At the heart of our language, things are what they are. Whatever that is, it’s pretty clear. For instance, this is antness.

Young Queen Ant on Her Flight Day …

… embodying the ant property of the universe.

And here she is (look closely) giving me a warning to keep my humanness to myself…

At least, in my humanness, that jaw-pincer thing sure looks like a warning. 

She is, you can see, making great use of the grassness of the universe (a form of frozen sunlight) to get closer to the sun for her first (and only) flight.

Well, it’s a pretty cool language that can do things like that. Here is some more neat stuff. Welcome to the cloudness of the universe…

No, Not Clouds, but the Principle of Cloud Energy …

… materializing over the Commonage and Kalamalka Lake (behind the hill).

See how this works? Here’s some life …

What Kind of Insect is This? Anyone?

I don’t mean that the grass or the insect are alive (although they are), but that the “lifeness” of the universe is present in this spot, in two quite different but related ways extended over vast stretches of time. Here’s another:

Swallowtail Butterfly in the Bella Vista Hills

It’s not that the butterfly is flying, but that it has caught the flight of the universe and rides it. This means of thought likely sounds poetic to contemporary ears, but remember this: the language holds the capacity to think like this, because it is at heart formed by this kind of thought. In words we all know there is a profound bridge between “modern” and indigenous thought. What’s more, if the language maintains this capability, so do all people who speak it. For instance, the needle-and-thread grass, yarrow and the mariposa lilies below don’t bloom and fruit, but enter the bloom and fruitfulness of the universe…

And don’t fill with light so much as join with it briefly. The body responds in this way. That the words do, too, suggests to me that they really are the words of the body, despite all contemporary things to make them signposts of the mind. This is one of the ways in which the whole world is art — dancing, even.

Lavender, Dancing