Purpose
As I sit on any given morning, pondering what is on my mind at the moment, I often use visual cues to spur me on. Since I have lately been writing in the morning at my office desk, I can choose to examine the things around me in the office, things that are by design filled with memories and imbedded aspects of my life that cause me to reflect. Every picture may tell a story, according to Rod Stewart, but every object tells an even greater story to me, and now that I have consolidated my memorabilia from my several homes and placed them around me in my office, I have an almost limitless source for inspiration whenever I need it. But as I have also explained, my desk is in an alcove with windows to the west, the east and to the north. Neck flexibility in an aging person is such that one must really want to look left or right to do so and looking straight ahead is simply so much easier and natural. This morning I am focused on the window before me so let me describe what I see and go from there.
To begin with, I love the western big sky. I don’t know why it seems big out here but it just does, and I love that visual. I very much like clouds and sky, not because they are somehow heavenly and ethereal, but because they are ever-changing and subtle, with sneak peeks of what is to come in the day and portend of trouble on the horizon. Two thirds of my window is filled with sky, which feels right. After two unusually stormy days and overcast skies, today is a clearing day with clouds still very much in evidence, but looking more benign than threatening. The sunrise to the east reflects off their tops and is set against the pale blue sky while the cloud bellies are still grey and holding more moisture than is usual for this dry area. The sky feels just right this morning with just enough transition and both plenty of hope for sunshine and just a hint of rain.
The hillside before me is sparsely inhabited. This is not a commentary on any rural nature of the place, but just a reality of the topography, which is heavily dominated by large boulders presumably coughed up in some long-past volcanic period and left littered on the hillside to become even more prominent through natural wind and rain erosion over the millennia. The boulders offer interesting features for building amongst, but I think it fair to suggest that the cost of dealing with such large and imposing impediments of granite are a deterrent to the Southern California cost-conscious builders who are looking to flip housing for profit. I am reminded of my trip to Croatia in 2013. I called it our Dalmation Coast Ride, misspelling Dalmatian. The eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea is the area of the world called The Balkans, after the Balkan Mountains that dominate what is called a peninsula bounded by the Adriatic, the Aegean and the Black Seas. It is more of a land mass than a peninsula per se, but who am I to question the Roman and Austro-Hungarian Empires and their naming protocols. The point is that the Dalmatian Coast gets its name for that part of The Balkans where the local tribe was called the Dalmatae. When most of us hear the word Dalmatian, we naturally think of Cruella De Vil and her herd (101 to be exact) of black and white spotted dogs. The dog gets its name from the coastline, as I learned in 2013, because the coast looks spotted from the sea, those spots the cause of the boulders interspersed with greenery. As I star out my window, I see the same topography as one sees on the Dalmatian Coast, a hillside spotted with green and tan.
In today’s modern age, hilltops are place where two things happen. First, there is the tendency for people to place castles on top to maximize views and a sense of dominance over nature and the others around them. On those hilltops what are a bit more difficult or remote, there is a tendency to populate them with water towers to take full advantage of gravity and cell towers, looking like regimented trees, to take advantage of clear sight lines both skyward and to maximum longitudinal coverage. There is an attempt to conceal these utilities, but they remain a feature of the skyline nonetheless.
The center stage of my window landscape are two houses that are set so closely that they almost appear overlapping on one particular outcropping of rock. They are probably 500 yards from me (Google Maps tells me it is 440 yards). One is a classic low-profile Mexican style with ochre stucco walls and a red/brown tile roof that matches the surroundings and history of the area. The one that overlays that to the west is a white, modern structure with a slightly cockeyed flat roof and black trim that looks very much out of place and questionably designed. In a seismic event (which we luckily are not prone to on this hilltop based on the absence of fault lines below us), the White House looks like it would slide down the hill, while the Mexican house would stay right where it is. I know for a fact that there is a great deal of animosity between the homeowners with the Mexican homeowner (Lindy) feeling that she has been put-upon by an insensitive and unneighborly interloper (Bob). The modern homeowner is a contractor who built the strange structure himself and doesn’t seem bothered that he has turned the cul de sac on which they sit into a permanent construction site with medium heavy equipment and cars strewn everywhere. I’m sure he feels that if she had wanted privacy, the Mexican homeowner should have bought the lot on which he now perches. With all the wide open spaces out here, it is amazing that people can’t seem to keep their distance from one another.
That brings me to my theme for this morning. What is our purpose on this earth? Boom, how’s that for a thoughtful transition? Some would say that its to get the most out of life we can and advance our species in its dominance of its surroundings. Others would say that it is to be sustainable and find a way to coexist with our surroundings and to help one another and nature be as content as they can be. And, of course, there is the story of the world we have always and probably will always live in, right in my window. There are those that want to help one another and get along and those who want the freedom to do as they damn well please. I am sure that we all have elements of both in our psyche, but they do tend to show themselves in one direction or another whether we intend that or not. I am sure that Lindy wishes Bob had never darkened her door (literally), and I’ll bet Bob thinks Lindy is a bit of a whiner and that he has the right to do as he pleases to make himself happy. I don’t know enough about either of them to know where truth resides or if there even is a truth worth pursuing in this case. I just wish Lindy could have anticipated her desires for her hilltop better and that Bob could have altered his manifest destiny by 100 yards to be a better neighbor.
That leaves me to my purpose in life, which seems to be to observe and comment whether helpful or harmful. Luckily, I doubt Lindy or Bob will ever read my story, so like the tree that falls in the lonely forrest, my purpose falls, as is so often the case for mankind, on deaf ears.