March randomness

Stuff happens. Sometimes it happens in a coherent order with discernible causes and effects, and sometimes not. Usually not. Sometimes apparently unconnected things can be pieced together by an unrealistic, but active, imagination in order to make things make sense.

Or do things make sense all by themselves, and it just takes some of us a while to get it? Oops, metaphysical question.

By the way, this is not about basketball. It's about a largely undiagnosed malady I've discovered called Seasonal Psycho-Incongruity Neurosis (SPIN). Seasonal Affective Disorder is out. SPIN is the new SAD.

The other day, a friend of a friend asked me, on behalf of her student, what the company is really looking for in a new job opening. I've been a go-between when people have actually gotten jobs, for better or worse, and it's kind of fun serving as a link in that chain. That very day I heard about a new position in our department. I looked at the posting online and offered my two cents worth of interpretation. We'll see if it goes any further.

Three weeks ago, another friend asked me to write a reference letter for an MFA program in Oregon, but I waited until two days before the deadline to write it. I think it was a good letter. The friend replied that she had been laid off from her current job in the Northwest. Noticing that another job was posted, and it happened to be in that neck of the woods, I sent her the link, she applied, and we'll see if it goes any further.

Unrelated events are a matter of degree. How unrelated is 'unrelated'? One day last week I'm out on the patio doing a qigong form in the welcome sunshine, and I see animal tracks in the snow. One set of tracks could be a big dog, another could be a deer, and a third could be a large bird, but what do I know. I'm not a hunter or a birder and wasn't a boy scout. The next day somebody in the cafeteria saw a wild turkey just outside the windows, and we all watched him do his big, puffed-up display with wing and tail feathers spread out, and he was impressive. I didn't see a female nearby, but it must be the season.

A couple of days later, a cardinal was singing in the top of a maple tree in the back yard, loud and long in the late afternoon. This time I did see a female in a nearby tree, so the song apparently was having the desired effect. I'll expect to see eggs soon.

It took less than a week since the big storm of '08, and most of the snow has melted. It felt good to go outside and see the naked ground again. There's nothing so remarkable about snow melting in March, it just looked different to the eye, all that color and texture in the saturated ground.

Last Sunday was Palm Sunday in most churches, and at the Old North Church my friend Ken reminded us to lighten up and notice our connection with the Earth. This week there will be much ado about bread and wine, which I can understand and enjoy on some level. The office is festooned with tiny, fuzzy, yellow chicks that mysteriously appeared from somewhere. Someone in another department organized a breakfast potluck, and people are doing their spring thing in their own way.

There is a dinner I'm attending tonight where toasts and affirmations will be made, and a long-time member of our group will take his leave, his personal narrative spinning off from the group story, and we'll maintain a looser connection than meeting once a week. It's all good. I don't expect any washing of feet or transsubstantiation of sushi and saki into the body and blood of Jim as he completes the next stage of his journey from central swingstate to Santa Fe. But who the heck knows really. I do intend to ritualize the occasion, in a random sort of way, with a spontaneous I Ching reading to mark the moment, and we'll see if anything comes of that.

Another loose aggregation of folks is holding an explicitly equinox gathering this weekend, where there will be drums and incantations and maybe even dancing to mark the turning of the big wheel of the sky. Seeds will be blessed before they're planted in the ground, and we'll see if anything comes of that.