Attending

When I was running one day, I saw overhead a flock of swans. Maybe a dozen in a V formation. They flew overhead, their great wings beating the air down. Like looking up at oar blades on a tranquil lake. Me below and they on the surface of things. My place is not the natural or right place. My perspective not the privileged one. In their world the up is as natural as the down.

I was watching as they receded and their moving wings flickered black and white - some trick of vision, the light or the movement. They became flickering pixels of darkness against the grey sky and then, all of a sudden, became a clear slash of silver-white against the clouds, like a slit in the atmosphere and a vision of beyond.

I was awe-struck. Their speed and strength. Yes. The oddities of perspective and motion. Yes. But, also, some essence of 'otherness', a moment of brief transcendence.

I turned and through the hedge, sheep-shapes appeared as silhouettes in the mist that lay low still over the chill fields. They were cut outs of grey on grey, coalescing and then merging back into the clouds as cloudy as their bubbling fleeces.

It was not a pretty morning. Not a pretty route that I went on. And yet...

And I was thinking about human enhancements and how people will want to be smarter and stronger, have better memories and more focus for schoolwork, longer legs and smaller bums, better vision and better hearing.

What I'd want is this, to see the everyday beauty. To find the depth in the flat and the wow in the clouds. Screw reasoning and remembering, I want to feel the pulse of the earth and the lights in the shadowlands. I want to see the world through a horse's eyes and smell life on the path as does a dog. I want to know the pull of the north when season's change and the urge to leap and twist like a galloping heifer. I want the pig's sigh of contentment and the shaman's escape from the all-too-human bonds of logic and reason. I want to fly. I want to merge in the mist. I want to live a life less human.