Passage #391: 22 February 2017
Flight of the Bumblebee
We can track them with radar, compose frenzied musical interludes inspired by their movements, propagate silly urban legends about the supposed impossibility of their flight and still come no closer to knowing the mind of the humble bumblebee.
We are always looking to impose our own meanings upon the natural world. We can't help it. It's what we do. So if the bumblebees, in their foraging, evoke both clumsiness and grace, we can examine that juxtaposition and try to understand what it means to embody both qualities. And while this may all make a rather poetic metaphor for the human condition, the clumsiness and the grace, one ought not confuse the map for the territory. The bees have their own reasons for bumbling, and so do we.
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