I’m learning how to be mentally present
such that I’m more likely to hear random things
I don’t know I want to know yet
For instance
today I found out
there is a vegetable named callaloo, and now
I know what I want to name my future dog
On a somewhat related note
there is a skin condition called cutis anserina
whose nickname is goose bumps
which in my humble opinion
sounds a lot less scary
I recently watched Animal Planet for
about three hours, and now
I’m convinced Peter Pan somehow
made a baby with Bambi
and the world decided to call it a pudu
so I think in a previous life, Artemis was
my best friend and I was
the world’s smallest deer who
never had to grow up
Before the internet showed me
what happens when cicadas emerge from dirt
like hungry zombies
I wanted to believe that every dead human
gets to become a tree
but now I can’t stop imagining
how it would feel to be the first feast
for a buzzing army: standing still
and sacrificing my skin
to feed everybody
Sometimes when I think about dying
I picture Boba Fett falling into the Sarlacc pit
so if there is ever a time when movies come true
and humans become extremely small
like they do in Honey, I Shrunk The Kids
I will most certainly have a very real fear of sea urchins
along with an inability to trust big starfish
because I can’t erase Patrick eating babies from my memory
and my heart is aching for Spongebob who
has no idea what his best friend is doing
I’ve been reading Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael
so I’ve been thinking about food chains
and about how things need to be this way
I don’t want to watch the shark eat the seal
because he’s cute and reminds me of my dog
but the thing is
if I don’t want him to die
that means I’m rooting for him to survive
thus he himself has to find somebody to eat
and consequently
he’s going to hunt the penguin daddies
who are marching home with food for their offspring
so if I ever meet a young penguin in person
I’ll fall to my knees and say I am so sorry
for having this bias not in favor of your family
In this current moment I’m reading about three giant trees
older than 20 million years
and I’m wondering if these are the levers
God plans to pull whenever the world is ending
I used to think there’s a big red button somewhere
that we humans are bound to push down just because we’re not allowed to
but now
I’m coming to terms with the fact that we have no control here
We can call things callaloo;
we can change names to make them easier to swallow;
we can dream of being smaller than we already are
but things will be
as they will be
and all we can do
is watch
and learn from what we’re seeing
Love this!!