From My Sketchbook, June 7th 2010

I am being utterly overwhelmed by all that is alive this very moment, just within the humble confines of my own backyard. It's as if sometime last night, when the moon was obscured by this dense marine fog and the night creatures had sought the safety of their nests, a rebirth occurred. Not some large flashy event where the stars shone down and the tempests shook, but a quiet, hidden event. One that passed in a silent strain noticed only by the mitochondria who never sleep. But it did happen. And when the winds pressed hard against the mist and light once again illuminated these soft edges, it was there.

Tiny.

Like something I could balance on a single fingernail but with a potency that saturates every life force breathing in this particular brand of atmosphere. I could see it in the slender blushing shoulders of the radishes and the plump drop of the season's first sugar snap peas. It was evident in the smallest bulbs of new raspberries, pale and hard but swelling ever outward. I could hear in the trill of the red-faced finch and in the sharp hum of the bumble bees.

I think to myself: this is why I eat, this is the whole meaning behind that base need. Look at this Life,

this pulsing,

throbbing,

chanting,

swaying,

spinning Life!

I would consume, I would be consumed, I would be caught up in this flood that dances so fast across the soil for a glimpse of eternity manifest in a single aged ray of sunlight. I would be this part, this element so carefully constructed into the great web of organisms sharing life, each interpreting and reinterpreting photosynthesis, changing the structure of energy once again. This is it. This is why. This is Life.