I often wonder if geese are existential. I wonder is they ponder why they are alive, experiencing what they are experiencing as they wander across the road in front of my car, moving painfully slow and looking bored. And I wonder if they all feel horridly existential sometimes and think they are the only one feeling this way because they don’t have access to anyone else. The goose looks at me navigating my system and I look to it. We all have imposter syndrome and

We’re all just little head cases with opposable thumbs and dreams, beautiful visions both violent and loving and filled with a potential to manifest with an assertion of self will.

And we have all of this without ever truly knowing why we have any of it, even ourselves. Science can break things down and give it all names but knowing I’m made up of what the shrinks call atoms doesn’t seem to give a name to why we are all here, falling apart and falling into each other. We give up, surrender, hold on again, and dissolve. Hands climb out of the folds of our bodies and become something no one could have dreamt up. And we throw our hands up and pray and hate one another and we fold down into the wars and mud and bow again to the spring as it dances us awake. So catastrophically we open our eyes and move, and so delicately we will die.