The past quickly becomes a dream at best and worst–Dubai Dreamland.
Well, while I was dreaming about walking distance green and blue in local parks…
How does that shopping work if you don’t want to get into your car every day?
And what if I have to be driving through a neighbourhood and need to shop?
Dubai urbanification–this is the Coastal Zone. In fact, it is the heart of a growing 200km long megalopolis connecting Ras al Kaimah in the north to Abu Dhabi in the south. And it was once…Empty Quarter.
The serviceable part of a lot of those hi-rise apartment neighbourhoods is that ground floor has retail space. I don’t want to turn this into some kind of planners manifesto; but if you must live in an apartment building, it is hugely practical to have retail on the ground floor of hi-rise–especially if your goal is to reduce numbers of local auto trips.
At 600 meters above sea level, early May in the Bernese Highlands, grassland pastures are full with first wild flowers. Imagine in the air, the fragrance of fresh green pasture spring.
I like to share things about plants, gardens and landscape. Things that can enliven and inspire.
But this set of photos is only about sharing perception in what I think of as teaching.
Every day I have mountains in my face. These photos how some of them. In particular, these photos tell a story that is quite visually apparent in early spring.
Here are the stories or rather the lessons learned:
Spring comes earlier at lower elevations than higher elevations.
Higher elevations have conifer only forests. Lower elevations have deciduous only forests. The two forest types merge in the middle elevations.
And the last image is a close up of the glorious electric lime green at this stage of spring growth.
Notice the green grasses in the lower elevations. Compare it to the brown yellow grasses at the higher elevations.
Darker green forest trees are conifers. Spring green forests are deciduous.
Electric lime green spring foliage on a mixture of deciduous trees.
I had to write this. Stroke is more common than many realize. This may be helpful to those for the first time encountering stroke affected close friends and loved ones.
Just about a year ago, I was visiting a nice park in Paris. It was a quiet Sunday morning. Roses and irises were in full bloom. The day was clear. The sun, getting higher, was bright and warm. There were plenty of public benches in the park. All the benches were empty. I looked for one in the shade with a good view over the gardens.
I sat down and immediately felt very tired. I then felt strangely obliged to do what my normal public bench common sense would never allow—lean over and lie down, using my day pack as a pillow. Everything went dark. After some unknown amount of time, I heard voices; but I couldn’t see anything. Still all dark—like my eyes were shut tight. I couldn’t open them. That’s how I remember it. But I could hear more and more voices, the voices of families that I figured had started visiting the park.
Well, that was the stroke onset. Making a long uncomfortable story shorter, I was then three weeks in an emergency ward of a Parisian hospital. Lots of strange stuff. But here is the quick and dirty. Couldn’t write, couldn’t walk, couldn’t swallow. Feeding tube in the nose, IV in hand, arm, everywhere, you know the ‘find the vein’ hospital drill. Nurses firmly reminding me ‘ne bougez pas’, like I had a choice. Fortunately, I knew French. That brain skill remained. I could not move in the bed. No toilet. No cleaning. The nurses did everything for me. I had time and capacity to think.
‘Was this mypeak recovery? Is this the rest of my life? Will I ever leave the hospital? Will I ever see my family? Will I ever walk again? Will I ever be able to feed myself? Will I ever be able to clean myself?’ That was some depressing sh*t.
So one year later, aftera lot of will power, therapy and the gracious help of family, therapists, nurses and staff, I am walking in my own neighborhood with my family. I am writing, eating and cleaning myself in what I tell myself is d*mn near a normal life. Every case is different, I am told; but this post is about hope and continually taking one small step at a time.
On a walk this week, I took these three Spring photos to depict the hope and glory and reality of the human condition.
Will every flower that’s happy please stretch out your petals toward the sun?
Who can’t feel the beautiful richness of the season?
The remnants of this tree, as it becomes repurposed by other natural elements, remind me of the struggles of every human, having gone through three score and ten. No one gets out without giving up some, without losing some. But in the end, even in the remnants can be found a certain beauty.
Had to catch a bus today. Once a week I have therapy and I get there by bus. Well, on the way…it is mid-March in the Berner Oberlands and March came in like a lion with Russian wind and cold from Siberia. The first two weeks felt the harsh results.
But this morning, on my way to catch the bus, I saw the promise of spring realized. I had to stop and photograph.
Is today the day? For sure.
And even I was still 10 minutes early for a bus that is always on time. Temperature had risen above 50 degree fahrenheit. Mild for mid-March. I sat down and took one more photo before the bus.
Deep breath of fresh water lake air. No chill. Yes, spring.
I have had a difficult time writing this. Not only because it is personal, but because it is also unsettling, unique, even frightening. Some of you may be aware that I suffered a stroke just about a year ago. Lots of people suffer strokes. I have been fortunate in my rehabilitation. I can talk. I can walk. I can write. I can take care of myself. These were not the case in the first three weeks following the stroke. So let me say to all my medical support, nurses and therapists thank you very much. Now, it is just me and the daily mental battle of rehab vs retrogression. No big deal. Humans seem to need battles to excel, to live. Strange as it seems.
For me, it is the first three weeks that perplex me, that put me into some kind of twilight zone between dreams and real life. It had been signed off at the time as stroke induced dreams but they came in such volume, in such intensity, with such fear. Then a couple days after a full night dream wherein I had violently struggled to free myself from entrapment, I noticed an horrendous bruise on my thigh at a place that could have easily occurred in my dream, so I had to ask myself dream or real life? And if it was real life why do I not recall my activities that night? I only recall the ‘dream’ and that ‘dream’ did not occur in the hospital.
Because of these uncertainties, I feel obliged to recall them in detail. Those ‘dreams’ in detail will become a series of short stories, if I have the fortitude to work through them. Fortitude? Well, since the stroke, one of the lingering effects has been my inability to even come close to multi-tasking. So I have stepped away from what many of us see as the natural multi-tasking complexities of the modern Western world.
The following set of photos exemplify what I find as simply satisfying in life these days. And when I try to resolve the awkward and fearful complexities of the first three weeks after my stroke…I rarely have the will power to remember or the endurance to examine. Rather I go out for a walk in the fresh air. The therapists call it looking to the future instead of the past. I can live with that; but the dream versus real life intrigues me.
