Vol de la Oiseaux Sauvages

 Excerpt: Journal 3:
On the Serious Edge of the Blade: Only Snails transgress that edged seam effortlessly.

   Why malacology?  And even why not only not other creatures or even kin snails but slugs? 

    There are many types of bravery as I learned from the slug. One person noted that if you really love someone then you are willing to stand before the entire universe with that person---solely.  That really is love.  The whole marriage and vows thing with sincere devotion and commitment to the ‘other’s’ being through thick and thin and, I add, kin.  It also doesn’t take too many steps to understand the longing existent in the ‘affairs of the heart’ that prompts all the marriage controversies today.  Beyond that controversy---and few do walk beyond that---there is the whole vows’ amnesia dis-ease: In other words: “I lied” or "I did not understand."

   Few creatures on this earth do not recognize the wild species amongst us that pique our interest, our attention, often our admiration, but more than likely an uneasy fear.  When they fly, dive or run on all fours we can easily admire and idolize them.  Who doesn’t love the eagle, the wolf, the panther?  The whole hunter/fisher mystique is still very popular.

   Literature with its drama, especially since the Greek dramatic plays and Shakespeare, now broadcast internationally in videos and films, can also help us overcome our innate un-ease with the romantic (therefore---sighs of relief---fantasy) ‘playing’ of the ‘wild birds’ with unreal scripts, beauties portrayed as gods and goddesses, and endings we can ‘walk away from.’  We can watch and partially interact from the safety of our homes. I could ask safety from what but I won't go there right now.

The Charlie Sheen and Ellen/Portia dramas fall into this category but so do the more ‘benign’ movies.  They are not reality but a lot of unsuspecting people get mixed up with much wilder, more dangerous, and deeper societal rejection than they ever bargained for when following these ‘pied pipers’ who could care less about them.  There are no safety nets crossing the unsafe bridges of the wild jungles of this world.

   Let me make one thing very clear, however. There are wild ones among us.  And God created them with gifts unbidden.  Because they are there, really existing, looking like us, taunting our lead-weighted, foggy -bottomed fears, we simultaneously run toward and away from these people.  There is a fanatical fascination surrounding their entrance into our presence.  We become like the proverbial moth headed straight for the flame.  We fear them because they mostly do not recognize boundaries or rules, at least not ours.  Almost inevitably they disdain these strictures without a qualm.  When the wild ones take a more destructive turn the psychopath cells add others to their list, unfortunately after much harm is done.  These destructive people make us fear even more the un-harnessed ‘wildness.’ 

   Some wild ones, however, like Beethoven, ride supernova tornadoes that give us great gifts in their returnings from the wild, wind-beaten peaks.  Few could ever hear the ninth symphony ‘within’ much less write and perform it.  Not many wild ones are even liked.  Take Prince, for example.  I did not like him at all from just looking at his picture which spoke nothing to me but unbridled arrogance.  But when I heard his guitar play “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” I knew that he had walked on that peak, higher probably than most, and probed deeper in unknown depths.  His soul, bought and sold, KNEW that song well in all sorts of chords, keys---minor and major, with melodies, counterpoints only he could sing.  

 As always, it is one thing to describe as observer, quite another to live as one that is there, was there and will be there.  You can’t sing songs with notes you’ve never heard.  I did not take that wild wonderful music then as arrogance but as such beauty of soaring out of such depths and heights most of us have no understanding about at all.  I was enthralled. It was humbling and magnificent.  It was that gift that set a wild bird in me free, too.
Soar high, little bird.