Caution: Rotating Blades

Diving down into the shallow depths of my brain network, rarely aware I see through the windows of my soul, my green-and-gold orbs, my ocular non-nocturnal vision my all, building slabs, hieroglyphs, woven fabrics, binocular nests. A scribe bent over the scroll. A weaver bent over the loom. A potter bent over the wheel. A cook grinding grain. Open to the world, the universe just a concept. Turkeys digging through the leaves in front of me. Squirrels cracking nuts with gravity as leverage. Almost too cool for butterflies.

I have seen only a small part of what I'm told is an elliptically-round sphere on which I live with the rest of this landscape of ecospherical beings. I do not know. I don't have to know anything. I act. I react.

We complicate matters to make matter matter. Always these words, these images, these quests for quest's sake. Close my eyes to see rods and cones act/react, or so I'm told. I see red and gray and hints of blue, green and yellow, flickering and fading borders. Open my eyes to renew the optical storyline.

I've never watched turkeys dig through the forest floor. Deliberate birds. Don't seem wary of predators. Part of the overpopulating deer and turkey groups in this part of the world. One, two, three four, five, six, seven, peck, peck, peck, eight, nine, dig, eat, fluff feathers, peck, wander closer, scare out chipmunk, stop and look at me for a moment, wander on, another chipmunk on the run, squirrels high in the trees dropping nuts and scampering down to find and bury them before the turkeys get closer, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom at my feet, five to ten pound weights on short storklike legs, gray heads, brown feather-covered bodies, taking turns looking up, a small hawk flies in and the turkeys gather and gobble in warning, one turkey flying up into the tree to scare off the hawk, another turkey flying into the tree, ten, eleven, twelve, another turkey up into the tree and figuring how to get to the hawk (chicken hawk?), a fourth flies higher and pushes the hawk further up the canopy, the first flies higher and moves the hawk to another tree, charcoal-brown feathers and walnut-brown feathers and goldenrod feathers, a cardinal calling nearby, the squirrels and chipmunks out of sight by now, a bluejay squawks, turkeys balancing on limbs designed for leaves, pecking order still being held, the hawk following this roving smorgasbord that knows how to live another day, turning around and heading back deeper into the woods, a lone turkey keeping watch, too far to tell if sick or male or just what keeps it separated from these dozen females in front of me.

Ted Turner owns just under two million acres of land in North and South America, raising bison, bear and other species. I claim one acre with my wife. Ted and I don't know each other but we know what we know - land relatively untouched by our species teaches us who we really are. I can dig into my brain connections, pull them apart and rearrange them but it's still one brain in one body of one species on one planet in one solar system of one galaxy in one supercluster of one region of one universe. We may claim ownership and jurisprudential jurisdiction of the land, sea and air but we own nothing. We belong to the land, sea and air, which owns us just as much as we own it. When we understand our relationships to this place, symbolism aside, we understand where to go in developing our species. Otherwise, we're playing with memes, thinking the color of our eyes describe what we see.