Fiddling

I’d like to say I’m fit as a fiddle, but it’s probably more accurate to admit I’ve been spending a lot of time lately just fiddling around, sometimes accompanied by fiddling-good music.

The music part, at least, began with Tracy Scott Silverman’s Trip to the Sun a CD I nearly got addicted to after checking it out of the library. Silverman’s mournful, strangely uplifting version of George Harrison’s Here Comes the Sun had me hooked the moment I listened to it. I found myself in my den listening repeatedly to the CD rather than to the tweeting, chirping, and cawing I’d recently become so fond of.

After my next trip to the library in search of bagpipe music, I found myself listening to Mason Darling’s The Secret of Roan Inish, music that relies heavily on fiddles for its ambiance. Somehow fiddles seems to match me present mood.

Some may accuse me of fiddling while My Country, ‘Tis of Republican burns, or drowns, but I don’t see how anything I could do will change that. Other than firing off an occasional email to my representatives or Senators, who already lean much further to the left than the nation as a whole, it’s hard to see how much more I can do for now.

I suspect neighbors may well wonder if I’ve “lost it” —though more likely they never thought I “had it” —when they see me sitting on the front porch with a 400mm telephoto lens for thirty to sixty minutes at a time watching male hummingbirds fight over who owns my, or Leslie’s, garden. While I apparently don’t have the reflexes necessary to actually capture their mid-air battles , it’s still amusing to watch each admiring his temporary domain after a skirmish:

I’d much rather watch hummingbirds fight over who owns the front garden than watch politicians fight over who’s to blame in New Orleans, when the answer’s obviously “Yes” or listen to arguments for Intelligent Design by people who obviously aren’t. While it’s nice to know that fundamentalists seem to be finally conceding that dinosaurs existed, they are now insisting that they occupied the Garden of Eden with Adam and, later, Eve. I suppose in the next part of their argument they’ll suggest that Noah simply didn’t have room on the ark for Tyrannosaurus Rex and his buddies.

Probably more ant than grasshopper by nature, I still find myself fiddling, enjoying the moment, building energy for a time when more effort will be needed.

For now, I be doin what needs to be doin, naught much more.

Fiddlin’ around, that’s what I be doing.

4 thoughts on “Fiddling”

  1. Loren, I’m in the exact same spot as you, politically speaking. I spend my days paralyzed by disbelief, horror, semi-despair, occasionally really despair. And like you, I await the moment when it once again begins to appear that my energies are wanted or could have even a slight effect.

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