Without Lifting A Finger

Check out my new poem Paint It Black @ Otoliths: https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2021/11/r-l-swihart.html?m=1

Killdeer @ Colorado Lagoon.  #rlswihart13 #longbeachcalifornia #coloradolagoon #birdsofinstagram #killdeer #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

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.”

“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 (on vacation) @ Julian CA. #rlswihart13 #julianca #southerncalifornia #birdsofinstagram #birdsinwinter #robin #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

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 f...

Harris's Hawks. Amazing to watch. Beautiful (beyond words).:) #rlswihart13 #california #desert #cooperativehunting #raptors #birdsofinstagram #hawks #harrishawks #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

 ‘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!’

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.:) &&& 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 th...

What I learned from the Idealists (and still most strongly hold) is this maxim: it is more important that Heaven should exist than that any of us should reach it. And so the great Angler played His fish and I never dreamed that the hook was in my tongue. But two great advances had been made. Bergson had showed me necessary existence; and from Idealism I had come one step nearer to understanding the words, ‘We give thanks to thee for thy great glory.’ The Norse gods had given me the first hint of it; but then I didn’t believe in them, and I did believe (so far as one can believe an Unding) in the Absolute.

Even in peace-time I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand.

Ring-necked Duck @ Borrego Springs. Saw these cuties in San Joaquin M & W but couldn't get close. In BS they hang out at an abandoned golf course. Small pond = better pics. #rlswihart13 #borregospringsca #borregospringsresortandspa #abandonedgolfcourse #ducksofinstagram #ringneckedducks #desertlife #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

 We are taught in the Prayer Book to ‘give thanks to God for His great glory’, as if we owed Him more thanks for being what He necessarily is than for any particular benefit He confers upon us; and so indeed we do and to know God is to know this.

 

White-winged Mourning Doves @ Borrego Springs. Got these beauties (rare here not there) but didn't get the prize I was hoping for: the little Verdin. Had a great time hiking and glamping. #rlswihart13 #borrego #borregospringsca #mourningdoves #whitewingedmourningdoves #birdsofinstagram #nature #beauty #desertlife #glamping #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

The reader who finds these three episodes of no interest need read this book no further, for in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else. For those who are still disposed to proceed I will only underline the quality common to the three experiences; it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is. &&& En...