Stage Coach

27^th November 2009, 21:53

Do you believe in a core? Do you compare one set of knowledge to another as if they were layers of an onion or tree rings? Do you see underlying causes and overlaying effects? Do you give because you receive?

One person changes the species. We talk and we listen, we hug and we push, we command and we obey, we think and we act.

Tonight, I sit and feel calm. I know our species faces no immediate, obvious threats to our existence. We are not going extinct tomorrow, the next day or the next week. I also know we as individuals face calamities galore.

I sit in stasis. I sit and feel the extra weight of eating more calories than I burn off in exercise. I have computer butt, in other words.

My/your/our species. Policies. Politics. Diplomacy. Decisions. No easy way to skip ahead to the next era, or jump past several trends tested in the interactive interplayfulness we weave daily.

Pulled up a batch of iris rhizomes. Growing underneath were dozens of daffodil bulbs stretching upward toward the light of day. We eat onion bulbs. We tend not to eat daffodil bulbs. The daffodil bulbs that were cut in two or cut in half I discarded into a pile of weeds, grass roots and other undesirable garden residents to be carted off at the request of two family members who wanted a thematic garden bed.

What is a weed? What is an undesirable resident? Of course, we make quick decisions to answer those questions every day. Everyday answers.

One planet. One species. One ground to play on, one ground to grow on, one ground to call our own and subdivide for new members of our species to live on.

How do I, as any one of you, decide which garden I belong in? We negotiate. We bargain with each other. We have our ideas about what delineates a garden, from glass enclosures on tabletops to fenced-in fields to entire planets. When negotiations do not bring us closer to mutual agreement, then what? When we can't buy our place on Earth, where do we go?

Where are our new horizons, our new frontiers, our places to live where we compete against more than fellow members of our species for a garden, range or ranch of our own? When rules and regulations cover over our natural desire to reach the light of day, how do we dig up and plant ourselves in a new place with room for healthy growth?

I sit in peace on a quiet island surrounded by the rising waters of care and concern about the ebb and flow of troubles, trials and tribulations. A sentimental journey to nowhere. How much more time do I have before the world's problems lift me up and tidal flows carry me off? Can I help solve individual problems without getting personally involved? I am a member of my species and thus part of the problems I see. We become the solutions, which lead to a new set of problems. The journey has no end.

Before I forget after I remembered (again (and again)), sitting in peace is a moment on the path that leads our species onward past being a species. Today's troubles are history. The moments after this one are full of new solutions.

I'm just about ready to stop using headlines to make humourous observations. I'm just about ready to be the next new me. I see that moment getting closer every day which will transform into another everyday decision, one of many we make that seemed important at the time but faded into oblivion with forgetfulness. Happiness in knowing we met here with humour as a platform for momentary agreement and then later parted company in joy, sharp details lost in the fog of everyday living, one species spreading itself out while looking for fertile territory, different needs at different times driving us into new relationships and new joys.