“About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.

The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second, through empty air.

Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass.

I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

Annie Dillard | Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

 
Gorgeous bird photography by TinyFishy

I’ve toggled in and out of vegetarianism for years. There were points in my life where the necessity to eat meat (or the belief that it was a necessity) felt crucial. But as I’ve matured I’ve come to see that most of what I thought about meat was inaccurate, not relevant, and based on whim, ease and, well, self-interest — rather than the ‘bigger picture.’

Everything eats and is eaten. Life eats life. This is a fact. But as our consciousness shifts, evolves, can we take life (to consume it) more consciously? Be that organic gardening, non-GMO food stuffs, humane slaughter houses (what an oxymoron that is)? Or become intelligently aware (not obsessive) with our nutritional needs so that there is balance and sanity amidst our consumption. And awareness of how those needs impact the world and the creatures that live in the world with us.

Presently I live on coffee, wine, salmon, vegetables, nuts and protein from egg whites. No gluten (or very little). Also some kind of treat: Cookies, muffins or an 18-pound box of See’s candy [I’m kidding.] But I do keep the treats gluten free.

But with meat. Oy. Watching one too many Youtubes showing the horrific, often deliberately cruel condition that chickens and cows must live through with what little they even have of a lifespan, tipped the tipping point for me. And then too, what of the workers in these plants and the impact of endless slaughtering on their psyches?

I had to stop and consider what I was aiding and abetting for the sake of convenience while shopping with a budget in mind. Meaning: Everything chopped, washed, wrapped and put on gleaming display in the meat section with an affordable price tag attached. Yes, all the necessities in place to make me not have to think about what I would have to experience if I were finding or raising my own animals and then murdering them.

No more.

Watch this interview with activist Gene Baur where he discusses cheap food, annoying protestors and the rise of giant sexless turkeys and let me know what you think and if this makes any impression on your dietary choices. I’d like to hear from you.

Hat tip to Godfrey Hamilton for pointing this Time interview out to me.

Pictures often save thousands of words — especially when it comes to astrologers and their tendency to blowhard.

As we move towards April’s ‘big kahuna’ grand cardinal cross (on April 23/24 to be exact) the following animated GIFS convey the essence and feeling tenor of the approaching clash of the titans:

…and yes, you can even Read more

A dear, dazzling soul took leave of the astrological community last night.

Many of us, today, are celebrating, recounting and mourning the extraordinary life of Kelly Lee Phipps.

Because astrology is a spiritual practice, a practice that offers the potential of awakening to those it touches, I’ve long known that astrologers comprise their own unique group soul upon the planet — a circle of colleagues that serves in the forging of a living connection between the terrestrial and the celestial within the individual soul.

Kelly embodied and embraced this service with all the gusto of a genuine (and wildly enthused) magician.

He inspired many hearts and minds, and initiated many others into the astrological logos as well — and offered the gift of his presence with spirit, imagination, humor and wisdom. A gentle man and a scholar.

“We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other.

We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, things fall apart. Structures disintegrate. Buckminster Fuller hinted at a reason we are here: By creating things, by thinking up new combinations, we counteract this flow of entropy. We make new structures, new wholeness, so the universe comes out even. A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars and thinks, ‘There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,’ is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves.”

— Annie Dillard

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones, ‘To Him we shall return.’

–Jalal ed-Din Rumi

Another friend dead.

Another Facebook page still active.

I understand the deceased’s family has to involve the Attorney General to get FB to remove a dead person’s profile. Why?

But then — hell — still living, I tried to delete my Vine account last week and it was impossible to do it. I needed to contact the president of the company or equivalent and get his permission.

Vines. How entwined, how enmeshed are we into these cross-connects of social networks? And why do the corps that run them need me so desperately to stay? Alive…or dead?

Five friends have died since I joined Facebook about 7 years ago. And it’s weird and now doubly voyeuristic to visit their pages when curiosity overcomes me. And it does. I click in and trawl around. It’s kind of awful.

Friends and family continue to scrawl comments — especially around holidays and anniversaries — as if the dead person can ‘read’ them. Nothing says disconnected from reality like: “Love you babe, I know you’re reading this somewhere. Here’s a picture of Tammy’s new baby.” Shit like that.

But then how ‘real’ is any of the interacting that occurs here, now, with the ‘living’.

I could have dropped dead after typing this post and a handful of you would be commenting, liking, and I might be writhing on the ground alongside my desk, savoring my last breath and getting the strangest download:

I’m imagining Hamlet at the grave and he’s turning the skull ’round and there’s a Facebook ‘LIKE’ logo etched into the dome-top. And for a soundtrack there’s that line from Joni Mitchell‘s Hejira:

‘Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tributes to finality, to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality’

I guess that’s part of the big unconscious draw to leaving trails on FB — be ye alive or dead — ‘chicken scratching’ for our immortality. And of those that have already flown the coop? They’re liking this in heaven.
 
Painting by Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix, 1939, Louvre Museum