Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Monkeying Around

Sort of repeated yesterday's experience - got home fairly early, settled with a pot of tea (unsugared these days) and relaxed to another episode of Life On Earth. This time it was Life In The Trees, featuring all manner of our primate cousins. Even though I knew that iconic sequence with Attenborough and the gorillas in Rawanda was on its way, it still worked a strange magic on me - surely the finest sequence in any nature documentary ever.

Partly it was the astonishing beauty and nobility and complex simplicity of the gorillas, and partly the hushed reverence of the commentator himself (of course, it would be dangerous to raise his voice in the presence of such power), and potently the wonderfully simple yet telling script, but I actually found myself tearing. In those moments I understood.

Everything that lives is holy.

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