3. Cub Baer

I am a large sort of animal, but I am a small one. I am a young one of my type. Not fully grown, not yet completely on my own.

Here is something I will tell you. Here is a thing I like to do. Here I am, introducing myself to you.

I like to climb, it's a common thing for an animal like me to do. It's something I was born to do.

If you have never climbed higher than you are right now, how do you know it isn't possible?

Everything that you have ever done, you did once for the first time.

My mother pushed me up the tree the first time. Her huge paw on my bottom. When I found my claws could work as well on bark as on the ground, when I saw how far I could see, I knew that trees were made for me, and I for them.

It is so hard, the first time, to believe in a wonderful thing.

It took so long, that first time we were living, to organize the world into a few
good things.

The ecstatic space of being in a body meant that every sound or movement we made was a place we'd never been before. The world was bigger with each effort and we were more a part of it.

If it was the first time always, always it would bring delight.

Innocence was a liability we treasured.

To believe the best could happen. To look on new experience like a gift. Like it is ordinary. Like it will always be this way, always new.

To look on a ladder, sturdy, aluminum, clean against the bright sky, as if anything we can think of can happen to us. As if anything we imagine is what we can be.

To know just the way limbs feel bowing beneath our weight, to know because we have been there, have climbed out on a limb.

wuns ie fell out ov a
tree and broek my
leg

There are details to go back over and fill in.

I did not know what I was doing, then.

I have travelled this far to tell you that I am filled with blood.

but iem glad thats
aull oever becaus
it shoer did hert

The energy of experience that can't be preserved. Of experience recalled.

The injury that disorganized experience.

An injury has disorganized my experience. I have come to this white-ceilinged room to tell you it was ecstatic.

n e x t

 

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