LOOKING FOR LIMITS

LOOKING FOR LIMITS

He sometimes tries to find

the limits of things like love.

Can you love only so much

and then it finishes at a fence,

or simply disappears like a small stream?

Is love like a savings account

that could quietly come to an end,

and then no more money

or love? He thinks the answer

is no, for each day

he rides on a sea

that has no shore,

is borne along by breezes

that never began.

EASY DOES IT

"Sailing off Alki Point"
oil, by Robin Weiss

As my many years in the classroom passed, I gradually made increasing use of the long-standing slogan “Easy Does It”. It was an advantageous change for me, because for the first half of my teaching career I could have honestly worn a button proclaiming “Hard Does It”.  In those early years, I approached teaching more like a warrior than an educator. Every aspect of teaching seemed to involve an obstacle to be overcome, a resistance to be neutralized, an enemy to be beaten. It was hard work – “hard” meaning tense, frenzied, and sometimes downright distressing. Thankfully, though, around my 15th year in the profession, I began to approach my work more like a sailor at sea than a soldier. When I was teaching, I often thought of my father, the finest sailor I knew and the man who taught me that “easy does it” on the high seas. Sailing was easy, he said, because you simply let the wind do the work. He taught me not to fight the wind – not to try to control it or manipulate it or resist it – but simply to work with it. Fighting the wind was hard work; cooperating with it, combining forces with it, was, according to Dad, as easy as breathing. In the last decades of my 45-year teaching career, I often thought of him as I steered my lessons through 48-minute class periods. Like the whimsical winds of the ocean, problems and distractions arose and spun around me, but – remembering Captain Pete – I tried to relax and lighten up instead of stiffen and fight. As student questions were asked and comments were made, I turned the lesson a little this way or that to take advantage of the energies and interests in the classroom. This doesn’t mean teaching became easy for me – just that I took it easy as I was teaching. There were times when I had to be firm with a student or a class, just as a sailor must pull hard on the sails in a storm – but I tried to be firm in a gentle manner, strong in a considerate way. Dad always said a good sailor is both forceful and easy-going, both unyielding and laid-back – an approach that seemed to work as well in Room 2 as on Long Island Sound.  

PLEASANTLY BORED

"Lazy Daze Bicycle",  watercolor,
by Kay Smith

     These days, the phrase “pleasantly bored” might come close to describing my lifestyle. I certainly don’t mean that my life is uninteresting or tedious, but simply that it’s not as serious and unsmiling as it sometimes has been. I still find life fairly fascinating, but in a more leisurely way – in a laid-back, relaxing way that has loosened me up and allowed me to slow down among the activities of my days. True, some of this is because I have recently retired from my full-time work, but some of my softer, gentler approach to daily life stems from slowly seeing, through the years, that being always focused – the opposite, I guess, of being bored – can bring about an intensity that soon grows tiresome for friends and family. For me, being intense about something has included being almost severe in my attentiveness, and sometimes humorless as well. When I was focused, I was not bored, true – not listless or uninterested – but I was also sometimes not a pleasant person to be around. Nowadays, I am focused in a more amiable way, a more good-humored and easygoing way. I am focused not so much on the end results of activities, but on the pleasures that come from partaking in the activities. I guess I shrug more than I used to, as when I say to myself, “So you didn’t mow the lawn in absolutely straight lines. (shrug) So what? (shrug) The grass is still green."  If being bored means being listless, then yes, I’m sometimes bored in the sense of lying back and letting the moments make themselves known as they wish. If being bored means being uninterested, then yes, I could say that I’m suitably bored at the age of 71, pleasantly bored, because I’m now entirely uninterested in being perfect or the best or the brightest. If that’s being bored, then I am seriously bored, and pleased to be so.

WELLS

It’s amazing to me how many “wells of water” 
I fail to notice – I mean, how many outpourings and  overflowings of thoughtfulness I sometimes overlook as I single-mindedly pursue my personal agendas. Delycia and I are given the gift of good water from our backyard well, but I’m also given another kind of gift again and again, the gift of brimful friendliness – and I don’t always notice or appreciate it. Just yesterday, I spoke to a man on the phone about some confusing issues concerning insurance, and, as I think back on it, he offered his helpfulness in an altogether generous way. He good-naturedly gave me the gift of his expertise, stopping several times to make sure I understood. As we were finishing our conversation, he even offered to come to our house for a conference to further explain things. This man was an ungrudging giver, a spilling-over source of advice and reassurance – but did I hang up and praise his work to my wife? Nope – just checked off another job on the agenda. This morning, though, as I was washing the breakfast dishes and watching the water flow from the faucet with abundance, I thought again of this man’s gracious goodwill yesterday, and I smiled in thankfulness.

SOONER OR LATER

Sometimes, when a morning mist is spread over Mystic, I think of the many times when a mist seemed to make its way across my teaching – times when all I could see as I was standing before my students was the haze of imprecise lesson plans and sleepy students. Those were the days when doing my job seemed similar to searching for a small stone in a vast forest. On those confused classroom days, try as I might, I saw no signals ahead to help me make the most out of whatever lesson plan I had prepared.  All was confusion and indecision. I guess what I needed to remember was that, like misty mornings hereabouts, things usually sort themselves out and light eventually lets itself through. Almost always the mist around these parts disappears by noon, and a rousing sunshine spreads around us. In its leisurely way, nature alters our world from gray to something closer to gold, and after a mist-filled morning, I’m sometimes walking a sunny beach by three. The lesson in all this? In my just-starting retirement, if a misty kind of confusion drops down upon me, I should simply sit back and be patient and prepare for some eventual and inevitable mental sunshine. It always comes, just like the sun shows itself, sooner or later, in this small seashore town.

NAMING BREEZES

NAMING BREEZES

Monday, June 24, 2013

     

      This thought came to me during yesterday’s breezy hours: What if we decided to give names to separate summer breezes? I imagined myself seeing breezes pass through trees and saying, “Let’s see . . . I’ll name the breeze in the upper part of the oak tree Jimmy, and I’ll name the breeze in the lower part Joanne, and now the breeze in the lower part has changed, so I’ll have to rename it and ....” It would obviously be an impossible task. The breezes yesterday were not separate entities, but were part of something vast, part of the wide wind that was blowing through Mystic, which was part of the immeasurable and unified flow of winds across the earth. Only a fool would seriously think of isolating and naming single breezes. I began to wonder, then, whether it might be equally foolish to take seriously our isolating and naming any so-called separate, individual parts of our cohesive and harmonious universe. It’s strange, for instance, that the name “Hamilton Salsich” is used to actually identify me, as though I am a very small, distinct, and separate “piece” of the universe. In a way, that’s as silly as sitting outside and saying, “Oh, there goes Julia” as a breeze passes across my shirt. The truth is that the person referred to as “Hamilton Salsich” is not separate, not isolated, notsolitary, but is always an inseparable and indivisible part of the single, endless universe. I think and feel and do things because the universe thinks and feels and does things. The great system of winds blows across the earth, moving the breeze in the trees beside our house, and the vast assembly of miracles called the universe (which is what I think of as “God”) dances in its sweet and ceaseless way, moving the life called “Hamilton Salsich”. Don't get me wrong -- I like my name. I use it to make life convenient for me, but I realize, all the while, that, like all names, it’s just a handy but basically meaningless label for something that can never be separated from the endless dance of which it is a small but very vital part.

SIMPLE SONGS

"Sing a Happy Song", pastel,
by Karen Margulis

As I was hanging out clothes on the laundry line yesterday morning, somewhere a bird was singing the same simple song again and again, and for some reason, it started me thinking about how strong and ever-present simplicity is. It seems clear to me that most of us, myself included, make life far more full of twists and turns than it actually is, and thus we miss the natural ease and straightforwardness of things. This bird, with its simple song, seemed to be living its life with effortlessness and unfussiness, simply reciting the same lovely melody over and over. It’s as if it knew instinctively that satisfaction is something simple rather than elaborate, plain rather than fancy. It reminded me of a lesson I learned long ago, sort of another simple song similar to the bird’s – that kindness is always stronger than unhappiness. This is an absolutely straightforward fact, the opposite of the cluttered and confusing rules we sometimes try to follow. The plain fact is, that no matter how full of despair a situation seems to be, if I simply stay kind to others, and to myself, the indomitable allure of life will soon make itself felt once more. Like the bird singing its same song yesterday, I should say this over and over – “kindness conquers unhappiness, kindness conquers unhappiness”. The bird knows satisfaction can come in simple ways, and so should I.  

BLUE SKYING

"Good to Go", acrylic,
by George Lockwood

    Recently, when Delycia was sharing some suggestions about placement of our new patio furniture, she said I shouldn’t take her too seriously, because she was just “blue skying”. When I asked her to explain, she said when there’s a blue sky, airplane pilots are free to follow their whims and wander wherever they wish, just like she was letting her thoughts do. When you “blue sky”, she seemed to be saying, you sort of think – and live – without laws, at least for a while. As I’ve thought about it since then, it seems a good way to live – to sometimes let your life lift off the landing strip, so to speak, and be on the loose, like a plane in a sunny sky. Thoughts, especially, should be sometimes set free to veer and swerve and stray in this direction or that, as Delycia was doing so delightfully. In a way, life brings blue skies to us constantly, if only we could notice. Most of the limitations we live by are built by our own beliefs, and once we see this, the sky of our life can clear and we can chart our own course. In a sky or life that’s blue, the barriers are down and we can dare to be brave, both with ideas for furniture and directions for our life.     

CAN YOU SPREAD OUT THE SKY?

When I do even a small task with success, I sometimes secretly salute myself for being so smart, so capable and clever, and it’s then that I wish someone would show me the sky around sunset. “Can you spread out the sky like this?” they might say, or “Can you carry ships on your back like the sea?” There’s nothing wrong with being happy to have the ability to get a few things done, but when I start slapping myself on the back and beaming with puffed-up self-importance, I need a friend to find me the right path again. I need someone to say, once again, that I am simply a breeze in the boundless wind of the universe, just a small shaft of light in the limitless light of all time. That doesn’t mean I’m not skillful -- just no more skillful than the smallest house wren or the sea that supports masses of ships. When I start thinking I’m something extra-special, a friend could find me a stone that’s been around for billions of years and say, “You’ve been here how long, Ham – 71 years? And you think you’re extra-special? This stone has survived dinosaurs and the Middle Ages and millions of mighty storms, and what have you done? Yes, you’re special, but so are all stones and blades of grass and drifting winds and lights in sunsets.”  That would put me in my place – an extraordinary place, for sure, in a universe where all things have been extraordinary right from the start.    

2 + 2 IS ALWAYS 4

"Friendship Bicycles", oil,
by Linda Apple

     I guess all of us wish we could find, some way or another, a force that we can always rely on, a force that’s always present for us and that can’t be conquered – and I think I’ve found one. Friendliness, it seems to me, is as present for us as the sky, and just as immeasurable and impregnable. After all, what problem can overpower our ability to simply be pleasant, to show some fellowship, to support and smile and say something that lifts instead of disheartens? Can’t friendliness survive even cancer, even a crushing kind of sorrow? In the midst of terror or tornadoes, can’t outgoingness and cordiality stay strong, and even grow stronger? It makes me think, surprisingly enough, of the simplest of math formulas. In the worst disaster, in sadness that strikes straight to the heart, in a failure that seems to foretell the failure of everything, 2+2 is still 4, and friendliness is still full of almighty force. If winds worked havoc and lightning burned my personal world away, 2+2 would still be 4, and friendliness, vast and everlasting, would still be the victor.

ONE-TO-ONE

"Yellow Pine Warbler at the Feeder",
oil, by Elizabeth Blaylock

     Delycia and I have signed up for several one-to-one tutorial sessions at the Apple Store, and I’ve decided I could use other kinds of similar learning sessions. One-to-one with a technology teacher can teach me much, but so, for instance, could a private class with the comforting winds that often flow through our backyard. I can see myself sitting in the shade and letting the wind whisper whatever it wants to me, just teaching me a little about taking it easy and going wherever it’s easiest to go. It could show me how to sometimes simply stop and be still, and then restart with ease and gracefulness. I could also sit close to our bird feeders and just be mindful of, and learn from, the charming motions of the birds during their meals. They move in a million different ways, usually fast and restlessly, but sometimes with flawless smoothness, and I could learn from this – learn to love moving with both liveliness and gentleness, and forever with composure, like the finches, who flit and flutter, but always with assured serenity. I could just sit near the birds and stare and listen and learn, one-to-one with these fluffy and skillful teachers.   

UNNOTICED ABUNDANCE

"Two Big Trees",
watercolor by Gretchen Kelly

     I wonder how much everyday abundance I fail to notice, the way I sometimes absentmindedly pass by the roses overflowing our trellis these days. In my busy comings and goings, I usually don’t stop to appreciate the many dozens of pink blossoms spilling over the bars of the trellis, just as I’m sure I heedlessly disregard simple but beautiful lavishness in other places. Stone fences, for instance, are plentiful all along the roads near our house – hundreds of thousands of stones selected for their perfect shapes and shades of gray, and set in place by practiced artisans. It’s a lovely bountifulness of natural fencing, but one that I usually pass with hardly a glance. And what about the layers and layers of leaves that are overflowing in trees at this luxurious time of year? Great clouds of leaves softly waver above me, but when do I ever truly notice them, study them, be thankful for them? Above the leaves, too, are sometimes bounteous tiers of clouds that seem to puff their way across the sky, but when was the last time I really noticed their lushness?  When was the last time I really looked at clouds in all their graceful profusion?

     This world is a place of pure abundance, and I guess, at 71, it’s time I started seriously noticing it.

MOMENTIALLY

     Perhaps a new word is needed in our dictionaries, something like “momential”, to describe things that recur moment by moment, the way perennial flowers return year after year. My wife has complete confidence that her Japanese irises will arise and blossom each year, and we can have a similar sense of assurance about the things that start up in our lives second after second. I know for sure, for instance, that a new feeling will unfailingly flow into me each moment. Like the irises, the feeling may seem the same as yesterday’s or last year’s, but there will always be a subtle uniqueness in the feeling of each moment, similar to the slight but lovely differences in each year’s irises. Feelings, you might say, are “momential” because new ones return in their abundance and freshness, like flowers, moment after moment.  

LOSING AND FINDING

     After losing my keys yesterday and then finding them fairly quickly, I started thinking about how frequently I find things – sometimes surprising things in surprising places. I once found a dozen silver dollars on an old blanket on the beach. There they sat, bright and unblemished in the sunlight, with scarcely a person to be seen anywhere, as if the sand was doing sentry duty for someone. I stared at them for a moment and then moved on, feeling lucky to have found them, and lucky to have left them there.  Likewise, I feel lucky, when I’m writing, to almost always find useful and sometimes startling words awaiting me in my word processor’s thesaurus. It’s as though thousands upon thousands of words are standing by to bring stylishness to my writing, poised to present themselves inside my sentences with their glow and gracefulness. I’ve sometimes found a word that, by itself, instantly added finesse to an otherwise plain paragraph. It’s true for thoughts, too, for they can be found in unforeseen ways and places, as though they’re hidden riches that ascend to the surface occasionally. For no reason that I can understand, thoughts arise inside me by the millions, some with an enticing shine, and, to my satisfaction, I get to sort through them and select the brightest and best for my writing. It’s like finding diamonds day after day, which should be a pleasing project for my chock-full and comforting retirement years.   

QUIZZES WITH NO CLASSROOM

"Who's the Teacher?", oil,
by Debbie Grayson Lincoln

When I was teaching teenagers, I gave quick quizzes occasionally, as a way of keeping the kids watchful, and in these first days of retirement, a learned and high-level teacher called Life has given me some off-the-cuff quizzes. Here are a few of the questions, with answers:

·      * How do birds sing so beautifully? (They believe they can.)

·      * What’s the meaning of the steadily streaming cars on the nearby interstate? (Nothing truly stands still, ever.)

·      * What good can storms do? (Blow dead thoughts out and fresh ones in.)

·      * Where can I find wisdom? (Here, now, always.)

·      * What’s the most perfect moment of all? (This one.)

    

     I’m feeling lucky to be learning from such a talented teacher. With all my free time now, some serious seminars and lectures lie ahead

NEW KINDS OF MEETINGS

"Sea Meets Sky", oil,
by Oriana Kacicek

     Yesterday, my second day of retirement, instead of attending meetings at school I was present at other kinds of meetings. I was up early enough to see the darkness join the dawn in their accustomed casual but efficient meeting. I silently sat in on the meeting as I watched through our windows the sunlight lightening the clouds. Some birds sang at the meeting, and some interested squirrels spoke, and a few flowers stood in silent attentiveness at this misty morning gathering. Later, Delycia and I drove up to spend a day with our grandchildren, and we started with a well-organized meeting with them at the kitchen table. The agenda was precise and the talk was trenchant and professional, with nine-year-old Noah presiding. In a few efficient minutes, we prepared a prioritized list of activities for the day, after which the meeting was punctually adjourned and tasty apple turnovers were passed around. Finally, on the drive home after the happiest of days, Delycia and I had a productive meeting side by side in the car. This was the best kind of meeting, an affectionate sharing of feelings, a conference between people who care. We summarized the day’s successes, made a list of favorite moments, and suggested some future modifications in our grandparenting methods. We concluded the meeting with a quick and tender touching of hands in our shipshape Honda Civic workspace.         

A TEACHING KIND OF LIFE

Yesterday, after my last graduation ceremony at the school where I’ve been teaching for 35 years, a surprising thought came to me: Now I can begin being a full-time teacher. The sky was clearing after days of storms, and my mind seemed to be clearing also – seemed to be seeing previously unseen and somewhat startling possibilities. Teaching, it seemed for those few moments, is not just about being in a classroom with students, but about living a teaching kind of life. It’s about teaching all the time, and tirelessly, and with the same steadiness with which I breathe and think. It’s about teaching not just how to read and write, but how to live a loyal and lighthearted life. I realized, as I drove home from graduation with Delycia, that now I’m starting a new kind of teaching career -- as a street instructor, so to speak, a moment-by-moment mentor, a casual kind of coach, a tutor who takes on students anytime and anywhere. In the years to come, I can teach in countless ways -- by talking courteously to a store clerk, by picking up something someone dropped, by listening with honest interest to anyone anywhere. Most importantly, I can teach myself by treating each moment as both a puzzle and a playful partner. I can prepare lesson plans on how I can praise each hour. I can lecture myself on letting go and lightening up. I can give myself quizzes on caring and sharing. My classroom can be our couch or a street corner or the silent seashore at night. In this new career, I can live and teach like my lungs lift and fall, steadily and necessarily.  

SPLIT-SECOND RAINBOWS

"Nevada Rainbow", oil,
by Don Gray

I once saw a surprising, split-second rainbow -- similar, in a way, to the wonders I saw in my English classes. This was an especially wondrous rainbow – a sudden and extensive crescent of colors above a small cloud in an otherwise blue sky. Usually rainbows, at least in my experience, appear after some rain, but this one was different and sort of shocking, since it seemed to arise from nowhere. Later, it made me think about the small miracles that suddenly showed up in the midst of some of my classes – rainbows in the form of colorful feelings and thoughts shared by the students. During our literary discussions, we often went through some minutes of fairly mundane remarks, but then, usually before long, a student said something that stunned all of us, sort of like my rather astonishing rainbow. For a moment or two, the students and I sat silent with wonder at the student’s startling comment, but soon its magnificence faded away, like the transitory rainbow, and we were left with the usual and simple successes of English class, sort of like the blue sky when the rainbow was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

NEIGHBORS

"Neighborhood Stroll", pastel,
by Barbara Jaenicke

Sometimes, when I see my neighbors strolling casually around our circular block, step by step with their dogs or families just for the fun of it, I find myself thinking about my other neighbors, the non-human fellow citizens that surround me in this good-natured neighborhood. I think of the birds first, who seem to sing by the thousands each morning these days, making the start of a day something like a dance. They live in their own special way among the trees beside our house, sometimes fluttering like friendly neighbors along the streets of the air. Then there are the earnest but easygoing squirrels, scampering and dashing here and there while some of us are finding friends to talk with on the street. The squirrels share our yards while we share words with our neighbors, and the subdued sounds of the squirrels can seem as pleasant as the passing of words among friends. I think this morning, too, of the tiny lives all around me, the mighty little insects that surely have their own concerns and duties, just as my neighbors and I do. While I’m waiting for my morning toast, flies and spiders on Riverbend Drive are doing their best to begin this day with their own particular kind of cordiality.      

PROVERBS OF ASHES

"School Outing", oil,
by Linda Apple

Somewhere in his book in the Bible, Job says that the words of his wise friends are no more significant than “proverbs of ashes”, and it has me thinking, this morning, about the millions of words I spoke to my students, and how, now, they’re something like dust in the limitless universe of learning. I so often saw myself as a sensible and shrewd instructor as I spoke to my students, but now, days and years later, my words to them seem like specks of small thoughts in a sky that goes on forever. The smart sentences I spoke in class and the lessons I set forth with self-assurance and satisfaction are now simply particles of sand on the endless seashore of my students’ education. Strangely, this is not a sad thought for me, but somehow an inspiring one, for it reminds me of the immensity and majesty of the teaching-and-learning process that I was lucky to be part of for 45 years. I was just one of the countless teachers my students had, including their families and friends and the books they read and the people they spoke to in passing and the sights they saw and all the words they listened to in their young but limitless lives. Their teachers were as numerous as the stars in the sky, and my spoken words just happened to be among them, just happened to float through their rising lives for a few months and then drift off like dust in the vast winds of learning. I feel blessed to have been even a small part of such a grand and impressive process.      

EVERYTHING WORKS

Sometimes small things don’t seem to work in our house, and then it’s good to stand back and see, again, that the whole world actually always works flawlessly, in one sense or another. If a window won’t close easily, I could say it’s working very well as one of my teachers, telling me to take my time and stay patient when problems arise. If the flow of water from our well slows somewhat while I’m showering, the good news is that it’s working in perfect rhythm with the condition of the water table beneath us. If a light switch won’t switch on, it’s working quite nicely as a reminder to stay serene and let small problems pass by like the breezes that are blowing outside this morning, making trees sway in the most perfect ways. 

UNNOTICED SNOWFALLS

"The Cottage", oil,  by Kay Wyne

My wife and I have been noticing an almost constant swirling of small, snow-like particles in the air these days, a sort of springtime storm, a snowfall of blossoms and dust. If we sit with the sunshine facing us, it’s especially noticeable. With a wind blowing, a soft blizzard of white things is spinning across the yard, as though June has somehow joined up with December. Eating outside, as we often do, we end up with pieces of blossoms and pollen and who knows what else scattered across our food. What’s strange is that we have to sit in the sunshine in a certain way in order to see this bizarre pre-summer performance. On cloudy days or if the sun is to our backs, this June dance is invisible to us, just like, in a way, the little miracles of life are invisible all around me. I wonder how many unnoticed snowfalls there are -- how many thousands of smiles I don’t see, how many cheerless hearts I disregard.     

BEAUTIFUL TRAFFIC

"City Traffic", oil,
by Tom Brown

     Our new house is a half-mile or so from Interstate 95, and, strangely enough, I’m taking some pleasure in the sounds of the distant traffic. I love listening to the sound of the surf at the beach, and, in a similar way, I’m starting to appreciate the highway sounds – the soft, far-off hum, the almost purring sounds of people pursuing their lives on the road. Sometimes my wife and I listen to soft background music in the house, and I’m finding there’s a sort of whispered harmony in the sounds of the faint and far-away traffic. I almost doze off listening to it. While birds make melodies in the trees around us, trucks and cars carrying important people and cargo cruise down the interstate like another summer song.     

SOLEMN SUNSHINE

"Tuscan Hillside", oil,
by Karen Winters

“Rex and Anna hurried away through the sunshine which was suddenly solemn to them.”

-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

            This morning, a beautiful one, I was struck again by the phrase “solemn sunshine” because it brought to mind the puzzling world I faced each day in English class. As I glanced around at my teenage students, I always saw both sunshine and solemnity, both the joyousness of childish life and the gravity of heavily burdened boys and girls. There was summer on one girl’s face and dark December on another’s. It was always that way, day after day – always a mixture of the lightness of being 14 and the weary seriousness of being 14. I tried my best to remember this when I was teaching. I sometimes came into the classroom carrying the inner light of the love of my work, which was fine, but what about the student in the second row whose sense of distress knew no boundaries, or the girl in the back who gave nothing of her kindness to anyone, ever? To these two kids, the sunshine I was feeling inside must have seemed as solemn as a memorial service as it spread out from me (which a teacher’s moods inevitably do). Even a bright and breezy poem can seem as burdensome as bricks on your shoulders if you bring a heavy heart to it. If sunlight laid itself across the blossoming trees outside my classroom windows and all seemed heartening and hopeful to me, there might have been, right there in the sun-drenched classroom, some students whose sorrow made even the brightest of days seem bleak.