Wednesday snow

No wonder there was such a frenzy in the Bird Park last night. They knew it was going to snow and wanted to fuel up for the cold night ahead. This morning, I made sure there was enough for everyone but this crow didn't think so.

Magpie and crow

00:30

Tuesday Blue Plate Special

The 7 o'clock magpie is early tonight. I guess she noticed that a couple of starlings have been vacuuming up the goodies at 6:30. Actually 2 more magpie just showed up so I'm not sure any of them are the 7 0'clock magpie. After all, it is only 6:43. Perhaps she isn't even here yet. Whoever it is, they are hoovering up the peanuts and drilling the apples. One of them just stashed a slice under a clump of dirt for later. It's a feeding frenzy out there. I think it's the wind. It's been a fury all day and that sets everyone on edge. The magpies are hopping and lunging around, hurling themselves through the gusts to get to a peanut, jetting off in a wobble, then are back for more and the pot bellied quail are running in every direction scooping up what they can before the wind sweeps them and the seeds away.

Roy asked about the photo in last night's post, No. I did not take the original. I just happen to really dig diners. Somewhere in the dark-rooted ganglia of my brain an inviolable connect exists between poetry, sleazy roadside diners and cheap hotel rooms so a while ago I hunted a diner image down on the web and have been playing around with it ever since. These things are something of my personal mythology I guess you could say, as is the coyote, the crow and others too numerous to mention. I apologize for using the little lemur. He is rather famous. I should swap him out for one of my own but ... mañana.

(Note: As is their style, Blogger ate the photos once posted here but here's the idea.)

Also, in keeping with last night's post, here's another jumble of words I stumbled across today while I was rummaging around in my files. I had forgotten I'd written it. I'm not sure I like it all and may end up just deleting it, but for the moment I'm including it in a draft called Book of Images. Posting it tonight might be in bad taste because of the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech. It is not my intention. I wrote this sometime ago. You might say it is a portrait of the world from a vegetarian point of view.

Dinner party
excerpt from Book of Images

I sit at the table of the living before a living feast; hearts, eyes, livers, backs, spleens, ribs, dreams marinated in their own juices; blood, sperm, milk, bile, tears. A quartet plays music behind a velvet curtain. They are blind. The cello sobs. Blood is dripping from my elbows. The woman on my right is dining on breaded fingers, spaghetti and eyeballs. The man on my left is slicing into a breast, colostrum oozing from the nipple and greasing his lips. There is a live fish on my plate laying on a pile of sautéed brains that pop like blisters when I stick my fork into them. They splatter fluid on the woman but she does not seem to notice. She stabs an eye, drags it through the sauce then pops it into her mouth. I look back at my plate. The fish is nibbling the brains. I press my fork into its scaly skin and it excretes a black pearl. I hurriedly snatch the pearl and tuck it into my pocket. The music stops. All the eaters turn in unison and look at me. They thump their utensils on the table making a fiendish racket then suddenly quit and the room is completely silent. The fish takes a tiny violin out of his hat and begins to play a heart rendering solo. The man slowly runs the prongs of his fork up and down my arm. He smiles dragging his tongue over bloody lips, burps loudly then resumes eating. Everyone resumes eating. I stand, slowly withdraw the pearl from my pocket and place it into the fish's hat. He continues playing. I exit the building and find myself standing in a giant, noisy, congested stockyard. After a pause to get my bearings, I push through the herd of people pressing eagerly forward toward the feast.

-asha

Peace please

The chickens have had enough but are the rabbits
fighting or playing?

Vonnegut, last words

Kurt Vonnegut's last book, “A Man Without a Country”, was a collection of biographical essays. It concludes with his poem "Requiem" and so, in a public sense, these could be considered his last words.

on Comedy Central
excerpt from New York Times Book section

closing lines from....
Requiem
by Kurt Vonnegut

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

Kurt Vonnegut dies Vonnegut last words

Happy Birthday Cheeta

Today is Cheeta the Chimp's 75th birthday and Cheeta Day in Palm Springs, so named by former Mayor Ron Oden. Cheeta, aka "Jiggs," was one of the stars of the original Tarzan movies, in case you are an uncultured slob and don't know much about Hollywood celebrities. Cheeta celebrated with a sugar-free cake and diet soft drinks, proving that indeed wisdom does come with age.


After retiring from the movies, Cheeta fell on hard times with booze and cigars but that's all behind him now. He got sober, moved to Palm Springs, famous retirement community for old movie stars, and took up painting, which helps pay the bills.




There have been 4 unsuccessful attempts to secure a star for Cheeta on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. What's up with that? Cheeta is a better actor than half the smucks who's stars act as grinding stones for cigarette butts. Filmmaker Matt Devlen is organizing another campaign for 2007. Be ready to vote. The Guinness Book of World Records lists Cheeta as the world's oldest primate (note from Wikipedia: presumably meaning oldest non-human primate). Besides that he is just one cool dude. So Happy Birthday, Cheeta.

Then and now

I brought back one of my mother's old photo albums from Seattle. It is what she wanted by her side as she lay in her death bed the final days of her life. The memories made her happy. The cover is missing, many of its black pages are torn or loose and they are simultaneously brittle and alarmingly soft. The whole thing is gradually disappearing with the passing years. My brother asked me to scan what is left of them before they are beyond capture. They are lovely. They have haunted me ever since I saw them there at the hospital so, a few years ago, I wrote a poem for them and her and today I joined them together. I hope you enjoy them.