate in it. In the second dream, I wasn’t sure which of our two houses I was sleeping in; the room and our bed kept expanding and contracting. And in the third dream, I had just attended some kind of conference and decided to stop at a country inn with two friends on the way home. The narrow dirt road leading to the inn had ovular turn-arounds in case someone wanted to go back to the airport. When we got to the inn, a woman in a gingham dress came to take our bags to our rooms. That’s when I woke up.

I gave up trying to decipher my dreams a long time ago. Now I just enjoy them. They are rarely disturbing and I can’t remember the last time I had a nightmare. The symbols in my dreams—if that is what they are—always elude me; why should I want to make a home for a hibernating bear, or why did the road to the inn have all those ovular turnarounds, or an innkeeper with a gingham dress? I’ll leave it to the Freudians among you to analyze me.

But I love my dreams. I wish someone would invent a machine that would record and play back my nighttime wanderings; maybe I would remember or understand them better the next morning. But I have to admit: I’m intrigued by my dreams—their imagery, their ephemeral qualities, their strange and crazy meanderings. They suggest that in some sleepy dimension, there are all kinds of permutations of reality possible, and what’s not to like about that!

There are many different types of dreams: daydreams, sleep dreams, lucid dreams (dreams in which you are conscious that you’re dreaming, but you keep on dreaming anyway), false awakening dreams, and nightmares to name a few. Years ago, I used to have a common recurring dream—you know, the one where you suddenly realize you have an exam the next day and you haven’t studied a lick for it and you’re stark naked to boot—but that dream, thank goodness, now seems to be a thing of my past. Back then, the panic of that dream could only be quelled by waking, and even then, it took a few minutes for my heart to stop pounding. Many scientists and psychologists believe that our dreams are trying to reveal critical aspects of our waking selves; in the case of my old recurring dream, that would certainly seem plausible given my usual state of unpreparedness and perpetual student deshabille. Now I just care less and have more clothes.

Most dreams occur while we’re in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, and can last from just a few seconds to as long as twenty or thirty minutes. It’s healthy to dream. Dreams, even the most vivid and fantastic ones, have been shown to promote effective and creative thinking, improved memory, and better emotional processing. Makes me want to go take a nap!

If it’s true, as Prospero muses in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, that “we are of such stuff/As dreams are made on, and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep,” then just maybe there is a gentle, playful world beyond this mortal coil. I suppose it’s equally possible that there is a hellish nightmare still to come; I guess we’ll all just have to take that chance. In the meantime, I wish you sweet dreams and should you happen to encounter a bear looking for a place to hibernate, please tell him I have just the spot.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.net.

 

Indulge me. Last week’s Musing had to do with two separate streams coming together to form a mightier river. This week, I thought to ponder the nature—the power—that comes from and through unification. Don’t get me wrong: singleness, individuality, uniqueness—they’re all wonderful qualities that have the capability to create and thrive all on their own. It’s even possible that in some cases, less really is more. But without wanting to cast even the tiniest shadow of doubt over the power of one, I want to make a case for the higher power of two. Or, for that matter, more.

We all know some things just pair well together. What’s yin without yang? Peanut butter without jelly? Me without you? I could write the proverbial great American novel, but without you to read it, it would sit silently on a shelf, a lonely, literary masterpiece. We—writers and readers—need each other. It’s just simple symbiosis: the interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both. In fact, in today’s world, “close physical association” is a highly relative term: I have friends who live many months of the year in London: we’re not physically close while they’re away, but in every other sense of the word, we always are.

Closer to home, I have neighbors who are building a significant addition to their home. For the past several weeks, we’ve been living yards away from a construction site, but that’s not the point. I watch the workers next door and I’m struck by two obvious facts. One: it takes a team to build an addition; it’s too big a job for one man. Two: almost every one of the laborers toiling away out there in the cold are come from away, probably from Central America is my guess. Without their energy, sweat and good cheer, my friends’ addition wouldn’t be rising; without my friends contract, these men and women wouldn’t be building a better life for themselves and their families. Talk all you want about border security, but be honest enough to admit that a lot of the hard work that happens in America today wouldn’t get done if not for the men and women who make the long journey here and are willing to work cold, hard hours for minimal wages. If that’s not a compelling case for symbiosis, I don’t know what is.

There is, of course, another side to this story; there always is. Many people fear either the unknown or change, and there’s little doubt that America is changing and our future is murky. While I personally don’t see a zero-sum game in symbiosis, many people do. They assume that one someone is elevated, someone else is diminished. I look out my window at all the construction activity next door and see the rising tide that’s floating all the boats in the harbor.

You may not believe this, but I am, by nature, an introvert. I am also married to the queen of extroverts. Our separate natures can, at times, be challenging, but I know in my heart that we’re better off together. There is an old African proverb that goes like this: “if we want to walk fast, walk alone. But if you want to walk far, walk together.” In a world where step-counting has become a mantra for good health, that makes a lot of sense.

I’ll be right back.

 

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.net.