Friday, May 24, 2019

Finding the Magic in the World



If you watched the game last night, didn’t it seem like the refs were calling fouls on the Bucks for just regular defensive playing? Conversely, they weren’t calling fouls on the Raptors for pushing Giannis down and tripping him and scratching his face till it bled. The Raptors probably wanted the fouls, because he was not shooting very well from the line. The thing is, I feel like Giannis is a big puppy who has been happily playing in relative obscurity, but now that he is in the spotlight, the haters have come out and caught him totally off-guard. I feel worse for him about that than just for losing. They haven’t lost the series yet, but it seems like he can’t get past all the vitriol being hurled at him. Why are people doing this to him? Jealousy, I guess. Being old enough to have borne him, I feel a maternal concern for him, so last night I sent him a tweet: “Ignore the haters – you are still the greatest!” Because he is.

When I was very young, barely an adult, and living in the Basque area of Spain for a summer, the coffee there was so wonderful that I drank it all the time. On the flight back to the US, we transferred from Iberia to Delta or something, some American airline, and I took one sip of their coffee and remembered why I never drank it here. The Basque girl who came back with me took one sip, spit it out, and cried, “What is this poop?” (Not the actual word she used.) I said, “Welcome to America, Arantxa.” But fortunately those days are in the past, and now you can find actual good coffee all over the US of A. I am still a little surprised that the very best seems to be in Nashville at the Johnny Cash Museum, but I enjoyed my mug full of A Brew Named Sue this morning and thought how great it is to have wonderful coffee at home. We just finished up the bag of Folsom Prison Brew, and I think A Brew Named Sue is even tastier.

My smart phone is so smart that it is scaring me. It compiles some of my photos into slide shows, like “Hiking at Such-and-Such State Park on a Particular Date,” and for some reason it made one for June 9 last year, which was just a day when Travalon and I went boating, but we were wearing the matching tie-dyed shirts I had made. Maybe artificial intelligence likes tie-dye? I mean, how are these compiled? It made a really good slide show of our trip back in March, and then it had one called “The Best of the Last Two Months.” Apparently the best of the last two months was Cuba and Olbrich Gardens. I thought about that, and the thing is those two days were magical. I really enjoyed Florida and the Bahamas, but they weren’t magical like Cuba, and that day in Olbrich with Tiffy was perfect: just overcast enough to be evocative, and all the flowers were gorgeous and smelled wonderful. But what is “magical”? When I was a child, now and then I would meet an adult or older teen who seemed to make everything magical, and I wanted to be that person when I grew up. To my delight, I seemed to be for some children years ago, but they are all Millennial adults now who seem to find me okay but nothing too special. Then I thought maybe the magic is showing someone the wonder in the world, and of course an adult can do that more easily for a child than for another adult. So what is the magic in the world? I think it must be a reflection of the Divine, so when I feel it now, I must be really sensing God’s presence in the world. No wonder it seems so beautiful, and why I wanted to be that guide for other people: I was helping them see the Divine! What could be more amazing than that? So then the question becomes: does my smart phone sense the Divine?

Famous Hat

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