“A dolphin has come to the rescue of two whales which had become stranded on a beach in New Zealand.
Conservation officer Malcolm Smith told the BBC that he and a group of other people had tried in vain for an hour and a half to get the whales to sea.” [BBC NEWS]
That gives rescue a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
And can everyone see why it’s not cool that Japan continues to slaughter both species?
Jeff Gordon, tech blogger/podcaster for APM, reports on a study which found that a robotic dog was “as effective as a real dog in relieving loneliness and fostering emotional attachment.”
Hold on to your flea collars kids, because I’m about to disagree: Oh, what a pile of puppy poo. (Hey, this is a family blog.)
If you can convince God to let you keep it – even after 12-16 years – by changing the batteries, then you can’t form the essential bond that is born of the irredeemable finitude of life. Everything is on it’s way to somewhere else, and that basic fact of life is what makes our short time together here precious. As one who has loved and lost pets, I assert that it is love – not entertainment – that defines our relationships with animals, and distracts us from the truth that we all die alone.
“We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan.”
“The Once Again Prince” from Separate Lifetimes by Irving Townsend
That being said, I’ll make these allowances for the fleeting consolations of materialism:
We all have mementos of those we’ve loved and had to let go. I have my dog Tasha’s collar hanging on the bed post.
Remember these little guys from the classic movie Silent Running ?
Alright, I’ll admit that it was impossible not to feel attached to Hewey, Dewey, and Louie. But I just don’t think that artificial anything can ever be a substitute for a real little heart, beating at your feet.
In response to this post by Billie on camera-obscura (check out the comments too), I offer this photo of my bro Joe, left, and me. That’s a state-of-the-art PlayDoh Factory, circa 1967.
Those were days.
I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us.
-Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)
Ethologist. Now there’s a cool job, don’t you think?
A little fun for your Sunday. Watch Anastasia the Jack Russell Terrier break 100 balloons and set a new world record.
Here’s a little sumthin special fur your Saturday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denouement
It is a splendid little word, isn’t it? Don’t ya just love the way it rolls off the tongue? Yep, and it’s French, you know. Literally, it means unknotting or unwinding. In a story, it’s the outcome of dramatic action, following the climax. The fate of the characters is revealed, harmony is restored, destinies are settled.
Well, Marty finally cracked last night, and spilled the beans. I’ve been waiting too patiently for too long for him to finally tell me what becomes of this little family I’ve created, and of their lands and lives, so I can write it down and get on with my own life. (Or perhaps I don’t so much write it down as type it up. And I mean to get on with my life by doing so, not afterwards.)
I’m afraid things don’t turn out too happily for our hero, as the new millennium staggers out into daylight, squinting and blinking at the sharp San Joaquin Valley sun. Marty finds himself cut off, adrift, and forced to face, literally, the means and instrument of his family’s greatest grief. As if Sisyphus, finally relieved of his burden, is made to sit and stare at The Stone, in the front yard of his house.
Why am I being so obtuse? Because you gotta buy the book, dudes. After I finish writing it. Well, a few of you will get free copies, but you still gotta wait. Except for this guy. In the mean time, you can learn more about the novel here.
Work, you say? Oh balls, I was afraid of that.
In response to my last post – bemoaning the dichotomy between the dream and the practice of creating – Joe Bunting has left a comment. (Thanks!) It links to a short article by Ben Stein, of Ferris Bueller fame. It’s good – so good that I had to move it to the main thread so you don’t miss it.
I know a lot of really successful people — in finance, in government, in politics, in Hollywood, in journalism, in literature.
Their common denominator is a modicum of talent and a capacity and an eagerness — not just a willingness, but an eagerness — to work like Trojans to get ahead. I don’t know of one really successful, famous man or woman who didn’t work insanely hard to get there and to stay there.
Doggone it. I guess I need to either learn to rap or sit down and write.
Hey now, I just had an apostrophe epiphany.
I was sitting here with my laptop pulled up to the sofa, watching The Captain, and thinking that it would be cool to be a writer on a clever funny show like that. I’ll bet, said I to myself, that those guys have a blast writing that.
My next thought was something along the lines of If I was a writer on that show, I probably wouldn’t be sitting on my ass watching TV. And that’s when it hit me:
People who have the kind of life I want make a living creating stuff to entertain people like me, who don’t. And if I had the life I want, I certainly wouldn’t have time for the life I have.
Is there a conundrum in there somewhere? Maybe.
I’ll think about some more after Two and a Half Men.
Tres existential.
is here. My Dad is a happy guy. He loves rain. Well, he ought to get a kick out of this; it’s really coming down.
Did you know that the word weather is sometimes abbreviated Wx? It’s true. So here’s a Wx poem for you, from several years ago.
BETWEEN STORMS
Sad, how the clouds gather again
against the small hills
for reasons I cannot comprehend,
and how I stand here watching
the last boat carrying men
from oil rigs in the cast iron sea.
Sad, how all the gulls are home
asleep, having eaten all day,
how I see the shadow of the clock
on the water, its hands turning
from island to harbor
to the tender sand beneath my feet.
So sad, how finally I am rising up,
falling in a long arc
into the mountains of darkness.
© J. Kyle Kimberlin
All Rights Reserved
Back in 1976, I went to Santa Barbara for a reading and lecture by a monk and writer named William McNamara. The occasion was the publication of his book, “The Human Adventure: Contemplation for Everyman.” I came away with a copy of this book, which now rests here beside my computer. I am a bit concerned that its structure may not survive its first opening in a long time: it is brittle. (It was still the 1970s when last I opened it.) I note that the cost, printed on the cover, was $1.95; the hardcover was originally $3.95.
As three decades and change have flickered by like magic lantern hummingbirds, I have often quoted – apparently misquoted – the admonition of this book to live my life, “steeped in radical amazement.” Here’s what this brittle little book really says:
It is this spiritual life, as well as my prayer life, of which contemplation is the highest expression. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is a life grounded in radical amazement, steeped in wonder, and full of awe, immersed as it is in mystery and engaged in intercourse with God. Contemplation is, above all, the loving awareness of God, the invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant source of everything.
Over thirty years, and I keep coming back to this, to one afternoon in a church when I was 15, to one man from the woods of Nova Scotia. I remember, without risking damage to later pages, that he lived in a log hermitage with his dog and ate oatmeal at dawn. I have remembered many times to try to find that amazement in the short days of my finite life. Perhaps more important, I’ve kept watch for a vision of that amazement – the wish to perceive it – in others.
Last week, a friend told me how much he likes the word amazement; I believe I see that wish in him. And in the past few days, I’ve found it without a doubt in the newest blog in my blogroll, camera-obscura. Anyone who dances with her horses is truly living steeped in wonder.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.— TS Eliot, Four Quartets
Metaphor 