Long Walks On Leafy Streets

10/31/2013 Beach Drive NW, Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC
Fall is having a somewhat late beginning here in DC. Perhaps because of the warming related to climate change, the trees are a little confused. Some are still very green while others are yellow and yet others are russet, scarlet and red. During the past week I have picked up couple of bags full of leaves from the neighborhood to add to my compost bin. We put banana and orange peels, vegetable stems and skins and other kitchen items in it and the tree leaves make a good addition. We don’t put food leftovers with starch or fat in the compost bin for fear of attracting rodents. I don’t know if I am doing a good job of composting but when I turn it over I do see some black earth at the bottom so I am guessing some kind of organic decay and recycling is going on. It is more important to me that they do not go to landfills.
The falling leaves remind us about the passing away of things, something I have been thinking a lot about lately.
I wrote in these pages couple of weeks ago on learning about the death of an old lady I used to know. This past week we heard about the passing away of the brother-in-law of one of my aunts. He was in his eighties and passed away very peacefully. On the other hand this week I was watching this show called "Into the wormhole with Morgan Freeman" on the science channel, where I learned about some of the amazing things scientists and engineers have been working on, all having to do with prolonging our human life. Figuring out ways to travel to other stars by producing miniature black holes and to other universes by building wormholes, the nuclear fusion project at the National Ignition Facility, a proposal to terraform Mars, building humanoid robots, recreating a human being through his or her memories by capturing every moment on video (life-logging) or by slicing his brain into tiny bits and mapping the entire neuron "connectum," beating death by re-engineering the death initiation process in cells and so on. Basically it is about extending the life here or in other planets before the sun swallows up our earth in a few billion years. It made me wonder, why would we want to live forever? Is not death that makes life so precious? Would we still enjoy life if we knew it would last forever? Would we have children? I do like the never-ending quest of science for knowledge. I do enjoy life. I hope human beings along with other life forms continue to enjoy many many more sunrises on the beaches and flowers in the meadows and sunsets in the mountains and all the wonderful and pleasant things of the world. But I also know that some of us will always wonder about the meaning of it all. Not merely for the sake of education, enlightenment or enjoyment but simply because at some point, like children playing all day, we will get tired of it. Also, what is eternal life but simply another form of death? As we learn from Physics, motion without change and being at rest are both the same. As Suzuki Roshi said, "Renunciation is not giving up the things of the world, but accepting that they go away."
The other question it made me think about was the meaning and purpose of life, about what it means to be a human being and what makes a human being. Are we simply the collection of our memories or the sum total of our neuronal connections? Is it possible to reconstruct or revive a human being simply by rebuilding their memories and their brain, physically? I tend to think that there is more to a human being, and that it would last beyond the death of the physical body, and it is part of the same “universal being” that lives in everything in this universe.
On Saturday Nicole and I along with twelve other people from the D.C area went on a hike in the Rock Creek Park to se the fall colors. As mentioned above the colors weren’t as spectacular as we had hoped, even this late into fall, but it was very beautiful nevertheless. I organized this through the nature lovers meetup. You can see pictures from the hike at the meetup website. Just click on the little photo at the top left of this page and then click on Meetup. The hike is titled “Fall Colors Hike in Rock Creek Park.”
I must say at first I was not feeling as energetic as I would have liked but once we started walking it rejuvenated me and I took a lot of pictures, one of which is on this page. Nature’s beauty is forever, and I believe it reflects the beauty and majesty of the universal being or whatever you want to call it!

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