Point of View: Sweet Dreams

Steep slated parapets with sheer drops into penumbral darkness, cars speeding in reverse downhill that I cannot stop, paddling up a creek on a skinny oar, and running through rooms in other people’s houses or apartments have been the stuff of my dreams of late.

And then I wake up and see Mary and all is well.

I had been reading a book on “Fear” by Thich Nhat Hanh, and that may have something to do with it. He speaks of “interbeing,” and of the miracle that occurs when you mindfully breathe in and out, but it’s hard, I think, for an American programmed to strain and strive and to always be on the go to get accustomed to it.

Peter Matthiessen said we were awake perhaps five minutes a day. I wonder if it’s even that much. Just imagine if we were to be awake twice as long, say 10 minutes a day — how much more at peace we’d be with ourselves, and, concomitantly, with others. Fifteen, 20 minutes a day, and — assuming we could get most everyone to sit still for that long — there’d be world peace! Well, maybe only within the town boundaries — excluding Springs, of course.

A letter writer said this week if the bypass problem were solved by way of railroad right-of-way lanes and exits here and there no one would have anything more to complain about. Not to worry, sir. Not to worry. Contention is the name of the game here — forget the mutuality of opposites. It’s all one — all one big pissing contest by and large, and, as one who benefits, although to a somewhat paltry degree, from this unrest, I say, complain away, complain away. . . . Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself, I contain platitudes.

Want to clean up our estuaries? Condemn riparian properties. Want to solve the traffic problem? Build an El. Want to solve the deer problem? Airlift them to Deer Park. Want to solve helicopter noise once that’s done? Send in the drones. Want transparency? Wash your windshield.

There, I feel better. But I am mindful, even though in your heart you know I’m right, that, as Lord Palmerston famously said . . . no, no, it was Gladstone: “To be engaged in opposing wrong affords but a slender guarantee of being right.”

And so to bed. Sweet dreams.