Mistakes, Not Mistakes

I sat under a lodgepole tree and gave consideration to my life.  What might I consider as my mistakes?   What events and decisions were not mistakes?

I thought long, sitting there under the tree.

Of immediate contemplation.  What about resting my forearm against the muffler of a chainsaw I had just shut-down after swinging it like a screaming sword to whack a pile of branches into pieces?

The result a burn.  That: MISTAKE.

But what beyond that?

Marrying a Vietnamese refugee: NOT A MISTAKE.

Trying to adjust the carburetor on my 1964 my Ford Mustang: MISTAKE.

Career as an electrician: NOT A MISTAKE.

Sitting next to the French woman while on the Li River tour boat in Southern China: MISTAKE

Taking some kind of camera everywhere I go: NOT A MISTAKE.

Not taking photographs of people: MISTAKE.

Learning to juggle: NOT A MISTAKE.

Stomping on ants: MISTAKE.

Stomping around the dance floor: NOT A MISTAKE.

Buying potato chips: MISTAKE.

Learning to tie my own shoes: NOT A MISTAKE.

Trying to find value in silence: MISTAKE.

Catching the first pink light of day: NOT A MISTAKE.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Forgetting Stones

Sometimes, when I am troubled and my mind is filled with stocky little construction workers jackhammering at my emotions, I will leave the front door of my house and walk into the hills directly surrounding.

Yesterday found me so distressed.  A friend’s father gone early in the morning.  My own struggles to pin-down a more exact form of happiness.  At the highest sun, I exited my house and wandered eastward into the now dry hills. Most of these hills are comprised of diluvium from flooding that marked the end of the last ice age some ten-thousand years ago.

Not far into the hills, I came across a shoulder of earth where a variety of stones have pushed themselves up through the loam and grasses.

Beautiful stones.  Some finely polished by ancient waters.  Rough fists of schist.   Opaque stones.  Stones marbled-through with festive colors.  Deep red stones.  Deep blue stones.  Shales.  Quartz.  Stones with stripes.  Striking unknowns.

Soon, I found myself taking up stones to examine them.  I burnished a few with my fingers and palms.  I licked some to wet them and announce deeper colors.  I scrubbed smaller specimens against the shirt on my chest.  I nudged at half-buried rocks with my feet.  I carefully replaced stones—exactly as I found them—if they did not fully send me.

Each stone a pretty and complete thing in itself.  Their exact places of origin a wonderful mystery to me.

Within a half hour, my mind became a quiet place.

I filled my pockets filled with the forgetting stones.

After something over an hour spent crisscrossing the shoulder of earth, I returned home heavier in stone but lighter in mind.

—Mitchell Hegman

Grasshoppers

I am not going to call the immediate area around my house “my yard.”   It’s not a yard in any normal sense.  And, in spite of what a few of my friends say, my yard is not filled with weeds.

My yard is native xeriscape.  I have attempted to emulate (if not fully join with) the landscape surrounding.

Sure, I have a couple fancy purple flowers near the deck.  I have a linden tree in front.  But the rest is unirrigated blue grama grass, needle and thread, native gayfeather, sagebrush, rabbitbrush, and juniper.

This year, the surround is also, as my father used to say, “lousy” with grasshoppers.

Zillions of hoppers.

I give you that grasshoppers are interesting in a general sense because their ears on their bellies.  I mean, try to imagine what someone you know would look like if their ears were on their belly.  Maybe your favorite actor.

Weird.

Red-winged grasshoppers are cool because, well, their wings are red.  And I even somewhat admire the jazzy kind of hopper that clicks as if flies.

At this point, however, I am overrun.  Grasshoppers cling to the side my house, hunch on the planks of my deck, fly in and tumble across my concrete drive.  If I dare walk in the now dry grass, a dozen hopper will launch out ahead of me with each step—as if at each footfall I am tripping catapults.

One remarkable aspect of the heavy grasshopper population is how the bluebirds have reacted.  For the past week, twenty to thirty bluebirds have gathered around my house all at once early in the mornings, to gorge on the hoppers.

The bluebirds, hover above the grass, drop to the ground, flourish, pirouette in midair, perch on my rain gutters, and fling themselves at the hoppers at every opportunity.

I have taken to sitting outside with my coffee to watch the bluebirds.

Nature at work.

Coffee.       

—Mitchell Hegman

Misinformed

I have never allowed being misinformed to slow me down.  This is how I ended up with investments that went upside down.  On the other hand, this is also how I galloped into the assignment of building the house in which I presently sit writing this.

—Mitchell Hegman

Men in Control of Their Own Destiny

Men convinced they are in complete control of their own destiny either spend their time attempting to control the destiny of others or they flail about in their personal life, seeking an ideal that does not exist, ending up with a string of feral relationships and drug dependencies.

—Mitchell Hegman

Updated List of Things that Make no Sense

Children Choosing Between Parents

Sneezing

Heated Towel Drawers

Owning More Than One Ball Peen Hammer

Ink Pens with Erasers

Flightless Birds

Wood Ticks

—Mitchell Hegman

Farewell Transmission

Today I am posting another song.  I had hoped to find a version of this particular cover with lyrics, but I could not locate one.

I find both the music and lyrics lush and deeply haunting.  The original writer of the song, Jason Molina, died at the age of 39 from organ failure attributed to alcohol-abuse.

Though the song is fairly long, I urge you to close your eyes and listen to the lyrics.

—Mitchell Hegman

Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acYkDTiQMRQ