Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
To survive in The Wild, one must pay attention.
Two-Legs pay selective attention. We devote the majority of our neural resources to whatever interests us at the moment.
Which is why we – the modern “we” – don’t do well in The Wild.
Pay too much attention to any one thing and some other one thing snatches you.
Pay too much attention to any dozen things and some other dozen things snatch you.
One learns to be broad-minded, accepting of all information, in The Wild.
It’s a survival thing.
It has been a while since we saw Erasmus.
Ever shy, ever watchful Erasmus.
Knowing the expected lifespan of Coyote in The Wild, I know he doesn’t have many seasons left with us.
We are here for just a little while.
No matter how long one lives, there is always something older, me thinks, to mourn our passing.
Back in my preaching days, I realized there were few pains greater than a parent outliving their children.
Although not genetically linked (unless you go way, way back), I tend to think of all The Wild as my children.
I’ve learned so much from them. Not sure what they’ve learned from me.
The Old Ones‘ first lesson is to be wise and, seeing the world around me, I doubt many willing to learn that lesson remain.
I will mourn the passing of my children.
Who is there who’ll mourn with me?
Who will be left to mourn me?
Last week it was Rabbit, this week it’s Coyote.
Probably because it’s that time of year.
The Wild wakes (not that it ever sleeps) and everyone comes out parading their young.
Kind of like an Easter parade, don’t you think?
And Easter…that christian new life/resurrection thing, that coming out of the cave, out of the earth, out of death, the big sleep as it were…
Why do you think the church decided Easter coincides with Spring?
Everybody honors The Wild even when they don’t mean to.
Stealth.
Two-Legs have long forgotten stealth.
Probably because much of the modern world thinks of itself as king-of-the-hill, top-dog, ultimate-alpha, dominant-species, …
Such arrogance, such ignorance, baffles me.
For that matter, much of the modern world baffles me.
We listen to self-proclaimed gurus and wisdom-keepers and relinquish all aspects of our selves.
What made us so gullible, so willing to accept hype without question, to march to the beat of a recognizably self-destructive drum?
Did it start when we as a collective no longer required the need for sstealth?
True stealth requires so much effort. It’s situational awareness to the max, it’s training without end, it’s confidence without being confident.
All things which necessitate a sensitivity to one’s environment, one’s place, one’s personal energy and existence.
No wonder we, as a collective, suck at it.
Having praised youth in our last entry, this week we turn our attention to what allows youth to exist, the bond praised in Paul Simon‘s Mother and Child Reunion and humbly immortalized in much of my work, Mother and Child.
My first cognition of a Mother and Child anything came while reading A.E. Van Vogt‘s The War Against the Rull.
There’s a scene in which a female ezwal (alien, six-legged, telepathic saurian (according to Wikipedia. I remember it as more like an earwig), and hostile to humans) and her child are in a crashing ship. The ezwal are huge (a few tons). The mother wraps her herself around her child to protect it and cushion it from the crash.
Even remembering that scene now, I tear up.
It was the first time I was aware there was some kind of mother-child relationship different from the one I experienced.
And I have longed to be the child of a loving, caring, protecting, ezwal mother ever since.