A Look at the End of the World

It's the end of the world.

That's how it starts to feel as a high school student. A bad mark on a test, a low grade on a project, missing observations, running late, forgetting to study, giving up precious time on a weekend to write a blog--It's the end of the world!!! Right?

Adults may be chuckling at this, after all there are things like war in Afghanistan, Ebola in Africa, hunger in our own back yards. Those are real things to worry about, and that's not even the end of the world. However, teenagedom it's no funny business either. Statistics from the National Center for Children in Poverty, or the NCCP, shows that 20% of adolescents have a diagnosable mental disorder. Because of this, suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers (Schwarz). The people that are being raised to be the leaders and innovators of tomorrow are dropping like flies from stress, anxiety, and depression. Sounds like a very final end to our proverbial world if you ask me.

Now, maybe this is due to the media, body shaming, or constant ghastly reports on the news. It's also possible that its psychological; the pressure and stress of a future and life that has to mean something. The 1,000 pound weight of Success looms like an fearsome beast as it crashes down on us with expectations. We are expected to find ourselves and be adults, but not grow up too fast or take on too much responsibility. This is an endless struggle for balance that we too often tip the scales of, fancying ourselves young adults. That's why any failure feels like its the end of the world, because we are convinced everything we do in these days will have an everlasting mark on our future. That one failure could domino into an unsuccessful lifetime. Its the end of our imaginary worlds.

Now this is the part of the post where we all start to wonder, what has this got to do with my backyard? Well, the fall is hitting its last legs, the ground if carpeted in leaves to say the very least and the coming days look bleak and dark. It's the end to my little world. *cue the dramatic sobbing*

Isn't it?

 

"I've never seen a flower radiate such joy..." 

(Field notes 5 Nov. 2014)

 

I first began to question the world's demise when I found this flower that I've never seen before. Its peaking out of the dead twigs reminiscent of bulbs that have already bit it. I found it happily soaking up the sun in its delicate bright yellow decadence. Clearly no one informed it that it was too late to bloom. From what I could see, it wouldn't have cared even if it had been told not to. Even sitting alone I  an empty dirt patch, I've never seen a flower radiate such joy and life. It refuses to end.

"They sit brashly and with confidence..."

(field notes 3 Nov. 2014)

 

This flower refuses to back down in the same way these newfound berries do. I've caught them growing in the bushes that are no longer shaded by the bald tree branches. The fiery leaves that crowd them seem to say that they won't go quietly. They sit brashly and with confidence on loaded branches even past their prime. Their soft squishy bodies speak of weakening but they stay as if they don't know the word. Even the birds dare not try them.

"The scrub-jay leaders continually shriek at one another..."

(field notes 6 Nov. 2014)

These birds have a resistance of their own. They sit and gossip in the trees, making their plots. They squabble and talk over each other in whining chirps and curious warbles. They hush with the approach of my footsteps as though they're hiding something from me and feigning innocence. The scrub-jay leaders continually shriek at one another between trees in secret code. They all settle in, rows upon rows, irremovable despite the chill. They do so because they know something we don't... the world's not ending.

It never has and it never is. In this life nothing has true permanence. There's certainly no everlasting despair from mistakes nor the weather--not empty trees or bad grades. The wonderful and tragic thing about time is that you can never stop it. Life will carry on even if we miss a step. These things we think are so important, so entirely earth shattering aren't even a ripple in the fabric of the cosmos.

We have no need to despair over the little things, the homework and the social awkwardness and the pressure and the changing of the seasons. It'll all pass. We just have to wait to see how it gets better. We have to let things in and also let things go.

Deep breath, the world is not ending.

Work Cited

Schwarz, Susan Wile. "Adolecent Mental Health in the United States." The National Center for Children in Poverty. N.p. June  2009. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.

A Look Down the Timeline

"Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. . .You just use the future to escape the present."

          --John Green, Looking for Alaska

We are stuck in time. Every moment of every day is a singular, all encompassing event which will blink out of existence with the tick of the seconds. They don't carry over, these precious moments, and we can never get them back. At the very least, we can think back on them, but in that, waste the present moment with nostalgia. How desperate it is to seek something that has already gone. Instead, the world teaches us, we must always look forward to what we want rather than what we already have. That desire never seems to cease, so we never cease dreaming of what is to come. The ever-renewable resource of imagination flows from us so that we don't have to face any unpleasantness, even now. In Halloween's shadow we rush to ready Christmas. As the semester winds down, every homework-filled afternoon is spent dreaming of winter break. Without even thinking about it we escape to the future.

Just as I do standing in my back yard.

The chill seeps into my bones as I juggle between feet, forced to stand as all of the outdoor chairs have been safely stacked in the corner, cowering away from the rain. The impending storm hangs heavy in the sky and seems to growl as it bears down on me, the sky choking on grey clouds until I am left without ally, facing such a beast. The dramatic turn in the weather has got me bundled up and feeling drowsy as the winter usually does, but the cool air that reaches the back of my neck and prickles my skin down to my shoes leaves me alert. I turn my gaze downward and notice a patch of vibrant decay. A flower, curling in, having turned a mottled brown color. I shiver just looking at it.

 

"I...notice a patch of vibrant decay."

(Field notes Oct. 30)

 

"It'll come back," I say to no one in particular.

It'll come back. . . The soft frost sleeping on the grass will melt into supple spring dew when the first morning rays crest the horizon. Newly made nests fill the branches of reanimated trees and will ring with hungry birdsong. Waves of fragrance from honeysuckle will beacon dopey honeybees to seek its sweet taste, shaking off the sleep of the winter. The lithe drip of bleeding hearts will grace the soil that can lay dormant no longer. Then that gentle sunlight will blanket innocent buds that kiss widespread leaves. As spring sets in the world will take on a kinder spirit, filled with gentle blues and golden tints, a place distilled in pure sunlight. Yes, it will all come back.

But first it must die. The emaciated tree looks at me with gaunt eyes as I avert my gaze of the wilting flower. "Dying," the wind hisses at me through long-clinging leaves. It makes the hair on my arms stand up for more than one reason to hear a call as lonely as such. I rock back and forth on the loose floorboards of my time-weathered deck. I slip into hallows left from footsteps that no longer can be heard. I scuffle my shoes on dark stains left from over ripe plums that ooze down throughout the summer and plague the ground with a sickeningly sweet sap. Now that's just a memory.

 

"The emaciated tree looks at me with gaunt eyes..."

(Field notes Oct. 27)

"It wasn't always like this," I say to myself. 

It was different. It was something better. There were shadowed patterns like lace on the ground, broken up by spilling sunlight that was too heavy to be held on leaves. The fragrance of summer was carried on the breeze; freshly cut grass, blooming flowers, burgers on the grill. The ballet of butterflies floated between full branches and kept in time to the distant serenade of the ice cream trucks. The plums that practically dripped from the tree littered the ground. There were almost as many there as the plethora we'd picked to make jam, the warm aroma of which had ruminated in the kitchen for days. I couldn't help but think that we were like plums if hearts were like seeds. The symphony of summer carried on in the style of a peaceful river, lovely, but unable to be captured, unable to be stopped. 

I can't help but chuckle, thinking that whilst standing in the dry riverbed of summer. It can all be stopped. Just never in the way we think. That moment is gone. Every one of them I can recall. But so is this one now.

Maybe I seek tomorrows in the gullible hope that there will be more time. Less to think back on to steal from the moment, less to look forward to to distract me and more to fill the space of the now. There will always be the feeling of nostalgia though, it is the malady of those constantly seeking greener pastures--we'll never see how green the ones we're in are. Maybe we need to be able to look backward and forward to understand where it is we are, because the spring that will be is going to turn into the summer that once was, and every fall I'll feel this way, as though I stand at the brink of oblivion--hoping for something that is not here. But, maybe every moment is a moment worthy of reflection and romanticizing.

I can't think of a perfect moment. One that does not lend itself to either nostalgia--because those are the ones that we don't notice, we're too busy enjoying them in all of their fleeting glory.

Wouldn't it be a lovely life to always feel that way? Isn't it a lovely life?

 

 

Work Cited

Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York: Dutton Books, 2005. pg. 54. Print.

A Look at the Eye Catching

One would think that living in a house for almost their whole life would lend itself to noticing the details, the fact that there are fifteen stairs from one landing to the next or that there's eight air conditioning vents downstairs. These are all things I've noticed and taken into account while rooted in my home for the last thirteen years. Even with the limited amount of time I spent in my back yard,(On account of all the bugs, and my phobia of bugs) I couldn't help but notice all of the details. The two knot holes on the right side of the deck and the bleeding heart flowers nestled behind the honeysuckle. I saw it all. Or so I thought. Not everything is always so eye catching.

There's a portion of my yard, quite a large one actually, that has climbing ivy growing on it. I say that lightly, it's a bit more like a cascading wall of ominous green that guards the far corner of the yard. The leaves march out like a small army off to war, cladding the trees in impenetrable armor and nobly staking out the rest of the yard. I always feared this section, my childlike imagination had no words to describe the horror that could lurk under a fog of vines like that, and I had no intention of finding out.

Armored Trees

 

The Cascading Ivy

 

As though my lack of interest in it were a cloaking spell, I ceased to see the looming shadow of undergrowth. It was a hulking mass with a lulling sense about it, nothing to ever catch my eye. That was, until I was parading around my yard one day after school, notebook in hand. My dad stood at his barbecue and watched me curiously wafting between bushes and trees. Out of curiousity he struck up a conversation about it:

Dad: "What is it you're looking for?"

Me: "I'm not looking for anything, I'm just looking."

Dad: "But, at what? What are you seeing?"

Me: "I'm trying to learn something new about all of these things that I've seen before just by observing them."

Dad: "Like what?"

Me: "Like.....I never knew baby's breath grew in ivy."

Dad: "That's because it doesn't"

Me: "Well then what's that?"

This came with a gesture at the ivy ridden tree in the picture above, and the culprit in question--this:

Ivy Blooms

 

I promptly sketched them with a myriad of questions in mind and went inside to research the first quality of the green behemoth that had caught my attention in years. Turns out that this is how English ivy, the invasive species common in most of North America, flowers. These little sprouts are pollinated by bees and other insects and typically spring up sparsely every fall. In spring, these umbrella like plumes form hard, dark blue berries that birds will eat and drop elsewhere. Although these berries are technically poisonous, it's really the seed in the inner shell that is dangerous, and that often gets discarded before any digestion occurs (Moore). With two seasons for pollination a year and an invasive personality, it's no wonder this ivy is everywhere; it's undoubtedly been spreading since before we moved in. And just to think, in thirteen years, I never once noticed it.

 

Isn't it fascinating how the things right in front of our faces are the last ones we see? Like our perception has been warped. We look so hard to find every rock and leaf, the divinity of every detail, but in the chaos of the minute, we can easily miss the object altogether. Maybe if we didn't always telescope in on the microscopic eye catching details, we'd see whole waterfalls of foliage hiding in our sights. It's possible that the things we see could become more eye catching than that which we have to search for. It's possible we've been ignoring some of the greatest beauty in our lives out of fear that's been so long seeded we forgot we had it. Maybe it's time to let go and embrace the obvious unseen.

 

 

Work Cited

Moore, Sarah. "Does Ivy Bloom?" SFGATE: Home Guides. N.p. n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.

A Look at the Slowly Dying

Scarlet leaves,
Burnt edges--
Red rimmed eyes
that have been
rubbed too hard
at the tantalizing draw of sleep.

Hollow noises,
Whispering winds--
abandoned branches,
swaying and scratching;
a raspy voice,
raw from lack of rest.

A tired world,
Trudging on--
dragging late into the night;
A stubborn child
inevitably fading
from exhaustion.

The young, weary world is laid to rest by the passing days.

              --Mickayla Clune fieldnotes 15 Oct. 2014

Field notes 15 Oct. 2014

Welcome to fall, the season of shortening days, warm drinks, sweaters, football, falling leaves and death.

Yes, death.

At least, the way I see it. Traditionally, fall was celebrated for the biggest crop harvest of the year, but in some ways dreaded because it signaled the end of growing season. The cold sets in and the crops die. In those days, if not enough food was preserved in the summer or not enough food is harvested, it could mean a hungry winter, leading to starvation (that means death). And as we're all pushed inside, in close quarters, sickness follows as we enter cold and flu season. This includes the flu that can kill the young, the elderly, the feeble, and countless of them. The times were dark, damp and cold once fall hit and it became a hell to survive rather than a season to enjoy.

Okay, so maybe that isn't the biggest of our worries from year to year as the smell of pumpkin spice fills the air and we ready our costumes for candy collection. In fact, the most death we see is probably on the Walking Dead. Still, I see the world dying, even as the leaves change.

As the days shorten, the leaves see less and less sun. This allows chlorophyll. the chemical responsible for photosynthesis in plants to die, ending the production of green pigmentation, allowing new and pretty hues to become present, but essentially killing the leaf (Helmenstine). It's like nature's own graveyard is at our feet, and for some reason, we enjoy it. Maybe I'm being morbid, but it can't be denied, we're surrounded by death--in nature, in innocence, reported in the media, around the world. It's there. Why we choose not to think about this is really just a matter of perspective; it we don't see the death, we can forget it's happening... but should we?

Let's take this fall, and not only drink lattes, carve pumpkins and dig out sweaters buried in our drawers, but also take a look at the world, the community, our own backyard and acknowledge the death. Take it in and except it. Then maybe, just maybe, we can live in a way to make up for the death and richly balance the world.

Work Cited

Helmenstine, Anne Marie. "Why do Leaves Change Color in the Fall?" About Education. N.p. n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014

A look from a litte further

This week was nothing spectacular in the ever so interesting life of my yard. The leaves were moved, and I saw no change. The cobwebs were swept aside, and I met no revelations. The lawn was mowed down and there were no miraculous discoveries to be found. Like putting makeup on a corpse before a funeral, we cleaned the back yard before the icy hand of fall sweeps down on it like a guillotine. I expected in all of this to find the strange and beautiful, but I saw nothing. My world has been shifting so slightly beneath me this whole time thatin my eyes it hasn't changed at all. The one thing I did see revealed this week was the familiar stark blue sky that we become so accustomed to in the summer, and along with it, my favorite color.
It's not just sky blue, it's when that crystal clear blue is sandwiched between two clouds, it's the blue that frames the sunset and hides on the opposite horizon, that drapes along the skyline like a lace lining. It's a delicate and beautiful blue that begs with all of it's being to blend in, wishes to live its days unnoticed and reflect the beauty around it. It's my blue, and I saw it this week, slung low in the sky to contrast every leaf, complimenting without wanting to be complimented.

Plum Tree and blue sky

(Field notes 10/4/14)

 



Other than the mysterious and rebellious blue hiding in plain sight, it was static in my backyard. That was until I got a little perspective on a trip to Apple Hill. I don't think if it's a commonly known tourist spot here, but its a lovely place just past Placerville, California with a series of farms that all boast a new and exciting fall adventure (i.e. pumpkin patches, hay rides, picking apples in orchards, farm animals, craft booths, fishing ponds, and some of the worlds best caramel apples.) The whole place has an atmosphere of comfort and ease, the sweet simple life we've all gotten a little too out of touch with.

I know the trip there and the farms themselves are riddled with gorgeous views and autumn dipped trees, I was expecting it.

Roadside Aspen Trees

(Field notes 10/4/14)

 

What I didn't expect was to see so many similarities to my own backyard: black widow webs, the very thin kind with no apparent pattern; soft grass littered with fallen leaves that have lost all their green and stir in the wind like the smolders of a dusty fire; my blue in the sky, framing the horizon speckled with far off pines. It was like realizing that this huge beautiful piece of the world, this oasis I glimpse only once a year is hidden underneath my nose in my own back yard. As the sun set that day and the clouds turned to wisps of pink against my mysterious blue sky, I watched out my window as a new world that I had known my whole life flew by. Under that cotton candy sky I finally understood--this view wasn't their place or my place, this place could belong to anyone who sees it. Anyone who dares to look at the sky and take a place beneath it with their head in the clouds; get their hands on their little slice of beauty.

Our perception of the world is not assigned to us at birth, we are not to be held in one place. We are free to roam this earth and find all of its little treasures, to stick our hands in the earth and our heads in the sky and say, "This is mine." This world is ours to love and appreciate, no matter how close in we get or how far out we see. We can all feel just as at home under the cotton candy sky.

A look at the lonesome

It takes a truly lonely person to see a truly lonely world. The more often I stare out and look at the world around me the more I see a beautiful yearning, a disconnect between each tree and bird and spider and rock in all of its interwoven isolation. I see each of these little entities as lonely, searching for a way to connect to the life surrounding it, just out of reach. Like the stars that shine all by themselves; a congregation of blinking lights laying haphazardly on the black blanket of sky, all completely oblivious that there are others out there.

I see this disconnect in the lonely heart of my plum tree. Its mottled branches stretch out towards the sun, the trees to both of its sides and hanging heavily, as though the ground would even be an acceptable friend. I call it my yearning tree; it stands day after day with arms open wide, asking and never receiving the love it sends out.

I see the ache of being alone in the first waking bird. I've never gotten to see him straight on, but he comes into my yard every morning. He lands in the trees heavy handedly--shaking the branches and squawking. He takes the sleeping world by the shoulders and begs it to wake up; begs the light and the warmth to come back to him. He waits to see the world he loves with impatience, waiting for that connection.

I see the lonesome lifestyle of seclusion in the black widows I find around my yard. They lay in webs, sure and ready killers, but in the light they run for cover, hiding in the dark crevices away from prying eyes. They long for the dark like a vice. Alone they wait through the berating day for the darkness to return. In my eyes they are the loneliest of all creatures because they do not even seek for a remedy to their estranged lives. There is no hope, there is no yearning, only emptiness. The passing of days in terms of when the dark comes back.

In a way, I see the things in my yard like people. We all are lonely creatures. We can consider ourselves a part of our families, our communities, our schools, and our friends in the same way that a tree is a part of a yard. At the end of the day though, my skin is my skin alone, my flesh is my flesh. I am not owned, I am not claimed or tethered. I am utterly alone. We all are. Whether or not we overcome this is our own choice. There is a choice to be a black widow and hide, see our disconnectedness as insurmountable and draw away from the world we know. Or we can be trees, open ourselves to the world, send love without being able to expect anything in return, beg the world we love to greet us the way the early rising bird does.

We can all choose the type of lonely to be, and if we all reached out, maybe we wouldn't be so lonely after all.

A look between the webbing

For this assignment I've started spending time observing my backyard, because I hardly ever go out there. I'm quite paranoid there's a spider colony living under my deck, which I find terrifying. I hate spiders. It's a phobia really, seeing one is like an unnatural shock to my system that usually results in small bursts of screams and shuttering. That being said, I'm going to talk about spiders all over this blog.

Now I know this sounds scary already (at least I would think it does), but it's not, it's fascinating. It all started while I was watching a tree in my backyard and tried to sample some early fallen, bright red, leaves to press in my journal. I remember thinking it was like the tree was bleeding, in slow red drips on the wind. However, my attempt to pick one up was met with ample success, three leaves all came together, glued together with webbing. There are spiders in my tree. I've found two webs, but no actual arachnids (thank goodness).

Now as I've been observing just theses last two weeks, one of these webs is already broken. Which has got me thinking, what kind of stupid spider is going to build a web, easily able to be broken by a good wind and in full sight of birds, one of their biggest natural predators? That makes no sense. Maybe that's why they're already gone. I wonder how often spiders build webs and move.

At this point I stopped fearing so much and entered the fascination stage. This when I made a brilliant discovery.

This is a black widow. In my own backyard.

I've named her Shelob and she's beautiful and terrifying. Its fantastic, and she even has neighbors!

 

This is a nearby and much longer spider who at least looks more amicable. My first though of him was that we was sleeping, but with more research I found that spiders don't sleep, they have circadian rhythms of rest and activity and can hibernate but when they rest they're able to be immediately animate if something disturbs their web. This one is most likely dead though because they don't tend to lay on their backs like that. (pawnation.com) Spiders also have the ability to tuck their legs into themselves, slow down their metabolisms and hibernate for the winter without food out of harms way and wake naturally once it gets warm again.

 

Maybe as fall rapidly approaches I'll be seeing them less and less. Although this is sad for scientific purposes, the fall setting in is really lovely. Esspecially in the morning as I say in my observations, The grey morning light  paints the world a dead color. (Sept 26, 7 am) This waking world is starting to get sleepy and slip into a cold repose. I can't wait to see what it brings.