Category: Short Essays Page 5 of 14

Cutter is a form of interruption. Space is interrupted by objects. It can be as large as a building that blocks the sun and view. It can be small, like a living room loaded with collections on shelves, floor, and furniture

Reactions to clutter can run from like, tolerate, and abhor. I fall somewhere between tolerate and abhor. If it’s my clutter, like. Others clutter – abhor. Clutter is stuff you think you need, you want, you can’t part with. As soon as I step across the threshold and encounter a cluttered room, I form an opinion and I don’t feel comfortable.

Beaches, forests, lakes, mountains, hills, and meadows are clutter escape hatches. To to one of these places is to reorder mental clutter. After an uncluttered experience and return to a cluttered environment, the person might ask themselves…”Why do I keep all this stuff?” Garage sales are held so they people selling old stuff can buy new stuff. Or they may be moving and say. “How did I accumulate all this stuff?” if it was a gift, it is nice to show respect by keeping it.

I’ve seen photos of minimalist living quarters. The walls are bare. There is hardly furniture…maybe a chair and table. The people who live in this kind of environment chose to stay clear of the task of taking care of their stuff, protecting it, and eventually, finding room for more. They maximize calm and they see what’s not there. Empty is the new full.

Here’s an example. I volunteered to help set up hundreds of books for a used book sale. Eventually the room was packed with table after table of books. After just a few minutes, I stopped searching for a title I’d like. I had to leave. It’s easy to become overwhelmed. I needed balance. Outdoors, less clutter, mind clears. I drove to a pier on the bay and parked. I saw the horizon. This alone relieved my stress. Open space is necessary for everyone. What is there is not there…space, minimal information. This is the kind of place we all need from time to time. Nature is relevant, intelligent, and related. We experience networks of ecological connection.

Seeing nature is a holistic experience, a bigger picture experience. You are not closed in by walls. There are no boundaries. Nature is not cluttered. We all need “not there” experiences, away from job, house, neighborhood, traffic,and away from our monkey minds that jump and sway from tree to tree.

Where can you go to get away from busy, from speed, and noise, what’s not there is the there we need to find.

The Center for Environmental Education and Discovery has launched a groundbreaking effort to establish an education center in Bellport.  After three years of hard work, the board of directors has earned the key to a large building where future programs will be conducted.

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Petite wavelets sweep a north shore beach. I have come to Long Beach on Stony Brook Harbor, to experience early morning calmness in summer;  to listen to the cadence of tiny breakers that curl and fall onto wet sand at the edge of a placid Long Island Sound.

The surface of the Sound is glass. High tide has me walking right along this edge because the upper beach consists of pebbles. Walking on pebbles is hard. It might be compared to walking on millions upon millions of solid, metal pin balls. I want solid footing. Only the strip of wet sand at the very edges allows me to do this.

The slush part of the beach goes right up to the bluff. Tidal surge eats at the base of north shore bluffs and erodes it. The pebbles stay, the silt and clay are carried off into the sound.

I wasn’t expecting such astounding beauty. The scene is sky, water, and a thin strip of Connecticut on the north horizon. I wanted nothing to change. I stood quietly knowing that everything changes. The sun’s ascent changes the light and washes out what find textured details I am now seeing. I am thoughtless because this place has emptied me. I have lost the manic pace of Long Island life. The tacit lap of wavelets are like the second clicks on the stopwatch on the TV show 60 Minutes. This is Earth meditating. I feel my pulse. My heartbeat and wavelets are in tune. I am reminded that all of us  are part of a much bigger picture.

The sky is clear. There are no boats, no gulls, and no other people. Thousands of slipper shells lay at my feet. There is a boulder about 50 feet off shore whose tip is just above water with just enough space for a gull to perch. I slowly see the tide ebb as the wet edge of the boulder grows. It has its own world. Periwinkles, rock weed, mussels, and small crabs live in community on its surface. It boulder looks like a surfacing gray whale. The bluff is bare. Up top, a tree trunk is perched having fallen curing a strong hide tidal eroding event that took away just enough topsoil to undermine the tree so it fell. Beach grass grows at the base of the bluff. Every scene I see flows. And all during the time I’ve spent so far, wavelets rise, curl, fall, and sweep.

There is no need to walk. Instead, I sit on a log and run my hands through sand. It is getting brighter. I have lost track of time. I am not waiting. I am completely absorbed. A ring-billed gull has landed on the boulder. The wind has picked up. At once, the Sound takes on a different tone. A patch of wind comes in contact with the water. The surface becomes a chameleon. The water surface whirls and moves with textural changes every minute.  All the while I hear louder lap, lap, wish, wish. The sound of the sound speaks to me. The sun has overexposed everything. It’s getting hot. I walk back to the car, out of a church, having had a spiritual connection with…

A sacred place.

Where is it? In your ditty drawer, closet, attic, garage, trash? Aha. The garbage truck swings by because you hear it’s growl, a guy in an orange vest jumps off, grabs the can, dumps it, and crashes the can back on the curb of your house. The truck drives down the street until it turns left and it’s gone. So is your garbage. Wait, I see that truck way up there on top of that hill. I see it dumping, my garbage is on top of the hill. Is that the end of the line?

I flush and everything goes someplace; down the pipe under the toilet; makes a right turn down a larger pipe; connects up with a concrete pipe under the street; into a bigger pipe, then an even bigger pipe until…yes. It ends up at the sewage treatment plant. Then where? Or in a cesspool. Then where?

At the edge of a parking lot at the train station, someone rushes to catch their train. Oops, an empty cigarette pack falls on the ground. Don’t want to miss the train, runs, cigarette pack sits there hoping that person will not forget and will pick it up on his way to the car.

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I bought a house on Mill Road in Manorville in 2000 having divorced after family life in Smithtown. Before I bought the house, I dreamed of creating a place where friends and other could visit and feel peaceful, and hospitality. I was looking for a synapse  –  the space between two nerve endings. I moved in on my 60^th birthday with the help of some friends. Thus began a decade of life in the core area of the New York State Pine Barrens Preserve. As a naturalist, my acre of land turned out to be perfect. About 2/3 rds of the property is open meadow. I had a neighbor to the west, and several hundreds of acres on the east and north, the Peconic River runs east west within a 15 minute walk to the north. The LIRR tracks are just east of the house. Four times a day, the warning bell and gate lower as a train passes. Aside from this sound, motorcycles  roared by mostly on the weekends.  Mill road is 7 miles long to the east. My house was 7 miles from four settlements Riverhead to the east; Center Moriches to the South; Yaphank to the West; and Wading River to the North.

I kept a journal during the time I lived there. After 17 years, I’ve begun to read the almost day by day life I lived there. I wrote poems and essays. I had many guests. I hired Dave, a former student, to help me renovate the house. It was built in 1958.  Covered with asbestos shingles, very old insulation, roof needs replacement; a kitchen and bathroom that needed renovation; and floors, and windows and on and on.

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