Charlene, Peace, and Pond Tales

"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes and grass grows by itself." -Zenrin Kushû

Tales from the pond:

The multitude of goldfish survived the winter and then had a big spawn party a month or so ago, during a heat spell. Now bright orange fish flash and glide around in the shallows.

 

You have to sneak up on the pond or sit quietly for a while to see them. Or hide behind the ferns like I do. These fish are very cagey. Instead of darting away, they have a way of just sinking down imperceptibly until they disappear.

 

The wood ducks still swing by, flying low through the woods from pond to pond. Fat polliwogs wiggle in the sandy edges but most have hopped out of the pond to join the fully populated tree frog chorus performing every evening now.

 

Wetland plants are steadily creeping into the water and the pond lilies made it through the winter even though they aren't supposed to in this climate zone. They even have big round flower buds. Wildflowers are having a great year at the pond too, with more kinds blooming all around me than I can mention today.

 

The pond has a new pearl. Her name is Charlene because she is chartreuse. Here is a picture of Lon performing the formal rite of tossing in the new pond pearl:

I wrote a little poem about her:

 

Charlene, Charlene, you outshine the spring!

You're brighter than yellow, and brighter than green.

You get my attention, I cannot refuse,

that's why I've named you after chartreuse!

Chartreuse is the first color of spring. Everything seems to be a month or so early this year. Already we have had many record breaking high temperature days this year, same as you, probably, wherever you are. Global warming seems to be now passing the point of deny ability, even here in the land of denial.

Still and yet, spring is glorious. Meditating by the pond on a lazy warm day might seem to be the very idea of a peaceful spot. But peace and quiet are not the same! Even out here in the country where human made sounds are a bit fewer and far between, nature is roaring with the cacophony of the season.

I relax into the sounds and try to pick out the various birds voices from one another. Gradually the voices emerge of fauna and machine... I think of the fellow who roams the world searching for the sound of silence. But there is no silence, and peace is dynamic. I realize peace is a relationship web, and there is no more any silence in the universe than there is such a thing as the color black. All is light, all is vibration, all of creation sings. Peace is the sound of the song it sings.

Really? Isn't this pond a seething cesspool of contentious evolution, with fish eating fish, and I'm just romanticising the whole scene? I look out at the surface of the water. It is not a placid mirror, but a hundred moving circles. As I watch the water bugs skate around, I feel the joy of their adventure. I just know they are having fun. I wonder if most of the time, most of us, bugs included, are just bopping around being beings around here.

I give up trying to mediate with closed eyes or ears. Peace, I conclude, is some sort of intricate state of harmony we can tune into, or uniquely to us humans apparently, tune out from.