Got to pet a baby chick today, and holy smokes – what a fluff ball miracle, brought my whole history of sensory adventure to a halt – eureka. i feel something new, and to feel something new that felt like something new was a rich pleasure more intense than a terrible pain. It was an otherworldly softness.

Rubbed its scratchy feet, felt its tendon flex up between my fingertips. thought of a reptile, saw a bird. what happy dark eyes and whirling energy. animal characteristics have floored me before: a sharks dorsal, a dolphins smile, a hyenas presence, ants in colony, bird of prey precision, a dogs smell, squirrel resourcefulness, a lions pride, a flamingos hue…some of the magnificent features of nature I’ve been changed by.

I put her down. she seemed to want to go. she hustled away. just a touch made me want to start a rubber duck company. like an addict i was wondering about the scruff of her neck, how soft that was…I wanted more.

She didn’t even look back. I had no impact on her. Maybe she flicked me a look. I kept looking at my hands, sill itching, quivered by her echoing purity. She pecked away.

What she really did was force me into permanent meditation, reset the bar for earthly softness. What’s better than softness, now, I’ll keep asking myself.

Whenever I have a brush with nature, I get a feeling that overwhelms my chest.  it’s like heat, also like a wave, it starts in my upper gut and ends at my shoulders. I’m talking about real creatures here, outside homes, farms and zoos. For example just yesterday walking into my office i was face to face with a squirrel, Rodents in my view, but still, we were staring at each other, each anticipating the others moves. We were locked in. Communicating. Like when I locked in with vultures in Tanzania, monkeys in South America, deer or fox here in these rolling hills. It’s always the same feeling, this one that heats my chest reminding me I’m not speaking human, or even to myself. I’m in their world. The world!