wild turkey feathers, about to be plucked
I tend to think that everything has a price, not just things but also time, experiences, and even happiness. There is something wrong here. Because money is the medium of exchange for everything, things like my art become reduced to merely a sum. In that way, a thing is reduced to a concept of worth. So for instance, a horse and my art become interchangeable if they have equal worth. But they are not equal at all. Each has its separate and unique sparkle. Life loses some sparkle if money is my primary way to evaluate things.
That is why I found myself thrilled while helping a friend pluck a turkey. The many, many feathers took on a sparkle when I realized their beauty and abundance while not connecting them in my mind to money. I wasn’t saying to myself, “how much are they worth?”. Instead, they each became little complex and beautiful worlds unto themselves.