Ursa of Аляска

One Kodiak bear says to another Kodiak bear, "Why do we kill the defenseless animals that hop around the woods?"

The other Kodiak bear looks up at her confused.  She doesn't even realize there's blood all over her snout!

"Actually," the second bear says, "we mostly feed on Salmon, and rarely attack the woodland species such as deer or goats.  If we eat their meat, they're usually already dead from the winter."

The first bear looks skeptical.  "Then why do you have so much blood on your face?"

"Oh, that," says the second.  "You see, we all have that."  And it's true! The first bear has blood on her snout!

"How is this possible?" says the first.

Says the second, "Because it saves us the trouble of confessing later on."

So both bears stand among the trees under the northern borealis, emerald and pink, like fresh salmon arching through the sky. One has only to look up at the salmon of the sky, and easily forgets the blood matting the fur of the bears' snouts, as do they.

Slow rise

It all seems a bit silly, this brick-by-brick ascent.

The power goes out

The Earth grows dark. Well, what is there to do? We could go extinct. Or panic, loot and horde munitions, murder. We could conquer what is left in the black night. But that is uninteresting. Unoriginal--we've done that already. We could dream. Dreaming is a bit of old hat, but at least there are possibilities for novelty. Endlessly so. Yet dreaming seems somehow unproductive, or an irresponsible use of our time. Well then, we could go about making light. But that seems unlikely. Not anytime soon. Or perhaps the dark is an end, and there is nothing to be done. Dusks and dawns have for too long been regarded as givens. It's time we learned what we've been taking for granted all these mornings&evenings. Yet for those who've stopped to look at a pink sun setting on a gulf of green waves, it's unlikely this thing that looks so much like another world is being taken for granted. It seems unlikely that our fragile incubation, circling one behemoth spherical incinerator of billions, wouldn't still excite (or horrify) us. Can it even be said that we deserve this darkness of the planet Earth? We can always hope that it is an eclipse. If it is an eclipse, we will have learned something about ourselves. Even if what we've learned isn't entirely clear, and anchors upon the image of a corona. But could it really be said that we haven't learned about ourselves already? So we are left with this question, then. Unanswered. Unanswerable. The Earth is dark. At least maybe we can make up our minds about God--but probably not.

Identifying features

Soon enough your skin flakes off, your nails and hair grow until they need to be clipped, old socks get holes and are replaced with new ones, your DNA becomes new DNA, or something like that, and suddenly you're an imposter. Though if you're a new person, with new socks, maybe this means your memories aren't yours anymore, either. They belong to that other person, who is also an imposter pretending to be you. Liar! Well, you can scream, or you can turn to the present moment, which is wholly yours.

Worry

One thing people don't worry about is the death of the last veteran of war. Or maybe people worry about it intensely, so much so that they begin to shoot each other in the afternoon sunlight.

Cleopatra's lawn care ordinance

A worm in the warm dirt must wonder, why are the people so jealous of birds? Flight can be brief and cold and sharp and deadly, but the dirt, one can never get too far ahead of one's self in the dirt.

From a blind man to Mr. Humphrey Davy

If you stare into a light bulb intensely and for enough years, when the filament breaks, you won't even see the black-singed glass, the dark thing right in front of your eyes.