Sighting Off the Port Bow

Like a good omen, and as predictable as the upcoming Blue Moon, I spied a kolea off to the left this morning as we drove out of the wooded and grassy residential area where they, and I, like to make our homes.  She may have been there the past few days, but it's been rainy and my morning schedule a little disruptive, not conducive to birdwatching.

It lifted my lethargic dog-days spirit a bit to see the returned bird, whose arrival I had expected to herald the final preparations for a trip I'm now not going to take. I suspect the economy and election year anxieties were responsible for my trip planner not being able to sign up enough bodies to make the trip worthwhile.  I could have done it on my own, but planning Plan B became more complicated than the trip itself.  I have been plagued with dreams the past couple weeks of travel, of confused packing, of ambiguous ticketing and conveyances.  Perhaps now they will cease and I can just get back to a normal, post-Labor Day, post full-moon routine existence of work, classes, painting, reading, writing, and the ongoing entertainment of Korean historical drama (a welcome diversion from the election-year yammering).  Somehow the politics would be more interesting if it involved swordplay and not just the yammering.


Vincent Zhao in "The Great Wudang." I'd vote for him.

I've been thinking about "yammering" a lot lately, its meaning being something like what wolves and coyotes do at night, calling to each other or the moon.  A lot of it on forums and blogs, about the meaning of life, morality, purpose, God, gods, wu wei, dao, qi, yammer yammer.  Meditation, by definition, is an escape from the yammering. (Well, so is Korean Drama and travel to foreign places.) The more we talk the less we know; the less we know the more we talk.  I so want to emulate the quiet kolea, coming and going as she will, with sufficient strength and wingspan to escape the howling dogs and prowling cats. 

But everyone wants to talk politics...why the president need/need not be a military man, why abortion is/is not a woman's health issue, why Monsanto is killing us while feeding us, why Islam is/is not a threat, why there are no jobs, why I can't expect to live on social security, why gun control will cause/prevent theatre/school shootings, why Bradley Manning is a traitor/patriot.  Yammer yammer.

I wish I could vote twice; then I could do my civic duty while also cancelling out my own vote. Voting as yammering.