Now that the rocket's red glare is done, is our flag still there?
Today’s journey in search of life included a long hike, my favorite playlist and lots of time searching for and focusing on the small ones.
In the wilderness I feel free of the monsters.
I turned off the music and waded among patches of slender sunflowers in full bloom. In most locations this sunflower is spent by July. I think that the plants along this section of the trail must receive moisture from the marine layer in the morning to continue thriving into full summer.
I watched and waited for the bees. The moment came for my immersion, for blending in with the stand of sunflowers and disassociating from…from myself, I suppose, so as be no more nor less than everything else in that patch of flowers.
I am a better human, I hope, for wanting to and being able to practice this state of self-disassociation. I think it is a willing if temporary detachment from the ego, from all those competing needs and wants and fears that will not shut up, to let all of that evaporate so that I may replace the noise with the receptiveness that is requisite to witness and feel my kinship within the natural world.
We have forgotten that we are not separate from the web the binds us to everything else.
To learn what the other animals have to tell us, one must care about what happens to them, one must be curious about their ways. By studying their purposes, by observing how they navigate their world, we learn, again, that their world and ours are inseparable.
In reconnection we may find revelation and at last, a purpose for our own species. We must do the work to find it. It will not be delivered to us by a supernatural being or by one of the myriad gods we made in our own image.
Maybe then we will find a way to leave our youthful experimentation with parasitism behind.
