Decorah, IA

Watch this!

Except it's not really watching, if you define watching as active absorption in a scene played out before you.  No, the live footage of a pair of bald eagles raising three eaglets in Decorah, Iowa, is unwatchable in the sense of taking in a movie or a play or a circus act.   The eagles and  sit around and do a whole lot of nothing, only occasionally punctuated with vivid mundanities: They stir!  They cheep!  They poop!  Riveting stuff.

Nevertheless, this thing has been open on my desktop for weeks, ever since the third eaglet hatched at the beginning of April.  There's something to be said for an observational experience that is less focused and more expansive, less about actively engaging and more about fostering a warm, dim awareness of other lives lived in parallel. drink my coffee; the eaglets gulp dead fish.  I come home from work; the eagles rearrange the nest.  I go to bed; the mother eagle tucks her head under her wing.

It's drama, alright, but uncondensed, unspooled over the fullness of time.  It's both expansive and expanding, in the way the best of the Internetz can, but seldom bothers to, be.  I'm here; you're there.   Hello, world.