It is just past dusk as I watch a dance between bats——or at least between one bat and itself, masquerading brilliantly as a chiropterean couplet——in the eastern blue-black skies above the croaking, cricketing, swampish woodlands beyond the fault line where manicured grass gives way to yonder spaces of less palpable ecological devastation. In essaying to assay their erratic flight paths, I am reminded of myself, my life——flapping with all my strength, zipping any which way, directionless, in hot pursuit of an immediate need. Whereas an external observer might see grace, skill, and foreknowledge of the angles and paths that offer up the greatest consumptive rewards; to the bats and me, navigating through conscious materiality is arguably more visceral and undesigned. We sinuate, serpentize, and skew round the darkness, unguided save for our stubborn imperative to endure. Upon reaching the point whereat the marginal cost of exerting more labor exceeds the added satiation from further swelling the accretions forming in our stimulated stomachs, we return to our familiar idleness to hang ourselves, upside down, in comfort, in caution, and in a sleeping, sweeping blindness to all daylight revelations. Forevermore.
I, Vespertilio
One bat at dusk, and the watcher who sees their own life in its flight.