Filing

Success in the civilized world seems to depend on how well you manage your paper existence.

I swear I'll keep up with the filing, but papers always pile up. At first there are only a few. But then, before I know it, the stack has grown, and spawned other stacks on the tributaries that lead to my office. Maybe I think I want a second or third look at a particular document before I entomb it in the archives. Maybe it's something inherently boring, like a financial statement from one of my meager investments. Maybe it's a charitable apeal from one of the causes I can no longer afford to support, because I'm paying for health insurance, and because two people really can't live as cheaply as one.

We've created a world of ideas. Some of them are bullshit. Some of them are important. The words and numbers that express them flutter around my head like moths around a light. I should catch and catalogue them, but more often I let them burn out against the glass and fall dead, or fly away to another, brighter bulb.

Squirrels run across the clearing out back in any season. They have no filing cabinets. Half of what they store, they lose.

Squirrels need secretaries.

The sun comes up, arcs across the sky, slides out of sight again. Its changing angle brings us seasons in which the many other life forms who don't keep records live their physical lives. We spend time watching them, keeping their histories for them, shaping their lives to fit our needs.

Nature needs a good lawyer.

No, humans need more nature. Rather than shuffling the black specks on the white remnants of trees that died for our sake, I'd rather walk outside, looking up the trees that stand in my forest. In summer I can sit out back in clouds of hummingbirds. Their tropical colors sparkle like jewels I did not have to dig out of the earth. All I have to do is hang jugs of sugar water.

So this is underachievement.