Obon

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8-12 Obon

Today begins the Festival of Obon, a Buddhist recognition of ancestry, honoring family members gone before.

We at Your Inner Rhino are keenly aware of our own heritage, and think it is a good thing to set aside time to be grateful.

We are reposting a picture from October 22, 2014, just to remind you of how many Rhino family members there are, millions and millions and millions of years worth. No member of the family makes, or has made, a lesser contribution than another. Each of Us is a novel version of a long chain of predecessors.

Famlytree-10-22

Rhinos are lucky indeed. And grateful.

Limitations

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8-11 LookinGood

Rhinos are seldom caught up in arguments about appearance. Why would We be? Rhinos are Impressive beyond question.

Is there an ideal to which We would aspire? None that Nature has not addressed in our creation, right? Appearance seems entirely beside the point.

To the extent We understand Vanity, it seems an expression of insecurity and generalized hostility. Maybe We don’t grasp the subtleties of hoping to impress anyone with our exterior.

We can’t know Everything.

Glad Tidings

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8-10 TummyTowers

Sand castles are mighty fine, and Rhinos greatly enjoy architecting them. Add a spire here, a drawbridge there, and moat yourself silly. What can hold Us back?

The precluding issue might be that We do not live near the sea, most of Us. So We have to do our sand-castling in theory, rather than sand itself. We are not daunted however; We just proceed.

Piddling limitations do not affect Rhino Good Times.

A rose is a rose…

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is a rose. Not surprisingly, the same thing is true for watermelons. Clearly. This is what is known as Common Sense, information on which everyone agrees.

8-9 Knowing Stuff

We would point out that most Common Sense proceeds without investigation or conscious attention. We just know things and leave them to their own devices. Why fuss?

Every now and again Rhinos like to review the elements of what is commonly known, just to see if things have changed. They almost invariably have. Then uncommon knowledge is factored into the mix.

We are brilliant.

Too much insight per pound…

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8-3 Justice !!

Justice is supposed to deal with things in an evenhanded way, hence the blindfold. The problem for Rhinos would be that We can smell a rat at any distance, so our noses would need to be stopped, plus our hearing is fiendishly outstanding. We are four-legged lie detectors. All in all, Rhinos are fine judges of culpability, but not the ideal arbiters of the legal profession. Too insightful.

Also, We tend to be short-tempered with courtroom shenanigans.

Yet imaginary dress-up never loses its appeal.

On the Same Wavelength

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8-2 GalleryMusings

There are many Languages available, here and there. Urdu, English, or Swahili, what the speaker means and what the audience hears are unpredictable. Each speaker has personal thoughts that shape speech, and each listener has individual baggage skewing reception. Rhinos are often struck with how mixed up messages seem to get.

And there is communication without words of any kind, like Art. Even there, confusions exist between the artist and the viewer. You can read somebody’s explanation, but it never captures the essence of a painting, or sculpture, or drama, or song. We respond with some other part of Us; Art is an experience. That said, each of Us may respond differently at different stages of ourselves.

Rhinos don’t speak much at all. We communicate with some sounds, but mostly by scent. We heartily recommend it as a system.

Aaaaaand We’re off!

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8-1 Liminality

After We get to be two, or maybe some other age, We commence with adolescence. It depends on the individual.

Everything inside gets rearranged to accommodate how big We are getting on the outside, or vice versa. Anyhow, things are a mess for a while, but one day, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, here We are in all our Individuality. We were that and now We’re this! Hooray! Rhinodom resonates with the news!

Often this is a point where Mom discovers she is going to have another baby. She has usually had enough fun with the newly-improved offspring, and that youngster is encouraged to hit the Road of Life’s Independent Adventures.

And off We go, as ready as We’ll ever be, to find out what’s what! Hooray, some more!

                          For more on this topic, see the post for November 10, 2014

Here today, Gone tomorrow

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7-31 SayWhuuut?

Some Rhinos have more on the ball than others. That is how it is. If every Rhino were the cleverest one, the situation would probably be exhausting. We say ‘probably’ because We have never tried it.

What is surprising is that there is never a status quo. One day We wake up in a fog, then, out of the blue, We get a Message, and our Insides go into gear, all cylinders firing, lights flashing and rumbling ahead. Over there, another Rhino has gone into a temporary state of mental short circuitry, no matter how clever our yesterday may have seemed.

Each of Us has plenty of potential, but it’s expression comes and goes in unexpected rhythmic curves. Neat.

How dull would it be if these curves were predictable?