This is getting tiresome. I wanted to do something about deer repellent and tips from my garden experts, the Russians next door at Refuge Farm, and the Naked Gardener, and specific recommendations from my Coon Ass Cajun buddy about deer and the solid advice about marigolds and best garden practice from a committed herbalist in Utah.

The ground was too cold to get with the program this weekend, though, and we seem to be holding Spring at bay with a half-back’s stiff arm. The harbinger of Spring was limited to the Heckle-the-barn-cat’s imperious stroll past the front door to the garden plot and then a brisk leap up the rail fence with the metal screen around the inner compound.

It was chill in the morning- rising up only from near freezing in the thin chill air. I wanted to stay. I did not want to come back to the City, where I find mysel applying common-sense precautions to the near-term security situation, go-back packed and dealing with the potential for something wicked:

Avoid crowds.
Do not take the train.
Stay alert.

Why do all the kids have their ear-buds screwed in so tight so they could not hear a threat-or a warning- if their lives depended on it?

This is ridiculous in what was a free society, but looking through the reporting this morning on the stuff I do not want to talk about, I see that we are both ignoring the clear and present danger and assuming the invisible shackles attached to the chains that one clearly identifiable group seeks to apply to us.

Ah, well, thus was it ever so, I imagine. But there seems to be more to all this wicked business. I mean, the Russians talked to the FBI not once but twice about that young man with the dazzling smile and the newly found enthusiasm for his faith. Did you see the video of the attack and strategic withdrawal?

Chilling, man. Absolutely chilling.

Anyway, life has to go on. I am not going to beat it to death. I mean, the news we don’t talk about is as awful as anything else: the little city of West, Texas, vaporized. The five Colorado snow-boarders whose loss of life in the worst avalanche in a half-century exceeds the total of Boston Strong?

As I said the other day, sometimes stuff just happens, and sometimes you go asking for trouble and get it.

It is only news when you turn it the paradigm on its head and something wicked comes looking for you. How can you place a bomb on a sidewalk next to an eight-year-old boy?

But as a pal opined this morning, there is likely to be more to all this in the middle distance, and I will hold my peace for now. But Shakespeare always had human nature pretty well, and despite the archaic words and cadence, that serves him and his legacy well even today.:

Horatio:
He waxes desperate with imagination.
Marcellus:
Let’s follow. ‘Tis not fit thus to obey him.
Horatio:
Have after. To what issue will this come?
Marcellus:
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Horatio:
Heaven will direct it.
Marcellus:
Nay, let’s follow him. [Exeunt.]
-Hamlet Act 1, scene 4, 87–91

Somebody ought to follow something, you know? Before it follows us?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com