Spot the squirrel!

This is cool, don't you think? The squirrel seemed to know he looked like a patch of lichen covered willow bark!

I had decided to walk rather than run and so I was able to enjoy the scenery. As ever, a real variety pack of things caught my eye. Among them, a nest that had blown from a tree; a crow chasing a raven; moss; bark; and twilight.

It was such a beautiful day. But I was brooding. For some reason, I have a bugbear about the term "nonduality". My dear friend Gay uses it a lot. In general, I guess I buy into much of what that implies: the dissolution of dualities like nature/culture, for example. And I am fully on board with the entangled nature of being - the butterfly's wing and the cyclone, the John Muirism "pull one strand and the whole world comes with it". But there's something beyond all that... the "it's all One" with a capital O that gets my goat.

See, I’m a big fan of differences - all the many voices and differences - the diversity of beings… heterogeneity rather than thinking all merges into some homogeneity on a level I don’t experience… and I sort of think, well, if it WERE all one, then it wouldn’t matter if there were only cockroaches, rats and crows on the surface and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in their bunkers as it would be the same oneness at a metaphysical level...…. In contrast, I think it does matter that there are Amur Tigers and Tristan Albatrosses, and Robins, and Crows, and Rats and Cockroaches, and Oaks, and Beeches and all the billions of other forms! In fact, I guess I think that the forms are precious! Else we might as well say, extinction? So what? Who cares if a unique way of being dies out? It’s all the same oneness...

So I guess this post is a way of celebrating what's not One. There is a squirrel AND a willow tree. There are many trees. Many birds. Many ways of looking at dusk falling on a winter afternoon in Northamptonshire.

So I guess this post is a way of celebrating what's not one..