From today's Guardian:
The koala is assuredly a creature of leisure. It has the smallest brain proportionally of any mammal, sleeps most of the day, and dedicates much of the rest to chewing gum leaves. The first description published in England 200 years ago, in fact, introduced the koala as the "New Holland Sloth". In his Arcana; or The Museum of Natural History (1881), the naturalist George Perry was severely censorious of the koala's "sluggishness and inactivity", and thought its "clumsy appearance" was "void of elegance".
"We are at a loss to imagine for what particular scale of usefulness or happiness such an animal could by the great Author of Nature possibly be destined," concluded Perry, although his respect for that particular author compelled him to concede: "As Nature however provides nothing vain, we may suppose that even these torpid, senseless creatures are wisely intended to fill up one of the great links of the chain of animated nature, and to shew forth the extensive variety of the created beings which GOD has, in his wisdom, constructed."
Why do we want to see human traits in animals? He/her, not "it". Of course, even in inanimate things we divine a spirit, attribute a degree of sense-perception to them, or associate them with certain feelings: trees, rocks, colours. Metaphor: only connect! Since everything is prior to human beings, and since humans are central, everything is, in a certain fashion, contained in him, present in his soul.
Creative empathy and "oceanic feelings": the ability to imagine the lives of others, founded, perhaps, on a continuity of being. The desire to penetrate the veils that separate us: to move across the frontier is to enter a trance, a bewildered state, take leave of oneself (leaves of one self), shun familiar landmarks and signposts. The shaman who finds strength in customary visions.
Berserk.Our coat of arms.
Primo Levi: The Periodic Table: a style,a temperament, corresponding to a particular element and its properties.
"If you know how you sound, God help you"
(Paula Fox)
Discontinuity:
Much of those "other lives" is boring, horrid, senseless. Very few koalas, as far as you know, drink latte or read The New Yorker. Life is a distancing, a separation, a curving away from matter; human life a zig-zag jolt, a spark of intelligence that breaks free from the cyclomania of nature, seeks the wilderness, the wild blue, knows what a horizon is and is not just constrained by it.
The dull hours of insects is truly frightening. And most people have boring, insipid lives, filled with inane chatter and pointless meanderings. The need for entertainment, diversions, to forget the slow slippage into the inorganic, the seepage of reality. What do koalas dream of when they're stoned?
4 comments:
Straight Talk From Fox
Listen says fox it is music to run
over the hills to lick
dew from the leaves to nose along
the edges of the ponds to smell the fat
ducks in their bright feathers but
far out, safe in their rafts of
sleep. It is like
music to visit the orchard, to find
the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the
rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself
is a music. Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot
be told. It is flesh and bones
changing shape and with good cause, mercy
is a little child beside such an invention. It is
music to wander the black back roads
outside of town no one awake or wondering
if anything miraculous is ever going to
happen, totally dumb to the fact of every
moment's miracle. Don't think I haven't
peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons
making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is
responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not
give my life for a thousand of yours.
~ Mary Oliver ~
Did a fox write that or say it!?
Wonderful lines, though. "Thought-fox"
Not straight...tell it, but tell it slant, methinks.
Does a tortoise or a koala think of us in the same way, project her own view on ours in the way we do?
sure, for the fox God *is* grass, but a human would straight away ask: what is meant by "is"? continuity and discontinuity...
immediacy/presence *and* absence...a broken circle.
Ibn Arabi is more daring, saying that the human perspective, because it comes from a being created by the "two hands of God", sees more than even god (in some sense).
What does a god know of finitude and suffering?
no?
see, english has she/he and then it for the rest - not humans? romanian, or any other romance language, has she/he for everything, and neutral is not it, but a combination of she/he for plural & singular. so fox would be a she (vulpe), or a he with a different word (vulpoi)
does that mean we assign them human characteristics, or that english strips animals/things of living attributes because they're not human - but rather ours to command. it.
it's always baffled me why babies are 'it' - how does that work?
what does a god know - my christian view - what we know of finitude and suffering, god would know, multiplied by as many finite and suffering souls there are. so, much more than we could possibly know or stand to know.
finitude - i like the word :)
interesting thoughts, mani.
i think you're right: iris m once said that saying "he" when talking about a spider rather than "it" is a moral training.
but yes, fox is defintely female!
:-)
unless you say, sly old fox.
i think you're formally right but in practice, english as "she's" spoken, attributes a gender to animals all the time. "here boy" or "there's a good girl" when talking to a dog. and so we might ask: is language the set of formal rules, the structure, or is it the use of them in practice?
but the absence of he/she or the constant interplay of them, does not necesarily mean that we have command. for instance, when speaking of god. does the fact that god is spoken of 'he' say something about western approaches?
hmm..never did understand the christian view but that's really a question of temperament, i think the fact that God has to 'descend' to our realm, if that is in fact the correct way of saying this, in order to 'suffer' or know suffering ,is something quite odd to muslim ears. in any case, isn't there a unique descent?
can one know suffering without a body? i know it's the standard line to say that God knows much more than us but if we take your analogy-and this might be wholly inappropriate-then the fox or tortoise knows things that humans do not, even though she is at a lower level of being. no?
the allama: finitude is not a misfortune. this really appeals to me...from the miraj (ascension) we are told that the prophet returned to earth and this is suposed to be a higher stage than the losing of the self or its annihilation. i guess some parts of the christian view over time have seen this as 'worldliness'.
wow..all this specualtion and i haven't even had breakfast yet! got to run. look forward to your , or anyone else's comments.
danke, danke.
b.
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