jodawiqatsi

[eleriah]

1

I am not a hawk-rabbit, lying in wait for a hawk to scream down with talons outstretched, then jumping and kicking when the hawk can no longer escape. There is no bewildered instant of predator realizing something has gone wrong.

2

I stand and throw the rock in my hand, and it doesn't become a hawk tumbling down on the logging road, feathers torn and dusty. It hasn't rained for a while.

I don't see any blackberries as i walk, and no blackberries i think see me, tens or thousands of eyes gaging my distance from them. Fish would have to be small to school together enough to have that many eyes following me, gliding through the air silently and turning as if one. Blackberries can watch more efficiently, but so little mobility.

Clumsy walk down the road, scattering stones, no silent quantum transition to ever lower locations on the hill, no guardian spirit moving with native alacrity. My shoes get dusty.

I reach my car. It's not a hemispherical bubble, twenty feet in diameter, inertial dampers obviating the need for seat belts or other restraints as it lifts and glides smoothly in a slow spiral, forest and sky silently orbiting the axis of travel. No wings for gremlins to catch hold of and monkey with, or gremlin with.

No companions sit on the soft cushions, watching through the ceiling or floor, or mixing a juice at the kitchen island, or napping with the sunlight slowly reaching around their relaxed features. We don't follow the river to its source, just above its surface, or float in the belly of a cloud.

I try not to ride the brakes too much as i descend the logging road to get back on the highway. No borders are crossed, no military bases or units avoided as orphans of war are located by the intensity of their unmet needs, offered a ride to a new life by the computer's voice in their native language. No distrustful stares, wide eyes, hesitation about sitting with dirty clothes and limbs on the seats, talk and introductions with the other children, fear or wonder or suspicion when the landscape starts moving through the glass, eager taking of food and drink, and then with the last passenger on board, swift passage out over the ocean to reach an artificial island nation or submerged colony. No orientation, medical checkup, strange children and adults with different skins and eyes and bodies and languages and clothings and habits. No future forged together, no weeping to return to a lost home. No therapy groups, rivalries, breaking up of gangs, or matching psychological profiles to form cohesive threads of friendship, a common language emerging. I reach the highway, across from a red roadside bar that i can't imagine ever entering. I turn onto the highway.