Grahhr!

From Ryan

Marina's Photos from the National Aviary

Katie's Photos from the National Aviary

Forwarded by Marina

From Wikipedia: "In May 1974 Beuys flew to New York and was taken by ambulance to the site of the performance, a room in the René Block Gallery at 409 West Broadway.Beuys lay on the ambulance stretcher swathed in felt. He shared this room with a wild coyote for eight hours over three days. At times he stood, wrapped in a thick, grey blanket of felt, leaning on a large shepherd's staff. At times he lay on the straw, at times he watched the coyote as the coyote watched him and cautiously circled the man, or shredded the blanket to pieces, and at times he engaged in symbolic gestures, such as striking a large triangle or tossing his leather gloves to the animal; the performance continuously shifted between elements that were required by the realities of the situation, and elements that had purely symbolic character. At the end of the three days, Beuys hugged the coyote that had grown quite tolerant of him, and was taken to the airport. Again he rode in a veiled ambulance, leaving America without having set foot on its ground."

"What Do Animals Need"

Can I get a "Grahhr!"?

-- Robert Duncan, "Poetry, A Natural Thing"

Photo by Neil

"Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spend the day hanging upside by one's feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it either by imagining additions to my present experience, or by imagining segments gradually subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination of additions, subtractions, and modifications."--Thomas Nagel, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?," 1974

Heather

Ryan S., Lemon Verbena

"Do you really believe that you are an animal?" -- Gary Snyder, from The Practice of the Wild

Marina.

Katie.