The flies are angry bits of life;
why are they so angry?
it seems they want more,
it seems almost as if they
are angry
that they are flies;
it is not my fault;
I sit in the room
with them
and they taunt me
with their agony;
it is as if they were
loose chunks of soul
left out of somewhere;
I try to read a paper
but they will not let me
be;
one seems to go in half-circles
high along the wall,
throwing a miserable sound
upon my head;
the other one, the smaller one
stays near and teases my hand,
saying nothing,
rising, dropping
crawling near;
what god puts these
lost things upon me?
other men suffer dictates of
empire, tragic love…
I suffer
insects…
I wave at the little one
which only seems to revive
his impulse to challenge:
he circles swifter,
nearer, even making
a fly-sound,
and one above
catching a sense of the new
whirling, he too, in excitement,
speeds his flight,
drops down suddenly
in a cuff of noise
and they join
in circling my hand,
strumming the base
of the lampshade
until some man-thing
in me
will take no more
unholiness
and I strike
with the rolled-up-paper -
missing! -
striking,
striking,
they break in discord,
some message lost between them,
and I get the big one
first, and he kicks on his back
flicking his legs
like an angry whore,
and I come down again
with my paper club
and he is a smear
of fly-ugliness;
the little one circles high
now, quiet and swift,
almost invisible;
he does not come near
my hand again;
he is tamed and
inaccessible; I leave
him be, he leaves me
be;
the paper, of course,
is ruined;
something has happened,
something has soiled my
day,
sometimes it does not
take man
or a woman,
only something alive;
I sit and watch
the small one;
we are woven together
in the air
and the living;
it is late
for both of us.
33 comments:
I'm doing "best of" reruns at my place: link
All is right in the world again...
Congratulations on crossing the quarter million mark, El Pollo!
I ventured over to find this gem at the end of #10:
The essence of an idea can be distilled from crude thought too. All it takes is a little focused energy--just enough to set it free from context--and a little care in gathering and enjoying it.
When it comes to distillation of crude thought, TY on the Fly with Bukowski as Swatter, testify to focused energy at its finest!
One of the blessings of my younger years was a high school English teacher named Walter Lemley. Lemley was a Brit expat who had been a teacher in a boys school in the UK before moving to the US. He was in his 50s when I had him, tall, lean, silver-haired, stentorian booming voice.
Hardest teacher I ever had, by far. You knew that going in, but still, you signed up for every class he taught because he beat you up until you were excellent. It was worth it. He taught me to write, to read, to understand, to listen.
Lemley had a concept called 'stand and deliver'. If a classmate was stumbling or stammering while reciting (from memory) an assigned passage of Chaucer or Browning or Shakespeare or some other work of literature, and some student chuckled or snickered, Lemley would point at that student and yell "Mr. Jones! Stand and deliver!"
The snickering student then had to immediately stand and recite the same passage the other student was struggling with. And it had damn well better be perfect, or Lemley'd blister your hide.
What it taught on the surface was to be prepared; do the damn assignment and do it without flaw, just in case you were called to recite or explain or lead a discussion.
Deeper than on the surface, though, it taught us at a young age an important lesson: You had better be able do something better than the other person, else don't criticize another's work and efforts.
That's the underlying concept of competition, isn't it? Do something better than someone who is doing the same sort of thing. It's how sport is organized, and business, and courting, and grocery stores and nearly everything else that can be imagined.
"Just Do It" is a clever marketing idea, but the reality is "Just Do It Better" is what makes the world turn.
@ El Pollo
Right now I'm reading The Disappearing Spoon:And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements Very well written.
It has been ages since I had a chemistry class or thought much about the periodic table or the elements. I'm finding it fascinating and entertaining. Just right for a 'lay person'. Certainly too elementary for you on the chemistry level, but I am finding the anecdotes about the scientists and the industry very illuminating and funny.
Continued. For instance Lewis and Clark's expedition can be traced by their bathroom stops because they were taking mercury pills and the ...ahem....evidence is still there.
Shockley took credit for his colleagues work and made some of them so mad the even quit science. He was a giant A-hole in many ways.
@Haz: I had one of those teachers too: Dan Van Lanen at Middleton High School. He had a reputation for being a lot of things which ran the gamut from pervert to genius. I wrote about him here: link I sometimes wonder if those types of teachers still exist.
Haz, Great comment. All the best teachers are the most demanding. My speech teacher in college was the same. If he saw you reading instead of speaking he would literally throw something @ you, pen, eraser, etc. During a semester we had to give ~20 speeches, from impromptu, demonstration, etc.
Speaking and testifying became a big part of my career. I was never intimidated of doing those because of him. I'm an introvert, and w/o him I probably would not have had the success I did.
Trooper, There was a quirky show on HBO called Bored to Death. It only lasted 2 seasons. I loved it. The main character lived in Brooklyn and was an author who moonlighted as a PI. In one stakeouts he photographed gay guys having sex w/ one of them wearing a tiger outfit. I immediately thought of you but have forgotten to say so till now.
You being gay, and all.
Shockley took credit for his colleagues work and made some of them so mad the even quit science. He was a giant A-hole in many ways.
I suspect that sixty knows more about Shockley than any of us. I read the biography, "Broken Genius" which tries to explain the man behind the monster. We still owe him a great deal, much like Fritz Haber.
You can be a furry without being a fairy spinelli.
Broaden your horizons dude.
@DBQ wrote: It has been ages since I had a chemistry class or thought much about the periodic table or the elements. I'm finding it fascinating and entertaining. Just right for a 'lay person'. Certainly too elementary for you on the chemistry level, but I am finding the anecdotes about the scientists and the industry very illuminating and funny.
I am too young to retire and would love to get into teaching chemistry as a third career but I need help in identifying people who have done such a transition. The teaching world is changing fast and the old paradigms are no longer valid.
More to the point: If you want to be HERE rather than THERE, then put as much work into being here as you had put into being there.
We didn't like Althouse (the hostess), but Althouse (the blog) kept us interested, and most of us put up thoughtful or funny or angry or rational or ironic comments. Those comments took effort; put the same (or more) effort into comments here as you put into your comments there.
Tryin' to set an example here.
Long ago in a Wisconsin high school:
Mr. Lemley: Mr. Haz, would you recite for us the first few lines Shakespeare's 18th sonnet?
[looks up]
Mr. Lemley: I do have you name right? You are "Mr. Haz"?
Young Haz: [mumbles] Yes, my name's Haz.
Mr. Lemley: You're not speaking loud enough, Mr. Haz. Will you speak up?
Young Haz: [louder] Yes, my name's Haz.
Mr. Lemley: Mr. Haz, you're still not speaking loud enough. Will you stand and deliver? Fill the room with your intelligence!
I started working at Amdahl in '74. One of my coworkers had attended Stanford and gotten into a squabble with Shockley over eugenics. Imagine that.
Another guy I worked with there was Larry Ellison. He started his own company and from what I hear, has done okay.
In '73 I worked at Fairchild Semiconductor, and over the years have called on many of the spin-offs - Intel, AMD, TI, National and so on.
I met a lot of interesting people - Dr. Gene Amdahl, obviously, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, and back when I was a yute, John V. Atanasoff. His nephew was a classmate of mine and now the nephew is a crazy Bulgarian surfer on the east coast of Florida.
Some people, just sayin'...
Back to the subject at hand, the periodic table - as I have mentioned before, I read P. W. Atkins book Periodic Kingdom a few years back and enjoyed how he presented the subject matter. Not sayin' I'm going to read it again, but chemistry is destiny, eh? My brother visited this weekend and we got onto the subject of carbon, sulfur and potassium nitrate. Thank goodness I know nothing of such things - even writing the words is probably dangerous these days.
@ElPollo Heh. It was pretty much the opposite. I was so into the class and the literature that I was the guy who was always ready, willing and able to stand and deliver.
So much so that the presentations I had to make for other classes were written in the form of a standup humor monolog or a one-act play with another kid, or sometimes an informerical. I had a reputation......
I explained Nixon's 1960 presidential loss to Kennedy by rewriting Casey at The Bat.....
@Sixty: Check your fingers for GPR.
I thank you and DBQ for the too suggestions of chemistry books which have connected with you. I've never read Atkins book. I just ordered a used copy.
I have grandiose ideas of how to add my $0.02 to the topic but first I need to check the prior art.
Any other suggestions of chemistry authors who matter (besides Oliver Sacks and Primo Levi)?
Anyone?
two/two doh!
double doh!
A friend and I started doing a daily comic strip while in the second semester of ninth grade. It was called JB's Daily, using his initials. He was a wicked good artist and drew in what looked sorta like R Crumb's style, I wrote the story line.
Since there weren't copiers or home printers then (heck, there weren't even home computers...) we made one strip on a piece of paper and it was passed from friend to friend throughout the day. You could tell if it was being passed around in a study hall because of the choked laughter.
Our parents were called by the Assistant Principal, we were given orders to cease and desist. So we did.
One of the strops was somehow saved by a classmate and brought to our 25th anniversary reunion, much to our delight.
More pandaring.
It was a Catholic High School, and most of us had also gone to the same Catholic grade school. For 12years, we were coerced to give our pocket change to a Catholic charity to be used for the "pagan babies in India", whatever that meant.
At our 25th year, a classmate brought along a friend of hers, a guy from India who was one of her co-workers. By pre-arrangement, he was exceptionally well dressed and groomed, and at the time when each of us went to the microphone to announce who we are (hey, people change, and the stoners couldn't remember a damn thing) he took to the mic and introduced himself as a former pagan baby and just wanted to stop by and say thanks.
I had written a 10 minute monolog for him and it was delivered without a flaw. He talked about his homes around the world, his Mercedes and Jaguars, his Oxford and Stanford education and his ability to retire at age 35, all because of the lunch and movie money we all gave up to "save him". It was wickedly hilarious, and about one minute into it, my classmates began pointing to me and laughing. I had a reputation...
Ordered that book for my son (well, him primarily, though it sounds like one we all three will read and would enjoy). Son's sort of fascinated with the periodical table in an abstract sort of way, and I'm thinking this will with the transition to studying chemistry in a real way. A while back we bought the materials, equipment and chemicals to set up real chemistry lab (the kind that used to be available in high schools back in the day but, we gather, has become more "wimpified" in more modern times) in our basement. I think I might have alluded to that undertaking but not been specific in an online exchange with you, chickelit. What with various upheavals and a protracted move and two houses 1,000 miles apart, we haven't gotten around to setting up the lab or putting together the details of the curriculum, which would be largely implemented by my husband as the hard-science guy (he's an EE with a lot of Mech E and a solid dose of Chem E and metallurgy thrown in). The timing's probably better going forward anyway,, as it turns out, due to age, a better bigger basement layout and other factors.
Anyway, all that's by way of saying thanks for the book recommendation.
R,L: Can you set him up with a real Bunsen burner? Most chemistry sets use an alcohol burner which does really get hot enough for at-home flame spectroscopy. This is how many new chemical elements were discovered in the 19th century--by burning them and noting their unique colors. I guess you'd need a gas line. A propane torch might work, I suppose.
I had a Skilcraft chemistry set which I augmented with Ehrlenmeyer flasks and beakers which I could buy at a local hobby store. These days, people might think you were cooking meth or something.
doesn't not does...
I had a hand-me-down Gilbert chemistry set - my two older brothers had already used all of the good stuff by the time I came along.
I had about one semester of chemistry class in high school (I went to a lot of different schools, there was no continuity) and I recently read of the death of my teacher. She was as mean as a snake and put me off any further chemistry education.
III, V, vapor metal deposition, doping, p, n, poly and so on - that was where I worked. I put on an IEEE shirt this morning - got it at a DAC or some other EE convention 20 years ago. I was never a member, we AEs always said "You can't spell 'geek' without a Double E." We said that because we were mean and jealous.
Thank goodness I am over all of that...
rcommal
I bet your son would really like that book that I'm reading now. I am never going to be able to think about Lewis and Clark without thinking about them pooping mercury all over the West.
I had a chemistry set too when I was about 10 also. It was cool because you could not only learn stuff about the chemicals, you could amaze your friends with chemical "magic" tricks. Something like this ....I know...not your usual girly toys but I really wanted it, and a microscope AND an erector set that I made a motorized ferris wheel. Well sort of. It was pretty lame-o but I was happy with it.
Erector set? <--double D entendre
Sorry no hotlinks--I hate bothering via phone-- but if interested here are just two links to the guy on whose work in science home-education our chem collection was based (though we have and will enhance it as needed).
http://www.homechemlab.com/
http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/
And, chickelit, it is our plan to have available a gas line for a true Bunsen burner. Alas, until the other house is gone or something else changes, the project of converting the current house to all gas, including such a subline, is on hold. More deets another time, offline.
@DBQ & R,L: How would you two like to have a "book club" style discussion of the Kean book, "The Disappearing Spoon"? I have it, but never finished it. I picked it up again and realized that I'd like to add to the discussion and clarify some things.
@ El Pollo
That would be nice. I'm sure I would learn a LOT from your analysis. It is pretty slow reading for me in some parts, since I'm having to reabsorb some chemistry concepts that I never really fully absorbed. I have a tendency to skim when I read a book-novel for the first time, then go back and re-read for more content. I realized that you just can't do that throughout this one.
To avoid boring everyone to death here at Troops place we should take it to yours.
:-D
@DBQ: First installment: link
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