Middle Distances

I step out my front door this morning to an orchestra of birdsong. The sun, ever higher in the sky, the air ever warmer, the birds swoop and dance and play in the fresh light of early day. Mourning doves and crows and robins and other smaller birds perch atop the giant white oak overhanging the mill pond and leap into the air, across the face of the water or high above the tree tops, landing on the opposite side of the street in the top of a row of white ash. Their songs are joyous, they praise the sun and the day and their anticipated time within it.

As I rode into work, I noticed the deception of middle distance. The trees looked winter to me racing by in the car. I had to squint to see any changes. Up close, as I saw again this weekend, buds are pushing open. From a great distance, the subtle changes to the canopy are apparent. But in the middle distance, it is difficult to see. We put our soldiers in the middle distance. They fear for their lives. Shooting innocents is a necessary protective move, to stay alive. They cannot see to walk away or make different choices. That is the power of the modern bureaucracy, business, whatever you would like to call it, it can keep its parts in the middle distance. There can be no conscience where there is no consciousness. The army follows the corporate world in modeling their institutions. These human structures are by design. To know too much might change the course of world history. So we put the mass of men where they cannot see. We put our shopping in the middle distance. Our banking. We put the trail of tears running from every object of consumption out of sight and out of mind. And then we build our cultural logic out of the thin veneer of half-truths left behind.