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Lawnmowers in the Sky
I want to talk about the beauty of nature. I want to talk about the sacred beauty of nature. It might sound like a rant but I’m thinking of it more as a lamentation. It starts like this.
I opened up the windows yesterday for the first time this spring. It was almost 70 degrees out, so I asked my caregiver, Mango, to open them up for me. And that's what he did. And right away, a cool, nourishing breeze came into my room and moved through the house, and it had such a luscious, fresh smell. It smelled like real beauty, the kind of beauty that doesn't come in an Amazon box or in some kind of packaging. It's just pure, real, unadulterated beauty.
I slept last night with the windows open. It's the middle of March and I slept with the windows open. I remember waking up at about midnight and I could hear the bars downtown. There was still music going on downtown. I'm about a half mile from it, but I could still hear all the partyin’ going on. And I felt that cool, sacred midnight breeze through my window and it put me back to sleep.
Then I woke up again at about 3am and the bands had stopped playing, but I could still hear an occasional shout. There were still a few late night partiers hanging around. But then that quiet, cool, luscious 3am breeze kept blowing real nicely on my face. It was sweet. That and a half dose of Zzzquil put me back to sleep ‘till the morning. I can feel the breeze right now. I've got the window wide open and it's been a rainy, cloudy day today, but that breeze coming through the house is something special — having gone months without it.
Just so you know, I'm an open windows guy. I don't believe in air-conditioning. My poor daughter growing up. She just wanted to have an air-conditioner in her room. You know, like all the other kids. We had one portable air conditioner that sometimes I'd let her put up in the room, but essentially, her dad was morally opposed to air conditioning. My next door neighbor runs an air-conditioner in the hot months and I just resent the sound of it so much. I sit out on my back porch — my backyard is a natural refuge — and about 50 feet away as “rrrrrrrrrrr.” I don't know if that was such a good imitation, but you get the point. It takes the peace away. It's profane, it's irreverent and it's blasphemous. I realize those are some heavy words, and probably most of you have air conditioners.
I don't want to sound self righteous, but the earth is so beautiful. The silence of nature is so pure, so deep, so profound, so luscious and so endangered. I love the natural sounds of the world. I love the bird song and the breeze through the trees and the quiet — the cool, quiet moon and the warm, silent sun. And I love the loud, majestic crash of a thunderstorm. It's so sacred, it's so holy and it's so… healing.
I could feel it right now. Feel that? My blackout curtains are being thrown around and billowing in the wind. And there goes the door ready to slam shut… (door slams) There it goes. (lol) Oh, wait! I gotta have that open door again to get the nice flow. Hold on… Okay, I'm back.
So, in case you didn't know this, in order to get the real breeze coming through your house, you need to create a cross-breeze. So you need to open up a window on one side of the house and then a window on the other side of the house, so the air has somewhere to come in and it can flow all the way through the house. And then it has to have somewhere to go out.
It reminds me of my grandparents house back in Oak Park on Newland Avenue. My Papa T. and Bestie. Up in the attic, they had this big, huge fan. I remember we'd go into this little bitty attic and there was this huge fan. We could go up there and turn on the fan and open up the attic door and open up the door leading up the stairs and then you open up the front door or some windows downstairs and that huge fan would pull air up from downstairs, up through the house. It was just such a good feeling having that natural air move through the house. That's what I'm experiencing right now. I love it.
You know, I'll never go back to that house on Newland Avenue. I'll never get to go back up to that attic and smell those smells and feel that air. Those are some deep memories—finding refuge on the second floor of my grandparents house with my three sisters, my mom and dad, and that huge fan moving all that fresh air.
So I was talking about the sanctified and the divine sounds of nature, but then comes along the air conditioners and then my nemesis, single engine airplanes. So I've been wanting to tell you about something that's really bothering me. It's been bothering me for a couple years now. I'm really not sure what to do about it. I don't think there is much I can do about it. But for a while now, I've been wanting to do a rant on Facebook or a letter-to-the-editor. But I'm just gonna tell you guys now and get it off my chest. This is my lamentation.
So as I've already said, I love nature and I love quiet. And it's really having this illness that has introduced me to the extent of my love for those things. I've always loved nature and quiet, but I was always too busy to think much about it before. I was running constantly, always looking for the next project. But now more than ever, I love calm and peaceful things. I love trees and water and wind. I love flowers, I love mountains and I love seasons. But I don't love noise pollution and it's a real problem in my neighborhood.
You see, I live in a college town called Kent, Ohio. Maybe you've heard my song, “Kent Ohio. I know that I'm home when I'm Oh in Kent, Ohio, Time keeps rolling and our town keeps growing. Oh my oh in Kent, Ohio.” (lol)
So Kent's a peaceful town and I live in a particularly peaceful neighborhood, except for the single engine planes. See about a mile away in Sto-Kent is the Kent State University airport. Well, back in the years when I was goin’ constantly. I never really noticed it, or maybe the program didn't exist then. But now that I spend all day, every day in quiet time, I hear everything. It seems that at that airport, there's a program for student pilots running training flights in single engine planes all day long, especially on the nicest days of the year when all my windows are open. All day long and even into the evening are these single engine planes coming out of Sto-Kent circling my house. It's obscene. The noise is physically painful. It's like the sound of those slow grind drills at the dentist, not the high pitched ones, but the low, slow grind one, the drill sound that touches your brain in a weird way. It's a real blight on the audible world of my beautiful neighborhood.
Compared to the delicate wild flowers that are growing in my backyard, compared to the whispering winds that are blowing through the oak trees and the pine trees and the maple trees and the chestnut trees, compared to my three wheel scooter that's waiting in the garage for me to move silently around town in all her battery powered quiet beauty, these planes are rude and obnoxious. They sound like war planes and it seems that my house is right on their war path. They come zooming in from the distance with that deep grind and they get louder and louder and then they're at their loudest. Then, as if they've dropped all their bombs on my house, they gradually move off into the distance and get quieter. And then the whole cycle starts all over again about 15 minutes later, when the next plane moves through. It's unbelievable.
I call them the “lawn mowers in the sky.” And I'm not talking about electric lawn mowers. I’m talking about gas-powered, gas-guzzling, noise-polluting all-summer-long lawn mowers. And now I'm on a roll here. Let's talk about lawn mowers for a second. In my opinion, gas powered lawn mowers should be outlawed. It's obscene. (lol) I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Most of you probably have gas powered lawn mowers, but it's just wrong. It's a sacrilege! I mean, come on, it's 2025. Wake up, people! We have the technology. I've got an electric lawn mower, and it's got a nice purr, “bvvvvvv…” as opposed to the obscene, profane, repugnant, loud, obnoxious, gas powered lawn mowers that go on in my neighborhood all summer long while I'm trying to have my quiet time. (lol) Come on, people. What about me!? What about me and my quiet time? No, seriously, what about Mother Earth and her quiet time? That's what I'm talking about.
All right, I gotta slow down. I'm getting too riled up. Yeah, I can't really afford to get riled up about anything. This whole subject brings me back to the fact that I have a highly sensitive nervous system. ME/CFS has gifted me with a highly volatile nervous system that just can't handle much of anything — loud noises, getting riled up about things, even just basic human interactions. So even though it feels good for a minute, and I know I'm right, I can't get riled up about these single engine planes flying around my house. My nervous system can't handle anything but pure calm. Somebody else is going to have to take on the lawn mowers and the planes.
But the reality is no one else cares. They're all too busy. They're running around in their cars, in their loud cars in their busy lives with their windows closed. I'm sorry, (lol) here I go getting all self-righteous and riled up. I'm sorry. All right, let's bring it back to the grand point. The point of this story is lamentation. It's grief, grieving the loss of the natural beauty of quiet. That reminds me.
A couple weeks ago, I told you guys I was watching a show called “Severance.” And it turns out Severance is more than my nervous system could handle. It's a fascinating but nerve wracking show. I watched the season one finale. It was a pretty high stress episode. There was so much going on — this music that would go “boom boom boom boom” and a chase scene and so much intrigue. I started having a very nervous feeling halfway through and rather than stepping away to calm my nervous system, my eyes were stuck on the screen and I watched it all the way through, while my whole nervous system was shaken apart. I had a crash that evening — a devastating, life altering crash. It's just not worth it. It was so fun for just a little while. I love that show. I love those characters, but my nervous system couldn't handle it.
So I've given up the second season of Severance in favor of a live YouTube stream of a pair of American bald eagles raising their two little babies in a nest high above the big bear valley in the San Bernardino mountains of Southern California. Apparently, the nest is about 145 feet up in a Jeffrey pine tree. It's the home of “Jackie” and “Shadow,” the local bald eagle pair. Actually, I've only tuned in twice, but it really had an impact on me.
Just a few days ago, I decided to check in on the birds. And within moments, I just began weeping. It touched me so deeply. I began weeping from the beauty and from my disconnection from the beauty of nature with this illness. They just show this beautiful shot of this incredible nest, I mean, a nest built by the bald eagles and then the mama bird sitting there in the middle, so proud and regal. And off in the distance, you can see this river way down. I mean, this nest is high up in the tree and way down there you can see the river. And I just wept. I wept and I wept and I wept some more. It was all part of my lamentation.
And I guess that's what this all comes around to… is the weeping, the grieving. I think of this post as a kind of crying out to the earth and all the wonders of nature, for beauty lost, the mystical wonder of silence. There's a reason for my weeping. There's a reason for all of our weeping. The quiet, majestic, holy, sacred sounds of nature are in danger… all because we humans think we know what's going to make us happy. Whatever the cost, trying to get more done, get it done faster, get it done bigger, thinking we know the thing that's finally gonna satisfy us.
I think about all the damage I did in my futile search for trying to get what I wanted. You know, I'm no different from those people flying those single engine airplanes around town trying to have a good time. They're just trying to live their lives, trying to enjoy their lives. I'm no different than the people cutting their lawns with the gas powered mowers. I did it for years. In fact, I still own a gas powered leaf blower. Man, that thing is efficient. It gets the job done fast, but it's loud and I miss the old sound of a rake sweepin’ the leaves. “swish, swish, swish.”
Yeah, there's lots of reason to grieve and this is my lamentation. With this highly sensitive nervous system, my brain craves quiet. It craves natural stillness. It craves bird songs and breezes and flowing rivers and bubbling creeks. But I'm no different. I'm no different than all those people making the noise out there just trying to live their lives. I just get to see the insanity of it all, lying here in this bed. Everyone's moving so fast.
But the earth is so resilient, isn’t she? Spring after Spring, she keeps bouncing back. I haven’t seen ‘em yet, but I keep hearin’ about the daffodils and the primrose. Maybe today is just another day for praise and thanksgiving. Let’s raise up the windows. Let’s swing open the doors. Let’s shout songs of love and forgiveness to the single engine planes flying overhead. Yeah. We can circle up and bow our heads to the beauty — the beauty that never gives up… never gives in.
“rrrrrrrrrr” Here come the planes. Here come the planes. (lol)
Ahh… I think that'll be it for today. “Lawn Mowers in the Sky, a Lamentation.” Go out and enjoy some beauty. Go out enjoy some beauty today. Breathe that fresh air and listen to the breeze through the trees. Thanks so much for stopping by. Thanks so much for listening. It means a lot to me.
All right. Have a good day. Have a good week. Remember… you've got a body. Go live in it. Enjoy living in it. Enjoy the breathing and the eating and the being. Alright everybody. I'm going to bed. Have a good night. See you next time. Bye bye.
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