Scraps. Odds and Ends

alansmith888

4 months ago

This is a book about geese, yes. Their fluctuations, their vexed taxonomies, the “fractal complexity” of their flocks, their skill at whiffling, in which they perform aeronautical body rolls when coming into land. “If I could learn one thing from geese,” Acheson writes, “it would be to whiffle.” There are goose mysteries too. Amazingly, greylag pairs who keep losing chicks will foster their young out to more successful parents, who are willing to adopt as it improves the odds of their own chicks’ survival.

Amazing live band.

Enthusiastic British naturalist.

He's just had a book published about Geese.

Chloe Honum

The man has chosen that he wants his ashes scattered from the end of the pier

where he used to fish with his buddies. They’d sit on overturned paint buckets. Sometimes the waves gusted up

and the hems of his pants got wet and salty. He liked the gulls that stood on the railing, all puffed up with sky.

Having made the decision, he walks at dusk to the end of the pier and looks out at the sea.

There’s the brilliant business idea when you’re walking down the sidewalk, in no particular hurry to get where you’re going, merely taking in the sights and sounds. The drowsy midnight discovery that wakes you up from your pre-sleep hypnotic trance. The elevator epiphany. Traffic light insight. Bathtub revelation.

It’s these random moments that are the raison d’etre for the flâneur.

A campaigner against economic inequality.

Moon dance, you were not to blame.

Nor you, lovely white moth.

But I saw you together.

Alfred Kreymborg