8:21 AM Saturday, 15 November 2025

…Have seen murmurations this morning while driving thru the container pier–and also, once I got to Point Pleasant Park, there was a pair of loons having either a bath or breakfast–hard to tell from this distance.
The murmurations were small but I can’t help thinking–isn’t that how they always begin? I wonder if the birds choose to gather like that? Is there volition, in other words? On the one hand, I’d like to think so–that there is choice and the birds are opting for helping to create this mobile-in-motion. The other part of me is thinking, what a salvific instinct to have built into the DNA of creation…the idea that it is better when creation acts in harmony with other creation…That we are organically wired for that, even when we think we are choosing it, does not make is less of a marvel, less ‘true truth.’
The artistry of a murmuration certainly gets at that–no question. Chosen or organic, it pulses with life and art, each piece of it influencing the others closest to and played out over the whole. It is living texture, all of the shape changing, the breathing.
None of it linear, all in community.
What a model for humanity and the sometimes tendency, desire, inclination, to do it alone. It’s been a lifetime of learning for sure…A)To know that I am a better person for others because I live, move, and have being, with other people. B) What I bring to the art being created does not have to be in line with the others, necessarily, but rather, in relationship with… I might lend flex, bend, pulsation…I will have overt or subtle influence on those around me and I will likewise be nudged, inspired, motivated one way or another, by them. C) All of that is to, is toward, is for, the great Good that holds the whole together as One.