MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO
BY CAROLYN STICKLEY
In a nutshell, nature is the universe, with all its phenomena. My mind keeps going back to monkeys because they roamed earth nearly two hundred million years ago. Humans have descended over tens of millions of generations from that first mammal. It’s hard to imagine that far back.
Again, writing about ancestry, evolutionary history, and the lineage where we belong combined with all plants and trees, gives me a visual of nature all around me. I can feel the air but not actually see it unless you look around the edges of clouds. Clouds drop raindrops like tears and the sun drying the rainwater is nature at its finest.
In this workshop we attempt to make sense of the past and imagine the future. It’s the natural order that created us.
Monkeys are a subset of primates to which we belong and in the beginning were diurnal and dependent or reliant on sight. That’s what I remember from elementary school. Eventually our noses shrank, and our eyes got bigger, elevating our senses as humans. Another connection is that monkeys have a single birth, not litters. When I visit a zoo, I remind myself that this is how we began. Chimps look like they are fighting for their territories more than monkeys.
Sigmund Freud imagines that humans need civilization to save us from our basest instincts. I think basest means of little value and ponder the validity of this thought. I wish humans would focus more on peace than war or fighting so they could enjoy all the beauty surrounding them. On TV I see the Middle East continues to fight, destroy and hurt humans and the land. I’ve heard the expression “the nature of the beast” — how sad. | CS