from Epicurus

"Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city"

life/death

above: the site of the death of a bird.

duc, age 34, arpisson

Duc, Arpisson

Duc was 34 when I took these photos.

Dozens of photos of hatching chicks

 Hatching Chicks: The Definitive Collection.

The moral of this story (and the moral of all my posts about farm animals) is: animals are better than people. Actually, that should probably be the title of my blog.

 As soon as the little dark one hatched, he ran straight under his mom.

 The new daddy comes to check on his family. Just a few days later, this rooster was taken by foxes. We spent an hour searching the woods for his remains--a few brown feathers.

It was such a surprise to find the first peeping baby in the nesting box, right on time, three weeks after we gave the eggs back to the brooding hen. Though I'd been expecting them to hatch, it was funny and weird to find this little visitor where there'd been a humdrum everyday-looking egg just an hour before.

The Next Village

The Next Village
Franz Kafka

My grandfather used to say: "Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that--not to mention accidents--even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey."

The Isle of Man, 2010

Two recent obsessions

 Neighborhood spot for contemplating infinity, Atlantic Ave, Crown Heights, 2013

These two things have been on my mind constantly since I read about them:

1. A time capsule from 100 years ago opened in Oklahoma
People from the past always seem like little kids, don't they?

2. We're no more closely related to our 12-generations-back forefathers than we are to strangers
I've spent so much time worrying and wondering about my distant family. I thought knowing something about them would teach me something about myself. It blows my mind how quickly the genetic relations fade.

And this: "In 2004, statistician Joseph Chang, computer scientist Douglas Rohde, and writer Steve Olson used a computer model of human genetics to show that anyone who was alive 2,000-3,000 years ago is either the ancestor of everyone who’s now alive, or no one at all."

Los Angeles, August

from "New Year"

how many times at my schoolgirl’s desk:
what’s beyond those mountains? which rivers?
is the scenery nice without tourists?
am I right, Rainer, rain, mountains,
thunder? it’s not a widow’s pretension—
there can’t be just one heaven, there’s bound to be
another one, rainier, above it? with terraces? I’m judging by the Tatras,
heaven has to look like an amphitheater. (and they’re lowering the curtain.)
am I right, Rainer, God’s a growing
baobab tree? not a Louis d’or?
there can’t just be one God? there’s bound to be
another one, rainier, above him?

--from "New Year" by Marina Tsvetaeva, translated by Caroline Lemak Brickman (full text here)


Marina Tsvetaeva wrote this after Rilke died. For the last year of Rilke's life, the two poets had exchanged passionate letters, but they never met.

Podere Campriano, 2013

One poem for the day

Buffalo Bill 's

defunct

                     who used to

                     ride a watersmooth-silver

                                                            stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                                                                                        Jesus

he was a handsome man

                                                            and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

--e. e. cummings

One Poem for the Day

The Rhythms Pronounce Themselves Then Vanish

After they told me the CT showed
there was nothing wrong with my stomach
but my heart was failing, I plunked
one of those weird two-dollar tea balls
I bought in Chinatown and it bobbed
and bloomed like a sea monster and tasted
like feet and I had at this huge
chocolate bar I got at Trader Joe’s
and didn’t answer the door even though
I could see it was UPS with the horse
medication and I thought of that picture
Patti took of me in an oval frame. Sweat
itself is odorless, composed of water,
sodium chloride, potassium salts,
and lactic acid; it’s the bacteria growing
on dead skin that provides the stench.
The average life span of a human taste bud
is seven to ten days. Nerve pulses
can travel up to a hundred and seventy miles per hour.
All information is useless.
The typical lightning bolt
is one inch wide and five miles long.

--Dean Young

Père Lachaise, 2013