Wednesday, August 23, 2017

There Is a Certain Challenge in Being Humane to Hornets But Not Much

We did our will before vacation. We signed nothing - the lawyer gathered information. The drafting, the signing, the notarizing, takes weeks. The lawyer called yesterday: What happens to the money if I die, Earthgirl dies, our daughter Planet dies simultaneously. Who gets the money?

Two choices occurred that I proposed to Earthgirl: the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and the Humane Society of America. She chose HSA, I googled HSA to get the donation info.

Every other internet ad I see now I see now I see now a desperately hungry, mangy dog asking if I'll save him. Of many reasons I don't watch TV is fear I'll see a HSA donation commercial.

I give money to the Humane Society, their donation commercials catapult me into Dark faster than anything but photos of fatfucks smirking over animals they paid stupid money to Easy Kill. So yay me, every couple of minutes online, fine metaphor abounding myself with sharp fuckmees of Dark.











BURIED AT SPRINGS

James Schuyler

There is a hornet in the room   
and one of us will have to go   
out the window into the late   
August midafternoon sun. I
won. There is a certain challenge   
in being humane to hornets   
but not much. A launch draws   
two lines of wake behind it   
on the bay like a delta
with a melted base. Sandy   
billows, or so they look,
of feathery ripe heads of grass,   
an acid-yellow kind of
goldenrod glowing or glowering   
in shade. Rocks with rags   
of shadow, washed dust clouts   
that will never bleach.
It is not like this at all.   
The rapid running of the   
lapping water a hollow knock
of someone shipping oars:   
it’s eleven years since   
Frank sat at this desk and   
saw and heard it all   
the incessant water the   
immutable crickets only   
not the same: new needles   
on the spruce, new seaweed   
on the low-tide rocks   
other grass and other water   
even the great gold lichen   
on a granite boulder   
even the boulder quite   
literally is not the same

      II
A day subtle and suppressed   
in mounds of juniper enfolding   
scratchy pockets of shadow
while bigness—rocks, trees, a stump—
stands shadowless in an overcast   
of ripe grass. There is nothing   
but shade, like the boggy depths   
of a stand of spruce, its resonance   
just the thin scream
of mosquitoes ascending.
Boats are light lumps on the bay   
stretching past erased islands   
to ocean and the terrible tumble   
and London (“rain persisting”)   
and Paris (“changing to rain”).   
Delicate day, setting the bright
of a young spruce against the cold
of an old one hung with unripe cones   
each exuding at its tip
gum, pungent, clear as a tear,   
a day tarnished and fractured   
as the quartz in the rocks
of a dulled and distant point,   
a day like a gull passing
with a slow flapping of wings   
in a kind of lope, without
breeze enough to shake loose   
the last of the fireweed flowers,
a faintly clammy day, like wet silk   
stained by one dead branch   
the harsh russet of dried blood.



9 comments:

  1. 28. To open the window and let a wasp out from the room. Ah, is this not happiness?

    from http://artoflivingguide.org/happiness/thirty-three-happy-moments

    Whilst stranded in a temple with a friend for ten days on account of rainy weather, Chin Shengt'an, 17th century Chinese playwright, counted the truly happy moments of human life, moments in which the spirit is inextricably tied up with the senses.


    3. I am sitting alone in an empty room and I am just getting annoyed at a little mouse at the head of my bed, and wondering what that little rustling sound signifies – what article of mine he is biting or what volume of my books he is eating up. While I am in this state of mind and don’t know what to do, I suddenly see a ferocious-looking cat, wagging its tail and staring with its wide-open eyes, as if it were looking at something. I hold my breath and wait a moment, keeping perfectly still, and suddenly with a little sound the mouse disappears like a whiff of wind. Ah, is this not happiness?

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    Replies
    1. speaking of being humane to animals, here's an account from the guardian of some piglets who were rescued from a fire and lived a free-range life, eating locally-grown organic food, for the next six months:

      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/23/firefighters-sausages-piglets-saved-blaze-wiltshire

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    2. That's the link Motherfucking Humans in post.

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  2. "A notable alternative comics artist was in attendance. We ended up smoking out on the street, talking about the film we'd just watched, and mused about what was humor, anyway? And the fellow said: Humor was a juxtaposition, a collision of opposites which for a split second forced an observer to temporarily abandon their routine assumptions about reality. 'Some find that threatening,' he went on, 'and they respond by getting angry -- but for the other ninety-nine out of a hundred people, they're going to laugh.'"
    https://beforenine.blogspot.de/2017/08/funny.html

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I saw Mongo's post but haven't had chance to add link - I think I'll just wait now until next linky post.

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    2. I knew you would, your being reliably culpable. I just thought the highlighted paragraph was worth highlighting again in its frame.

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  3. Some time ago I read an article about a study that said hunters have small dicks. They compensate for it by killing animals for fun. I suppose this is potty humor but I found it funny. True story.

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  4. Incidentally, the USA SPA spots are unnerving -- both for the reality of their content (Dogs and Cats + Motherfuckinghumans), and the weird, disassociated feeling you get when presented with images of a true thing but are still being manipulated all to fuck.

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