Freedom & a Flower: Part I

 ‘One must have freedom, sunshine and a little flower.’

~ Hans Christian Anderson

CyberDragon’s Psychedelic Trips are perfect for staring at chickens in the sunshine. 

I'm ensconced in a wholly different world as I sit in the balcony, watching Flirty-Chicken mince around, fluffing her tail, while the two roosters flap and squawk, ripping each other to bloodied ribbons. I occasionally run through the yard, reluctantly flapping my arms, calling up childhood phrases (‘fighter-cocks’) to break up the fight. Pichkoo watches from under my chair, covered in her resident cloud of mosquitoes hovering around her little nose. (Pichkoo is very generous, she always shares her various bugs with me, often leaving a fat tick at my doorstep.) She’s watching the fight, hawk-eyed, probably hoping one rooster will flop over and die. She's also oblivious to Dove-White-Chicken greedily golumphing at her pet mosquitoes. ^[1] Usually friendly, Fatootie-Chicken is grumpily glaring at the commotion around. Her ferocious pecking is enough to keep the warring fools away, far from her food.

We are what we see before us. We forget other sentient beings in our wired, weary daily lives. Stop Instagram-ing for an instant, please, and spend time soaking in the sunshine. Sit still, and breathe slow. Stare into the skies beyond. See the birds circling the clouds. Floppy-eared bunnies and horse-dragon clouds floof through the bright blue skies above. Purple feathery flowers peek through the touch-me-nots. Once you’ve watched a sapling struggle through the soil, would you be willing to destroy swathes of ancient forest to fuel your already avaricious coal empire?

I often wonder what it would be like if I could survive on fruit and plants from my backyard, and sit and stare at the chickens all day long. What if I didn’t feel compelled to engage with, attempt to empower and amplify voices of the marginalised, impoverished, malnourished, brutalised, discriminated against, criminalised millions? What if there was no need to write impassioned reams of information on communities across the country? What if there weren’t any enslaved, tortured, crushed by administration’s inability to deal with neglect, greed and corruption?

“The unmarked graves

The lost languages

The uprooted trees and histories

The dead stares on the faces of nameless children”

We played a game last night, my friend & I. We tried to think of a place where there isn’t some shit going down. Iceland & Denmark rate ‘at peace’ in terms of armed conflict – civilian or international. No one is inclined to data crunch daily violence, so technically, there is no human habitation per se, where there is peace. Maybe Christania. Mostly.

There’s far too many ego-bloated ‘humans’ pomp-arsing their way through life (think Arnab Goswami). Fools who’ve failed to realise that we’re all just made of Star Stuff and Space Brains. A punter. Or a politician. Maybe a banker or a billionaire. A certain cop somewhere, and a minion or two there. Same story everywhere. Slaves who believe our destinies are to ‘conquer’ by plotting wars and mangling minds. The rest are either mesmerised by TV or desperately dying for telling the truth.

  

“… we could be silent forever

…And you would still ask us

For more of our silence.”

~ Emmanuel Ortiz

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[1] I feel like Pichkoo may be playing the long game, that one day, she's just gonna snap up Dove-White and run away, like she does with all the plastic water bowls I put out for her. Neighbours and friends keep ‘returning’ bowls they find anywhere between my house & her usual humans’ villa.