R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 63

The Lives of Animals

“I agree. It works. Still, isn’t there a position outside from which our doing our thinking and then sending out a Mars probe looks a lot like a squirrel doing its thinking and then dashing out and snatching a nut? Isn’t that perhaps what she meant?” “But there isn’t any such position! I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I have to say it. There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason.” “Except the position of someone who has withdrawn from reason.” “That’s just French irrationalism, the sort of thing a person would say who has never set foot inside a mental institution and seen what people look like who have really withdrawn from reason.” “Then except for God.” “Not if God is a God of reason. A God of reason cannot stand outside reason.”

Paint It Black by R L Swihart @ Otoliths

Check out my new poem Paint It Black @ Otoliths:

https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2021...

Killdeer @ Colorado Lagoon

Killdeer @ Colorado Lagoon. 

#rlswihart13 #longbeachcalifornia #coloradolagoon #birdsofinstagram #killdeer #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

The Lives of Animals

Ruth Orkin, from Psychology, is telling his mother about an experiment with a young chimpanzee reared as human. Asked to sort photographs into piles, the chimpanzee insisted on putting a picture of herself with the pictures of humans rather than with the pictures of other apes. “One is so tempted to give the story a straightforward reading,” says Orkin—“namely, that she wanted to be thought of as one of us. Yet as a scientist one has to be cautious.”

Coetzee's The Lives of Animals

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she begins. “It is two years since I last spoke in the United States. In the lecture I then gave, I had reason to refer to the great fabulist Franz Kafka, and in particular to his story ‘Report to an Academy,’ about an educated ape, Red Peter, who stands before the members of a learned society telling the story of his life—of his ascent from beast to something approaching man.1 On that occasion I felt a little like Red Peter myself and said so. Today that feeling is even stronger, for reasons that I hope will become clearer to you.

Robin in Julian CA

Robin (on vacation) @ Julian CA.

#rlswihart13 #julianca #southerncalifornia #birdsofinstagram #birdsinwinter #robin #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

Handke: Letter Writing in the Last Days

A letter box in classic yellow, as tall as a man, with two slots, one for local mail, the other for all points of the compass, stood outside on the pavement, within easy reach. From his seat by the window, open to the summer air, he could have thrust his letter through the open window into the ‘all points’ slot. But he just sat there and observed the letter box, as well as the activity around it. As night closed in, the number of people posting letters increased. Then came a period during which they streamed to the box from all sides, one after the other, finally clustering around the box, forming a queue, especially in front of the slot for long-distance and foreign post. Letters to official agencies and so on, with pre-printed addresses, were in the minority; most of the envelopes displayed handwriting. So after an era in which letter- writing had dried up. seemingly for good, letters were being written again. Can you believe it? The crowd grew larger and larger. ‘End of days?’ The footpaths alone, more and more of them, even in the heart of the capital, had belied that notion.

Harris's Hawks

Harris's Hawks. Amazing to watch. Beautiful (beyond words).:)

#rlswihart13 #california #desert #cooperativehunting #raptors #birdsofinstagram #hawks #harrishawks #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

The Great Fall

 ‘The last human being,’ the actor said to himself, ‘one way or other. Is this supposed to mean that we humans are done for, I and the others, the world of human beings? Is that possible? Is that permissible? Can it be true? No, it mustn’t be true, mustn’t be true.’ And then: ‘Watch what you’re blabbering about, even if only to yourself. Blabbering is not merely blabbering, saying is not merely saying; words, even those that go unspoken, are not merely words. Hush, my friend!’

Handke's The Great Fall

In my reading I've passed from Ishiguro's Floating World to Handke's Great Fall. Not that Floating World wasn't thought-provoking: I guess I was just too lazy to post any excerpts.:)

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The bursting of jewelweed if one barely brushed against it: a temporal threshold in the year, in the summer, as the hazel catkins, which had just opened, drifting in the otherwise imperceptible breeze, marked a temporal threshold in early spring, and the gentle crunching of nut shells marked a temporal threshold in early autumn. Once he had been aware of innumerable such temporal thresholds in the year. But meanwhile he had forgotten them all. He no longer knew them, or did not want to know them; for him, they had lost their meaning. There remained only one temporal threshold he could not and did not want to forget: the circling of an eagle, high up and higher still in the sky, calm spirals in the blue, drifting away and finally returning and circling again, while down on the ground, after hours of silence, the hour for an even deeper silence, a palpable one, came due, in which not even a grasshopper’s chirping would be heard, only the silence, with its sign, the eagle high overhead, the temporal threshold of midsummer. And as he thought of it, he looked up and there it was, high in the blue, no sooner thought than done, I kid you not, the eagle circling, its motionless wings spread, far above all the fluttering, flapping crowds of birds zigzagging and darting through the air. So that meant today was midsummer.