21 April 2020. Interrupted by Squirrels.
Well, he’s right there in the plum. My namesake—mi tocayo—but that can’t be. Two Antonio’s in one cave? On one branch, that is. The cave was Tolstoy and God, as Leonard once explained. Not room emough for both. But here the two of us, we both fit—me just inside the window, writing and drawing, whereas he goes to work on a buried nut outside. They’re good at that, those squirrels. Their forte, you might say—planting them in the ground, late fall, then digging them out as spring arrives. Not that there’s that much difference—newcomers say California has no seasons—but it’s not so. The changes, subtle as they are…
The squirrels have a way of comig back to us. Refinding what’s been lost. Although I’m quite certain that in their tiny heads, nothing is ever lost. They know the date and place of every nut. It’s a developed sense—one that we might work on ourselves. The sink, upstairs this morning—old old plumbing, so I brought out the black rubber plunger and gave it a go. Nice to see the gravitational swirl at the end of my labors...
But yes, the squirrels. I remember the headline: "Squirrel causes power outage for 45,000 in the East Bay." Started in El Cerrito, of course—my studio home—a substation failure after some choice nibbles. The New York Times ran a defense., “Too Convenient a Scapegoat.” But I’m not so sure. Seems more that their dietary habits are a form of wisdom.
____
Can we write this large? I’m looking for an overview here. How vulnerable we all are to the smallest change—and sometimes small is big. I think that’s why people call it freedom (young blond woman leaning half-way out the window of late model SUV—placard in hand—“Then go to China…!”). These conclusions we draw—so easily—not so much because they make sense, but because we need conclusions. A difficult trait. What if the squirrels were that way? Invented piles of non-existent nuts, left them in imaginary holes—only to find much later that they were hungry…
But hunger can be a good thing. Ask Kafka—he fashioned an entire fable around the idea. Saw the contradiction—proving his point by following its absence. Yes, sometimes less is more. But not in the Miesian sense—rather, the old Chinese (to their great and everlasting credit) whose poets knew that the window over a quiet pond opened onto an entire world…
Well, he’s right there in the plum. My namesake—mi tocayo—but that can’t be. Two Antonio’s in one cave? On one branch, that is. The cave was Tolstoy and God, as Leonard once explained. Not room emough for both. But here the two of us, we both fit—me just inside the window, writing and drawing, whereas he goes to work on a buried nut outside. They’re good at that, those squirrels. Their forte, you might say—planting them in the ground, late fall, then digging them out as spring arrives. Not that there’s that much difference—newcomers say California has no seasons—but it’s not so. The changes, subtle as they are…
The squirrels have a way of comig back to us. Refinding what’s been lost. Although I’m quite certain that in their tiny heads, nothing is ever lost. They know the date and place of every nut. It’s a developed sense—one that we might work on ourselves. The sink, upstairs this morning—old old plumbing, so I brought out the black rubber plunger and gave it a go. Nice to see the gravitational swirl at the end of my labors...
But yes, the squirrels. I remember the headline: "Squirrel causes power outage for 45,000 in the East Bay." Started in El Cerrito, of course—my studio home—a substation failure after some choice nibbles. The New York Times ran a defense., “Too Convenient a Scapegoat.” But I’m not so sure. Seems more that their dietary habits are a form of wisdom.
____
Can we write this large? I’m looking for an overview here. How vulnerable we all are to the smallest change—and sometimes small is big. I think that’s why people call it freedom (young blond woman leaning half-way out the window of late model SUV—placard in hand—“Then go to China…!”). These conclusions we draw—so easily—not so much because they make sense, but because we need conclusions. A difficult trait. What if the squirrels were that way? Invented piles of non-existent nuts, left them in imaginary holes—only to find much later that they were hungry…
But hunger can be a good thing. Ask Kafka—he fashioned an entire fable around the idea. Saw the contradiction—proving his point by following its absence. Yes, sometimes less is more. But not in the Miesian sense—rather, the old Chinese (to their great and everlasting credit) whose poets knew that the window over a quiet pond opened onto an entire world…
