The Palo Verde are blooming. And I'm talking about the trees, not the nuclear reactors at the edge of town.
Once the Palo Verde pop, you know—it's over. The honeymoon. The cool balmy air of spring. Squashed. Under the heavy weight of the ever hotter summers.
The trees are amazing when they bloom. They do look like little yellow mushroom clouds! A puffy, muffin top of tiny, but profuse, flowers. If there's no heavy weather, the blossoms will hang, for a good two weeks. Eventually, from one cause or another, the blossoms fall, and a carpet of gold encircles each tree. The formal capitulation of the Sonoran Desert fauna. Well, accept for the Saguaro's. They're just gettin' started.
It's interesting how…important it is. Seeing the blossoms. It's is having a unique effect on me. It's, like, a little touch of reality. An anchor. I can hook my rag-dolling consciousness to it, even if only for the forty or fifty minutes I'm out on the bicycle. It's something to hang onto. "Hey, man, I've seen this before! Maybe other shit will be normal before too long?"
Uh, maybe…I won't hold my breath.
I wonder how Ma Nature feels about all this? She seems to be reveling in it. What are the odds we seek a means to return to health, both physically and financially, that includes mom? Right? Wouldn't that make sense? "Oh my god, we just got our asses kicked. By something we actually had a few feeble little tricks for. There's no containment strategy for a five degree rise in heat!"
With the Sixth Extinction roaring along, we need to face some facts. If we don't find a way to clean up our act, surviving a pandemic will look like a TV game show. A rigged TV game show at that.
You know…some really bad shit is headed our way. Everyone's way, on the whole planet. There's going to be situations that drive us apart. Things may be all happy-go-lucky all for one and one for all—right now.
But.
In the not too distant future, people will be hungry, and homeless. I can speak from experience—when your hungry and homeless, your judgement…changes. Your values change, and it might be hard to look across the street at your neighbor who has plenty but refuses to share…and not want some agency, some action, to demonstrate the inequality of it all…
So, it's not just the virus. Or the climate change. Or rockets and nuclear bombs. This will be a time for us to take the longest, hardest look possible inside. That's where our problems, no, our opportunities, are. If we build/rebuild from a fundamental compassion, something that's in our nature, and if we are generous with out resources, and if we keep our minds open—maybe we can overcome all the pain and peril we have created for ourselves and have something better than before.
Back in the day there was a subculture identified as 'flower child'. Someone who appreciated nature and wanted to preserve it, people who gave freely of themselves, shared what they had and were averse to the accumulation of material possessions. Everything was owned by the community, or commune as such things were called. A place to go if you wanted peace and you had something to contribute to the good of all.
Otherwise known as hippies…
Hippy culture ruled in the Sixties. And there are still a bunch of hippies left in this country, in the world.
Maybe it's time we had another summer of love.