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Superpower / Duty

I’ve been thinking about humans, as a species.

We seem to be undergoing a species-wide crisis while all the other things on the planet are doing fine. Better, in fact, since our carbon footprint suddenly shrank several shoe sizes.

Some people say this is Mother Earth putting us back in our place. I don’t know. Maybe. Nature does this to all of her species once in a while–I don’t assume it’s anything personal. We’d like to think we get special treatment, but we don’t really.

I go to the beach to breathe in the sky and search for my sanity, and I find myself wondering: what does the planet even need us for? Besides building glass and concrete cities to cover the land and sucking fossil fuels out of the earth only to dump them into the sky, what can we do that other species can’t? Even an elephant can paint a picture.

So?

I know what the earth needs buffalo for: to trim and fertilize the plains. It needs birds and monkeys to spread seeds that keep the jungles growing. Wolves cull the smaller mammals in the mountains. Hawks and foxes keep the mice population down. But people? Would there be too much of anything without us?

I don’t know. Not that I can think of. So what is our thing? We must have one.

And then I thought of one thing–one thing humans can do that other species can’t–not dogs, crocodiles, guanacaste trees, blue whales, daffodils, kitty-cats, boa constrictors, or bougainvillea.

We can appreciate aesthetic beauty.

Plants and animals are capable of appreciation–I have no doubt about that–but I don’t think they appreciate the beauty of a sunset or a brilliant rainbow. My cat laying under the hibiscus bush appreciates the shade and the cool ground, but he doesn’t care about the flowers. The dogs playing with coconuts on the beach love the game but they aren’t sighing over the colors in the clouds. A rose bush likes bees I’m sure, but it doesn’t appreciate how beautiful a butterfly is.

People can do that. It might be our superpower. It might be our duty.

I feel compelled to state these observations as I watch our species struggle in an identity crisis brought on by something so small as to be invisible. Other species can love. Other species can help each other. Other species can build and create. But are we the only ones who can give value to something simply for its aesthetic beauty? I think we are.

And?

And, I don’t know. Is appreciating beauty going to save my life or yours if it comes down to that? I don’t see how. But there are a lot of things I don’t know, a lot of things I cannot conceive of in my little mind. I’ve got no health claims to make (unless we’re talking about mental health?); I just think this would be a great time to find something beautiful and appreciate the heck out of it. Go ahead: a cloud, a flower, a person, an animal, music, a work of art…

I’m joining you. It can’t hurt. Never underestimate the power of things you don’t understand and don’t even necessarily believe.

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Unexpectedly Iridescent / Inesperadamente Iridescente

i am free
to inhabit all of my skin
to pulse this blood into
every capillary
i own

you are free
to see me in
whichever color you choose

call me an angel
a liar
a lion
a stone

like a blue morph, i
am at home among orchids and ferns
invisible at rest
unexpectedly iridescent in motion


soy libre
de habitar toda mi piel
de pulsar esta sangre hacia
cada capilar que
me pertenece

tu eres libre
de verme en
cualquier color que elijas

llámame ángel
mentirosa
leona
piedra

como un morfo azul, mi
lugar es entre orquídeas y helechos
soy invisible en reposo
inesperadamente iridiscente en movimiento

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The Year of The Knife

In place of a New Year’s resolution, I have a New Year’s image to keep present with me for the next 330-some days. It came to me as 2019 was ending—2019 that I promised myself would be The Year of the Open Hand. And it was.

2020 is The Year of the Knife. Not The Knife as a weapon; The Knife as a tool.

This image of The Knife presented itself to me one December morning as I was walking on the beach. Of course a knife can be used to injure, but that’s not the knife’s fault; a knife is useful for lots of things. In the hands of a surgeon The Knife can save your life. In the hands of a tailor, it shapes your clothes. In the hands of a hunter or a gatherer, it provides food. You can use The Knife to mark your path through the forest so you don’t become lost. Everybody needs one.

The Knife is necessary for separating. It separates what is useful from what is not useful. Sometimes it separates what is well from what is sick. It separates things into useful portions—think of an axe or a hatchet turning a fallen tree into something you can cook with or use to build a dwelling.

The Knife can open what is closed: a melon, a package, a locked door.

It splits yes from no. It severs now from later (or before). It divides too much into portions of enough. It defines. It peels away a bitter rind. It cuts the umbilical cord of beginnings and allows/requires things to become what they are.

I don’t know what I will need this Knife for in 2020, but it seems like an important tool to learn to use well. And carefully. You could hurt someone with it. You could hurt yourself.

Interestingly, a few weeks after The Knife came to me, I went to visit my friends who owns the deck of tarot cards that gave me such a fascinating directive at the beginning of last year. Again, I laid 3 cards on the table and turned them over. No devils this time. Whew. But there was The Knife—two of them, in fact—on the card intended to represent The Present: The 2 of Swords. On this card, a woman sits blindfolded with her back to the ocean holding 2 gigantic swords in her hands, crossed in front of her like an X. She is clearly a swordswoman, she is clearly well-equipped, she is clearly attentive and calm. Whereas she is non-threatening, she demands absolute respect. I like this girl.

And so?

So, happy Year of The Knife.

You can have one, too. Take an invisible blade, slip it into a sturdy sheath so that you don’t hurt yourself, and put it in your imaginary backpack. You have one whether you know it or not—of stuff you carry around with you. Put your knife in there and remember it when you have to separate what you want from what you don’t want, what you need from what you don’t need, or when a thing must be in smaller pieces to be good or useful to you. Choose not to use it to injure.

If your Knife is sharp and you are careful, you can make something beautiful with it. That’s what tell myself.  That’s what I’m trying to do.

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Stop

this poem wants to say
enough is enough
but it doesn’t
know the language
it only knows wind
and the dust it carries
that settles everywhere
and is there
in the morning

it wants to say
no more
but it can only
shuffle leaves and
throw little sticks to the ground

this poem takes a breath
turns around and
doesn’t say anything