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Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. —Mark Twain
A torrent of warnings, stories, adages, poems, threats, how-tos, real estate info, survival tips and non sequitur jokes are available for those who tap in. Everything talks, you just have to be willing to listen.
Flashbacks from the Discovery Channel haunted me, stirring up the Latin name for the grizzly bear, Ursus arctos horribilis. Horribilis indeed.
Butterflies live short lives because they have mastered the art of living. They serve to pass it on with luminous bursts of joy, bright flickers from the other side.
There would be no more hot dog–eating contests or NASCAR or picnics in the park or Cheetos® or America’s Funniest Home Videos or revving truck engines or books or children laughing or fetch with a stick or iPhone updates or shopping or electrical jobs or songs or genius inventions or drunken dancing or Fireball whiskey or snow globes or wedding vows or ugly ties or Christmas hugs or…families. Family.
“I have nine brains—which never stop growing—three hearts, and I can regenerate my arms; but mostly, it’s because I’m female.” Female. Well, shit. Admittedly, I had limited knowledge of them, but they had always seemed omniscient and formidable to me.
(Small fact for you here: the rough translation of “zoo” in bird twitter is “creature quilt” because that’s what it looks like from above, a blanket made up of species-separated enclosures.)
“tater tots are mood-enhancing potato pillows,” and “cheese is the cure for boredom.”
Listen; life is worth a fight. Expectation must be shed like winter leaves. Even in death, there is wondrous beauty. And death is not The End.
If you are alive—whether of blood or bark—you will be struck by pain, love, longing, fear, anger, and the particular ache of sadness. There will be joys that quiver your leaves and betrayals that will sever your roots, poisoning the water you pull. These are the varying notes in the music of living. Look up, to close your eyes is to stagnate. To rot and stop the song.
