~Sam~
06-15-2004, 06:51 PM
http://www.hipgallery.com/photopost2/data/500/638Fox_for_forums.jpg
Last Fall, as I sat on the back porch one night, I became enchanted by the song of the Fox Vixen who lives upstream. Her yips and yodels and howls became the music of the dark.
Taking another hit from the bowl, I put my cupped hands up to my ears to mime the vixen’s ears. The sounds of the night that I thought were quite incredible to my human ears became incredibly intense. So intense, that I momentarily took my cupped hands down to come back to my normal hearing.
Then I returned them so that I could continue this incredible change in perception. The rush of the water fall took on a roar, even though it’s not so big by river standards. Moving waters upstream and swirling eddies downstream added a hypnotizing quality to this water symphony.
Crickets and tree frog songs, so often a mere background to my thoughts, became a raucous argument of who was bigger and higher in the tree tops, and who could chirrup the loudest to attract a mate.
The sound of a passing car almost sent me scurrying back to the den. It was then that I noticed that my face felt fuzzy, as if it were growing fur. I went along with this sensation and winced as my face elongated and my body stretched in ways that were slightly uncomfortable.
Smells! The smells of the dark! Wonderful smells of home. The upended tree roots that formed the entrance way of my den smelled of sweet sap. Soil and leaves, soft and comforting, held the aromas of generations passed through.
As a fox, I surveyed my surrounding with pleasure. Lying on the upturned slope of the entrance, I rolled onto my side and fell asleep to the music of the water and of the night. My belly was round, and life was rich and full….
Human beings wander through life virtually oblivious to their surroundings, their brains sweating in a panic as they try to dissect little bits and pieces of information in a constant struggle to fill the colossal gaps of their perception. Yet this process only distracts them further, for as they deconstruct, classify, and mull over the details of one observation, they miss everything else going on around them.
The night that I became a fox for a few minutes, I understood in a flash why two-legged creatures need so many statistics and experts to tell them what to do. The human herd actually encourages it members to dissociate from the body, the instincts and the senses. Children are taught to narrow their attention, cling to the past, and focus on the future, thus losing their ability to fully function in the present. They become dependent on authority figures who themselves only excel in highly specialized environments and situations.
And the day that I saw myself reflected in my horse’s eyes, I felt handicapped again. The world is too vast and intriguing at every moment for my apparent lack of interest to disturb his equilibrium. He merely noticed my dilemma that day as if he were sizing up a flower. Yet once I saw myself in his eyes, I became disturbed by this uniquely human tendency to experience life as a series of overprocessed sound bites. The idea of constantly editing snippets of sensation and tapes of secondhand observation into extended works of thought lost its appeal for me that afternoon, and I’m still reconciling my identity from the lessons I’m learning from the life around me.
Sam
“There is a pool in the heart of the desert. The surface is as quiet as glass, though its waters are nourished by a mountain stream rushing, endlessly underground. When the sun speaks in tongues and chases the clouds away for months, rivers turn to dust, dry grasses hiss tributes to the wind, eagles perch wings outstretched on columns of rising air, and the pond reflects it all in a luminous reverie that has never known stagnation. This is the spring that lives behind the black horse’s eyes.
I am content to sit at the edge and toss thoughts like pebbles into its depths, watching the ripples expand in all directions. To the black horse, the human mind looks jagged, as if the roundness of experience has been cut up by ruthless lasers and most of it discarded in a great heap underground. Still, he embraces my saw-toothed ways, for in the mirror of his lake, they are no less beautiful than flowers blooming or vultures preening after a good meal.”
~ from The Black Horse Speaks by Linda Kohanov
Last Fall, as I sat on the back porch one night, I became enchanted by the song of the Fox Vixen who lives upstream. Her yips and yodels and howls became the music of the dark.
Taking another hit from the bowl, I put my cupped hands up to my ears to mime the vixen’s ears. The sounds of the night that I thought were quite incredible to my human ears became incredibly intense. So intense, that I momentarily took my cupped hands down to come back to my normal hearing.
Then I returned them so that I could continue this incredible change in perception. The rush of the water fall took on a roar, even though it’s not so big by river standards. Moving waters upstream and swirling eddies downstream added a hypnotizing quality to this water symphony.
Crickets and tree frog songs, so often a mere background to my thoughts, became a raucous argument of who was bigger and higher in the tree tops, and who could chirrup the loudest to attract a mate.
The sound of a passing car almost sent me scurrying back to the den. It was then that I noticed that my face felt fuzzy, as if it were growing fur. I went along with this sensation and winced as my face elongated and my body stretched in ways that were slightly uncomfortable.
Smells! The smells of the dark! Wonderful smells of home. The upended tree roots that formed the entrance way of my den smelled of sweet sap. Soil and leaves, soft and comforting, held the aromas of generations passed through.
As a fox, I surveyed my surrounding with pleasure. Lying on the upturned slope of the entrance, I rolled onto my side and fell asleep to the music of the water and of the night. My belly was round, and life was rich and full….
Human beings wander through life virtually oblivious to their surroundings, their brains sweating in a panic as they try to dissect little bits and pieces of information in a constant struggle to fill the colossal gaps of their perception. Yet this process only distracts them further, for as they deconstruct, classify, and mull over the details of one observation, they miss everything else going on around them.
The night that I became a fox for a few minutes, I understood in a flash why two-legged creatures need so many statistics and experts to tell them what to do. The human herd actually encourages it members to dissociate from the body, the instincts and the senses. Children are taught to narrow their attention, cling to the past, and focus on the future, thus losing their ability to fully function in the present. They become dependent on authority figures who themselves only excel in highly specialized environments and situations.
And the day that I saw myself reflected in my horse’s eyes, I felt handicapped again. The world is too vast and intriguing at every moment for my apparent lack of interest to disturb his equilibrium. He merely noticed my dilemma that day as if he were sizing up a flower. Yet once I saw myself in his eyes, I became disturbed by this uniquely human tendency to experience life as a series of overprocessed sound bites. The idea of constantly editing snippets of sensation and tapes of secondhand observation into extended works of thought lost its appeal for me that afternoon, and I’m still reconciling my identity from the lessons I’m learning from the life around me.
Sam
“There is a pool in the heart of the desert. The surface is as quiet as glass, though its waters are nourished by a mountain stream rushing, endlessly underground. When the sun speaks in tongues and chases the clouds away for months, rivers turn to dust, dry grasses hiss tributes to the wind, eagles perch wings outstretched on columns of rising air, and the pond reflects it all in a luminous reverie that has never known stagnation. This is the spring that lives behind the black horse’s eyes.
I am content to sit at the edge and toss thoughts like pebbles into its depths, watching the ripples expand in all directions. To the black horse, the human mind looks jagged, as if the roundness of experience has been cut up by ruthless lasers and most of it discarded in a great heap underground. Still, he embraces my saw-toothed ways, for in the mirror of his lake, they are no less beautiful than flowers blooming or vultures preening after a good meal.”
~ from The Black Horse Speaks by Linda Kohanov