Things are a bit on the weird side these days, what with Covid-19 restrictions, and now big fires north of us, with evacuations spreading our way. It probably won't get here, but it gives one pause, and reasons to write.

Ecocentrism has been on my mind of late, looking at the work of folks such as Joe Grey and a few others who are keeping the flame alive. It seems like the pandemic and now the fires would encourage others to give a think about our relationship with the natural and how the way humans live is so out of step with the way the natural world works.

But then, one would have to think, wouldn't one?

Anyway, stop in at Searching for Balance and The Way of Nature for the continuing saga.

Well, I've got the reading part down pat. I've been pouring through books on Quantum physics and implications for interconnections in the macro world. Pretty fascinating stuff, but, so far, hasn't lead to much writing.

I've been gathering this stuff in my blog The Way of Nature, where I'm searching for a Way for our time and place, a compilation of te many philosophies that I've come to know over time.

Oddly enough, this all goes along with quantum physics, which demonstrates that what we think of as "The Universe" is actually Universes, and what we think of as discrete physical things, separated from every other things, from quarks to galaxies, are interconnected and indistinguishable one from another. When one plucks a flower, one really does trouble a star.

This, of course, is totally incompatible with the macro world we experience in the here and now, the world of cause and effect. Even so, it's more real than my fingers on this keyboard and the scintillating electrons that appear on the screen before me.

Yes, it's weird, and it's life.

Writing takes reading, just as a pump needs priming to keep it flowing and efficient, keep the algae from building up, keep the leathers moist and flexible.

To that end, I've embarked on rereading all of Ed Abbey's writings, at least those on my bookshelves and in electronic files on my computer. It's been an interesting project, a dip into the past, a return to the deep well of inspiration. I've found that I write best in reaction to something I've read, or, at best, to something I've observed that strikes a cord. I think this is why I'm much better at faction than fiction.

In the process, I've been reorganizing my piles of electronic correspondence from various web sites, discussion lists and email communications. It's fun and often surprising. Did I write that?!

I'll be adding some these electronic scribblings here on Words Arranged, as I extricate them from their electronic boxes and display them in all their scintillating reality, if anything on the Internet is real.

I'll also be putting up new pages of links to Abbey's web presence, including some contemporary discussions about Ed and his writing on Facebook and other sources.

Onward!

It's November here on the Central Coast and last night we welcomed our first significant rain of this season. Yes, welcomed. One can only take so much sun and blue skies.

The words haven't been flowing much of late, as distractions and procrastination are handy excuses for ignoring the muse. I've been concentrating on environmental missives to our so-called representatives in local government, plus inexhaustable  genealogical research. And then there's daily walks, cloud counting and wildlife appreciation that must be curated and filed.

I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein once again, for the umpteenth time. Always something new to grok in fullness in this book. This is the original version as Heinlein wrote it. It was subsequently edited down for publication. Heinlein's daughter republished the original manuscript, which contains extensive passages that didn't appear in the first publication. I recognize several phrases that I have adopted and forgotten where they came from!

When James Michener was working on Alaska at Sheldon Jackson College, he told me he was more of a researcher than a novelist. He found turning the historical and natural history materials into epic prose a hard and onerous task. I understand that feeling. I love the research and I find fiction writing difficult and tedious. I suspect I've never been much of story teller.

Every now and then, The Muse grabs me by the wrist  and drags me to this poor defenseless keyboard, to pound away the thoughts that wake me up at four in the morning. The words flow onto the screen unforced and natural. It feels good. But then, what to do with them? Haven't worked that out yet.

Meanwhile, it's easier to sit here and create on a grey and drizzly day. Maybe I'll get something put together after all.

​Stay tuned, and stay dry.

    I might as well write something...
​
​    Lately, my thoughts increasingly turn to bioregionalism as the only sane response to a human world gone mad.

    Somewhere back up the road we came in on, the human species took a wrong turn. There's no signposts on this road, so it's not surprising, but unsettling nonetheless.

    We turned our backs on the world of Life on the planet and strode smartly off in a different direction, ignoring our inseparable ties with the world we attempted to leave behind.

    Little did we know that this path we are on is not a series of separate roads but a network, a web, a system of roads that intersect wildly, go their own ways, then wind ineluctably back together. The road from a flower to a star is complex but tight. It cannot be severed. It cannot be ignored. It is part and parcel of our entire being on this planet.

    So the trick is, then, to figure out how to live as human beings on this planet of life without laying waste to the neighborhood and the neighbors and still find some sort of satisfaction in our own lives.

It seems like this should be easily achieved, and yet, we never arrive. There's always something and/or someone who draws us from the path, who throws obstacles at our feet, who pulls our eyes up from the mud and focuses them on a distant horizon that we can never reach.

    This is my quest, no matter how hopeless, for the rest of my life.