Ruminations During A Morn's Observations

The squirrel and the robin must be pretty aware and cautious to stay alive. Squirrels seem jumpy, nervous, paranoid. Moving here and there. Rapid. Skittish. Even when they attempt the "stay motionless" manuever their rapid heartbeat and pent up energy can be observed. Like a coffee addict. The birds seem to observe motionless. Well those that remain. Most take to the trees. A useful trick that takes the squirrels a bit longer. The trees seem to be like a haven or refuge. The forest floor a dangerous place. It's the dark, dangerous woods of old faere tales. Not these toned down, neutered ones we have about nowadays.
Tales with ogres, bogey men, and witches in tasty homes with ovens for cooking children. They were scary, yes, but they had faces. Those evils of old. They could be faced. They could be wrestled with. They could, no matter how scary, be defeated.
But now our tales are not near as in your face scary. The danger not as apparently dreadful. We don't dread them that much at all. Death over there. Starvation. AIDS. Obeseity. War. Impersonal. Massive. Faceless. Things you can't push in the oven. Things you can't momentarily blind by reflecting the sun off of your shield. And we don't have any magic beanstalks anymore.
So we try to ignore and move on. Listen to music. Watch TV. Eat. Excercise. Buy stuff. Not buy stuff. Pick your poison. To do battle with our modern bogey men? No way.
These aren't witches, ogres, ghouls or ghosts. They are giants. What can one man do against a GIANT? And then I think of Mickey. When he was a tailor. What? The Mouse? The spokesanimal for the sanitization of fairytales committee? Yeah.
He faced a Giant at least once. I saw it on TV. He was bragging about killing a bunch of flies at one blow. Do you remember? They thought he was talking about Giants so he was taken before the King and told to slay the Giant. Hmmm. This I can relate to. The job seems too big for a tailor. It seems too big for me. Now we can back down. And do. Often.
But not that indefatigable mouse. (I mean... everyone was watching.) So what does he do? He uses his ingenuity, and what's on hand, what he knows, and goes out there. He had a couple tricks. The one I remember most was when he challenged the Giant to squeeze water out of a rock. He used a big chunk of cheese. Fooled the Giant. Beat the Giant. (Who ended up becoming an amusement park or some such thing?)
Perhaps there is something we can do. Perhaps Giants can be defeated by simple people: tailors, poets, scientists, trades people, young, old, and inbetween.

Sometimes we are squirrels, and we nervously dart around and freak out and run away. Sometimes we are the birds and we observe; pick our time to run away. Perhaps we are to be mice. Stand up. Think. Slay Giants.