soliloquies in the outdoors
Cold, is all that they are, rocks in the high mountains, some basking in stasis, others churning in that slow glacial procession… concoctions of pressure in myriad forms, sharp volcanic outbursts or a gradual buildup of sediment… flaky or smooth, jagged or rounded, monoliths or pebbles, blunt prose or poetic allegories, they’re cold, all cold… …
Lepidoptera, the order of insects comprising butterflies and moths, are a strange lot… not only do their physical forms metamorphose rather unrecognizably from birth to adulthood, interestingly, so does their relationship with us… the adult being an avid pollinator but the caterpillar might be an agricultural pest, although some weave silk too… ‘twas the Chinese …
Prinia, prancing… that’s my mumble on spotting this busy bee of a bird, flitting impatiently across bushes with the tail moving in a rather autonomous manner, like a music conductor’s baton waving furiously to navigate a busy section of the symphony… well adapted to the chaos that is urbanity, its dismissiveness to the idea of …
Temples, those that have been wizened by the meanders of civilization since medieval times, are more often than not draped in a bemused solemnity… been there, seen that… the tomes of religion remain the same, but their interpretations are forever in a state of flux… the monuments lie somewhere in the middle… tangible testimonies of …
Graves are as much annals of natural history as that of civilization, one muses, looking at lichens creeping over the tombstones… myriad shades of green go exploring the cracks and crevices to burst forth and fulfill their seemingly imperialistic ambitions through spores or isidia… from the vestiges of those deceased, life emanates as an intriguing …
Woodpeckers underline the echoes of winter… their tap-taps breaking the silence of the otherwise brooding woods… as the chirps of other avifauna punctuate their own little surrounds, woodpeckers fill the whole forest with their drumming… rhythm and bass section, one muses, watching these birds bristling about the oaks and pines in a no-nonsense manner… for …
Spiders, like most insects, are cringey at first but tend to grow upon one’s thoughts… tactical predators, mathematical geniuses, eight-legged freaks, masters of silk, artistic abseilers… spiders weave their own little worlds, an ability once revered by older cultures, from cave paintings to the lore of Brutus… and now inextricably intertwined with the human conscience, …
Eagles, there is such pensiveness in their cold stares… although I find most avifauna steeped in a wistfulness that characterizes the nature of their existence, it seems more accentuated in the raptors, as if exhausted by all that burden of death, stuck in this vocation… their cries are shrill, movements calculated… the hooked beak resembling …
Prehistory, one feels at times, deserves to be left alone… for we aren’t doing much with it, except maybe for emojis… there’s no cultures to revere or ancestries to venerate, and consequently, no opinions to subjugate… hardly any narratives soaked in drama… just a clutch of unembellished facts aloof to sensational revelations or discoveries… content …
Birds, the fidgety kind, anyone who likes to stalk them in lush, dense forests is well acquainted with the acoustic delights and visual disappointments… the chirps and rustles spark hope… the human crouches and crawls in a misconception of stealth, the avifauna revels in the foliage… both parties trying to avoid a startle, one looking …