It is amazing how symmetrically we are designed. I tried running with my right arm in unison with my right leg, left arm with left leg, and it is almost impossible, you just about fall over, and your arms return naturally to the opposite side from your leg, which is the most economical way to run, I suppose, all limbs swinging away in a balanced fashion to keep you upright and going in a relatively straight line.
Well, I'm cheating again today, no drawing or painting, but I loved this photograph when I saw how it had turned out, so I am using it.
I was sitting on a rock in the meadow thinking how awful some people are. Earlier, looking at beautiful pictures of the Hebrides in a National Geographic, I turned the page to horrific images of animals being sold in a Jakarta market, owls, toucans, iguanas, monkeys and other illegally traded, often endangered animals. I wish ill on these people, I want them to experience an excruciating death. I feel such anguish just seeing a racoon dead on the side of the road. It is incomprehensible to me how people can be like this, the cruelty of human beings. The indescribably stupidity of mankind. I wish I was so rich that I could travel there and buy up all the animals, and set them free in a safe perfect place.Nick is reading Moby Dick, the famous classic, an American allegory about an idiotic man searching for a white whale and looking for revenge. A much better book, in my opinion, is "Ahab's Wife" by Sena Naslund. But that is beside the point, which is to do with man's inhumanity to animals, sentient beings like ourselves. I was so happy to find out that whales actually did attack boats and kill people, one entire whaling ship, the Essex, was holed and sunk in the 1800's. When people first encountered polar bears, when the first ship got to the Arctic Circle, the men on board just shot them, about 500 of them! What is wrong with us? We are capable of such heights but such terrible depths, and today was a murky day for my soul.
Unfortunately our past is filled with this short sited behavior. Look at the American Buffalo, almost hunted to extinction when there were hundreds of thousands of them. I was sad hear when Teddy Roosevelt found out about the low numbers left he boarded a train and shot one before they were all gone. Later when he met with Sierra Club founder John Muir he asked him "When are you going to end this childish obsession with killing animals?" I guess we will always have good vs. evil. Which reminds me, I think I need to renew my Sierra Club membership.
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