RENATURED

My cousin Pejk Malinowski sent me this poem last night by Robert Creeley. I am smitten.

Love

The thing comes
of itself

(Look up
to see
the cat & the squirrel,
the one
torn, a red thing,
& the other
somehow immaculate)

– Robert Creeley

(Poem #39) The Riddle of the World

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his mind and body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Whether he thinks to little, or too much;
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus’d;
Still by himself, abus’d or disabus’d;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all,
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

– Alexander Pope

Yes – say it like it is.
Sorry to be such a child, but I have no better language to describe how provocative, dark, pure (following the heart, following internal logic, following a line of inquiry), genre-bending, and ideologically challenging these works of fiction are.

1. Bear, Marian Engel

2. An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, César Aira

From today’s NY Times: Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the World, an article on what the decline of taxonomy means for us as narrative beings.

The past few decades have seen a stream of studies that show that sorting and naming the natural world is a universal, deep-seated and fundamental human activity, one we cannot afford to lose because it is essential to understanding the living world, and our place in it.

image from the book “Kunstformen der Natur,” by Ernst Haeckel, 1900.

There aren’t many sites in defense of the grey squirrel. Here’s one written in the first person, with some good arguments on defining “nativeness:”

http://www.grey-squirrel.org.uk/

“NATIVE BY BIRTH – CONDEMNED BY ORIGIN”

Key points at a glance

1. “Nativeness” is based on political boundaries rather than sensible concepts of the range of a species, or the birthplace of individuals

2. Evidence to support the “nativeness” of red squirrels in the north of the UK is extremely low

3. Humans are part of the environment, and therefore as legitimate a means of transporting species as any other natural means

4. Most Red Squirrels currently in the UK are also “aliens” by conservationists criteria. They were imported from Scandinavia to replenish numbers.

…and if you’re feeling feisty (and up for a clubbing yourself) you can buy one of their advocacy brollies in Professor Acorn’s shop.  Between fights, your head’ll be protected from the shit of the songbirds that the greys might’ve missed.

save the grey.

Talking to Grant Burgess at the DOVE Marine Lab today about the defensive slime that bacteria produce, in order to keep from being decimated (by enemies, by antibiotics) reminded me of Alfonso Lingis’ description of the body as bodies, systems inside of systems, from his book “Dangerous Emotions”: