All my life I have been told that I am ''different''.
Not knowing exactly what different means since
it seem to vary a lot from individual to individual,
I've concluded that it's one of those ambiguous
words.
Different can mean:
dissimilar, unlike, unalike, diverse, varied,
separate, divergent, distinct, uncommon, etc. etc. etc.
It can also mean: not like most, not like others,
strange, foreign, unusual, etc. etc.etc.
Already as a very small child I knew that
there was something different(in this case meaning
=wrong)not okay with me.
My first six years of school were not easy
as I was bullied constantly for being ''different'',
as in not ''normal''. There were beatings, my books
and other school materials broken or destroyed.
My bike was always tampered with; the chain broken,
the tires flattened or the seat removed to
somewhere unknown.
So, more often than not, I had to ''walk'' my
bike and myself the 5 kilometers home.
A walk which consisted mostly of a dense forest
which for an eight year old little human
can be really scary during the autumn and winter
months during which the dark(evening) sets in at
three o'clock in the afternoon.
It was during one of those long walks home
that I first realized just how rich and musical
the sounds of the forest was.
*
I am not a twitcher so I don't know birds
by their names, but I am a musician so I know
them by their songs.
Every season has provided me with different singers.
Some of them familiar to me and some of them
for me to get to know.
Sometimes the occasional bird of prey
would let me know that it was around.
Its haunting screech suddenly filling
the air like a soprano who just reached to far.
But always, always cheering me up and
making my walk home shorter and more
delightful; those chittering, twittering,
flittering and magnificently azure blue
tiny little wrens.
I am worried about the future for our
feathered friends. We, the people, have figured out
how to melt the ice caps, to cut down earths ''lungs'',
to poison rivers and creeks, to overuse fertile soil
until it is fertile no more, and how to weaponize microbes
to kill everything alive and now..............
and now we want to set a ''something'' loose on
our planet that we know is capable of ''freeing''
itself from its makers. Really?
We didn't learn from Hiroshima to think first?
Although mankind is a striving, driving and
endlessly inventive entity(as in biological living thing),
may I be so bold as to suggest that mankind is
also a ruthless steamroller kind of thing
which in its pursuit of riches and power
is apparently oblivious to that
once it has acquired all it desires,
there's no Living Planet left.
''Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we realize we cannot
eat money.''
(Cree Native American Prophecy)
''Let us not run hastily into a future without
first making sure that we will find light there.''
(Citizen Z)
about the image: top Ink on paper ...Title: Robochicks?
middle: Acrylic and eyeline pencils on large canvas
Title: What are we teaching our children?
Bottom: Digital photo
Title: Without light, what is there?
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