Hollow Kingdom

And everyone on earth knows if you have the respect of a cat it means your soul is worth being around.

I cannot recommend this to you enough: find something that you believe in, right down deep in the depths of your silvery plumage, and then throw your heart at it, blood and valves and veins and all. Because I did this, the world, though brambled and frothing at the mouth, looked more vibrant; blues were bluer, and even the fetid puddles that collected under rusting cars tasted as sweet as summer wine.

Big Jim’s eyeball fell out. Like, fell the fuck out of his head. It rolled onto the grass, and to be honest, Big Jim and I were both taken aback.

Trust it turned out, was a very beautiful and fragile thing with a taste like wild raspberries and experienced only by the very brave.

Her name translated as "Survivor," but she told me she didn't like it much. I asked her why and she said because she is a female and all females are survivors so it was massively redundant.

Watching the sunrise.....what an act of beauty, of unwavering faith, something to look forward to each and every day.

A creature can be heartbreakingly powerful and loving while also being a destroyer of worlds.

Where I come from we call what you’re feeling The Black Tide. It will pass. Tides, by their nature, come and go.

You know so much, Onida." "I have nine brains—which never stop growing—three hearts, and I can regenerate my arms; but mostly, it's because I'm female." Female. Well, shit. Admittedly, I had limited knowledge of them, but they had always seemed omniscient and formidable to me.

Bald eagles are majestic as fuck.

Change is inevitable, dear crow. We must adapt. You cannot stop the tide, S.T. You must be more like the log that bobs along its surface.

And though Nature is tough, she is always conspiring for your success, encouraging you to evolve. You can even hear her if you listen carefully.

Trees are normally very general and all-inclusive with their wisdom pearls. When a tree decides to talk to you, it's a very, very big deal, as if the world stops, as if you are scooped up and held in a snow globe, weightless and womb-like. I felt their vibrations in my feathers, in the flutter of my little black heart.

Big Jim was not a crow, but he knew about the loyalty of murder, which makes him as much crow as any I’d met. “Crows before hoes,” said Big Jim, pretending he wasn’t drowning as I sat on his shoulder and collected his tears.

When you have the power to stand up to oppression, you must.

So there we were. A rejected crow with an identity crisis partnering a bloodhound with the IQ of boiled pudding. We were perhaps the most pathetic excuse for an attempted murder on the face of the earth.

I explained birthday cake as a spongy mattress of awesome with hidden rivers of delicious goo to celebrate having stayed alive a whole year.

I’m not sure why everyone hates opossums so much; they may look like someone shaved the buttocks of a poodle and taught it to talk through it’s asshole, but they are generally pretty likable critters.

And we protect The Pack from the hunters, we will fall in love with each moment, singing to the moon that has loved us since we were stars.

Penguins, it turns out, are pretty fucking delightful.

Every singe one of us, from amoeba to blue whale to the tenacious bloom that dares to dream of tomorrow, have their own destiny-fulfilling journey as long as their minds and hearts are open.

All the winged, even fungus gnats, know that you cannot fly if you're carrying too much weight with you. It's a well-known adage, actually: "The light of heart is free to fly.

Butterflies live short lives because they have mastered the art of living. They serve to pass it on with luminous bursts of joy, bright flickers from the other side.

Elephants command attention. But their size is not what makes the heart skip a beat. It's how they walk with the world's weight on their shoulders, sensitive, noble, their hearts pulsing and as wide open as the great grey leaves that are their ears. MoFos used to say that an elephant never forgets and until this very moment, I hadn't understood what that really meant. An elephant's memories don't reside in organ or skin or bone. They live closer to tree time than we do, and their memories reside in the soul of their species, which dwarfs them in size, is untouchable, and lives on forever to honor every story. They carry stories from generations back, as far as when their ancestors wore fur coats, That is why, when you are close to an elephant, you feel so deeply. If they so choose, they have the ability to hold your sadness so you may safely sit in the lonely seat of loss, still hopeful and full of love. Their great secret is that they know everything is a tide—not a black tide, but the natural breath of life—in and out, in and out, and to be with them is to know this too, And here they were, suddenly lifting the weight of our sadness for us, carrying it in the curl of their trunks. We all sat together in our loss, not dwelling, but remembering. For an elephant never forgets,

We are more powerful when we work together because we look out for one another by being one. That is the code of murder.

Addiction to an electronic world caused the downfall of the MoFos. They’d forgotten to connect with each other, to connect with the creatures who missed them and to Nature as She called for them to come home. The crow part of me knew not to dwell on what was, but the MoFo part of me would always carry my best friend in my heart. Because we never give up on anything, especially love, and that’s the very, very best thing about being a MoFo.

I realized, wet and defeated in a puddle of mud, that I was surrounded by devastatingly beautiful things. None of it called attention to itself, no preening and crowing here, Everything just was what it was, intricately complex and simply stunning.

Everything talks, you just have to be willing to listen.