Wildcavy
Well-known Member
Cavy Gazer
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Posts
- 1,008
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 1,008
Sometimes it is impossible to write. The words are there in my head, with pictures and music. I know how they should be assembled. I know that somehow they should matter.
I suspect that what I am seeing inside my mind is a glimpse of insanity. No, rather, future tense – a glimpse of what will be my insanity. Everything racing toward stasis. The front car in my thoughts will stop, and every single image, song, and phrase will slam into it, with crushing power.
Eventually it will be recycled. There will not be any new information supplied to my mind. No new music. No new pictures. The only words that I will savor will be the ones that I have already tasted. Did Shakespeare dream of Joyce Carol Oates? Did Plato contemplate Monty Python?
Monty Python. I love that line – All the words are there, now you have to get them in the right order.
Being able to recite “Cheese Shop” in all its glory. Of course now I don’t recite much. Whether it is my lips or my mind, I cannot retrieve or form the words. I can see them, they glow, but I cannot get them to travel to where they need to be.
I am accustomed to the double vision, now, and I do not drive at twilight or at sunrise. Oddly nights are better than the day. I remember driving in the wee hours, at full pedal, windows down and the autumn air picking up Neil Young and carrying the words,
She’s been running half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Colliding with the very air she breathes …
My husband, when we were just dating, used to play Harvest Moon for me … the album, not the game … and I knew that he knew. And so we married.
He goes to take care of the raptors at the rehab center. He has to scrape down the owl cages. He comes home and announces, I am covered in owl poop. This is a matter of pride for him.
What you should understand is that owl poop is a high-octane version of regular bird poop. It is not the pellets that they cough up in order to disgorge the bones and feathers of their prey. It is whitish and gloppy and they shoot it out like a water cannon. It dries quite nicely on walls, trees, and floors. And thus you have to go after it with a putty knife several hours every week. The owls thank you for your hard work by pointedly ignoring you.
My husband’s first stop is the shower, armed with pumice soap. He wants to remove all scent of the raptors from himself, so as not to disturb the pigs. We do not know whether they know instinctively the scent of a predator, but we are not prepared to find out.
The funny thing is that my husband searched his whole life for living owls, to see them in their natural environs. He is an Owl person. He knew where he was supposed to find them. You can tell by the whitewash – the streaks of white down the sides of trees, evidence that an owl perches up in the tree on a regular basis. But the owls remained secret until the past few years. Watching but unseen.
I took for granted the owls. I lived briefly as a young person in Colorado. I remember the song Wildfire. I did not care about the meaning of it, I just knew that it featured a horse. And “hoot” owls. The hoot owls sounded ominous. But they were unconnected in my mind to the owls that were persistently calling outside of my window, then and later. But now it is the monkey-calls of Barred Owls, asking who cooks for whom.
I know now, of course, what the hoot owls mean. Things come early and unexpected. I can dream that my earthly mind is an infinite thing, but it is not. How much can it carry, what can I store up before the eyes go dark and the ears grow still? Were there markers? Did I miss something, looking at the forest, and not observing the trees?
I suspect that what I am seeing inside my mind is a glimpse of insanity. No, rather, future tense – a glimpse of what will be my insanity. Everything racing toward stasis. The front car in my thoughts will stop, and every single image, song, and phrase will slam into it, with crushing power.
Eventually it will be recycled. There will not be any new information supplied to my mind. No new music. No new pictures. The only words that I will savor will be the ones that I have already tasted. Did Shakespeare dream of Joyce Carol Oates? Did Plato contemplate Monty Python?
Monty Python. I love that line – All the words are there, now you have to get them in the right order.
Being able to recite “Cheese Shop” in all its glory. Of course now I don’t recite much. Whether it is my lips or my mind, I cannot retrieve or form the words. I can see them, they glow, but I cannot get them to travel to where they need to be.
I am accustomed to the double vision, now, and I do not drive at twilight or at sunrise. Oddly nights are better than the day. I remember driving in the wee hours, at full pedal, windows down and the autumn air picking up Neil Young and carrying the words,
She’s been running half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Colliding with the very air she breathes …
My husband, when we were just dating, used to play Harvest Moon for me … the album, not the game … and I knew that he knew. And so we married.
He goes to take care of the raptors at the rehab center. He has to scrape down the owl cages. He comes home and announces, I am covered in owl poop. This is a matter of pride for him.
What you should understand is that owl poop is a high-octane version of regular bird poop. It is not the pellets that they cough up in order to disgorge the bones and feathers of their prey. It is whitish and gloppy and they shoot it out like a water cannon. It dries quite nicely on walls, trees, and floors. And thus you have to go after it with a putty knife several hours every week. The owls thank you for your hard work by pointedly ignoring you.
My husband’s first stop is the shower, armed with pumice soap. He wants to remove all scent of the raptors from himself, so as not to disturb the pigs. We do not know whether they know instinctively the scent of a predator, but we are not prepared to find out.
The funny thing is that my husband searched his whole life for living owls, to see them in their natural environs. He is an Owl person. He knew where he was supposed to find them. You can tell by the whitewash – the streaks of white down the sides of trees, evidence that an owl perches up in the tree on a regular basis. But the owls remained secret until the past few years. Watching but unseen.
I took for granted the owls. I lived briefly as a young person in Colorado. I remember the song Wildfire. I did not care about the meaning of it, I just knew that it featured a horse. And “hoot” owls. The hoot owls sounded ominous. But they were unconnected in my mind to the owls that were persistently calling outside of my window, then and later. But now it is the monkey-calls of Barred Owls, asking who cooks for whom.
I know now, of course, what the hoot owls mean. Things come early and unexpected. I can dream that my earthly mind is an infinite thing, but it is not. How much can it carry, what can I store up before the eyes go dark and the ears grow still? Were there markers? Did I miss something, looking at the forest, and not observing the trees?