this side of the blue

so far, i have absolutely no complaints about any of my teachers this semester, or if i do, they are so petty and minimal i feel foolish even stating them. so, that's good. i'm actually... enjoying the classes. even College Algebra. i know! it's weird. i wouldn't be surprised if this changes in a week or two, though.

i read a zine last night called 17 Strangers. and oh my god, i loved this one part so much, i'm going to type it out here-

One time, when I was growing up but still living at home with my mom, a rabbit family moved into her small herb garden out back. A mother rabbit made a little nest for her babies underneath a bushy herb plant, which my mom noticed one day because she saw something under there that looked like an animal. It startled her for a moment because she thought it was something dead. But it was the nest. Apparently rabbits make nests from fluffs of fur and other soft things. A kind of wild mattress ticking.

The mother had her tiny, trembly babies there and for a few weeks we had sightings of them from the kitchen window. There was just one time that I was able to get close to one of them. I happened to be out in the yard, mincing through the wet grass toward the garden to cut a few sprays of one of the plants for cooking - basil or rosemary, probably. A still summer day; the air was thick and close and the sun was warm on my arms and the top of my head. And sitting right there in front of me was a tiny brown baby, no bigger than the palm of one of my small hands. Because it was so new, so foolish, it wasn't afraid of me, and it just sat there as I crunched down to look closer. Its ears were comically outsized and almost diaphanous - I could see the red veins in them. It held perfectly still, and because it was so small its heartbeat made it dip back and forth. This is what I remember about this rabbit and have thought about many times since.

A few years later I was looking at a book on American Sign Language and I learned that the ASL word for animal is formed by pressing your hands together at the blades, palms facing your chest, and rocking them open and closed. The book explained that this mimics the motion of an animal's heartbeat rocking its whole body. I can't tell you how beautiful I think it is, the idea that this striking moment - which I'd thought belonged only to me and this tiny rabbit I met once - would be considered central enough to animal existence that it is its NAME. A heartbeat so strong it makes you sway.

<3