Heavy
The old man said, “It’s true, I’m not a human being. In a previous universe … I was the abbot on this mountain. A student asked, ‘Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘someone like that doesn’t fall under the law of cause and effect.’ Because of this, I’ve been reborn 500 times as a fox. ‘Baizhang’s fox’ The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Milan Kundera Each day this year’s falcon chick chitters a one-note wheedling cry from high in the dead eucalypt out in the paddock, or from the tip of one of the windbreak pines; the sound increases and decreases in volume as its parents come and go. At first the other birds ignore it. Then one day it flies down onto a low branch in the garden. Perhaps it’s trying to hunt. If so, no luck this time – it sits looking furious, hunched, surrounded by a buzz and clatter of honeyeaters, thornbills, wattlebirds, wrens, blackbirds. ...