The world

The world was crashing
around our ears—
or was it the Anthropocene
beginning to


open
like the century plant
opens—
in its time—
petals of a new
strange
age—
the age of man.

RIP Takaya

Takaya
Photograph: Cheryl Alexander/Wild Awake Images

Takaya, Canada's eccentric and legendary lone wolf dug wells in summer to find water, was known to sit three feet from a person and look them directly in the eye, but though he sometimes sought out the company of humans he also cleverly evaded all attempts people made to capture him in order to protect him from what would be a sure and tragic encounter with humans at some point in his journeys,

Now that we humans have caused what biologists refer to as the Sixth Mass Extinction since our planet's beginning some 4.543 billion years ago, we will have to invent new words to describe the people who kill animals, cut down our last remaining forests, and continue polluting our dying oceans, land, sky and all life that walks, flies, swims, wiggles, burrows, and breathes in this world upon which all our lives depend. And we will need to create words for those people who kill the last remaining members of a species and other words yet for people who kill those iconic members of other species who inspire us to remember to love and save what's left of this world.

On 24 March, Takaya was shot and killed by hunters.

Bird Park East

The three kinds of dawn and dusk

This morning during civil dawn,  the time before the sun peeks over the horizon, as we humans while away in contagion . . . humankind's second oldest friends after dogs, the pombos (poem-boos) aka pigeons, resumed their cooing. Today they chose to begin the day with an old favorite doot DOOOO doot 

. . . doot-DOOOO-doot / doot-DOOOO-doot / doot-DOOOO-doot here . . . do-do DOOT / do-do-DOOT / do-do-DOOT/ do-do-DOOT there  . . . doo-DOOT / doo-DOOT/ doo-DOOT over there . . . and DOOT-doo-doo / DOOT-doo-doo / DOOT-doo-doo from across the way.

And, during civil dawn, the peacocks, roosters, and hens resumed crowing and clucking. Once the sun was fully above the horizon, a couple of parakeets zoomed past flashing their bright green wings, seagulls glided by, and little birds of various descriptions twittered songs in the trees.

After dawn, Blacky the cat made an appearance and Barkie the dog added her comment. Bird Park East, the place I call home these days.

Note to self

Got some of the stitches out today. The rest come out next Wednesday. And yes. The biopsy was positive for Myoepithelial carcinoma again. This time they increased the margins by a lot. I'll have a CAT scan in a few months to see if there's anything left. That's it.

Harbor watch for the predominately inattentive

It looks like a small city at sea, 17 smoke gray stacks against the flat horizon, and the deep voice of a fog horn taunting me with intriguing blasts. This particular freighter has been parked at the mouth of the Tagus since I got up this morning. It must be waiting for a dock to open. Generally the ships just chug by.

I keep binoculars nearby, always hoping for a glimpse of arrivals and departures. I don't have a camera these days otherwise maybe I might catch an interesting photo now and then. As you see, at this distance, my poor phone can't make much sense of things.

M.'s position is that I've never learned any of the cameras I've had so why waste the money. Ok. He's partly right. I haven't studied the technical side of photography but I do have a decent eye, plus it's something of a meditation for me and, as someone with acute ADHD-PI (PI being "predominately inattentive") I can use all the help I can use and I can use photography because it shows me how to focus exactly on what's in front of me then rewards me with a photo to see if, in fact, I did. If you're not ADHD that probably doesn't make much sense.