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vaneramos
Lake Erie's north shore, about 1:30 pm on December 23. 
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"This is very interesting. I am finding bodies of humans, but I have yet to see a dead animal. . . . Maybe what we think is true, that animals have a sixth sense."
~Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, who owned a hotel in Sri Lanka's Yala National Park, speculating that wildlife fled to higher ground. The hotel was destroyed in Sunday's tsunami and 200 people in the park died. The park is home to 200 Asian elephants, crocodile, wild boar, water buffalo and grey langur monkeys (Associated Press).
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If animals have a sixth sense, then we should have one, too. Some of us do. A Canadian snorkeler said she survived Sunday's tsunami because she sensed something was wrong and decided to leave the water. It's not hard to believe. Nature is full of rhythms and cycles. When something disturbs them, it shouldn't take a sixth sense to pick up subtle changes in sound, light, temperature or the smell of the air. Perhaps its not a sense at all, but a subconscious centre in the core of the brain that picks up these clues and computes them, notifying us when a collection of factors has shifted subtly. Not one of them alone would register meaning, but together they make an equation our minds should grasp.
We are used to living mostly in our conscious minds, the higher brain that deals with sense perceptions and reasoning. But we are still fully equipped with the lower reptilian brain that controls many instinctive behaviours. Among other functions, it detects changes in light and secretes chemical cues that tell our bodies to sleep. It also controls many of our basic responses, like fear and hunger.
It is not a rational reaction, however. Rational society has taught us to ignore our instincts. We humans have so over-stimulated our senses that we have stopped paying attention to our animal insights. We are not only out of touch with the Earth, but with ourselves.
Images of my walk on Thursday afternoon remain stark in my mind as they are in the photographs. The bank of clouds marking the eastward retreat of a winter storm crossed the Lake Erie horizon. The winter sun emerged and bathed snow-covered beach, bank of ice, and distant green lake water in a strange pearly light.
Once, I ventured onto the ice, lying in a thick shelf across the verge of sand. Shifting temperatures and the forces of water had ruptured a chasm filled with chunks of clear ice and fragile crystals underneath, where ripples had hollowed out a cavity before receding. I crept forward cautiously lest I sink through and soak my boots. At the edge of the miniature abyss I leaned forward to take photos in the inscrutable shadows. My hand touched the edge, and a sound of tinkling erupted, crystals breaking and collapsing like shattered glass. It set off a domino effect along the fault line, tracing hidden corridors up and down the shoreline. The voice was musical but cold and spiritless. I had started a tiny ice quake. After two or three seconds the shattering subsided, and the winter beach fell still.
The say a butterfly's wings can start a hurricane on the other side of the earth. I wonder if a lightning collapse of icicles on Thursday could send impulses through the earth's mantle and molten core, triggering an earthquake on the floor of the Indian Ocean on Sunday. And I wonder if my sense of awe on the beach—at the austere power of earth, water, stone and light—might have tasted like foreboding.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-29 08:24 pm (UTC)Seriously, I was just reading this on a recently posted MSN/CNN article....If we stop and smell the roses, stop and listen to the voices within....or simply....just stop!!!
no subject
Date: 2004-12-29 08:31 pm (UTC)Hope you have been having a good week. Hugs from Canada.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-29 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 12:19 am (UTC)I still have a long way to go.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 03:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 07:59 am (UTC)for some reason I can't see the pics though....just red Xs
no subject
Date: 2004-12-30 05:42 pm (UTC)I really did miss you this week. I wouldn't mind sitting down right now to talk about things in the world over a cup of coffee. I am somewhat cynical with respect to aid agencies, from my experience working for one. Not that I think they are bad, but I feel they can hardly address the problem because Westerners are so paternalistic in their attitude toward the Third World.
Having said that, I really admire your commitment to donating part of your income, and at times like this I hope more people will wake up to how closely our lives are tied to the rest of humanity.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-02 08:29 am (UTC)Looks like my magic bay here....how...refreshing, renewing it is just to look at!
I wish we COULD sit down with a cup of coffee and discuss this. I'd really like to hear more of your opinion and your experience.
I have a bit of hope that this might be a tipping point of sorts for awareness of how much we Can do if we tie ourselves with the rest of humanity and take action, each of us, when there is a need, a hurt, etc. I want us to work like the human body...when there is an injury on an extremity...
Did you read that article on how amazon.com was donating more than the country of france? I'll try to find a link if not. I wih the 10% idea was in play throughout all the large corporations at this time...it would boggle everyone how much would be able to go for aid right now.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-02 04:02 pm (UTC)I feel terribly torn at this time, whether to face the fate of humanity with resignation or hope. It's like fighting with cancer.