Tag Archives: bees

Buzz

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Buzz: (n) a humming sound.

There are two things that have a buzz: bees and things threatening to be broken.

The buzzing of the bee is common, but you can often tell when something is breaking, has a bad cord or is giving up the ghost because it will start emitting a buzz.

So when I hear people discuss the topical stories on any given day, I wonder if it’s based on being busy like the bee, or a sign that something’s “got a short.”

I think when we buzz about how to get along better, escape prejudice and cut each other some slack, we are actually trying to be bees, producing some honey.

But when I hear a constant flow of lamentation, disappointment, aggravation, brattiness and self-righteousness, I realize there’s a brokenness in our thinking which warns that if we don’t fix the connection soon, we’re going to lose our power.

 

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Busy

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Busy: (adj) having a great deal to do.

“Busy as a bee.”

Are bees really busy? We attribute this to them because they fly, buzz and appear to be accomplished.

But if you think about the normal day of a bee, it’s more the life of a hippie at a commune.

They fly off, check out the flowers, and while there, they pick up some nectar–and then they fly back to their hive, buzzing and maybe taking the long way home.

They contribute their nectar to the general well-being–the ongoing project, the commune’s goal. They spend a little while enjoying their time with the other drones, dreaming of a day when they might have their moment with the queen.

And then they’re off again, at a respectable, but not break-neck pace, to enjoy more flowers, bring back more nectar and come into the hive with that age-old joke that most bees hate: what’s the buzz?

After this procedure is repeated a number of times at an enjoyable clip, the bee can proudly step back and say, “I made honey. I made the world a sweeter place. I have taken something that was in the flowers and created a substance that transfers that glorious juice into the tastebuds of human beings.”

Most of the people I see who say they’re busy are just frantic.

They don’t visit the flowers.

They don’t take the long way home.

And they sure as hell don’t make honey.

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Apiary

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Apiary: (n.) a place where bees are kept.

This is really unfair.

I guarantee you, I will not remember this.

Am I the only person who thinks an apiary is a place where you should keep apes?

How am I supposed to remember that an apiary is where you keep bees? A word picture won’t even help me. My God, the horror of blending a monkey and a bee.

And even though I’ve seen people who tend to these little buzzing wonder-units, it does baffle me. Because they make honey but they will sting–so much so that if you don’t have that funny wire mask on, and the white suit that makes you look like the Marshmallow Man, you’re always in danger of them…well, getting a bee in your bonnet.

But then the shocking news came to me that bees were beginning to die off, and that if they continued this extinction, pollination could cease and therefore crops would not grow and we will eventually all starve.

God, I wish my pollination was so powerful.

So I really have mixed feelings about bees.

I know they’re important. I know they make something sweet in life. I also know they sting.

But I understand that if they do sting, word has it that it can be fatal to them. Maybe something God should have instilled in the human being–some sort of system whereby you get three mouthfuls of gossip and then your head falls off.

I am not the kind of writer who will close this off with some silly reference like, “Whatever bees will bees.”

I am well beyond that.

  • I am astute.
  • I am articulate.
  • And I have enough fear of the works of Shakespeare to avoid such trivialities.

Oh, what the hell.

Whatever bees will bees. 

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Al fresco

Words from Dic(tionary)

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Al fresco: (adj) in the open air: e.g. an al fresco luncheon.

Much as I enjoy the arrival of spring with the promise of coming summer, and the warmth of that experience, I also become fully aware that I am about to be inundated by many different individuals who want to take advantage of the beauty of the season … to do everything outside.

Especially difficult for me is when they suggest that I take my sound equipment and music and array it on some sort of makeshift flat-bed trailer to perform in a park situation, surrounded by so many distractions that it’s nearly impossible to get the attention of a dead squirrel.

Let me tell you what bothers me about it:

1. Good sound needs walls. Otherwise it floats out and joins with other distracting molecules and becomes distorted or dispelled.

2. Even though I work very hard to be interesting, birds and trees, supersonic jets flying overhead and children briskly running and tripping to fall and scrape their noses do tend the eliminate the possibility of an ongoing attention span.

3. Bugs. If you are a normal person who showers, uses deodorant, or God forbid, aftershave, bugs seem to approach you as if you were a saloon and they are determined to get drunk on your elixir. I’ve had them fly in my mouth, buzz my bald head and perch themselves inside my ear.

I think I’ve just described the definition of “distracting.”

It happened to me recently when some friends invited me out to dinner, and asked if I wanted to sit at a table near the lake. It was a beautiful evening, about 6:15 P.M., and apparently the exact time when the local bees come out for an evening fellowship and what appeared to be church service. They huddled together, gathering around our food, and at times it appeared they were saying grace for the bounty set before them.

We eventually (being more intelligent than the buzzers) found ways to cover up our food, our bodies and the surrounding table with napkins, plates–and I think one lady used a scarf. It was not exactly what I would call a favorable dining experience.

I think going camping is an al fresco event. When you do so, you plan on roughing it, taking on nature and trying to get away from the delicacies of life.

But every other time you go al fresco, you must realize that it’s going to turn out to be a campout–and as soon as you arrive outside, you have departed your home … and entered Nature’s back yard.