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The Quail Diaries.

What I mean to say

What I mean to say is there is nothing so wondrous as the evolutionary brilliance of our own electrophysiology; and nothing so mysterious as a sky full of crows, all cawing, all connected to me by history and context but utterly other.

What need have we for X files and what the bleep do we know simplicity when what is inside and out is far stranger and more complex.

They knew it.

The post below

makes me feel anxious and sick to my stomach.

This post is not about princesses

Naturalistic explanations are more magic than a resort to supernatural intervention.

This is, according to Slavoj Žižek, an attraction of the murder mystery genre–the banishment of the supernatural makes the story more wondrous by far.

“What is the matter with the day?” said Wimsey. “Is the world coming to an end?”

“No,” said Parker, “it is the eclipse.”

And though I do not always agree with Žižek’s points, I do so often, and I suspect this naturalistic solution is the reason I am personally enamored of the mystery genre. In the naturalistic explanation is the wonder that comes from experience of the world as a place far more amazing because crop circles are the work of human artists, orbs are the play of light and digital technology, the sense of spiritual uplift from yoga is a neurobiological reaction and all beings that have lived, are living and, perhaps, will ever live, relatives all, are subjected to the nonprogressive forces of evolution. Even humans, no apex we, are still entwined–freedom from evolution would be a sad thing indeed.

To be honest, I have felt very angry lately. So, to some of you this is no surprise–”aren’t you always pissed off?” you might ask. And of course, I am–I have a core of anger that is hard as a nut. But, because of various events, one of the things that I felt was a foundation in my life–my yoga (and as I write this I must admit that my self-loathing is starting to peak out–yoga mom! yoga mom! it shouts)–has become problematic.

bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;
bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

What is currently a problem for me it the tension between 1) the (rather narrow) conception of yoga as the manipulation of the body and breath to manipulate one’s own physiology and neurobiology and 2) the broad conception of yoga as a practice originating in Vedic or Pre-Vedic times in South East Asia–one not focused on the body (although perhaps somewhat on the breath (?and here I get nervous, for what the heck do I know?).

Put that way, it seems a simple thing. But it is more complex, because of the word but also because of the people borrowing bits and pieces from this and that tradition and glomming it together to make…what???

Yoga is everywhere and I do not know what it is.

The moon which is the source of light, has a blue stain. Even I myself

am blue

I want a concrete definition of yoga for myself—I do not want to feel like an asshole.

What makes language so difficult. What makes this translation so unfortunate. The cats are walking back and forth and I have yet to say anything.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who heard the crows and looked up to see five chasing a bald eagle north.

No…

Once upon a time, there was a woman who was afraid of certain things

No…

Once upon a time, there was a woman….well really, it is me I am talking about. I am that woman, but you know it. And I am tapdancing around the issues.

Where is the woman in all of this?

She stands in the middle of a burning creation ground. She has fangs.

There are things I am not telling you.

0000000

quotes are from Slavoj Žižek, Dorothy Sayers, Inger Christensen (trans Nied), Brhannila Tantra (trans. Biernacki)

Kids and kitties, and suchlike

The baby next to me is 1 month old.

I think I’ve noted before, how, as children age (or at least as my children age, from my point of view) each little phase dies and is gone forever. I know this is not true. These bits are still there inside my children, but that little baby next to me gives me an ache that has nothing to do with wanting another child. One thing I learned with my second, that first baby is gone which the child emerges, the second doesn’t replace it, or become it, but becomes something completely different.

My children still smell the same–in a way, I should say, that is deeper than milk, more in the gut than baby shampoo.

&*&*&*

There are two cats–I may have mentioned one. She (or he), is very old and every bit of fur is tangled and knotted. This kitty has runny eyes and a runny nose. I keep going back to the kitty’s house to see the cat because I am very close to just taking him/her/it. But first, I suppose, I will talk to the “owner.” Last time I went, another cat wandered out to greet me. This is a black cat, certainly younger, with a large bald spot and scabbing on his/her/its back.

These cats have issues of discomfort easily solved.

Can you tell me what to do?

(I already know what I am going to do…shhh)

my children and some cats…do I wander?

Of course I do. And I give myself no quarter because at every moment there is my own private executioner, cutting me off at the knees.

Should I explain that to you or do you understand it implicitly? It just means that I will never be the parent I long to be. Never ever good enough for the perfect things my babies are. I cried during my son’s first week because, in part, I knew I would not live up to the perfection he was. (Of course, my hormonal fluctuations and lack of sleep likely had something to do with the weepiness. I was sure, during my daughter’s first week, that she and my son were going to die because he had croup and had to be rushed to the emergency room–hormones in part).

There you go…does that explain it?

And of course the cats. Whatever I do with the cats will never be the right thing. Never ever. It is just too bad I cannot be madder–it would help ease my own sense of failure, perhaps, or perhaps not.

At any rate. I must away, there are a million things to do and a million things to see and I am only just beginning, though I feel old enough to have been here before the earth was formed and naive enough to be one free of experience.

There was once a little dog

In the tale The Water of Life the blade of the knife turns bloody in the sisters hands when evil befalls him.

I was in Iowa last week giving a talk on the strangeness of medicine and the strangeness of fairy tales. The Water of Life is one of my favorites because of the girl, the knife and the screaming stones.

There is also a nice story of the old man with his heart in a bird. Except, of course, it is not so nice when the young lad squeezes the bird to death. And really, in general it is not a nice story, because no bird should be saddled with that sort of burden–no other creature (although we do it to them all the time, do we not?)

I saw grackles, which pleased me, and red-winged blackbirds foraging along the side of I-80 as I drove back to Illinois. They surprised me–but the fields–all those fields made perfect fodder for the bird, I suppose.

*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

There is something I want to tell you about. When driving the other day, I witnessed a fight, or rather the pummeling of one guy by another, which began suddenly, moved into the middle of the intersection and ended, after the victim was held down on the sidewalk for about 3 minutes. After he was let go, he crouched, picking up objects that had fallen during the fight, and ran off, still crouching, his face bloody.

So. I did call the police while I was sitting there. But let me be perfectly honest. I called the police because of the dog.

The aggressive guy (a big guy with a colorful mohawk…I cannot believe those things are still considered punk) appeared to be the dog’s person. During the fight, the dog was very agitated. Frightened. Someone tried to catch it when it ran into the street, but it ran back to the sidewalk, to escape the stranger.

We all have adrenaline, I suppose.

I should have felt sorry for the guy who was getting pummeled, and I did, but if the dog had not been there, I would have just assumed that the cops would never get there fast enough anyway. I admit it. I feel uneasy with this admission. I wanted to help that dog and as I sat there I felt as though the whole world was breaking open into the kind of anguish that dog appeared to feel. Appeared, I say. It was purity of sentiment and unbearable. That is why I called the cops. My putting something on that dog, making assumptions and feeling very badly.

I am and am not a misanthropist.

I am a cliché. I am I am
I still see that dog.
Can you tell me what to do?

Briefly, of golden toads and other things

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head!

or rather my other-colored head–for I am not going white just yet.

I can see two black and white cats walking through tall grass one just ahead and to the side of the other. They are not inherently evil–and are less verminous than are we, disgusting pollution spilling world exploiting primates that we are.

Ah…but not mykids…they are different.

Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me
Yesterday by the cool waters of the fountain?

This was and is the voice of the Frog Prince. Little toad, little frog. Disney’s long-overdue foray into the creation of an African-American Princess arises out of this fairy-tale. Undoubtedly it will be as sanitized as the rest. Her father will be jolly and she will not show the cruelty she shows in the tale.

Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me
Yesterday by the cool waters of the fountain?

No, actually I don’t, little toad. But I do know that you are gone gone gone away today. Little golden thing, little bo peep, creature of the earth.

In all accounts of you, little creature, they say the word was.

This is was the Golden toad of Costa Rica. Now extinct.

Like a painting we will be erased, no one can remain.

I’ve already written, already grieved, about the Golden toad (the G.W. Bush era essay is here: goldentoad). But for whatever reason I have been thinking about it again lately. It vanished just before I visited Costa Rica and I never met it. It is that feeling that I stepped into a space just vacated that haunts me.

Everywhere we move we are entering spaces just vacated–we are touching the dust of things gone before–consuming them even as we miss them and grieve for them.

nights exist, nightshade exists
the dark side, the cloak of namelessness exists

The toads and the cats–on other ends of some sort of spectrum–but I love them both. I cannot help but incorporate contradictions. I cannot but help it.

Oppressed nature sleeps.
This rest might yet have balmed thy broken senses,
Which, if convenience will not allow,
Stand in hard cure.
Come, help to bear thy master;
Thou must not stay behind.

*********************
quotes are by Shakespeare, Brother’s Grimm, Anne Carson, Inger Christensen, Shakespeare

Our goal is complete objectivity.

I should not be doing this–I do not have time for this. There are things to be done.

What is the difference between this

cicadas exist; chicory, chromium,
citrus trees; cicadas exist;
cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum

and

Śūnyatā

[Śūnyatā is oft defined as the Buddhist idea of emptiness--but as many have said, that translation doesn't quite get it--as so often do translations not get it.]

Is there a relationship between these things and what, what, what am I writing about?

Not about quail, I suppose, not yet at any rate.

I forgot to tell you (or did I?) about the three bald eagles circling the PCC (our local coop). I believe they were three bald eagles, one juvenile and two adults. They were accompanied by some very agitated crows and did not stay long.

I had trouble believing my eyes…but then bald eagles exist.

and the baiji? the ivory-billed woodpecker? the golden toad?

exist?

If I breathe correctly, if I reach the point of breath where it is no longer me breathing the world but the world breathing me, will they exist again?

The strange thing about other species is how they can exist outside of our perception. They really can. It is why I like to study quail, or anything really, as I have said, in it’s own habitat. The keep existing (if we are lucky) even when I am not there.

I want to intersect, just there, at that place where they and I are illumination.

—
Quotes are by Hannah Weiner and Inger Christensen