The In-Between

Bird Calls and other Interventions

I was thinking of a word to describe the terrain I’ve been in lately and landed on in-between.

It applies to many things, but mostly in-between versions of ourselves and so, our world. The above portrait of Vincent Van Gogh VS his self-portrait demonstrates for me something of the difference. (Not that I’m seeing things in swirls of bright color - I wish!)

Being in-between is not a bad place to be.

In the in-between, life is… malleable: there’s a kind of elasticity to it. I suspect because as a person I’m not feeling particularly ‘fixed’ at the moment, that aids in perceiving the world with a similar kind of fluidity. I don’t know.

Phrases that have no meaning in the in-between: figured it out, it’s a lock, nailed it down, done-deal. You get the idea.

I have a new theory about Vincent Van Gogh. I think he lived in the in-between all the time. I think he painted what he saw - that animating force running through everything.

It’s just a theory.

Being in the in-between is like slipping into a space that’s always there but easily missed because your very idea about what life is and who you are, keep you tethered to certain “location” that keeps the in-between out.

Things stand out that otherwise would not. Symbolism comes forward, messages are heard & received and weird shit happens.

I’ve noticed a ‘sketchy’ quality to some people lately. Meaning they are more like a sketch than like a physical person. That perception is often accompanied by a sense of their belonging to the past. Or what will soon be the past. (Or maybe that’s more about me? In these exchanges, one of us feels out of time.)

Hard to put it into words.

Bird call this morning:

We need you we need you we need you we need you

5 seconds later:

We need you we need you we need you we need you

5 seconds later:

We need you we need you we need you we need you

Like clockwork every 5 seconds, rapid-fire repetition of the same “phrase” exactly 4 times.

We need you we need you we need you we need you

If I weren’t in the in-between I probably wouldn’t have heard the call that way.

After listening for several minutes, I telepathically tell the feathered-messenger - I hear you. Go away now, please. You’re annoying.

A few moments later, it goes.

Walking recently along a river - had the trail to myself - kept seeing things dart out from upcoming trees. So fast I couldn’t make them out. That kind of thing is pretty standard in the in-between. (I got the sense, whatever it was, it was just having fun.)

(I just thought of that awareness experiment from a while back with the basketball players. When told to count one team’s passes, a full 50% of those taking the test won’t see the random gorilla (or other costumed person) walk through the game. They’re not looking for it. It’s something like that but more general.)

In the in-between the overarching message is: the world is not what you think it is. The coolest part is that the ongoing life-force pulse that penetrates everything - animate and inanimate objects alike - is pronounced. And it doesn’t feel weird, it feels completely natural and familiar and you wonder how it is you can go so long missing it.

There’s this decrepit, crooked mailbox a few streets from mine. I pass it regularly when driving. Most people would have replaced it years ago.

There’s something about how it sits. (Maybe too, its sheer resiliency.) I’ve seen it in all seasons and in various lighting. I couldn’t say what it is but whatever it is, it makes me smile.

Now in the in-between it’s enhanced by the very stuff that holds our world together. What Vincent captured in his paintings. I don’t know how it turns something that looks like trash into something that looks like art, but it does.

Most of the time - perhaps necessarily - we live in a space and place where we think we know who we are and we think we know what the world is. We think we know what’s trash and what’s art.

I think most of the time, we miss a lot.

Pic won’t capture it. (But I’ll bet it still makes you smile.)

Once I’ve snapped out of the in-between, I’ll probably post more often.

Thanks for reading.

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