DOWN HERE ON THE GROUND

As a kid growing up I recall my parents noting that my sister, Susan, had eyes whose color changed with the weather; gray on cloudy days and sky blue when it was sunny. Here, many years later, I have finally accumulated enough evidence of catching “summer colds” with the extreme example described in my last post serving to, like the stubborn mule, knock me in the head to get my attention to the fact that my lungs reflect the weather as fittingly as “Thithter Thusie”’s eyes. The fairly consistent overcast conditions inherent in March winds and April showers seem to have been matched by the congested condition of my breathing apparati whose relief has always been sunny days of summer to bake away the mold.

As I sat in my garden shed this morning as the sun barely peeked through the congested clouds the universal metaphor, “As above, so below,” came to me for the zillionth time in its most powerful expression yet. The closest approach to religion in my life is as, like my father, a deist along with the decidedly non-religious Buddhist precept of being one with everything. So long as the sun can burn away clouds I will find a way to breathe freely.