Overall, I see the song as one about disillusionment with the human race. (Not an unusual theme for TMBG.) The speaker is seeking to depart from the land where people live, to go as far away as possible: to a land populated only by benign vegetarian animals (cows), or a land beneath the sea, or BOTH, if possible. That's where he will find friendship ("Cow's a friend to me"). Reasons for his disillusionment:
(1) We were once primates living in the trees, but we evolved "intelligence" that caused us to abandon that life of simple joy and exploration in the trees, and eventually create our present existence ("the ardor of our arboreality is an adventure we have spurned"). [Note the nice word here, "aboreality": rather like a joining of "arboreal reality".] "The yellow Roosevelt Avenue leaf overturned" is a symbol of leaving that aboreal world behind: like a leaf in Autumn, we fell from the trees at the end of a "summer" in our evolution, and the green leaf is now fallen and dead. Winter is approaching. We think we've made progress (turning over a new leaf), but in fact we've gone backwards.
(2) "We yearn to swim for home, but our only home is bone." We're looking for a unity, a home, but can't find it. We left that behind us in the trees. Now all we see in our future is death (bone = the lifeless skeleton), at the end of life's futile existence. It's a troubling thought (sleepless), that even in our infancy (as eggs), where we'd like to think we're full of new possibilities, we are doomed to this end. Even though we think we're powerful and dominant, able to control our destinies by being tool-users and weapon makers, in fact we can see that death is the only thing waiting for us ("that which throws the stone forsees the bone").
This same theme is echoed in the Bible's Genesis, with our ejection from the Garden of Eden, and the subsequent slaying of Abel by his brother Cain. Christians believe that we're doomed to death by our original sin. However, they see hope through salvation; TMBG sees no hope.
Overall, I see the song as one about disillusionment with the human race. (Not an unusual theme for TMBG.) The speaker is seeking to depart from the land where people live, to go as far away as possible: to a land populated only by benign vegetarian animals (cows), or a land beneath the sea, or BOTH, if possible. That's where he will find friendship ("Cow's a friend to me"). Reasons for his disillusionment:
(1) We were once primates living in the trees, but we evolved "intelligence" that caused us to abandon that life of simple joy and exploration in the trees, and eventually create our present existence ("the ardor of our arboreality is an adventure we have spurned"). [Note the nice word here, "aboreality": rather like a joining of "arboreal reality".] "The yellow Roosevelt Avenue leaf overturned" is a symbol of leaving that aboreal world behind: like a leaf in Autumn, we fell from the trees at the end of a "summer" in our evolution, and the green leaf is now fallen and dead. Winter is approaching. We think we've made progress (turning over a new leaf), but in fact we've gone backwards.
(2) "We yearn to swim for home, but our only home is bone." We're looking for a unity, a home, but can't find it. We left that behind us in the trees. Now all we see in our future is death (bone = the lifeless skeleton), at the end of life's futile existence. It's a troubling thought (sleepless), that even in our infancy (as eggs), where we'd like to think we're full of new possibilities, we are doomed to this end. Even though we think we're powerful and dominant, able to control our destinies by being tool-users and weapon makers, in fact we can see that death is the only thing waiting for us ("that which throws the stone forsees the bone").
This same theme is echoed in the Bible's Genesis, with our ejection from the Garden of Eden, and the subsequent slaying of Abel by his brother Cain. Christians believe that we're doomed to death by our original sin. However, they see hope through salvation; TMBG sees no hope.