Trapping light. Trapping wasps. Trapped in winter. Trapped in dilemmas. Trapped in trees.
I have been totally transfixed for two days by a wasp, a live wasp, which has installed itself upon my exercise ball while being stored in my mudroom. My mudroom is easily the temperature of a refrigerator and at times as cold as a freezer. Side note – I indulge this fixation as I simply cannot use the exercise ball which for my exercise circuit it is the next circuit in a sequence. Thus I cannot exercise. How convenient is that! OK. So back to the wasp. I have two clear plastic storage containers in my mudroom. Each has a simply delicious and spectacular partial wasp nest in it. Do I need to tell you that I creep quietly into the room to sneak up upon them to see if they have come alive and are emitting wasps into the mudroom? OK. Back to the wasp again. HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY BE THERE? HOW!!!!!!
So this morning I decide to entrap the thing so I can get my exercise ball which is now required in red alert status due to Valentine’s over-indulging. It all becomes way too much for my artistic sensibilities and I race for my camera and macro lens. (also serves to procrastinate further on the exercise thing) I open the mudroom door and for the first time in several days it has now moved. Really? It was there three minutes ago. But I have a particular radar for some living things and I locate it right away. So I entrap the wasp in a sealer jar and begin to photograph it some more. Finished, I am caught in a dilemma. Do I keep it trapped? Do I let it go perhaps to reproduce or call more of its friends? How can I trap it? That will kill it. What a glorious creature you are to arrive when it’s -30 and survive in zero degrees! It’s entrapment has entrapped me in this dilemma. I abandon it to go for a walk to consider.
As I walked Charlie Girl my dog I got into one of those pickles I seem to get myself into. It’s unbelievable to me how I do these things and a source of mystery. But it seems to happen frequently enough that I cannot deny that it’s a characteristic of my journey. Listen to this.
We often on our walks meet many people, dogs, squirrels, rabbits and the occasional deer and fox along the way. Some are known to us and we count on them being there. There is one very lively Border Collie who has an exceptionally long fenced yard and he races back and forth, up and down, trying to entice other dogs to race with him. Today Charlie took the bait. I decided to traverse the knee deep snow to go over for a visit and pat him over the fence. It’s about 12 feet from the path to the fence. So I am walking along the dog raceway chatting up a storm as the dogs race back and forth past me. They stop. I approach for the pat session. Off they go and I decide to walk a few more feet and then return to the main path. I straighten up and swivel and before I could even understand what was happening a flexible shoot from a low hanging tree is plastered between my glasses and my eyes, effectively shutting my eyes and pressing the lids to stay closed. Yup. I am stuck to a tree branch. So I decide to move my head to try to get off and another branch grabs my woolly toque tightly. So I cannot move. A branch stuck to my head and one between my glasses and my face. Of course it did not occur to me to take my glasses off. It was all happening too quickly. My first thoughts were what if someone can see me? Followed quickly by what if someone can’t see me and I am stuck? Really stuck! Then I start to laugh and the twig on my eyelids acts like a rasp. Good grief. My head felt pinned as if it was in a surgery vice and someone was about to drill into my brain. I cannot move one tiny bit! I could go blind! Note that it still had not occurred to me to take my glasses off. As I said, things were happening quickly. Really. Well needless to say that I figured it out. One eyelid is a bit scraped. I am not blind.
But I am struck by many things. The ongoing reality in my life of the endless play within the play. Today’s play is entitled ‘Entrapment’ for the harsh reality of the feeling of being trapped. The wasp goes free I tell you!
And if someone could answer for me the why I have this duality between my discernment of fine movement and incredible detail versus my all too frequent physical bungling because I am not watching what I am doing I would be so grateful.
On a final and related though wave, I was asked a great question the other day by someone preparing a lecture. The question seems complex but most will have an immediate answer nonetheless and it goes with my theme today. So I will close by asking, “What stops you from living? What entraps you?”
I have been totally transfixed for two days by a wasp, a live wasp, which has installed itself upon my exercise ball while being stored in my mudroom. My mudroom is easily the temperature of a refrigerator and at times as cold as a freezer. Side note – I indulge this fixation as I simply cannot use the exercise ball which for my exercise circuit it is the next circuit in a sequence. Thus I cannot exercise. How convenient is that! OK. So back to the wasp. I have two clear plastic storage containers in my mudroom. Each has a simply delicious and spectacular partial wasp nest in it. Do I need to tell you that I creep quietly into the room to sneak up upon them to see if they have come alive and are emitting wasps into the mudroom? OK. Back to the wasp again. HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY BE THERE? HOW!!!!!!
So this morning I decide to entrap the thing so I can get my exercise ball which is now required in red alert status due to Valentine’s over-indulging. It all becomes way too much for my artistic sensibilities and I race for my camera and macro lens. (also serves to procrastinate further on the exercise thing) I open the mudroom door and for the first time in several days it has now moved. Really? It was there three minutes ago. But I have a particular radar for some living things and I locate it right away. So I entrap the wasp in a sealer jar and begin to photograph it some more. Finished, I am caught in a dilemma. Do I keep it trapped? Do I let it go perhaps to reproduce or call more of its friends? How can I trap it? That will kill it. What a glorious creature you are to arrive when it’s -30 and survive in zero degrees! It’s entrapment has entrapped me in this dilemma. I abandon it to go for a walk to consider.
As I walked Charlie Girl my dog I got into one of those pickles I seem to get myself into. It’s unbelievable to me how I do these things and a source of mystery. But it seems to happen frequently enough that I cannot deny that it’s a characteristic of my journey. Listen to this.
We often on our walks meet many people, dogs, squirrels, rabbits and the occasional deer and fox along the way. Some are known to us and we count on them being there. There is one very lively Border Collie who has an exceptionally long fenced yard and he races back and forth, up and down, trying to entice other dogs to race with him. Today Charlie took the bait. I decided to traverse the knee deep snow to go over for a visit and pat him over the fence. It’s about 12 feet from the path to the fence. So I am walking along the dog raceway chatting up a storm as the dogs race back and forth past me. They stop. I approach for the pat session. Off they go and I decide to walk a few more feet and then return to the main path. I straighten up and swivel and before I could even understand what was happening a flexible shoot from a low hanging tree is plastered between my glasses and my eyes, effectively shutting my eyes and pressing the lids to stay closed. Yup. I am stuck to a tree branch. So I decide to move my head to try to get off and another branch grabs my woolly toque tightly. So I cannot move. A branch stuck to my head and one between my glasses and my face. Of course it did not occur to me to take my glasses off. It was all happening too quickly. My first thoughts were what if someone can see me? Followed quickly by what if someone can’t see me and I am stuck? Really stuck! Then I start to laugh and the twig on my eyelids acts like a rasp. Good grief. My head felt pinned as if it was in a surgery vice and someone was about to drill into my brain. I cannot move one tiny bit! I could go blind! Note that it still had not occurred to me to take my glasses off. As I said, things were happening quickly. Really. Well needless to say that I figured it out. One eyelid is a bit scraped. I am not blind.
But I am struck by many things. The ongoing reality in my life of the endless play within the play. Today’s play is entitled ‘Entrapment’ for the harsh reality of the feeling of being trapped. The wasp goes free I tell you!
And if someone could answer for me the why I have this duality between my discernment of fine movement and incredible detail versus my all too frequent physical bungling because I am not watching what I am doing I would be so grateful.
On a final and related though wave, I was asked a great question the other day by someone preparing a lecture. The question seems complex but most will have an immediate answer nonetheless and it goes with my theme today. So I will close by asking, “What stops you from living? What entraps you?”
Wasp Exercising
Entrapped
RSS Feed
