Spotted there: a crow. A kid with Down syndrome who yelled “Hiii!” at me about fifty times. Deer poop. And a lot of soon-to be-melted snow.
And yesterday for Valentine’s Day I hung out with two of my Fabulous Boyz, drank homemade beer, and had a delicious hoagie prepared by a quite drunk waiter.
Isaac
I looked for the pair of great horned owls I had seen two winters prior, but they were well-hidden and were not calling. All in all I saw one bird, plus or minus one bird.
The visit made going into St Louis Park – even when I didn’t have to – worth because of the sun and moon. The sun has been setting later and later (I have heard we are gaining five minutes a day) and the crescent moon was prominent. It will be full on the 18th. I also some some tracks from a heavy animal, maybe a coyote.
Isaac
How to improve this trait?
Strength –
weightlifting, strength circuit with dumbbells
Perception –
birding, sketching, photography
Endurance –
running, cross-country skiing
Charisma –
inviting people over to apartment, visiting family. even watching movies might help
Intelligence –
actively studying
Agility –
lunges with dumbbells, tree climbing
Luck –
there is no such thing as luck – Han Solo. just be prepared – “Chance favors the prepared mind,” per Louis Pasteur
Isaac
I have uploaded all my previous posts from the bloated and decaying Livejournal site to WordPress, which is a clean-cut, simple blogging site.
Isaac
Are all one’s thoughts like passing clouds? Touching nothing, present
only distantly, wispy and indistinct, forgotten and replaced as soon
as they have left one’s view?
I pondered this question or doubt recently as I counted up all the
notes I had put down on three-by-five note cards, sticky notes, and
legal pads over the past month or so. Each note cued me towards a
task, idea, concept or phrase I meant to pursue at the time I wrote it
down. But as I sift through the notes in the present the voice
conveyed by them seems distant. The urge to pursue it seems weaker.
The purpose seems vague. The reason for having written it down is hard
to remember. Obviously I had once considered it worth pursuing. Yet
what is it now but part of a pile of paper?
I suppose a sense of anxiety is responsible for some of my doubts. I
want to be a person of action. But so often my resolve is fleeting. I
fail to seize the resolve of the moment while it is there, instead
filing the thought away for later. I am not in school, some of my
proudest attributes have stagnated, I spend a lot of time reading
while sipping coffee like a retired person.
I say anxiety makes me think this way. Anxiety is like fear. Fear an
effective inciter of action. Very well then. May my anxiety provoke
action and urge it on. May I put down my goddamn three-by-five note
cards and comics and go do something, advance my life, learn in a
systematic way, make money, form memories, be with my friends, visit
my family. And perhaps most important to me personally: go outside!
My thoughts needn’t be like a passing cloud. Instead I will make each
one a call to duty and a license to action!
Isaac
On Tuesday 30 November 2010, Kurt died. I have only gotten to writing a proper encomium now, three months later. In the morning of that day I saw him eagerly scratching to get out of his cage as he does every morning when he hears that I am awake. But I was running a little late in my routine, so I didn’t let him out for the oatmeal breakfast he usually takes alongside me. I left for work at 12:30 pm without letting him out. When I got home at 9:30 pm, I went into the kitchen and had a glass of water without hearing him stir. When I went over to his cage I found him in the typical dead rodent position and I knew immediately he was dead. I bagged him up and put him in the freezer. A necropsy will rule out or confirm my suspicion: an upper gastrointestinal bleed from swallowing a piece of his cage. He had a little blood around his anus and a few dark, compact turds in his cage consistent with passing blood. Not finding any wire in his gut would make me feel a little less guilty over his death.
I will stuff Kurt to have him around. I already have the borax and cotton balls. I will miss him. I am glad I took dozens of pictures of him recently. I keep thinking about him. I feel bad about leaving the chicken-wire with him and about not taking him out in the morning like I usually do. I knew he had been picking at the top of his cage but I didn’t consider that he would swallow any wire. Still, he had a good life, and two and a half years is a long time for a rat. Also I don’t think he suffered when he died. Indeed it may have had nothing to do with the wire. An information pamphlet from the Humane Society tells me that 2.5 to 3 years is a normal lifespan for a rat. I had thought it was longer. But recalling my previous three rat companions (Razar, Sasha, and Rat), I realize that each of them had lived about that long. It only seemed like longer because I was a kid.
I mentioned an informational pamphlet from the Humane Society. I have it because I have already adopted another rat. I have named him Carl (an improvement over “Dozer,” his previous name) and he is from a group of three brother rats. He is named after Carl Sagan, just as Kurt was named after Kurt Vonnegut. He cost five bucks. He is already 2.2 years old, so he doesn’t have much time left, as if a rat ever does. I have already introduced Carl to my friends and family and taken a bunch of pictures of him. He has adopted many of the same habits and idiosyncrasies of Kurt. We have bonded well. I hope his two brothers are in a good home.
28 Sep 2010
Journal
Uplifting Passages
Pessimism is awfully popular these days. Everyone seems gloomy about politics, the environment, their own personal future, etc. (Or am I just projecting my own feelings onto others?) Either way, when I come across an uplifting passage, something that makes me feel good, I feel I should share it. The following are three passages reminding me that humans are magnificent creatures, worthy of praise and awe, as long as we are always striving and moving forward, and remaining devoted to the pursuit of understanding. All three passages refer to “man.” Just ignore that and accept that they apply to all people. The first is from Goethe:
“Whosoever unceasingly strives upward… him we can save.”
The next is from Hamlet:
“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable, in action, how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals…”
And of course Hamlet then rejects all this. But ignore that, it’s fine. The next is my favorite, the one that really refreshed my spirit, even though it is by far the most ancient passage of the three. It is from Sophocles’ Antigone:
“Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south-wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, un-wearied, doth he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year.
And the light-hearted race of birds, and the tribes of savage beasts, and the sea-brood of the deep, he snares in the meshes of his woven toils, he leads captive, man excellent in wit. And he masters by his arts the beast whose lair is in the wilds, who roams the hills; he tames the horse of shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon its neck, he tames the tireless mountain bull.
And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when it is hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come; only against Death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffling maladies he hath devised escapes.”
5 Sep 10
Journal
Recent pests and parasites I have encountered
As much as I appreciate insects and other invertebrates as objects of study, I have had far too much personal experience with small pests and parasites of their ilk recently. I will describe each encounter presently, in order of their offensiveness. The first came when I left work at about ten at night a few days ago. Numerous toads hopped about on the path to my car as they usually do at this time of year. One juvenile, however, did not flee as I walked near it. I bent down to look at it and discovered it was injured in some way. Worse, even: on its back was a group of tiny, writhing larvae. There were eight to ten of them in a nasty little bundle on its back, lodged deeply into a lesion that no doubt extended into the poor toad’s thorax. The toad was moribund. I wanted to put it out of its misery and prevent the parasites from infecting other amphibians, so I brought the toad home in my lunchbox and put it in the freezer, larvae and all.
The next, second most offensive pest or parasite came to my attention when I picked up my sister’s new dog’s poop the other day. I had noticed little white specks around his anus that I assumed were bits of paper. When I picked up the poop, though, I saw little worms, fluke-shaped, squirming about in it. They extended like leeches from a third of an inch to an inch and a half as they tried to flee their first-ever exposure to sunlight. The white specks on the dog’s butt hairs were in fact dead, dried worms. And the worms appeared in greatest profusion in the dog’s morning poop. One can hardly be surprised at the parasites that come in a dog adopted from a state like Oklahoma.
The final and most offensive pest or parasite was a bug I found in my own apartment. After an absence of several days I returned to find that water had leaked through my roof and saturated some wood in the closet. Hours after cleaning up the immediate mess I turned a corner to find a roach fleeing the light! Was it really a roach? Do roaches even live in Minnesota? I would find out during the post-mortem! I swatted at it with a Swiffer broom, spilling its yellow innards across the floor. The roach still twitching, I put it under a petri dish for observation. Two days later it died, and an internet search confirmed the insect was an Oriental cockroach (Blatta orientalis), “considered the filthiest of cockroaches because it loves moisture and emits a foul odor.” Its forebears were called “stink mothes” before it was named systematically. Sure enough, it smelled terrible, and my rat Kurt was crazed to get at it. I wouldn’t let him eat it though, of course. That would be gross.
In sum I like bugs only insofar as I can maintain a critical distance from them, so to speak. I enjoy learning about them, observing them, capturing them, and releasing them. But to have to pick them off my own pet, to see a nice young toad fall victim to them, and to kill “stink mothes” in the place where I sleep and eat… That is just too close for comfort. My feelings might be likened to those of a gynecologist who is up to his elbows in diseased vaginas all day, but who when he goes home to his beautiful healthy wife, wants nothing more than to sit down and do a crossword puzzle with no thought of sex.
13 Sep 2010
My trip to Hawk Ridge
I drove up north on Saturday. My destination: Jay Cooke State Park, where I would hike into the same secluded campsite I had occupied for four consecutive nights the year before at around the same time in September. When I arrived there I found that my lack of planning would assign me this time to a drive-in site (car camping) instead of the more rugged backpacking experience. Oh well. Fewer beer-miles on my poor back.
I set up my rugged campsite a solid 15 feet from my car and then set out on what I hoped would be a long hike into the park‘s trails. I looked the part of a hiker: binoculars across my chest, a jacket, a can of bug spray poking out of my back pocket, and reliable shoes. In addition, concealed, I carried a pen, a notebook, a flashlight, a headlamp, warm gloves, a cell phone, a folded paper towel, a small knife, a set of keys attached to a carabiner with another small knife and can opener, and a map of the trails.
I walked and walked, stopping to peer into the dense aspen stands in search of a bird here and there. I didn’t exactly see any birds besides downy woodpeckers, but I sure did observe a lot of trees. And I caught a leopard frog. After miles and miles of walking, with an occasional stop to take it all in, I headed back, following the map in a nice loop.
Arriving at my noble campsite I set up my rations to replenish my energy: I ate peanuts, a lot of them. And I had three hearty beers. I sat and communed with nature, using my headlamp to read the first volume of “The Walking Dead” by Robert Kirkman (a fucking sweet comic). I made a fire as my remotest ancestors had, and threw lots of shit in there to watch it burn, which was neat.
The next day I woke up early in the morning, perhaps ten or ten-thirty, and packed up my tent and set off for Hawk Ridge (by car, of course). After stopping for necessities such as coffee and two Subway sandwiches and some soda, I arrived there and watched the raptors pass overhead in profusion. I was so adept with my hands, and so keen of observation, that I was able to identify them with binoculars in one hand while feeding myself an Italian BMT with the other hand. Truly humans are fantastic creatures.
After a full afternoon of intense wildlife watching, I headed home to Minneapolis, secure in my kinship with wildlife and mastery of the outdoors. And next weekend I will set out into to the wilderness again.
1 Aug 2010
Desperate guy screaming outside my building last night
I have another fun story about the things that happen outside my
apartment building at night. Early this morning, at two (Three? Four?
Who knows?), I awoke to a sort of whimpering outside. It was a man’s
voice, definitely a white guy, and young. Perhaps in his thirties. The
thing about it was that it rang out with desperation, and it was close
by, as if he were yelling at someone in my own building.
I heard lines going somewhat like the following: “Amber, what the
hell, what are you doing?” “Why are you doing this?” “Just let me in,
I don’t want to leave!” I couldn’t hear Amber’s responses, though.
It could have been a quaint story of thwarted romance, but then the
desperate man screamed, “Great, my friend has chosen 90 milligrams of
methadone over me! How do you think that makes me feel!?”
Ah, that’s why he is yelling. Heroin.
I fell back asleep suddenly but woke up again within a minute when the
man’s pitch changed. Someone else has started yelling at him, most
likely telling him to shut the fuck up. He shouted back at her,
sounding kind of angry and sad, “Look, you don’t know what’s going on,
she took something of mine and it means I’m going to have a fucked-up
day tomorrow if I don’t get it back. And also she screwed up my rent
for this month.”
The other person went away or shut her window, not caring. The man
started yelling again, and that plaintive pitch had returned to his
voice. But he was angry now too. “Amber, what the hell? You are a
goddamn bitch. You are just being a bitch. Amber, just let me in.”
A muffled response came. Amber’s voice was apparently really high and
whiny, just like her friend’s. The man said, “Fine, fuck you, I am
leaving now.”
That’s when I fell asleep for good. And today there is a heroin addict
somewhere, having a terrible day because he does not have his
methadone.
pseudoisaac 