THE FOX WHO LOVES ME + OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FAUNAL AND FLORAL KINGDOMS: A PHOTO ESSAY.

Key to the photographs: 

1. Deep, deep in the shrubberies: behold the beaver. Being human and smart-alecky, one ponders the paddle. We’re told that the paddle is for dam building, but that can’t be all. The beaver, for example, knows love. What doeth the paddle during the love-making of the beaver? People paddle each other, although the paddle is not — organically — attached to them. You might think “furry, cute little critter” but I think not. I see a varmint that can chew through a tree. Knowing not what might aggravate the beaver, I keep moving along.

2. This massive heron floats down to earth. It is equal parts dinosaur, goose, and 747. A comedian. Slender and plump. Where are the myths about this fine specimen? How come no Leda and the Great Blue? It is a stoic. Perhaps it thinks me a stoic, as well. The two of us, trudging along in the miserable murk that defines our lives. Me ‘n’ the heron, we complaineth not.

3. Thank you for inquiring about the Early Girl tomato plant. Given the absence of bees on the balcony, Dear Reader, I hand-pollinated every single flower. Lo, the plant begat many dozen tomatoes! We had a terrific affair. As for the fruits themselves, well, they were quite tasty, as it works out. This bit of gardening provided me with an essential activity as my skeleton reeled from an injury.

4. During my convalescence from said injury (which continues at present) I watched some reruns of Law & Order. I would like to say that Claire Kincaid, played by Jill Hennessey, is my favorite character. Dunno how the show continued on without her.

5. I got bitten! Not only that, but the venom (of whatever bit me) tried to slay me. But I endured.

6. Given the seriousness of the injury, I hadn’t seen my BFF from the faunal kingdom in several months. But one day, as part of my rehabilitation walk, I thought I saw the little ears sticking up, out of the sand trap. So I says, “Hey mate,” in my silly Australian accent. “Hey mate, you’re a good-looking fox.” This is how all the animals in my orbit know it’s me. The silly accent. She sits bolt upright, curling the big brush of the tail behind her. I think she even whined a little bit. That really broke me up!

7. The fox, stirring.

8. The fox, running. She looks hale and hearty. She’s a good-looking fox, mate.

 

Complaint Week // Complaint #5 of 5: INDUSTRIAL DECAY.

True in 1980; true today. 

In Theodore Dreiser’s turn-of-the-century novel, Sister Carrie, Carrie’s sister, Minnie, muses that, unless Carrie, a recent arrival to her modest household in Chicago, “submitted to a solemn round of industry . . . how was her coming to the city going to profit [Minnie and her husband]?” This selfish outlook on Minnie’s part accidentally unleashes one of the greatest phrases in American literature: “a solemn round of industry.” The phrase needn’t refer to gloomy industrial tasks per se, as it might refer to the incomplete “industriousness” of Sister Carrie, notably her unwillingness to conform, as Minnie contends, to the laborious traditions inherent in the City of the Big Shoulders, circa 1900. Ah, the good old days! What America wouldn’t give for a little more Industry, now, more than 100 years after Sister Carrie fled with the manager, Hurstwood, who helped himself to a sack of loot, to boot. People would probably submit to Industry, if Industry would open a few hundred factories; okay, even five or six. Instead of Industry, Americans must submit to other forces, such as DNA paternity tests. It’s a flawed principle, you’ll grant me, to rely upon the confusing haze of promiscuity in order to “grow the economy.” The Hookup Economy, at best, allows a laboratory to hire a ‘Night Guy’ for the newly-minted graveyard shift, and nobody really knows what goes on then, except the cleaning crew, who dance with the ‘Night Guy’ to “Heart of Glass.” On the other hand, Google Girth now tracks the whereabouts and deeds of Chris Christie, the embattled New Jersey Governor whose accumulation of scandals rivals Imelda Marcos’ accumulation of sandals. Still, the Chris Christie economy doesn’t add many people (but his cronies) to the payroll, and Google Girth, for its part, hired the chap who’d been rotating the egg camera at the Great Blue Heron nest. That’s an albatross for the labor force, who yearn, aloud, to submit. “Let us submit,” they cry, amid googling. The gurgling you hear isn’t the gargling of a desperate labor force, but the water in the hookah pipe, it turns out. The toiler submits to a solemn round of hookah. The toiler sits in armchairs, in divans, in minivans, in situ; the toiler sits in hot tubs, in dance clubs, for back rubs, for medicinal shrubberies; wherever can be found a sitter can be found a googling hookah, the apple jack tabac, Jack. Lo, the American Dude sits on the couch, and considers the sport that destroys the athlete. I am an American Dude, I too consider the sport that destroys the athlete. There follows a solemn round of touchdowns, a solemn round of advertisement, and a solemn round of indigestion. Both oceans batter our shores. Across them, in exotic lands, can be heard the faint sounds of Industry, the pile driven into the soil, the pain of the soil, the dumb might of the mechanical driver. 

Complaint #1: Doctors & Pre-illness.
Complaint #2: Gravitational Pull.
Complaint #3: Washington Metrorail.
Complaint #4: Beer Prices.