Sparkling portent of summer and balance.

It's like being in a fairy world, looking out on my back yard. The fireflies are a-bloom, just in time for the start of Summer. This actually used to be the middle of summer, but lopsided seasons irked the orderly, so we ended up with it being summer-like, but not official until the Summer Solstice, which is June 21^st this year and the 20^th next.

Earlier, I had a moment to think about the incredible balance that we all live with - consciously or not - on a daily basis. What brought it to mind today were the three ticks I removed from my body as they made their way to juicier pastures to graze in. None of the three made it, but I found it disconcerting that they essentially make me want to hide indoors. Between the diseases and the sheer gruesomeness of their methods, they are pretty creepy, even for a guy like me who lets spiders crawl around my hands while I talk to them.

Then, of course, I looked out just after dark and saw the aforementioned fairy world of fireflies that make me just want to get back out there and be among them. The night and in particular my big maple tree are truly sparkling with them. It's humid, not hot, but muggy and they seem to like that.

Balance, though, is not so apparent and seems to be this lark calling, but rarely heard. Every day I see people wasting - gunning their cars, throwing shit out their windows, buying plastic crap that won't last a season and generally buying into the whole destructive consumer trance. Even people who espouse their environmental ways, often wear only the green paint and have little commitment.

The fulcrum on which this all balances is far too low slung - who am I kidding? There is no balance. I think of the Material World book and corresponding NOVA show when I think of our lifestyle assumptions that for some reason, we deserve more, more, in fact than we need, more than we can often handle, more than we can keep track of, more, because we can't sustain our current state without producing at equal or greater rates. We're screwed then, because we either have to lose wealth, or keep wrecking all the stuff that keeps us alive.

The resolve with which our grandparents and great grandparents survived the depression is needed now, to kick the habit. If you have not watched Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff I urge you to watch it... with an open mind, depending on where you stand politically. It's common truth to some, and socialist propaganda for others.

The beauty I noted earlier is not so balanced for all the people experiencing the 'worst of' storm events in the last decade. We've had a lot of 'largest, worst, most powerful's', and I believe we should be paying slightly more attention to them.

Balance has become a trend, yoga, products, a whole lexicon of ways to be more green, but there is not much out there helping people to rise up together, to create the wave that will force meaningful change. Greenness has spawned more products, not fewer. They are more mindfully produced, but no less unnecessary than the plastic widgets we've been discarding for the last several decades. It's mostly trash.

The fireflies are stunning. They are the grand canyon experience in my back yard. I stare at them, watch in amazement that all this biology and time has created something so beautiful, but they also remind me that the world is fragile, delicate, prone. The beauty can be small while taking one's breath away, and that is worth fighting for.