happybat

Consider the noble centipede...

I am not a fan of the many many legged. I remember watching one with fascination in a childhood garden, but things took a downturn after. The key moment was the night of my final Final exam (philosophy of maths) when I got up to go to the loo, saw a centipede making its earnest curvy path across the bathroom rug, had complete hysterics and woke my partner of the time to get up and deal with the monster. Poor man, he ventured through and instead of the three foot monstrosity I had described, he found a piece of fluffy string. He flushed it and returned to tell me the monster was vanquished. I was unsure of his sincerity and required him to return with me and THERE IT WAS processing across the floor! Clearly, it had lain in wait for me.

Seventeen years later, the first centipede of my solo existence looped and curved across the floor towards me last night. I am awed by my own bravery in capturing it, having hysterics as it strove mightily to escape its juice glass prison, sliding my polling card below it and then throwing it out the window. It was sort of reddish, and it had many legs. Probably some of those legs had venomous claws on them.

Because they are territorial, it is unlikely I will see another for a while. Because they eat other insects, I am a little worried about untidy neighbours having some kind of infestation, and have resolved to be extra scrupulous about cleaning my floors. Because I live alone, and a hysterical terror of small creatures that can't really hurt me all that much is unbecoming, I have resolved to learn to love the centipede.

So I am trying to admire the creature's sinuous grace. It was really a very fetching shade of red. There was a lovely symmetry about the many body sections, and the long bits on its bum that looked like antennae matched the actual antennae on its head. It is a noble hunter, and lives in solitary splendour, defending its territory and preying on many much more destructive creatures. It... let me catch it? It enterprisingly crawled its way up to a first floor flat...

I am not sure I will be able to love the centipede.

  One Art


The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.


-- Elizabeth Bishop

"At the same time, the joke's on ... well, I'm not sure who the joke's on. I'm not even sure there is a joke."

Some Writer On Salon, about Art.

The pennycandystore beyond the El

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

RAIN
by Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters. 

If to do so amuses you, guess the source - and then have fun speculating on the movie that MIGHT have been.

I felt a sudden hot sear as if a red-hot iron had been pressed to my thigh. There was a crash as ______'s pistol came down on the man's head. I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while _________ rummaged him for weapons. Then my friend's wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair.

'You're not hurt, ________? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!'

It was worth a wound - it was worth many wounds - to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

'It's nothing, _________. It's a mere scratch.'

He had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife.

'You are right,' he cried with an immense sigh of relief. 'It is quite superficial.' His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. 'By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed _______, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?'