I was watching birds eating sunflower seeds on the front lawn this afternoon.
I found myself trying to identify them. I didn't even make a conscious decision to do that - it just happened out of habit. First I was in the moment, then suddenly I was half in the moment and half in some bird-watching book my schoolteacher grandparents gave me when I was eight.
So instead of just seeing and experiencing the birds, I was trying to name them all. Was that a sparrow? A finch? A wren? A Fahrquahr's Ruby-crested Titmouse?
(There's actually no such thing as a Fahrquahr's Ruby-crested Titmouse. I just made that up because I like saying 'titmouse.'
Titmouse. Titmouse. Titmouse.)
This brings me back to the question: what is it?
If I say it's a sparrow, does that mean it is a sparrow? Or does that just mean I have a name for the thing that I don't what it is?
If I say it's the wind, or the sun, or life, or love or Angelina Jolie... what is it?
Do you get I'm saying? What is it?
I don't know, and as always, it's OK to not know.
But don't think that just because you have a name for the thing in itself, you know what it is.
(Titmouse.)
3 comments:
"A white horse in not a horse" is defensible. "Horse" denotes the form and "white" denotes the color. What denotes the color does not denote the form. Therefore we say that a white horse is not a horse.
If only the features of a thing can be pointed out, how can the whole thing be pointed out when the whole thing is not a feature of anything?
One and one cannot become two since neither becomes two.
You think too much about Angelina Jolie.
What a titmouse "is" varies, depending upon the processor between the beholder's ears.
The same can be said for tits and mice, by the way.
Well, certainly for the tits, anyhow.
he said "tit" heh heh heh
blogblah!!!
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