A glance at perspective. If I were a human and a lion and a cockroach, able to live out from where they live out their lives, while at once able to live out my life as a human among human things, human chatter and human worries, then I would be a special being indeed. I would be human-lion-cockroach, the borders of my existence would be multifaceted and unclear–for instance, whether I should scurry at the lion’s feet, or run from the lion’s roar, whether trash and earthy viscous matter should be my meal, or the antelope or zebra, or something on a plate, shared with friends and enjoyed over gossip and gesticulations, subtle and explicit, and glances over the table–and I would miss out on just what it means to be a human being, or a cockroach, or a lion. What it’s like to be a bat is, after all, conceivable–but not a bat alone, instead it would be a being like a bat, that is, conceiving itself to be this bat. We would feel an unbridgeable gap between ourselves, such imaginative and sympathetic beings as we are, from the bat itself, alone and blindly-masterfully darting for prey above our heads.
Love the Dust 