THE URGE TO WRITE

There’s no hot topic about which to opine, no brilliant insight into breaking the spell of the myth that has lead western civilization to abandon the symbiosis man shared with the nature of the planet when it employed totalitarian agriculture to become a malignant parasite threatening the health of the body on which its own well being depends, no report of the bumper crop that keeps me from having to go to the grocery store to supplement my garden.

There’s just this urge to express myself that feels akin to water making its way down the mountain after being deposited by winter in the dormant state and wakened by the returning sun to overfill ancient caverns, stalactited with calcified tradition forcing a seep through the seems of conclusions and the faults in boulders of certainty to reemerge on the surface as the fountainhead of fresh thoughts sifting and shifting the grains of factual sand and rolling the theoretical pebbles along arid arroyos of habit to remerge inevitably with the ocean from which it evanesced in the endless cycle of why and understanding my mind is wont to indulge.

The past couple of months have brought a change in the tenor of my “daily dozen,” as my grandmother used to refer to her solar cycle maintenance routine. Rather than acting from the solitary inspiration of watching the sun being slowly revealed by the rotation of earth’s occluding bulk, I have been turning my back to that relatively changeless event cycle to share the observation of its light revealing six brand new sizes and styles of fledgling feathered pterodactyls every cycle with my equally inspired friend, Erica. As chick fuzz molts to be replaced by the multicolored variegation of the adult feathers the wearers of the costumes retire at twilight larger and more colorful than they awoke that dawn.

While they are young, my caution sharpened by the slaughter of three of the first six chicks by my neighbor's dogs and the ensuing insanity, I seal the babes up in the coop with a door over what will remain open for the adult chickens to roost and lay eggs via the walkup ramp and let them down at first light of false dawn. I sleep in the hammock next to the coop with the sharpest ears these old cauliflowers can sprout and often awake to stray cats’ curious investigation of restless peeps and floor peckings emanating from within. Priest, my faithful companion, has made peace with their uncanny resemblance to the birds he catches and the chicken wire that separates him from them to hang with Erica and me to watch in fascinated wonder. Ella, Erica’s dog, on the other hand, has a lifelong reputation for herding to uphold and cannot sit still if there are less than all in sight and constantly circles the coop and looks up into the top for the missing ones in addition to a periodic check of the pond to count the fish.

It feels much better to express thoughts about my experiences in returning to symbiosis with my environment than my experiences of hearing endless news about the results of the wars against whatever, such as the simultaneous calls for compassion, by the Dalai Lama at Harvard, and for empathy, by Barack Obama qualifying justice, while the politicians translate such feelings as code words for liberal treason. Yeah, no more politics here.