Category: Reflections

The Waving Porcupine and The Peculiarity of My Idiosyncrasies

May 14, 2025

A couple of years ago I met this fellow.  

I was talking to my loyal friends, Thiebault and Milly, about the incongruences of life, imagining what other stories I could write for my grandchildren about life in Maine with Aesopian morals to the stories.  A peculiarity of my idiosyncrasies, so to speak.

When I first moved to Maine full time, I had an indescribable urge to write stories for my grandkids -a welcome change from writing government contracts and reports-, describing life by a pond full of frogs and visiting herons, feisty spring lambs, buzzing bees, running bears, suicidal deer, wailing coyotes, hungry goldfish, swooping eagles, and yes, the ubiquitous and shy porcupines that the dogs and I followed too closely. Milly and Thiebault got quite a few quills on their snouts.  I got around 3 on my middle finger.  I later learnt that key to removing the quills was to cut them first so that they would go limp and could easily slide off.  But, oh well.  Suffice it to say I didn’t suffer as much as the dogs!

Sometimes, though, life gets in the way, and I just wrote drafts and more drafts, but failed to produce the finished product.  Nonna of Penobscot, as my grandchildren know me in stories (if they ever read them!), putt-putt-puttered to a halt.  Not because of writer’s block, mind you. 

It took me a while to realize that my problem wasn’t anthropomorphizing, but the reverse: I was projecting adult human traits and behaviors onto my animal characters, which restricted their growth by tainting their noble qualities with the often uglier and truculent aspects of adulthood.  I was dehumanizing them because I was having a hard time finding redeeming qualities among my fellow earthlings!

On Mother’s Day, I stumbled upon this grainy photo that I took a lifetime ago.  Have you ever seen a porcupine wave?  I remember how mesmerized I was by its intense stare and the slow raising of its paw.  And oh, those fingers!  After a wonderful chat with my children, I went back to my darling porcupine.

Before I knew it, I shed the veil or scales clouding my brain.  I already have the draft of the next Nonna of Penobscot fable.  Will it come to fruition?  Who knows.  But I am embracing the peculiarity of my idiosyncrasies:  why not tackle playful or absurd imagery like a spiky creature in a tree delivering a sassy farewell—while delving into serious themes of suffering, yearning, pride, deceit, betrayal, greed, cruelty and redemption. 

Might there be a knack for blending whimsy with a sharp disdain for disloyalty, like imagining a porcupine waving goodbye to backstabbers from a tree. All of a sudden I found myself once again gravitating towards my own concoctions, which may be my own special way of processing emotional boundaries through quirky, symbolic scenarios. If I can quote myself, “I’ll laugh at the absurdity of life, but I’m dead serious about cutting out the deadbeats and the riffraff of life!”

So, I have been jotting things down left and right.  Now, will I finally finish my stories?  Who knows.  But I feel happy!  And all because of a little porcupine that waved my stumbling conundrum away.

Moonlit Maze of Sorrows

May 14, 2025

This last Sunday brought back many memories of long lost family members and friends, some exceedingly beautiful, some heart wrenchingly sad.

A magnificent Flower Moon rose up from the trees and, beneath its tender glow, I pondered how fragile and fleeting life is —here one breath, gone the next.

Because someone dear to my heart – who a few months ago was a total stranger whom I met through a purely business transaction, but soon reached out to me with a gentle and comforting hand – suffered a life altering traumatic experience that very Sunday: a shattered backbone.

As I looked at that Flower Moon I realized how insignificant our own problems can be. How a freak accident alters the course of our lives and makes us stumble under fate’s cruel weight. Sometimes the pain we survive comes from a broken body. Other times, from a broken soul.

There’s not much I can do, other than provide encouragement and trivial support. I find prayer has always helped me cope, heal and recuperate.

Last year, when I found out someone was facing a major health downturn, I discovered that the patron saint of sick people and doctors and surgeons is St. Luke. Yes, the one who wrote one of the Gospels. I know, I know. Leave it to the Catholic Church to have a patron saint or two for anything that ails us or spooks us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it.

However, I had forgotten that St. Luke had been the “beloved physician”. So he is not just an à-la-carte saint du jour. So, in the spirit of ecumenical brotherhood, since Luke was most likely a Jew and my friend is a Jew, I told my friend I would reach out to the patron saint of surgeons before the delicate operation. What do we have to lose, right? And as my friend said, at this juncture, we take all the help coming from any which way.

As I stared at my Flower Moon I reflected on how fleeting life is and on how we can navigate a moonlit maze of sorrows while dancing the eternal dance between life, love and death.

Crossing The Line

February 24, 2025

This past week I was greeted by a line.  A vivid pink line.  I marveled at it, thinking it reminded me of something, although “the what” escaped me.  And yet, I kept observing, because I kept thinking of “crossing a line”.  We cross so many lines in our lives, and seldom do we contemplate why.  At least that’s me.

I turned away for a few minutes, and when I returned to keep observing, I was greeted with a different image altogether.  Gone was the line and the pink.  Instead, there was a silvery sun with its silvery reflection.  It is times like these that I wish I were an artist, and could capture the beauty of a sunrise like this one.

Sea, sun, sky and a straight line.  Crossing a line.  I always think about my family and friends and acquaintances who are no longer here.  Someone once said to me that I was “tetric” (meaning gloomy).  Well, it is a common word in Spanish, and we used to use it in school in English, when I was growing up.  It turns out that apparently, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is an obsolete word that has been out of common usage since 1810 or so.  Go figure!  I still use it, so, baloney.  

And then it hit me, my tetrical self.  The crossing of that line:  a meditation on death!  A boat, the sea, the light, the tides, the sand.  And yes, the crossing of the bar.

CROSSING THE BAR
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star,
      And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
      When I put out to sea,

   But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
      Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
      Turns again home.

   Twilight and evening bell,
      And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
      When I embark;

   For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
      The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
      When I have crost the bar.