I am living in my art studio. Things that I made hang about, and make music as I move around. Just behind my little room is a pen where two goats and many chickens live. They sing to me about life in captivity, strange songs with many verses. The chickens are much louder and complain more. Sometimes the larger goat, the mother of the other one, gets out and knocks with her hard hoof on the glass of my back door. She gazes in hopefully. I have no idea what she wants, but I give her some grain and push her back in the pen. She looks at me with her slitted pupil, and I can’t begin to know what it is like to be a goat living in small pen with a bunch of complaining birds. I am usually just as baffled by the behavior of my human neighbors. I go back to my room and think about my own problems and try to be the best human I can be.

We can talk and write and have a huge effect on the world, but I have almost as much trouble making sense out of the choices that humans make, like keeping goats and chickens together in a small pen behind my little room, the nuclear arms race and rush hour traffic jams. I am almost certain I will never really understand people any more than I understand goats. I think I can almost get a handle what’s going on with the chickens sometimes, but I could never explain it too a human or a goat. It is just a vague feeling of unease and desire to be out in the grass away from these big stompy animals with the hard hooves. It is a song that goes well with too early mornings and not enough sleep, too many complications and not enough energy or brain power to make sense of it all. Best to just sing a little song and shrug your shoulders and move along through it. Maybe it will make more sense with a little more experience and lot more coffee.