Each year, the intersection of Highway 53 and Georgia 400 grows more similar to countless other urban landscapes. Once there was only the gas station called 'Sanky's" to  mark the turn. Now there congregates the expected assortment of fuel, fast food and grocery franchises. But the city effect only holds sway over the country at the corner. Back behind the buildings, often only yards away, the wilder  world still exists where it was banished to by development. That explains the strip of pasture behind my studio and beyond that the chicken pen with a rooster whose call announces regularly the Real World is still very close by.  His crowing reminds me of the parts of our own lives we think we may have stifled with choices that helped us blend in more and banished the parts we felt didn't align with the usual. We've all done it at one time or another.  Some of it just oils the flow of life. But some of it, can result in far too much concrete being poured.  Maybe that is why despite all the paving over, most quiet afternoons, the rooster struts out, puffs up and sends out that unquenchable, attention gathering call to all who can hear-- which you might be interested in knowing the dictionary defines as 'a sound of pleasure'.

In the traffic of our days                                              All things want to be heard,
may we attend to each thing                                        so let us listen to what they say.
so that patterns are revealed                                        In the end we will hear what we are:
amidst the offerings of chance.                                     the orchard or the road leading past.

                                    --  Rilke  "A Year with Rilke", Joanna Macy, Anita Barrows