Yesterday, one of my Philosophy professors lectured about being human - about how a bird knows how to just be a bird and a dog just a dog, but we are not nearly as good at being just a human because we can reason. It's the reasoning that puts a distance between the borders of our skin and the rest of the world, that draws a line around us and says: This Is Me. And because we are so aware of ourselves, that awareness interferes with our just being what we are. The same reason that makes us more than animals also makes us less somehow. It might be that the most successful humans are the ones who leave at least some of their reason untapped, trailing down behind them like a thread hanging from the bottom of their pant leg, forgotten, unaware, not missed.
It is a lie this reason, this awareness. It tells me there is more, something shining and bright hot, that feels like a spirit, and that this is what makes us most human beyond the flesh and blood we share with animals. Maybe it's not completely a lie - maybe it's partly true, but only partly because this bright center is also what makes me unhappy because it is always just out of reach.
The leaves are coming down. Yesterday I kicked through a yellow pile of them lying next to a curb on the way to walking to the edge of a big lake whose border is so far away that it lies beyond the visible horizon. The leaves may mean that another year of growing things is dying, but they just might mean that dying things can be beautiful. Or they just might be lovely leaves.
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