I wonder if life would be better as a “lower” mammal, rather than as a human being?  A non human mammal, without the facility of language would be equipped with efficient senses, better sight, hearing, smell along with instinct honed as a serrated blade.  The mammal would not be burdened with the paradoxes of what “is” vs. what “ought” to be.

If I could, I’d be a fox for one hour in the rose-pink of morning dawn.  To experience the woods in terms of the scent that comes with the dawn mist.  To feel hunger as do all mammals when the body demands replenishing; to hunt with a keen eye, a mind primed with instinct to wait with patience, to pounce with lethal “intention.”  The term intention is used stripped of moral connotation.  The fox surely lives without conscious calculation, aside from what language and “reason” make possible for us humans.  The fox lives without the benefit of tools, or the liability of a tool’s feedback loop, the relentless logic of unintended consequence…  The fox lives in simplicity, without trying, each moment “known” with vision, sound, scent and bodily musculature orchestrated by ancient instinct…

What would that be like, to live as a fox for one hour at sunrise on any day?

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Two images

represent the range of possibility for a distinctively human life.

The first is a graphic representation of the correlation between the incidence of the state’s vaccination rate with the voting performance of citizens in the November presidential election.  The correlation coefficient between them is 0.87. A perfect correlation would have a coefficient of 1.  There’s a single possible conclusion:  More Trump = more death.  Received this graph from Professor Scott Galloway who teaches at NYU Stern School of business.

The second image is offered for your aesthetic appreciation, your appraisal.  A baby snapping turtle makes it’s way across the lawn in search of the nearby creek which flows into the marsh, which will be its home.  This is the second year of our good fortune, to observe the hatchlings begin what we hope will be a long life in Braeburn marsh.

Two images, of vulgarity and of sublimity of human experience.  The graph, — our potential to be entangled in a bubble of self imposed ignorance with a fatal consequence.  The hatchling reptile, a rare opportunity to approve, to feel a “yes” in one’s body to the wordless beauty of new life.