I Am Not Hamlet

"Love receives but does not take what is not given."  --Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J. Why is something so simple so difficult? Why am I so slow to learn?

I came across this formula the other day; you should try it too: take your age, multiply it by 365, subtract the product from 25,000.  Do you know what that number signifies?  That is approximately how much time you have remaining if you live in North America.  I was shocked to see my number in the 8,900 range.  While 8,900 days is rather abstract (it comes out to 24 years years and some change), it is strange to see your life expectancy spelled out in such a specific number.      How much time have I wasted?  How much will I continue to waste?  Now, that number was simply a general outline; I could drop dead today--laid low by an aneurysm or killed in a car crash--or I could live to be 96, no one knows, but still...it serves as a good reminder that no one, NO ONE lives forever this side of death.      I've found myself less enchanted by video and computer games these days, notorious time suckers that they are, an...

Due to negligence on my part, my camera, all attendant equipment, and my iPod were stolen at the end of August.  I've gone through just about the peak of autumn without a camera.  Finally, after much rigamarole, I've got a new camera (I replaced my iPod about a month ago).  It is an upgraded version of my Canon Rebel.      I don't know why I feel naked--perhaps naked isn't the best metaphor--let me say something was missing--without my camera.  I have this need to document scenes and events in my life visually.  This is obviously something ginned up by the camera manufacturers starting with Kodak and Eastman.  Yet, people have expressed themselves visually on caves and rocks for quite some time.  People even had portraits made of themselves through painting, so there's more to it than just consumerism.       I'm just fascinated by the play of light on certain surfaces, or the color of a leaf in mid-autumn....

In reading a brief passage today from The Backyard Beekeeper I had one of those epiphanic moments we all occasionally have. A bee spends the first three days of its life as an egg, about the size of a grain of rice sliced in half, and after that "the egg dissolves, releasing a tiny grublike larva." From there depending on whether it was fertilized or not it becomes a queen (if the workers decide that), a worker, or a drone. Yeah, yeah, to beekeepers this is nothing special. This is what most novice beekeepers learn early on. My question is where does that bee essence come from? Sure, there's the sperm and ovum, that's true for nearly all living things, but think about it--all living things are composites of their forebears. The individual bees, bears, and humans didn't exist before conception--and yet, here they and we are! What a miracle is this! Skip the genetics lecture, I get it; where did we (that's you and me) come from? How is there bee essence and oa...