Masculinity
is rather innate
for the lightness of your step
and the grace of your hands,
relevant, undeceiving,
leave one to ponder
(not quite mentally)
the motive of your motion.

                   --1955

---

Max Ernst

I see by the light of the centerless moon
a bear against the blue sky
his path lies angled to my own
we come together, he and I

Hands clutch paws, we start to move
dizzy, awkward, stumble and swirl
we dance together, he and I
bear and girl, bear and girl.

                               (.1970)

The Death of the Kenwood Hotel, Chicago, Illinois

The youth with kettle-copper hair
Wheels his barrow round the square
--asks little for his pains--
Whistling a martial tune
He gathers shards of broken glass
For purposes no one explains.

                                                 (late 1957)

Bill the Bogeyman

There's a big, black bogeyman with hands like boulders
With dirt upon his fave upon his great, shaggy shoulders
He's friendly with the fishfolk,
He has a peaty smell
He eats no flesh and gives no pain
And does not wish me well.

                                                   (c.1966)

 What a great idea! Why didn't anyone think of this before?

.

                      Yang- Yang 
                    
(the top yin-yang [yin-yin, that is] appeared in the New Yorker,  October 3,
a cartoon by Kim Warp, with the caption "A YIN-YIN SITUATION")

 

Me!

(this was the first translation I ever saw; none of the others are nearly as good) I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because  I don't know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close

 

Paula, well, here it is, such as it is. Poem is at end; you can
whatever you want with the rest. Hope the photo of Notch came through

A Netsuke in the Museum Store: 5 rats with designs on a bag of grain


In
the Museum store, there are 6-7 copies of Netsuke ("toggles" in
Japanese) from the Peobody and Essex Museum in Massachusetts. Most are
very carefully carved, and all are made of resin--which has a very nice
heft: heavier than ivory, lighter than porcelain, and seems to take
tones very nicely, though most of these netsuke are some variation of
black lines on white body. They are $20 a piece (and  almost $3 off with
a 20% reduction).

There are three of them with a rat theme, and
my favorite is Bag of Grain with Rats. Five rats.  Each rat is so
carefully carved, in spite of its diminutive size, with its beady little
eyes bulging, And there are tiny white marks on either side of the face
to represent whiskers; one rat has burrowed into the bag, and only his
bottom, with its pendant tail, sticks out, while on the other side, one
has just poked his head out of the bag, The other three are in various
stages of readiness to take the plunge. Or gnaw.
This is the year of
the Rat in Japan, and he is the first sign of the Japanese Zodiac,
representing fertility and wealth, an emblem of good luck, and companion
to the god of wealth, Daikoku. No wonder there is a preponderance of
rat-netsuke in our selection.

Oh yeah. And Ganesh rides on one.

Eventually,
I bought two for presents: one for John Stucky, the librarian who holds
the museum together, and one, later,  for my friend Sid, who is a
computer whiz, the Placer Street Quilters' best quilter, etc, etc. When I
told him about the rat-netsuke I got for John, he said:

"Are they anatomically correct?"
"WHAT?"
"Male rats," he said, "have enormous testicles."
"They
do? I never noticed."  I mean, you're standing there, holding a dead
rat fresh from a trap or whatever. so you don't take the time to examine
its sex organs; you dash outside with it and throw it in the
bushes....and it can start fertilizing the soil.
"Maybe they are all
girl-rarts," I said crossly. I remembered that the rats on John's
netsuke didn't have large--in fact, ANY--testicles.

I e-mailed John about my conversation with Sid, and he sent me the following story:

---

My freshman year in college, my roommate, Robin Bullard rescued several lab
rats. We housed them in one of our bottom drawers.  The males & females
were kept separate until we decided to transport all of the rats back to
Robin's house in Marin. We traveled from Stockton to SF via Greyhound, but
had to keep all of the rats together in a very small cage, camouflaged
inside a large shopping bag as animals were not allowed on the bus.   I sat
with this stupid parcel on my lap and a drunk sleeping and drooling on my
shoulder all the way to the City (ca. 2 hours by bus from Stockton).

When we got the rats to Robin's house, everything seemed calm and normal,
but, throughout the night there was a lot of noise, scurrying and
skirmishing, coming from that little cage.  The next morning, the boy rats
had transformed.  Their testicles were so big that they could barely walk!
It was a very rapid and downright bizarre transformation for two young
hooligan bucks like me and Robin to witness.  Them womens always drives
mens CRAZY!  YOW!  ......& Jeeeez!
Yers,
SpuDd

I found the conversation and the e-mail very informative (and the e-mail very funny). But I wanted to know Why,
so I Googled "Why are rats' testicles so big?" and I found out. It's a
case of "Survival of the ME," (Sperm Competition Theory) and is known
throughout the animal kingdom wherever a species lives together in large
bunches.
Rats have  a mating system in which multiple males mate with one female, especially
at higher population densities. When a female rat comes into heat,
she may be mated by multiple males in a short span of time. The male
with the biggest testicles will produce the most sperm, which means
he'll have a higher chance of fertilizing some of her eggs.

And they all lived happily ever after.

                                                           Explanation of Netsuke
                                     
                                                           Some of these rats are girl-rats
                                                           Some of these rats are boys
                                                           And some of these rats are transgender rats
                                                           And share all the other rats' sorrows and joys.

                                                              
                                                             "Notch," because of the arrow on his head.
                                                            
                                                              The original of Rats with Bag of Grain"

HAPPY  BIRDDAWG, Sid!




Will ya still need me,
Will ya still feed me
When I'm 62...hey...it doesn't even rhyme...

Black is the color of cats.
Their green eyes tell you what they
Want you to know.
Though the long Siamese
has symmetrical brown markings,
a long, beautiful horse-face
and blue, blue eyes--
black is the color of cats
their green eyes
tell you what
they want
you to
know.

I'm sorry I said it,
I;'m sorry you read iit--
But please do take note of it:
I'm not sorry I wrote it.