Roots

Have you ever bent down to listen to an ant walk on the ground? When you can do that, you can read this.

I just finished a meeting with some associates who needed training in the convincing business. They have a view of the world that I attribute to their childhood surroundings so I have worked hard to show them other views just as convincing. Difficult? Yes. As you know, the views you form in your childhood loom large in your thoughts just like the face of a parent loomed large in your view from the crib.

At some point in your childhood, you began to see your thoughts as equal to, better, stronger, higher than the adults and peers around you. For me, I had those first thoughts when I was five, going on six years old. I sought out others like me and it took a while to find any in person so I found my first contemporaries in books, including those short, cryptic encyclopedia entries I flipped through to see a reflection of myself.

On the playground, we sort out the physical domination scale pretty quickly. You join or stay away from the schoolyard bullies who have nothing better to do than show off their physical prowess or those who only take comfort in strength in numbers. Me, I picked fights with my friends, learning more from battling my physical equals than standing over a shrimp and feeling triumphant (but of course I'm not innocent - I beat up a few people smaller than me, testosterone being the ruler of my puerile pubescent days).

As the number of days increased in which I understood my relation to my species, my body matured. I had both emotional and rational thoughts at my disposal. I read, studied and practiced religious ceremonies, including ones of my local religious center and ones of religious centers I'd never seen. I cultivated myself. I cultivated friendships.

Now, I sit here and watch a yellow jacket buzz around my feet while gnats fly around my head and insects chirp in the woods. A stick of incense burns nearby, masking my scent from mosquitoes. Ants of various sizes make their paths, crisscrossing every which way in social searches for survival.

Back to the ants again, are we? In middle age, my ears sing their own song along nerve pathways, taking away the childhood joy of sitting on a piece of plastic or canvas cloth and listening to ants walk. I've lost the hearing but not the memory. The thrill of knowing that those tiny creatures so easy to crush with a shoe or kill with insecticide have a music all their own that resonates with every step they take! I only wish I could hear the roots of trees grow just as I can still hear their limbs bend and their leaves dance in the rain.

Like I say, I am incomplete but that's fine with me. My rugged edges cut but they also bind.

A friend of mine suggested I poison the squirrels residing in my attic. Unlike mice, the squirrels only chew audibly during the daytime so I'm less inclined to eradicate them in such a cowardly fashion as poison. Instead, I've chased them out of the attic so my friends the hawks have more food to choose from. Twice this year I've watch a redtailed or red-shouldered hawk drop from the sky and take a meal from my yard, much more thrilling than walking the rafters looking for the rotting carcass of a dead squirrel. In our urban and suburban cocoons we often forget our place in the food chain. I want ants and trees and squirrels and hawks around me just as much as I want my human contemporaries. How else can I feel my place on this planet? I eat grains, vegetables and meat like other species. We all get our turn at the trough of life. We all have roots somewhere that can be heard growing.