I washed the breakfast dishes with the scent of lilacs sending me into a world of dreams as it wafted through the open windows. Iridescent bubbles slid down the surface of my cups and plates, and lacy white curtains waltzed in the breeze. When the last fork was clean, I dried my hands and went out for a tour of my gardens, so lush now. And then she did it, Merry May, her gift of the day proving how she got her name. At the edge of the garden, a motion caught my eye. A prince in disguise! I laughed at the surprise. And although I didn’t kiss him, he let me gently stroke his pebbly textured back. Spring laughs in flowers, said a poet once upon a time. And now comes May, the merry one, making me laugh with her gift of a toad.
As if the fragrant blossoms weren’t enough, a yellow swallowtail came to sip the lilac’s nectar. She was the first I had seen this year, regal and lovely as she fluttered from flower to flower on her delicate wings. Once more, I found myself catching my breath in astonished wonder that such a thing could be, right before my eyes, in this heady, perfumed May air.
The sprig of young oak leaves startles me, a shaft of sunlight bathing it in yellow-green, sharp in its brilliance and in its contrast to the hunter green needles of the pines, in whose midst it grows. But the color isn’t what struck me; it was my realization that I knew this oak; I encountered it last fall, glowing russet red. “Why, hello!” I say to it, right out loud. “Good to see you looking so fine. Good to see you.” I have stood in this very spot before, staring up at this very same tree. And somehow it feels like meeting a friend, right here at the edge of the woods.
For days, I have been watching the lilac’s buds grow plump, their pale purple trumpets lengthening, the tips of them swelling until, one here, one there, they burst into white stars that pour forth a scent brewed, you would swear, by angels. Today it wafts through my open windows, perfuming the rooms, and I, enveloped in the fragrance, breathe, and believe that surely I am tasting the essence of heaven.
“What I don’t know I make up,” I used to tell people as a kind of joke. I left it up to them to figure out where fact gave way to fantasizing.
I was listening to some talk about ChatGPT this week. “What is ChatGPT?” you ask. (Here’s a good description.) Basically, It’s an online tool that’s sort of like a cross between an unimaginably vast library and a great personal assistant. A big bevy of those First Adopter types are praising its capabilities. It’s passed the bar exam, scored well on the SATs, and developed detailed business plans, for example. It’s fast and smart. You’ll be hearing about it more and more, I’m sure.
Well anyway, it turns out that when ChatGPT can’t find an exact answer for you, it, too, will make stuff up. And it’s very good at it, I hear. The Artificial Intelligence developers label the phenomenon “hallucinating.”
I thought that was an interesting word choice. When I make stuff up, I think of it as imagining. But what’s the difference when it comes down to it? Regardless of which term you give it, it’s a story our brains fabricate, both the living and the machine kind.
Personally, I thought it was a bit eerie that a language tool rooted in Artificial Intelligence would make things up. Why would it do that? It doesn’t have an ego to defend, after all, or emotions to sort out. It’s not trying to entertain. Maybe it’s a technique it uses for problem-solving. That’s one of the purposes our own story-making serves. Fortunately, ChatGPT doesn’t hallucinate anywhere near as much as we humans do. It’s more of a cut and dried here-are-the-facts kind of operation. We, on the other hand, are living in our dream worlds, our story worlds, more than we’re not.
To borrow the AI developers’ term, we’re usually living in a hallucination. There’s not necessarily something wrong with that. It’s the nature of the human mind (and maybe machine mind, too) at work. It’s a way of figuring things out, of looking for solutions.
What separates us from the machine, though, is that we can turn our attention away from our imaginary stories and focus on the here and now, with all its colors, and tastes, and sounds and smells. We can feel the air moving through us and around us. We can notice our bodies and adjust them at will. We can respond to the action around us. We can decide to play a different movie than the one that we were engulfed in minutes before. Or we can go back to it. But in the meantime, if only for a moment or two, we can be here, consciously alive in the midst of a living, mysterious world. And isn’t that amazing? And isn’t it amazing that we can be amazed?
Wishing you a week where you abandon the trance repeatedly to rediscover the mysterious reality right before you.
On this rainy morning, I wake to a world of emerald green. I laugh to see that the ferns, whose emergence I awaited all those early spring days, have conquered the hillside. I grin at their glad victory. Overhead, raindrops play the leaves of the trees as if they were the keys of a piano. And I watch and listen to the song, and it fills my heart with joy.
The moments become more precious now, each one a treasure, even those swaddled in clouds of gray. I stare at the creek intently, as if I could hold onto these colors, as if my staring could somehow paint them indelibly in my mind, as if I could keep them, or at least make this moment linger. But spring flows swiftly on, blithely transforming the world as she goes, dropping her love notes everywhere. I hardly dare move lest I miss one luminous hue, one scent, one note of her song. She laughs in the tumbling waters. She dances in the breeze, And oh, the fragrance of her green perfume!
They stand for nothing, not for a price or a system, not for any particular position, or concept or creed. They obey only the law of their being: Flower freely. And so they show their colors, and feed the ants and bees, and decorate the roadsides, and dance in the morning breeze, asking nothing, simply being, and singing their songs. And when the nighttime stars rise above them, their hearts are filled with contentment and joy.
It makes you feel more than lucky, blessed maybe, honored, humble, to happen on a little squad of baby geese, no more, I’d say, than a couple days old, intently studying this brand new world with all its colors and scents and motion. I try to imagine seeing it through their eyes, their instinct telling them what to eat, remembering where to find it. Little do they know, these little ones, the magnificent adventures that await, that they will one day mount the sky on great wings. and travel with these grasses far behind them to new lands. It is enough on this fine afternoon to be here, in the warm sun, studying this green birthplace, and remembering.
Just when I begin to think she’s settled down she tosses another surprise before me. Day after day, she just goes on and on. Today, for instance, it was dainty bluettes, sprinkled in puddles across the forest’s floor. All you can feel when you look at their faces is happiness. That’s why she brings them. It’s who she is. It’s what she does.
