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INTERLUDE: INSTEAD OF TRUMP AN OCTOPUS 

2/21/2017

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Playing with an Octopus
 
On a rainy Wednesday we   went to the NC Aquarium on Emerald Isle.  Ho hum-- until I got swept off my feet by an octopus.  He wanted to play. No wonder: he was alone in a small tank, quiet and contracted when I first looked at him.  I pressed an index finger to the thick glass of his tank. After a while, he moved   close to it, with a big eye `seemingly staring at my finger tip.  Was he curious?  I moved my finger tip, wondering if he would follow it with his eye or his body. Nothing happened.  I tried tapping on the glass at various places. No response.  But when I started to move away, swiftly but smoothly he moved high up in the tank and spread his tentacles. He was bigger than I had expected - but I opened my hand and spread my fingers as wide as I could, but still less than half the length of his tentacles. I tried moving my palm over the glass. He dropped to the bottom of the tank and changed into his purplish camouflage. ,He showed no interest in play, even though I ran my extended palm over the surface of the glass, tapped on it,  and on my knees tried to Make eye contact with him,
 
I was about to give up when he once again swooped to the top of the tank, extended his tentacles and weaved their fine pointed ends gently, delicately as if to some rhythm I could not hear.  I followed his lead, and spread and wiggled my fingers in a crude imitation of his, He moved to my right and rearranged his tentacles. Again I followed lead and did the best I could to match his movements. I felt as if I were an ill-trained player rehearsing a symphony that he would conduct, All I could do was follow his lead as best I could.; perhaps he would find some way to cover my ineptitude and deficiencies. He knew best,
 
 This went on for some minutes, as I gradually learned the lesion he wanted to trach me: If you try to control my movements, you will get nowhere; just follow my lead and we will play joyously together.
--
If this seems implausible to you, or if you think we can understand what it is to be human without understanding   animals such as the octopus, you must read Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus.
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A ZOMBJE EXPLAINS THE 2016 ELECTION

2/8/2017

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​A ZOMBIE EXPLAINS THE 2016 ELECTION
 Trump is right. I am dead, and I voted, me and more than three million other dead people. Unanimously for Hillary.  Our neglected demographic turned the popular vote in her favor.  With better organization we will win in the congressional races and in the Electoral College next time.. Dead people may be the most neglected demographic, but we are the wave of the future.
 
It wasn’t easy getting out the vote. There are a lot of apathetic people in these apathetic graves down here. Some of us had been Republicans all our lives. Mossbacks, not about to start voting for a Democrat.at this late date! More important, the system is rigged against us. For example, many of us found our names had been erased from the voter rolls by officious bureaucrats. But we did it! Over three million votes! Enough to give that so-called President of ours apoplexy (Not fatal, we trust, since no one wants him down here.)
Are you surprised we went unanimously for Hillary, even though she didn’t pay much attention to our demographic? She treated us as if we were all straight working class white males from Wisconsin, with grease under the fingernails. .She never stopped in at her local graveyard.  She didn’t, have to bring wine, milk, honey and lamb chops, as if we were running an ol’ time nekromanteion,   Just sitting quietly for a few minutes would have helped.  You don’t get to be a great leader without contemplating the limits of the self, including the big one there at the end of the road.
  We could have helped her, big time. We know some grave truths, recognize a fatal mistake when we see one, or a campaign that is dead in the water, or a policy speech that bores everyone to death.  But.no!, she never came even  for a quick visit,
 
Still we voted for her, all three million of us. You ask why?  Come on!  Readers of this blog are well educated. You have read your Homer and your Vergil. You have seen wily Odysseus and copycat Aeneas go down to the underworld to find out what was in store for them. We dead folks know, things. We hear things other people miss. Waiting there, hoping to hear her light tread, we heard instead the hooves of four horses galloping in the direction of Washington. We knew, what it meant. It’s the Apocalypse, Stupid.
 
 
 

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