Ode to a dung beetle

The Economist, in Names for Sale, its leader discussing the millions of animals in need of names, brings up "the difficulty of who will sponsor unloved animals such as leeches, worms and dung beetles."

Dung beetles? Unloved? Oh, what deskboundness wreaks! Discounting history, what type of modern human, having met, truly met a dung beetle, cannot be awed, held in thrall, cannot see the beauty of the beast (like all beetles, the many dung beetles are spectacular) let alone its helpfulness? Finding an email to a friend, I come upon my own words, "How can one feel down when the world has dungbeetles so close that they are visiting the balcony now?"

There was one special night when they came in their many thousands and mated in front of us, the body of them moving against the balcony window like a sleeping five-year-old boy. Here in Australia, they are a rare case of beneficial animal importation, and the nights are often filled with their buzzing. Put your head down to a fresh cowpat and you can hear the crackle and pop as they move about. The native antechinuses adore them, and in the sheltered hideaways where they prefer to eat their prey, you'll find a boneyard of beetle shells (many of them dung beetles) like a pile of armour whose knights have been eaten right out of it.

Ode to a dung beetle

I wanted to write an ode to a dung beetle
but everyone would think it silly
or repulsive.
So I wrote an ode to a swan floating like
its neighbour swans. Watched from the shore
they look like so many discarded tissues.
Why look, though, when we know all the
allusions, princesses et al.

The dung beetle tunnels lonesome
lacking resonance of swans
but with a necklace of
golden servants cleaning
its russet fur, and a smell
of musk that queens would
kill dragons for with their own
bare hands.
Take that, you princesses!
Take that, you swans!
Ring the bells of resonance
for the clangers they are.
Clean on, golden servant-mites.
Trundle your dung-ball to your
secret den, dung beetle unsung.
This poem shall be for you:
Oh Odious One.

Now, to one of my favourite books:
Insect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World, edited by Erich Hoyt and Ted Schultz. Here it is, with a portrait of the unloved on the cover.

So, advice to the deskbound: unbind and see other worlds.

The Medlar Comfits Cooking Guide: Lesson 1— Peppering and larding

Pepper a hunk of meat, and the diner can scrape the pepper off or use tweezers to pick it out. But if you want what you shove into that hunk to stay there, then shove it deep inside, deep into the heart of it. That's called larding.

Peppered quince.
Freeze one quince. This allows the sugars to mature so that you use less added sweetness later and the taste of the quince dominates rather than added sweet. Peel the quince. Roll it in a light mixture of cracked rose pepper, black and green pepper, and some crushed cardamon. Bake slowly in a covered dish with a little water added, till it is the colour of a freshly stubbed toe, or a red rose if you must.

Serve on a bed of kasha or couscous, with a drizzle of honey and a dollop of rich yogurt.


Larded Unicorn (vegan version)
Slice unicorn (made of gluten or marzipan) with a thousand cuts, or poke deep holes into it, and shove in what you like. Then smooth over the outside so that nothing shows.

If your unicorn is made of marzipan, then pieces of candied clementine are good.

If gluten, shove anything in. Nothing will save it in the taste department, any more than anything does, a bird filled with birdshot.

The beauty of mating slugs

The most beautiful dance I've ever seen, from David Attenborough's newest series, Life in the Undergrowth.

See leopard slugs move as humans could only dream of (and they don't bloody their toes!) and watch them create a flower of sperm.

The best way to have seen "Jaws"

In 1976, I saw Jaws in Mexico City, at a movie theater that we were lucky didn't burn while the film was running. There were about 5,000 people in the place, and the aisles were more filled than the seats.

The movie was dubbed. The entire audience cheered the shark.

Homes: temporary and permanent as permanent can be

TREE: Persoonia, though I don't know the species (there are approximately 100). Commonly called Geebung, this tree, like many other geebung varieties, has edible fruits with one large seed in each berry. They are astringently sweet with a little kick of turps, crunchy as gooseberries but without tartness. It's always an exciting experience eating them, for they have such a range of personalities, from tree to tree and berry to berry—or more properly, drupe to drupe, as are cherries and olives and peaches and loquats, but that word has an unfortunate dry sound, doesn't it? 'Drupe' should mean desiccated through neglect, like a dusty orange, hard and hollowish, or like so many people.
VINE: Eustrephus latifolius var. angustifolius, commonly called Wombat Berry. The berries are the size of peas, and ripen from apple green to bright pumpkin orange; fleshy, crunchy, and each contains a few smooth and shiny black seeds that are almost impossible to dump from pockets because they look and feel like seeds that fairy tales things grow from. The fruits are delicious—a cross between star fruit and pumpkin. I think that I would still think they taste like tropical pumpkin with crunch even if they weren't pumpkin coloured, but I don't know. I saw them before I tasted them, so they need an untainted taster to taste without preconceptions. The root of the plant is edible but I've never dug one up.
PUPA CASE: Guessing here—one of the Psychidae (commonly called bag worms or case moths) ?

What the octopus?

Have you ever regarded something that was transformed, by the peculiar state of your mind at that moment, into something quite different, and yet the essence of itself? It only happened to me once, just recently.

Perhaps it was the preoccupation of "Why," but when it happened, I barely had time to reach for a pen, as I didn't do anything but act as secretary. Yet the happening was as natural as an octopus jumping into fishnet tights, because of course, the octopus is an eight-legged ballerina.

More than that, I can't explain. But I hope someday, to meet the octopus again.

from The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson (unedited excerpt)*

In the sea there are mysterious comings and goings, both in space and time: the movements of migratory species, the strange phenomenon of succession by which, in one and the same area, one species appears in profusion, flourishing for a time, and then dies out, only to have its place taken by another and then another, like actors in a pageant passing before our eyes. And there are other mysteries. The phenomenon of 'red tides' has been known from early days, recurring again and again down to the present time — a phenomenon in which the sea becomes discoloured because of the extraordinary multiplication of some minute form, often dinoflagellate, and in which there are disastrous side effects in the shape of mass mortalities among fish and some of the invertebrates. Then there is the problem of curious and seemingly erratic movements of fish, into or away from certain areas, often with sharp economic consequences.

When the so-called 'Atlantic water' floods the south coast of England, herring become abundant within the range of the Plymouth fisheries, certain characteristic plankton animals occur in profusion, and certain species of invertebrates flourish in the intertidal zone. When, however, this water mass is replaced by Channel water, the cast of characters undergoes many changes.

In the discovery of the biological role played by the sea water and all it contains, we may be about to reach an understanding of these old mysteries. For it is now clear that in the sea nothing lives to itself. The very water is altered, in its chemical nature and in its capacity for influencing life processes, by the fact that certain forms have lived within it and have passed on to it new substances capable of inducing far-reaching effects. So the present is linked with past and future, and each living thing with all that surrounds it.

*Rachel Carson, The Edge of the Sea, Chapter Two, "Patterns of Shore Life", pgs 44-45, Panther Books Ltd. London 1965
…………………………………………………

The biology of human history

In the course of human history there are mysterious comings and goings, both in space and time: the movements of peoples, the strange phenomenon of succession by which, in one and the same area, one culture appears in profusion, flourishing for a time, and then dies out, only to have its place taken by another and then another, like actors in a pageant passing before our eyes. And there are other mysteries. The phenomenon of mass hysteria has been known from early days, recurring again and again down to the present time — a phenomenon in which the populace become obsessed because of the extraordinary multiplication of some idea, often a perceived villain, and in which there are disastrous side effects in the shape of mass mortalities among minorities and various individuals labelled as "the enemy". Then there is the problem of curious and seemingly erratic movements of people, into or away from certain areas, often with sharp economic consequences.

When societally-created disaster floods the roads with a populace yearning to escape, refugees become abundant in neighbouring countries, and various types of black marketeers flourish in the lucrative zone between the places of peace and prosperity, and that of danger and deprivation. When, however, the situation of societally-created disaster is replaced by a situation of prosperity, freedom and safety, fleeing refugees are replaced by immigrants, and the cast of characters undergoes many changes.

In the discovery of the biological role played by human society and all it contains, we may be about to reach an understanding of these old mysteries. For it is now clear that in human society, nothing lives to itself. The very social fabric is altered, in its nature and in its capacity for influencing human activity, by the fact that certain ideas have lived within it and have passed on to it new ideas capable of inducing far-reaching effects. So the present is linked with past and future, and all history and each human and living thing, with all that surrounds us.

Things left in books

I love really used books. This fell out of one just now.

Individualants

It isn't wise to stop by the side of just any anthill in Australia, but this one had no aggressive defenders. The visible ants were busy coming up from a narrow opening, each with a particle of sand in its mandibles. Each ant deposited its load on the rubbish pile and returned below.

They looked as same to me as we would to them. While I was watching the ants, some builders' labourers drove past, and a waste truck. Some of the ants that I watched working were slightly bigger than others, some slightly brighter coloured; each individual looking a bit different though not different enough to recognise if the same one emerged again on the busy worksite.

They acted, not as 'ants', but as individuals. They had personalities. I've often watched ants, but never noticed before how individualistic their actions could be, and possibly always are. I don't know. All I can say from having been fascinated is that these ants busy at my feet were like any nation of people. There were ants who ran with their rocks to the top of the rubbish hill and dropped them so that if they rolled off, they'd roll away from the central entrance in its depression. There were ants who emerged from the hole and dropped their rocks right at the entrance where they were likely to tumble in. These ants reminded me of people who open their doors and just turf their rubbish out, a common practice where not made illegal.

I'll be accused of anthropomorphism for saying this, but ants were around first, so whose ism is it anyway: It was utterly compelling seeing an ant emerge, watching the way it moved, and trying to predict what it would do.

There were ants who looked as if they knew they should have gone further, but dumped the load and quickly ducked back inside. There were ants who stopped partway up the rise, for all the world looking as if they were contemplating. And there were ants who worked in the most disgustingly virtuous way. No fist-pumping from them once their loads were off their jaws—only a work ethic that ants have a reputation for, but Mao Tse-tung thought he knew the masses, too. It is man's social being that determines his thinking, he wrote. Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world.

Granted, ants aren't known for changing the world, or having great leaders. They've made great strides to change the world in a vast area underground just metres from where I sit. But they're still just ants. The more things change, the more they stay the same. As for their society, I couldn't tell one ant from another, so there was no way that I could say, 'That ant doesn't deserve to be supported by the toil of the rest of the masses.'

When I got home, I looked up 'lazy ants', and found that Eisuke Hasegawa marked the ants he studied. I wish I could have done that, but I only observed in ignorance and surprise.

Is it preposterous to consider the thoughts of an ant? Of course, workers have a difficulty thinking, as H. Rider Haggard remarked in his account of a year of his life as a progressive gentleman farmer, A Farmer's Year: Notable men are rare; there be very few in any age who can lift their heads and voices high enough above the raving crowd for the world to see and hear them, and great events occur only from time to time. But behind these Titans existed the dim multitudes of the people . . . of all these forgotten humble hordes there remains nothing but ourselves . . .

I could not tell whether busy ants and slack-arse ants are so as a matter of personality, age, health (factors Eisuke Hasegawa pondered) or indeed, whether that virtuous ant was a slackard in the last trip up from the bowels of the nest. I could not compare their queens, or even meet them.

The only thing I knew from watching these educators is that I'll never again think of ants as that body made up of individuals in the way that negates the individual. The fact that we don't know the who-ness of an ant is another mystery that we should want to explore, not negate the existence of. Workers unite, to be sure. And they do seem to be so much more efficient and cooperative than those creatures who have lips to sing the Internationale, but it was wonderful to see that they would fail, as masses, to spell We Love Our Dear Leader, or even We Suck, in some stadium display.

The masses are often surprising — individuals even more so.

Grandfather's beard

It's high summer here in southern New South Wales, and the grandfather's beard is in seed. By winter, the grandfather's beard will turn grey. Like an old salt's face-growth, grandfather's beard is tougher than steel.



Caustis flexuosa, Family: Cyperaceae. A type of sedge that grows in clumps up to the waist height of a smallish woman. Often seen near 'drumsticks'.

Adventures of discovering the ellemehnopee

He came first once, then twice a week, exactly at 7:30 pm, in a clean torn shirt topped by a gnarled sweater, his smile eager and shy, his hair still wet from the bath. He always came bearing gifts. A box of apples, their skins still covered with the cataract of bloom, a bag of grapefruit smelling like tonic water and stink bugs, some flame-red persimmons, always picked that day.

His ringed notebook was clutched in an armpit, filled with his former and latest assignments. At first I asked him whether he wanted a mug of tea when he arrived, but I soon stopped because it would sit getting cold, and then he would drink it all at once because I had made it.

He knew how to sign his name, but could not read the letters, so we started with the alphabet. Starting with A, B, C. In printed form, both capitals and lower case, in four alphabets. Century Schoolbook because of its nostalgia to me, but the practical reason is that it's a good serif font for reading any of these complicated squiggles and other impertinences that were part of all letters before type artists knocked the little hooks and noodles off to become the simplified, increasingly used, but harder to read sans serif—William's second alphabet to learn. I chose Gill Sans, a late 1920's font originally based on Edward Johnston's alphabet for the London Underground, but which seduces me with its uniquely elegant and legible proportions. Besides the pleasure of looking at it, I chose this second alphabet because of its resemblance to his third alphabet, the one that his hand had to form by printing. The fourth, of course, was cursive, and he was surprisingly eager to master it, the form he picked out to learn being a classic, 45 degree angled copybook style, generously looped, somewhat fancifully capped.

The alphabet, though, presented the first problem. In order to remember the letters and their peculiar order—why, for instance, are not the sounds grouped—I chose to teach it as a mnemonic. There was only one that I know, and I hesitated, then told him honestly that it was the first long song that I memorized, and I still say it in my head to be able to use that book of mystery and magic, the dictionary.

So we sang it together, and to my delight, he felt the delight that I do in this simple learning aid. He thrilled at the plot. The deliberateness as it begins its march, only to stop abruptly at G. I could feel his sense of suspense. Then we set out again, only to stop again poised but breathless after P. Then with the same sure tread as when set off on our expedition, we approached the end of our journey, which always sounded like a thud of a let-down to me, but didn't to him, because I grew up with the reward of rhyme at the Zee, but here in Australia, Zee is Zed, which doesn't work. Not to me, but to him, it worked "a treat", as he would say. Because it meant that he had seen all the letters and remembered them.

I thought that being a song, it would be easier for him to remember each letter, but I was pleased that he also felt additional pleasure from the arrangements of sounds they make, and the relationships of the letters to each other rather than just abstract symbols in sight and sound. I never discussed it with him, but could see from his joy that he also felt something about the exoticness of it, especially when we came to the part of our journey where we meet what I always have thought of as the rare spotted forest-dweller, the ellemehnopee.

Once he learned what the letters were, we began to practice the sounds they make. I could not find any books suitable, but could remember my mother teaching me how to read after school when I was in the first grade. Sight reading was just coming in, and my mother wanted her children to know how to read, so she ordered some books and taught us by herself.

The diphthongs and paired letters were the key to it. And they are what I started with. I made a large card deck—cards with single letters and cards with combinations of two, three, and four letters.

We started out playing cards. CAT. HAT. CH + A + T. That sort of thing. For it wasn't as if we could have started out with ONE, TWO, THREE. Besides, with his rather old-fashioned Australian dialect (in which cockney plays a large part), "one, two, three" comes out as "one, two, free," which meant that both the "th" and the "f" were building blocks that we stumbled on, though not pyramid-sized.

He also had the problem of "d" and "b", "p" and q".

But they were not insurmountable either. Far from it.

Because this man, a very successful farmer, had left school early because the forest was so much more interesting. I only found out about his illiteracy in a slip-of-the-tongue by his wife, saying something about him wishing that he could read so he could enjoy what I so clearly enjoy. So I offered to try, for it would be a joy for both, and so we began our lessons. He knew words in the way that children learn words now in too many places in the English speaking world—as specific words, by sight.

Soon after William and I began our hopeful experiment, I began tutoring an 11-year-old boy who was unhappy that he couldn't read. I saw his plea in the local paper, and in my naïve enthusiasm, I was eager to help. He had passed every grade, indeed, got average grades at school. When he came for his first lesson, I gave him a children's book about lizards, so I could hear where he had problems. He looked at it and me. He did not know the alphabet. He was not able to read Cat in the Hat. His parents wanted to help but didn't know how this could have happened. I asked to see his report card, and he brought it to me. It explained the problem. Such a good boy. No trouble at all, So quiet. His reading was "good". The comments were written in a semi-literate hand, and the spelling would not have passed any test, except a school system's like this one. I visited the local schools' office and asked what their policy was. Pass everyone. Failing makes children feel bad.

Because Luke had such immediate problems, we scheduled several sessions a week. Easy for him because the teachers have so many days off for preparation, and then there are so many days that the children are out of the classroom doing some sort of visit somewhere, like the park in town or somewhere baby-sitting-on-the-move from the attitude of the teachers; and then there are so many breaks for holidays, he always seemed to be on holiday. His parents said that it didn't matter if he went to school or not. He didn't learn anything. He did know some words. He'd say, "I know that word. We learned that word." But it was like a drizzle of memorized hieroglyphs, with no logic to connect them.

I tried to make it as much fun as possible, and he tried to concentrate as well as he could for a normal boy of eleven with so many fun animals outdoors, and the sun on the paddocks. Sometimes we adjourned to the outdoors and did lessons there, with him spelling out loud and building words in his head, and saying them out loud. He especially took to rhyme, which suited me down to the ground.

Luke was a charming boy, not at all dim-witted as his parents and he were wondering about. We would have gotten somewhere beyond, yes, the mastery of Cat and the Hat, except for natural inclination and pity and laziness. His mother felt sorry for him, and didn't believe me when I said that he had to do the homework I made for him each lesson and settle down for an hour every night, or it would never sink in. The bicycle came out as soon as he came home, and then, at each lesson, we would almost have to start all over again. It reminded me of taking Rosie to her school once a week, and us both rolling our eyes at the other people who were still saying "Sit. Sit. Seeyiiit!" month after month forever.

Finally, I told the parents that if he did not do the homework during the week, I could not put in the enormous effort it was to craft these lessons specially for his interests. His homework, by the way, was with the deck of cards I made for him, in which you got points for making the words and building from them to make new ones, like in Scrabble, so more than one could play. They also now had Junior Scrabble itself, and there were simple rhyming and sentence construction exercises in addition. But the bike was more fun, the mother not wanting to be hard on her child, the father at work, trying hard not to be laid off because of an ailing back. So Mrs. ended the lessons by telling Luke that I "didn't like him any more." I only found this out later, after the family split up. What Luke is doing now, I don't know. But he has been cheated in life, for what boy does want to work, especially when he's come home from school, in those crucial years that he is cooped up in "school" and the school gives him an education not worth a splat of birdshit?

William was different. He was exhausting. He did two hours at night every night, minimum, for the pleasure of it. Because he had never known how to read, and always had to hide it, he remembered EVERYTHING. He didn't need silly mnemonics because he had never had the luxury of anyone teaching him elegant little sayings to help him remember. His memory was built from sheer willpower, then the ability that comes from the practice of flexing the muscle of memory. By the time he came to me, he was a truly exceptional man, with no knowledge of his exceptionality, other than that of being an illiterate—and painfully shy and insecure because of it. He soaked up my lessons, both written and spoken, so well that I had to become extremely pedantic in making absolutely sure of every tiny point that was said to him. I had to LEARN like crazy. He forced me to think, and then to think again, such as no teacher had ever forced me before. His mind picked up exceptions to rules like rose thorns find tender skin.

He adored diphthongs. He thrilled to their different personalities. He was awed by the concept of silent letters. He was amazed by the illogic, or secret codeness of having a word with a whole lot of silent letters huddled together in it.

He loved watching the action of the ink coming out on the paper. And he used black ink. Pencils were below him. He would write a whole page perfectly, and if it had a mistake, he would write it all again, correctly. When we got to sentences, he felt masterful at being able to punctuate them exactly, to put the comma in where it belongs. To indent for a new paragraph. To think about what constitutes a sentence, a phrase, a paragraph, an argument itself. The logic of thought unfolded in his mind as he played with the building blocks of language itself. It wasn't as if he could not think before. But seeing words on paper and knowing what they meant opened up a feeling that then he could explore new thoughts, whole books, something that he had always wanted to do.

We began to use the dictionary, and he found intense joy in first, figuring out how to find the word, and then, seeing the definition. We even went through the symbols for pronunciation, because he hated not knowing what they meant, and when he knew, he always liked to pronounce the word as the suggestions said, sometimes surprising suggestions.

He bought his own dictionary, and told me that he enjoyed spending an evening with it, reading.

We read out loud, and with his mild dyslexia, and his eagerness to please, he had a tendency to run ahead of himself. I had to say, "Slow down. Read that again . . . See. Now you are reading it right. It says 'Not to be used within sixty days.' Not 'To be used within sixty days.' " Because, of course, we were not reading Dick and Jane play with Spot. We were reading poison pamphlets.

For "graduation" he wrote a letter (his handwriting, his composition) to the Mayor, about something that needed to be done in the region. The mayor wrote back immediately, saying that he had been unaware about this issue till this very informative letter, and so the Council had been directed to fix the problem immediately. And the Mayor was telling the truth. He did get onto it immediately and pulled his weight to make sure the Council workers did, too. To my gobstopped surprise, that was the quickest and most successful political request and action taken that I have ever seen. William just thought that that was the treatment us letter-writers are used to.

As for William, another family, another culture. Less beautiful nature outside the jail-of-a-schoolhouse doors, and who knows? Thinking of today's many-lettered elite, William, with his innate abilities, would have had no problems being their peer. But as for them being his peer, I would rate them to him as a red delicious apple is to an honest, crisp, flattened ball of an apple, netted with the rusty veins that only those in the know, mean the mark of the truly delicious: the russetting. The mark that makes your average person throw the apple away.

THE ALPHABET UNCOVERED IN ITS HABITS

At fifty-five, this farmer, grizzle-haired
with eyes pale soup from too many skies
met and discovered the alphabet
and it wrapped its letters around his head
the H and P and O and T
and all the others in their riotous abandon.

Wild they were with their own associations
and he gawped upon, uncovered at last
the marriage of the G and H and the quick
divorce with no hard words, then new
flirtations with other lovers for just a moment
G and U and H and T and then, more fluid
matings! Couplings airy in their flightiness
amoral in their joyousness. Laconic in their
messageness. The bible and a poison pamphlet
same U and G and H and T and just as many
liaisons, even though the one says thee.

His filmy eyes, with their magnifying specs
watched and learned, and memorized the varied
combinations, till he smiled when he saw the T and H
together, and the O and U meant that G and H could make
a foursome, and the nonconformist letters and the noncon-
formist words? Stolid dogma helped him to remember,
like a prayer and a marriage and the shapes that made
his name, the name of fifteen letters, that at fifty-six
he learned.

And now he's fifty-eight and so
his story ends as pear trees grow
when left alone —
without an end.
For him, the letters, to the scarcely seen,
are not cold tools, or means to read
that book. Communication only? No!
Yes: living, leaping, singing, naked friends.

His thinking, ex-espaliered, spreads now
branching, budding, blooming to the yet unread
of lichen-covered borer-riven dogmas down below
as he, the farmer, reaches to prune his fruit trees,
diphthongs, word song buzzing in his head.