Cattails: Part 2

Dear Little Water Nymph,

My greatest memory of cattails from my youth was that if you were looking for frogs or garter snakes that moved through the swamps near my parents house, you could usually see a beautiful redwinged blackbird perched on a cattail.

That's how I remember cattails, as perches for redwing blackbirds.

But it wasn't until I began driving into Michigan last week that I wondered: Why cattails?

Oh, I'm sure there is some scientific story that will explain how cattails fit into the ecosystem, how redwing blackbirds help disperse the white puffy seeds that these brown cattails become. But this "why" is different: it's more like what that German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, talked about when he talked about "Dasein", "Being in the World".

I was born into a world of cattails and for many years of my life, I never really noticed them. I thought they were interesting when I saw them included in floral arrangements (which is really about taking one thing and artistically putting it in another setting).

Driving back into Michigan, I suddenly realized how immersed in cattails my youth had been and how, having moved to a big city, I no longer live in a world of cattails. (Technically, I do (I haven't left the planet!); but existentially, they don't line the road of the route I take to work.) What do they mean to me? I wonder as I drive past hundreds, hundreds of thousands of them.

From one perspective, what is there to get excited about. What's so that remarkable about cattails? Why was a feeling a certain pang of nostalgia? Is it possible in some weird way, I've been missing cattails?

I pulled off of the road as cars and semis roared by to stand in the swampy, soggy ground just off the expressway to snap these photos for you and while I've isolated one or two in the photos, they're really not that startling: pretty much the same shade of brown, the same sausage shape.

Living in this country, we spent a great deal of time talking about what makes us SPECIAL. Sadly, it is how we place a value on things. We tell ourselves that we give movie stars more money when they are more talented. We tell ourselves that we pay more money for paintings done by "better artists". But this money that we pay is more about what all the cattails agree is of greater collective value.

Your mother and I plan on showing you just how unique you are, how wonderfully talented you are. And you are, you will be.

But I don't want you to only value those things that make you different, I want you to see the cattails too because those are the things that later, as you grow older will surprise you with how FULL your world is!

I want you to imagine yourself a redwinged blackbird, perched on a cattail singing about the beauty of the world. If you're lucky, a breeze may come up and move those cattails and make them look like they're nodding their heads or rustling the dry stalks that sound like applause.

But if there is no breeze, I still want you to celebrate cattails, coz that's what we do as humans, celebrate   and sing the praises of this God-given creation. We're born to praise and pray.

Someday I hope to take you out to the edge of a lake and scan a whole field of cattails. We'll look for redwing blackbirds too. And if we don't see one (a redwinged blackbird, I mean), let's sing about cattails together, shall we?

Cattails: Part 1

Dear Song of a Newborn Star (did I call you that already?)

So, last weekend I was driving back to Michigan for yet another film festival which was being held in East Lansing where I spent two years of college. I'll spare you the frustrating story of the screening and the "awards ceremony" and tell you a different and far more (I hope) interesting story….

The word popped into my head at almost the minute I crossed the state line from Indiana into Michigan: Cattails.

It's not that there aren't cattails in Illinois. It's just that I don't think I have noticed "cattails" in years.

I grew up in a strange middle income suburban enclave among small lakes in a place called Waterford. I say strange enclave, because when my parents first moved us there, our bus route to school took us down a street called Hospital Road which seemed oddly named given the ramshackle mobile homes and farmhouses of families who ran the gamut from small farmer to low income.

Cattails! Cattails grew along the swampy wetlands of these small lakes (which were becoming overgrown and eutrophied by the run off of fertilizers from the well-trimmed lawns). I was always fascinated by cattails which like dandelions transform from one shape and style to a sudden, puffy collection of seeds that will be blown on the wind.

Driving through Michigan with roadsides lined with trees that still clung to their reds, orange and yellow leaves with a kind of a proud modesty, waiting for the chilly autumn winds to pull their fancy clothes away. It suddenly reminded me of summers and autumns I spent in this State.

Nashville

Dear Celestial Sunrise,

Before we leave Nashville, I wanted to post one more picture. It seemed to capture some essential part of the city which I can't quite put my finger on.

The last glimpse of sunset, set against the cloudy sky (is that rain off to the north?) is certainly one thing that drew me to capture this moment on camera. The colors were gorgeous (as I imagine you to be). But there was something about that Kroger sign on the corner, the day-to-day-ness of it (I imagine my own Kroger's, the things I drive or walk by or to.

Depending on the day, do I see the sky or the Kroger sign? What am I looking for?

To say I was standing at a crossroads when I took this picture almost makes me wince with its obviousness and collegiate attempt to be "significantly symbolic" (me at the crossroads of my life, when every moment is its own crossroads). But there's that too.

(What I love about this photo too is how much sky there is!)

Tennessee

Dear Multiplying Miracle,

Another thought I wanted to get down from our trip to Nashville as a scene from an otherwise frustrating Saturday night. In a rather odd (and oddly underattended) award ceremony at the Country Music Museum, we watched the lead singer of the group Arrested Development receive an award for a song they wrote back in the 1990s: Tennessee.

Speech is the singer -- and while I have always enjoyed the song, it was only after hearing him describe  the circumstances under which it was written (after the death of his grandmother and brother) that I came to fully appreciate what a powerful prayer the song is. Perhaps it can serve as a(nother) reminder of the many different ways we can celebrate this life, this gift:

I don't know where I can go
To let these ghosts out of my skull
My grandmas past, my brothers gone
I never at once felt so alone
I know you're supposed to be my steering wheel
Not just my spare tire
But lord I ask you
To be my guiding force and truth
For some strange reason it had to be
He guided me to Tennessee

(Chorus) Take me to another place
Take me to another land
Make me forget all that hurts me
Let me understand your plan

Lord it's obvious we got a relationship
Talkin to each other every night and day
Although you're superior over me
We talk to each other in a friendship way
Then outta nowhere you tell me to break
Outta the country and into more country
Past Dyesburg into Ripley
Where the ghost of childhood haunts me
Walk the roads my forefathers walked
Climbed the trees my forefathers hung from
Ask those trees for all their wisdom
They tell me my ears are so young
Go back to from whence you came
My family tree my family name
For some strange reason it had to be
He guided me to Tennessee.

Lucky ladies

Dear Long Distance Runner,

Your mother has begun to feel your feet as you make your long journey towards us. It's almost exactly three months from now that you're scheduled to arrive. (How strange that we have these time tables so precisely set up as if you're arriving by airplane and we'll be driving to pick you up.)

Exactly one week ago, the three of us were in Nashville and today I write this in a coffeeshop on the outskirts of Grand Rapids on my way to our last film festival for CASS, in East Lansing, the city where I went to college at Michigan State University.

None of that really matters to me at the moment because I've been remiss in posting this photo, because I want to show you how darn lucky you and I are -- what a beautiful woman. You're one lucky, little lady.

signed,
one lucky older guy

Heaven, Earth, and Human (天，地，人）

When I saw this photo, I took out out the window of the airplane as we were coming into Nashville, Tennessee, as I looked at the heavenly light and seeing that light reflected in the water below, I began thinking about the Japanese art of Ikebana. Like other forms of Japanese art (and certain Christian spiritualities) it holds the notion of the Trinity as sacred: Heaven, Earth and Human:

Each flower, represents one of those ideas: Heaven, Earth and Human.
Notice too how the flowers are reflected, just like light, just live eternal love.

Flying with you

My little miracle,

This miracle of flight... to be high above clouds, looking out at the sun and on the earth below... what an astonishing thing! To just be looking out at the curve of the Earth in the distance with the morning sun high above.

Your mother and I are on our way to the International Black Film Festival of Nashville where CASS will be playing -- and you are along for the ride: a miracle beside me, that I can reach out and touch.

Sometimes you need to touch the miracle closest at hand to appreciate the miracle farther away.
Soon enough, you will understand this too. Saint Anselm said that "God is the greatest we can conceive" but I believe God is greater than we can ever possibly conceive -- and that, my dear, is the joy of wonder and what makes a miracle like you such an exquisite pleasure.

Truth and Beauty

One of my favorite sonnets by William Shakespeare is one that pokes fun at how much (in our rush to name or describe something beautiful) we go for the easy, false and flattering comparison. Like the best of Shakespeare's writing, there is a wonderful punchline that is truer than any false comparison, especially when you encounter someone as beautiful as this.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare.