Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood,
So follow me, follow,
Down to the hollow,
And there let us wallow in glorius mud.
--Chorus from "The Hippopotomus Song"
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Mud, mud glorious mud, Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood, So follow me, follow, Down to the hollow, And there let us wallow in glorius mud. --Chorus from "The Hippopotomus Song" |
| date | 2000-12-04:17:59 |
| SelfConciousness |
I feel like wallowing a bit, mostly in self-pity. Poor me. Wallowing, as the song suggests, is actually a lot of fun, although in the literal sense getting covered with mud isn't something I enjoy. But metaphorically there's something about letting yourself sink into that oozing emotional soup, of feeling it conform to your shape, surrounding you and protecting you from the slings and arrows of your inadequacies that is deeply reassuring. Wallowing is fun, and self-indulgent, and we should all give into it now and then. Sometimes life knocks us on the head. We work hard, and then we don't get what we want. We lose our heart's desire, or at least see it slipping away from us. We find that we've struggled long and hard to get to a place that--now having the benefit of the lessons learned on the journey--we find we don't want to be. Wallowing a bit before setting out again on our journey through life can be refreshing. Nothing like a nice, cool muddy pool to ease my pain and rest my bruised soul before standing up under the sun again. And the inelegant flopping about during wallowing should remind us of the basic ridiculousness of out situation, it should in the end make us laugh at ourselves in the best possible way. The line between wallowing and melodrama is very thin, and it's only one small step beyond melodrama to uncontrollable giggling, which is a good place to be when feeling soul-sore. Off to the mud! |
| Creatures |
Does a tree count as a creature? I used to get a laugh out of those old Star Trek episodes where they'd beam down to some planet that was just teaming with plants and Spock would monotonically report, "My tricorder shows no life forms, Captain." I was always waiting for Kirk or someone to thwack him over the head with a branch or stuff his nose in a flower and say, "What'dya think this is?! It is not logical to say 'life forms' when you mean 'animals'!" Equal rights for trees, vines and veggies! The willow tree in the back yard has finally shed it's leaves. The bark itself is yellowish on the dangly bits, so it can be hard to tell when the leaves actually go, as they fade slowly from green to yellow and then finally fall off. It is the last tree to turn in the fall, and one of the earliest to regain its leaves in the spring. Willows are messy trees, although this one makes up for it by the shade it gives in summer. It has its own little micro-climate under there, and the branches form a habitat for all kinds of animals. Two years ago some kind of bird that builds basket-like nests created one high in the branches, and there is often a squirrel or two nesting up there as well. The kids and I tried to make willow baskets and things out of the long yellowish switches. This is part of my program of making sure they grow up knowing that just because they know how to type and drive a car and things like that they are not superior in knowledge or skills to people who lived in less technologically obtrusive environments. I get a laugh out of people who say the world is becoming more complicated, when in fact I think exactly the opposite is the case. It used to take a lot of trouble and planning to make a phone call across the continent. Now it takes nothing. Getting food was once something that took a lot of skill. Now it takes almost nothing. Technology has been a great simplifier, and continues to be. My father once bought my sister a watermelon for Christmas as a joke--he had it specially shipped from California. Today I'm sure I could do the same thing over the Web much more simply. To build a willow basket is not simple. Alex managed to build a kind of flat platter, and I managed to produce a basket that was wildly non-symmetrical and will hold water only so long as the water comes as fairly large blocks of ice. I'm glad that the onward march of civilization doesn't depend on my basket-weaving skills. "Primitive" peoples--that is, folks who don't believe in God and wear fewer clothes than the average Puritan--were and are in fact mostly highly skilled individuals. Their lack of technology and massively inefficient use of resources--both natural and human--meant they had to be to survive. We are fortunate to live in a time and place where we can afford to be ignorant of most of the facts that keep us alive, because our highly efficient distribution of labor and the market system that informs it makes sure that it is to someone's profit to know those things. If that were not the case, civilization as we know it would end, and we'd all have to learn to weave willow baskets, instead of buying them at the store. |
| Poem | I have no clue who the author of "The Hippopotomus Song" is. I've seen it sung in a documentary about a couple of English performers whose names I can't recall--a pianist and a singer who's in a wheelchair--from the 1930's or thereabouts. |
| Reading |
My reading has become chaotic in part because I'm avoiding the Iliad. Barry Hill-Tout once told me he thought Homer was deliberately portraying the senselessness of war, but I have to disagree. I think Homer really means it, every word, about how "glorious" it all is. In any case, I'm going to make a concerted effort to finish the damned book, as it doesn't do to be a poet and not to have read a verse translation of Homer. The Odyssey really is a much better story, although even it is over-rated. It's strange to me that Gilgamesh ever gets compared to the Iliad, because the poems seem to me to have almost nothing in common. Gilgamesh is a builder, a protector of his people. Achilles is a spoiled brat and a fighter, nothing more. Gilgamesh seeks immortality after his partner dies. Achilles seeks revenge. Gilgamesh journeys to the ends of the earth and beyond. Achilles whole career is compassed by some grotty little war in Asia Minor. Gilgamesh finds the secret of immortality but does not use it himself--he wants to bring it back to his people, that all may benefit. None of Homer's swaggering Dannan thugs are capable of such a sentiment. I'll be reading a recent translation of Gilgamesh, unfortunately from the Assyrian rather than the Sumerian version, after finishing the Iliad and will no-doubt have more to say about the comparison then. |