46.

Some people get upset when too much value is placed on animal lives, as if it is being placed there at the expense of the human. I rather think it the other way around: we demean ourselves when we over emphasise our difference from other animals. Perhaps it is true that we are peculiarly conscious of our fate, but I’m not sure we suffer a different death. In seeming to obliterate certain distinctions we open to a much more potent difference & in an important sense become more difficult to fool, though our words & our ways may still appear foolish to some. Everything that lives is holy: a single flower is worth more than all the gold in the world, a ladybird landed upon your finger suits you better than any jewel, a twig caught in your hair is more lovely than any tiara, & if a fly landed on your face it would be clear it was a beauty spot. It doesn’t really get any cleverer than that, for all the world may continue to argue otherwise. To some degree it could be seen as a matter of having our priorities straight. While such great power appears merely poetic & quaint all manner of progress amounts to no more than a deepening curse. This is not the promise of a cartoon utopia, it is more like coming to terms with the grimmest of reapers, crossing the abyss of every inhuman madness. I suppose I only mean to say it is not an easy thing to do, even as in essence it may be absolutely simple. I’m sure in some small way we are doing it for each other all the time, because whatever else we are this is right there at the base of us, it just gets taken advantage of, it somehow makes us seem easy to please when in truth we are anything but. I am glad for what is close to us but it is not separate from what we hope to keep further away: the difference between us all is the same. At least now it starts to sound totally unacceptable again. The only solution seems to be to put that difference between oneself & the world & let the world be the impossibility of making any sense of it, when here outside it seems to do just fine making sense of us. What the world thought selfishness was but the enemy of its own rabid compartmentalisation. What the clever thought stupid was a symptom of their own ignorance. What twisted you up was a question no real person could actually ask. The difference is the same. We are all equally different. We have nothing in common. But this is the infinite talking! This is the eternal shutting up which is the wondrous opening of every Pandora’s box. This is judgement.

Then what is your verdict, sunshine? Let us hear from the birdies in the wings.

You are angry with yourself. You need to give up the world but you keep torturing yourself with ridiculous questions that make what you’ve tried to say a nonsense. Of course it is, it is a nonsense, but you have established it is a holy one, it is evidently sacred to you, the cow has indeed jumped over the moon, you can just say that kind of stuff now. You, the saint, & the murderer, all equally different because the difference is God & that can be Hell if we want. You can’t really tell what it is for anyone else. Even when it is peace for you you can hardly bear it. But this changes. Because it doesn’t. Justesse & Judgement. You had a good Lent, dreamt some funny dreams & some scary ones & the weather has turned good & outside is unbusy smiling. Why not see if the bunny wants to venture out his cave?