Look, I'm just going to say it: Jurassic Park is the best movie ever. It was on TV this weekend, and I watched it. And when it was over, I watched it again. I ask you, is there a better opening scene than a guy getting eaten by an unseen creature in a crate? Is anything scarier than velociraptors in the kitchen? Is there a better line delivered in a British accent to said velociraptor than "Clever girl"? These are all rhetorical questions because clearly the answer is "no."
Watching Jurassic Park in the theater in the summer of 1993 was one of the defining moments of my life. It completely changed the way I saw movies. If there was a job that consisted of bringing dinosaurs to life, I wanted in. Think of the power! That's what fascinated me about movies. I knew that if I wrote scripts, I could see creatures in my imagination become real. It was an intoxicating and terrifying idea. Of course, it could be done badly. After Jurassic Park finished airing on the SyFy channel, they showed some made-for-TV movie called Triassic Attack about dinosaur skeletons attacking people. I realize they must have been working within a budget, but dinosaur skeletons? Weak.
Now I have a bad habit of writing action scripts and putting the characters in sticky situations just so I can introduce something like a sharkmeleon (that's a shark that's a chameleon) to create a diversion and help them escape. It blends in with the skyline and then *CHOMP* OMG IT ATE THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AND EVERYONE ON IT.
Awesome.
To Help the Monkey Cross the River
by Thomas Lux
which he must
cross, by swimming, for fruits and nuts,
to help him
I sit with my rifle on a platform
high in a tree, same side of the river
as the hungry monkey. How does this assist
him? When he swims for it
I look first upriver: predators move faster with
the current than against it.
If a crocodile is aimed from upriver to eat the monkey
and an anaconda from downriver burns
with the same ambition, I do
the math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey,
croc- and snake-speed, and if, if
it looks as though the anaconda or the croc
will reach the monkey
before he attains the river’s far bank,
I raise my rifle and fire
one, two, three, even four times into the river
just behind the monkey
to hurry him up a little.
Shoot the snake, the crocodile?
They’re just doing their jobs,
but the monkey, the monkey
has little hands like a child’s,
and the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The trouble with mice
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that Stuart Little is a mouse born to humans? Yesterday I got into a heated discussion with two friends who were adamant that E.B. White's character Stuart was simply adopted or somehow found by the family. I said, no, he's a mouse and his mother, Mrs. Little, brought him home from the hospital. He is the biological son of human parents. We consulted that beacon of reliability, Wikipedia, and that seemed to be enough to verify that yes, he was a mouse with maybe some recessive human genes. That's cool? E.B., where did you come up with this?
I get that the book Stuart Little is a story of independence and the pursuit of beauty. I also love me some E.B. White (The Trumpet of the Swan is a favorite), but I'm getting the impression that E.B. had a bit of a fascination with mice that went beyond inspiration. It seems like they were the symbol for something that plagued him. I was reading a little bit of his biography where it's mentioned that he struggled with "nerves" when he wasn't happy with his writing. He went to see a doctor in 1944 about his head, "as there seems to be a kite caught in the branches somewhere." He also likened it to a battery getting overcharged after a long drive. He wrote the following poem that same year about his troubles.
Vermin
The mouse of Thought infests my head.
He knows my cupboard and the crumb.
Vermin! I despise Vermin.
I have no trap, no skill with traps,
No bait, no hope, no cheese, no bread–
I fumble with the task to no avail.
I’ve seen him several times lately.
He is too quick for me,
I see only his tail.
(Sad fact: E.B. White died in 1985 of Alzheimer's.)
I get that the book Stuart Little is a story of independence and the pursuit of beauty. I also love me some E.B. White (The Trumpet of the Swan is a favorite), but I'm getting the impression that E.B. had a bit of a fascination with mice that went beyond inspiration. It seems like they were the symbol for something that plagued him. I was reading a little bit of his biography where it's mentioned that he struggled with "nerves" when he wasn't happy with his writing. He went to see a doctor in 1944 about his head, "as there seems to be a kite caught in the branches somewhere." He also likened it to a battery getting overcharged after a long drive. He wrote the following poem that same year about his troubles.
Vermin
The mouse of Thought infests my head.
He knows my cupboard and the crumb.
Vermin! I despise Vermin.
I have no trap, no skill with traps,
No bait, no hope, no cheese, no bread–
I fumble with the task to no avail.
I’ve seen him several times lately.
He is too quick for me,
I see only his tail.
(Sad fact: E.B. White died in 1985 of Alzheimer's.)
Friday, October 15, 2010
"Why did cheese decide to perfom heroic deeds in France?"
I was so excited the other day when I was killing time in a book store and I came across Pablo Neruda's The Book of Questions. I have been trying to find this book since college and it seemed to have gone out of print for a while. Now there it was sitting nonchalantly on the shelf.
Some of you may recognize Pablo Neruda's name from the character in the movie Il Postino. He was a political Chilean poet. This collection is different from his others because all the poems in the book are made of questions. They don't have rational answers, but they are meant to just make you reflect on things.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts:
If all rivers are sweet
where does the sea get its salt?
Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?
Do tears not yet spilled
wait in small lakes?
What are you guarding under your hump
said a camel to a turtle.
And the turtle replied:
What do you say to oranges?
And what did the rubies say
standing before the juice of pomegranates?
Does the earth sing like a cricket
in the music of the heavens?
Where is the child I was,
still inside me or gone?
Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?
Some of you may recognize Pablo Neruda's name from the character in the movie Il Postino. He was a political Chilean poet. This collection is different from his others because all the poems in the book are made of questions. They don't have rational answers, but they are meant to just make you reflect on things.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts:
If all rivers are sweet
where does the sea get its salt?
Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?
Do tears not yet spilled
wait in small lakes?
What are you guarding under your hump
said a camel to a turtle.
And the turtle replied:
What do you say to oranges?
And what did the rubies say
standing before the juice of pomegranates?
Does the earth sing like a cricket
in the music of the heavens?
Where is the child I was,
still inside me or gone?
Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The Dog
I want a dog.
I had a labrador once, growing up. Everyone thinks their dogs are the best, and I am no exception. Look at this face and tell it that you do not think it's the best:
We called her Bella. She liked spaghetti. She was trained to not go past the point where the kitchen tile turned into the family room carpet. She excelled at digging and barking and generally being a dog. She lived to a ripe age of 13.
Since then I haven't owned any pets, except briefly a cat. She showed up outside our apartment door one day, mewing and looking pitiful. We took her to get a bath and then to the vet. If we were going to keep her, she would have to be an indoor cat. Her name became Bacon:
Sadly, this arrangement couldn't last as it became clear that two of us were far too allergic. Bacon was adopted by Russians. Her name changed to Behkon, I like to think she sits on a pillow and eats caviar all day.
So, by process of elimination I am a dog person (I also eliminated fish, but that is a different story). I hope to adopt a dog whenever I decide to become a real adult with a stable job and a yard. In the meantime, I came across this poem written by Billy Collins, or rather by his deceased dog:
The Revenant
I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.
When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.
I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.
I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.
I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.
You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.
The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.
While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl.
Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place
except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner--
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.
I had a labrador once, growing up. Everyone thinks their dogs are the best, and I am no exception. Look at this face and tell it that you do not think it's the best:
We called her Bella. She liked spaghetti. She was trained to not go past the point where the kitchen tile turned into the family room carpet. She excelled at digging and barking and generally being a dog. She lived to a ripe age of 13.
Since then I haven't owned any pets, except briefly a cat. She showed up outside our apartment door one day, mewing and looking pitiful. We took her to get a bath and then to the vet. If we were going to keep her, she would have to be an indoor cat. Her name became Bacon:
Sadly, this arrangement couldn't last as it became clear that two of us were far too allergic. Bacon was adopted by Russians. Her name changed to Behkon, I like to think she sits on a pillow and eats caviar all day.
So, by process of elimination I am a dog person (I also eliminated fish, but that is a different story). I hope to adopt a dog whenever I decide to become a real adult with a stable job and a yard. In the meantime, I came across this poem written by Billy Collins, or rather by his deceased dog:
The Revenant
I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.
When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.
I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.
I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.
I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.
You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.
The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.
While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl.
Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place
except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner--
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
No animals were harmed in the making of this poem.
There is a car outside my window that needs to be dealt with. Whenever it gets turned on, it makes a horrible ear-piercing screech. The sound doesn't end. It goes on for ten minutes. What is the driver doing? Is he checking to see if the sound will go away? It's not going away, sir! I keep sitting here at my desk/dining room table waiting for the car to drive off and leave me and everyone in a five-block radius in peace.
It has been three weeks since I first heard the sound. At first I thought maybe it was someone visiting our across-the-street neighbors, the ever popular alleged drug dealers. Those lovable thugs, they get so many visitors. I'm sure every neighborhood has its own variety. Ours take themselves literally in every sense of the word. They are content to blast music but not just any music. If it's Sunday morning, they will blast Easy Like Sunday Morning. On repeat.
Anyway, it wasn't them. I know this because last week I ran to the window after a particularly long session of acoustic bombardment. I was intent on discovering which car it was and . . . after that I'm not sure what my next step would have been. My downstairs neighbor once confronted a woman a few houses down who was laying on her horn for a good 15 minutes. This was because she was too lazy to get out of the car and ring the doorbell for her friend/boyfriend/kid/whatever. They got into a pretty good fight that nearly came to blows but luckily didn't since my friend is a dude. The moral of the story is, think twice before you pick a fight in da hood. So I ran to the window just in time to see the offending vehicle pull away from the curb. Aha! I thought. I've got your number.
The next time that car started up, I was ready. I feel it's necessary to give you some sense of what it sounded like:
Imagine a bird, perhaps a canary.
Singing its sweet little song,
it gets to the trilling of a particularly
complex arpeggio when
an evil child plucks the bird
right out of the cage, mid-note.
The child holds the bird
in such a way that it can only tweet
the same note
in terror
over and over and over again until
the sadistic youth
swaps the birdcage for an electric fan.
The bird is dropped in its new prison,
the fan turned on so that now
the bird is shrieking
two variations of the same note
back and forth, back and forth
while the fan blades batter
its poor little organ.
The evil child then extracts
a cricket
from the depths of his pocket.
The poor thing clearly
has been through the ringer,
but it's not over yet
because now
the devil child
feverishly rubs together the cricket's wings,
chirping faster, faster
as if making fire.*
The bird and the cricket,
trilling and chirping,
shrieking and burning.
That is what this car sounds like.
My roommate happened to be around when the car screamed to life. "Why doesn't he get that flippin' car fixed?" "I know," I said. "Let's see if he drives away." Five minutes . . . six minutes . . . seven minutes . . . "ARGGGGGGHHHHHH I WILL CALL TRIPLE A MYSELF IF IT WILL TOW YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE!"
We ran to the window. There it was, rattling, heaving. The hood was up. The driver stood before it, trying to solve the puzzle. He tinkered. He got back into the car. He shut it off.
"Huh," I said to my roommate. "I guess he's aware of the problem."
*I do not condone the torture of animals. Do NOT try this at home.
It has been three weeks since I first heard the sound. At first I thought maybe it was someone visiting our across-the-street neighbors, the ever popular alleged drug dealers. Those lovable thugs, they get so many visitors. I'm sure every neighborhood has its own variety. Ours take themselves literally in every sense of the word. They are content to blast music but not just any music. If it's Sunday morning, they will blast Easy Like Sunday Morning. On repeat.
Anyway, it wasn't them. I know this because last week I ran to the window after a particularly long session of acoustic bombardment. I was intent on discovering which car it was and . . . after that I'm not sure what my next step would have been. My downstairs neighbor once confronted a woman a few houses down who was laying on her horn for a good 15 minutes. This was because she was too lazy to get out of the car and ring the doorbell for her friend/boyfriend/kid/whatever. They got into a pretty good fight that nearly came to blows but luckily didn't since my friend is a dude. The moral of the story is, think twice before you pick a fight in da hood. So I ran to the window just in time to see the offending vehicle pull away from the curb. Aha! I thought. I've got your number.
The next time that car started up, I was ready. I feel it's necessary to give you some sense of what it sounded like:
Imagine a bird, perhaps a canary.
Singing its sweet little song,
it gets to the trilling of a particularly
complex arpeggio when
an evil child plucks the bird
right out of the cage, mid-note.
The child holds the bird
in such a way that it can only tweet
the same note
in terror
over and over and over again until
the sadistic youth
swaps the birdcage for an electric fan.
The bird is dropped in its new prison,
the fan turned on so that now
the bird is shrieking
two variations of the same note
back and forth, back and forth
while the fan blades batter
its poor little organ.
The evil child then extracts
a cricket
from the depths of his pocket.
The poor thing clearly
has been through the ringer,
but it's not over yet
because now
the devil child
feverishly rubs together the cricket's wings,
chirping faster, faster
as if making fire.*
The bird and the cricket,
trilling and chirping,
shrieking and burning.
That is what this car sounds like.
My roommate happened to be around when the car screamed to life. "Why doesn't he get that flippin' car fixed?" "I know," I said. "Let's see if he drives away." Five minutes . . . six minutes . . . seven minutes . . . "ARGGGGGGHHHHHH I WILL CALL TRIPLE A MYSELF IF IT WILL TOW YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE!"
We ran to the window. There it was, rattling, heaving. The hood was up. The driver stood before it, trying to solve the puzzle. He tinkered. He got back into the car. He shut it off.
"Huh," I said to my roommate. "I guess he's aware of the problem."
*I do not condone the torture of animals. Do NOT try this at home.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
You're apologizing to me?
Back in college I wrote a poem that included a line I thought was pretty great: "a stitch that itches the womb." The poem itself wasn't anything special. It was about humanity, which is basically the broadest topic you could pick to write about, and I only decided to do it because I saw a magazine in the supermarket that had a photo essay on fetuses. I had to have an assignment to turn in the next day. Boom. Fetus poem. I secretly loved that one line, though.
I was a little nervous when I had to read the poem out in class because I knew my theme was flimsy to say the least. There's always that moment after you read something out loud where the whole room is silent, taking it in, and you wonder which way the audience is going to tip. But it was that line, only that line, that saved me. I got a lot of praise for it, with my professor specifically picking it out. "A really nice use of internal rhyme," she said, "I love the way it plays on the tongue."
The trouble is, after I turned the poem in, I suddenly wondered, did I write that? Was that my original line? Could I really come up with something so neat? Did I subconsciously plagiarize it? I was reading a lot of Plath and Sexton at the time. It did sound distinctly Plath to me . . .
I didn't want to know. If I wasn't capable of that level of grown-up writing, and if even my own brain was overcompensating, then I'd rather just leave well enough alone. I avoided the Google search box. I ignored the book Ariel sitting on my shelf. There was one poem I suspected I borrowed from in that collection, and I didn't want to go near it. So it went on for nine years until the day I recently lost my job.
Feeling sucker-punched and directionless, I was questioning my purpose once again. It was a familiar place to be. I decided that I'd had enough. I had to know: did I write that damn line? To the Google search box! I typed in the quote. Something came up.
What's this? An apology? Google actually apologized for not being able to come up with an exact match. I could scarcely dare to believe it. There was only one other way to be sure. To the bookshelf!
I went into my bedroom and dusted old Ariel off the shelf. Even so many years later I still knew exactly which page to go to. From a poem called Lady Lazarus: "And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls."
That's it? That's it??? Granted, that's a beautiful line, but I didn't plagiarize! The stitch that itches was mine. My line. I wrote it. Now, I feel safe to say, here is the poem:
Anyone Could Join the Circus
The first month we look like worms,
eyes in a sac, a stitch that itches the womb.
We are bulbs of flesh, photographed
for Time magazine's latest fetus spread.
This is how millions
discovered just how close we'd come
to being left in a shape nowhere near human,
had the covers been suddenly yanked
off our cozy amniotic waterbeds.
At three months we have the snouts of pigs.
At eight we could be the progeny of a pachyderm.
What is to keep us from popping out
with a small, wrinkled trunk in those last
two months? Maybe those who are allergic
to peanuts have been the humans all along . . .
Would my mother have loved a child
more elephant than not?
I was a little nervous when I had to read the poem out in class because I knew my theme was flimsy to say the least. There's always that moment after you read something out loud where the whole room is silent, taking it in, and you wonder which way the audience is going to tip. But it was that line, only that line, that saved me. I got a lot of praise for it, with my professor specifically picking it out. "A really nice use of internal rhyme," she said, "I love the way it plays on the tongue."
The trouble is, after I turned the poem in, I suddenly wondered, did I write that? Was that my original line? Could I really come up with something so neat? Did I subconsciously plagiarize it? I was reading a lot of Plath and Sexton at the time. It did sound distinctly Plath to me . . .
I didn't want to know. If I wasn't capable of that level of grown-up writing, and if even my own brain was overcompensating, then I'd rather just leave well enough alone. I avoided the Google search box. I ignored the book Ariel sitting on my shelf. There was one poem I suspected I borrowed from in that collection, and I didn't want to go near it. So it went on for nine years until the day I recently lost my job.
Feeling sucker-punched and directionless, I was questioning my purpose once again. It was a familiar place to be. I decided that I'd had enough. I had to know: did I write that damn line? To the Google search box! I typed in the quote. Something came up.
What's this? An apology? Google actually apologized for not being able to come up with an exact match. I could scarcely dare to believe it. There was only one other way to be sure. To the bookshelf!
I went into my bedroom and dusted old Ariel off the shelf. Even so many years later I still knew exactly which page to go to. From a poem called Lady Lazarus: "And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls."
That's it? That's it??? Granted, that's a beautiful line, but I didn't plagiarize! The stitch that itches was mine. My line. I wrote it. Now, I feel safe to say, here is the poem:
Anyone Could Join the Circus
The first month we look like worms,
eyes in a sac, a stitch that itches the womb.
We are bulbs of flesh, photographed
for Time magazine's latest fetus spread.
This is how millions
discovered just how close we'd come
to being left in a shape nowhere near human,
had the covers been suddenly yanked
off our cozy amniotic waterbeds.
At three months we have the snouts of pigs.
At eight we could be the progeny of a pachyderm.
What is to keep us from popping out
with a small, wrinkled trunk in those last
two months? Maybe those who are allergic
to peanuts have been the humans all along . . .
Would my mother have loved a child
more elephant than not?
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Damn Thirsty
You know how you used to know something really well? You knew it like the back of your hand, then you grew up and you forgot about it. But suddenly something jostles that trunk where it's stored in the cobwebbiest corner of your mind, like under a tarp, and it pops open and you go, "Hey, I used to know that! Wow!" There must be a scientific name for this phenomenon. I even remember it occurring at the tender age of five when it consistently blew my mind to realize that bugs lived in the ground. Now I feel that way when I read about buffalo (i.e., "Buffalo? Aren't they extinct? Is that the same thing as a bison? Oh, they still exist? Phew, glad to hear it!").
Anyway, a friend of mine sent me something I feel like I read before. It's vaguely familiar, and all the time I'm reading it I'm kicking myself for ever forgetting it. It's about a fish:
First
The fish needs to say,
‘Something ain’t right about this
Camel ride-
And I’m
Feeling so damn
Thirsty.’
I didn't write this poem. Hafez did. But I am the fish. I know my friend feels like she is the fish. Maybe you are, too. And maybe you just woke up and you looked around and thought hmm something's . . . fishy. (Sorry, it wrote itself.) How did I get on this camel? Fish aren't supposed to go on camels! Who booked this ticket?
And also, why are some of the best poems about fish? (see: Elizabeth Bishop)
Anyway, a friend of mine sent me something I feel like I read before. It's vaguely familiar, and all the time I'm reading it I'm kicking myself for ever forgetting it. It's about a fish:
First
The fish needs to say,
‘Something ain’t right about this
Camel ride-
And I’m
Feeling so damn
Thirsty.’
I didn't write this poem. Hafez did. But I am the fish. I know my friend feels like she is the fish. Maybe you are, too. And maybe you just woke up and you looked around and thought hmm something's . . . fishy. (Sorry, it wrote itself.) How did I get on this camel? Fish aren't supposed to go on camels! Who booked this ticket?
And also, why are some of the best poems about fish? (see: Elizabeth Bishop)
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