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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
Let's wrap up my entries for this round of "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]depressed arches You know how, sometimes, it feels like you just can't go on? Nothing's right, but you don't have enough desire or ability to try to make it right? I don't know; maybe you're one of the lucky ones who never feel that way. But I think most people, especially creatives, get depressed at some point, even if it doesn't descend to the clinical level. Sometimes, paradoxically perhaps, it can add fire to one's work. Bruce Springsteen, one of the most prolific songwriters of all time and one of the most energetic in concert, disclosed in his autobiography that he suffered from depression, to the great surprise of anyone who's never heard one of his hundreds of songs. I don't know if Leonard Cohen did, but shit, man, just read his poetry. Lots of great comedy comes out of depression, because, really, what can you do but laugh and try to make others laugh, too? Not to mention every Russian writer ever, and at least half the French ones. Thing is, though, when you're an arch, you have no choice. You have one job: supporting everything above you. And you do it, through rain, snow, sleet, and (at least relatively minor) earthquakes and hurricanes. Worse, when you're a depressed arch, the thing you're holding up tends to be very heavy, like train tracks. Well, those aren't all that heavy, comparatively speaking, but sometimes there's a train and then you really feel the weight. But that's not even the worst thing. No, the worst thing is knowing that you didn't have to be an arch. You could have been a solid wall, except that someone decided that something—trucks, pedestrians, a river, wildlife, whatever—absolutely had to get from one side of the thing you're holding up to the other. And your span is too wide to simply throw a beam on top, so to be able to hold up something that's not you, you become an arch. You don't even get paid. Maybe, sometimes, you appear in some book on structural engineering and/or architecture, or get your picture posted to Wikipedia, but otherwise, you just sit there. Brooding. Not for all eternity, mind you, because you're acutely aware that everything eventually crumbles to rubble and dust, but sometimes, it sure feels like it.Perhaps, on better days, when the sun is shining and the people admiring your smooth lines and graceful curves are happy and smiling, you realize that things could, indeed have been worse: you could have been located on the bottom of someone's foot. |
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