Outside / Inside Harbin field notes
Saw a little, playful headbutting
between two, baby cows, calves,
- were they male or female?
I don't know -
on a beautiful, oak ridge,
in rural Lake County, California,
this morn. The oak trees,
dotting the ridge, above them,
in full, spring leaf,
filled out this Ferdinand scene.
This could be Greece, or Spain,
in mediterranean, inland California,
virtually.
And this baby playfulness,
perhaps 10 cows and calves
all around,
on a perfect day,
has probably gone on
long before that thriving
culture on Samos, Greece,
with its aqueduct,
the 2800 year old
Tunnel of Eupalinos,
- Herodotus's 8th world wonder,
I think -
long before the first cities
of 10,000 years ago, -
as part of agriculture,
in time immemorial.
Two woodpeckers then alit
on a branch, very close,
black & white with red heads -
a pair they were, -
then flipped under the branch,
still attached, upside down,
pecked a little,
and flew away, displaying
their magnificent wings from
below, black & white,
all spread out so expansively.
These rolling hills & trees,
a bucolic, pastoral, calming scene,
after good, needed sleep, -
such beauty in solo-ness.
The cows are gone, now.
A brown truck,
a little fumy,
with two men of
Spanish-Mexican descent,
drives by on this
wide, beautiful, well-maintained,
dirt road ... They look like
salts of the earth,
one man smiling,
and I smile at him,
in passing.
Who are they,
in this other world?
Might they have staged
this gentle calve-romp, -
for, soon after the headbutting,
a calf rolled over, almost playfully,
too cute,
and stood back up,
up on the ridge,
where I had seen turkeys,
of an earlier poem -
through knowledge of &
skill with livestock and cattle.
A kid on a too-small, motor scooter,
- that looks like fun,
and this could be Greece, again -
then passes, legs asunder,
hair flying, under his knit hat.
He looks as if he may be
heading to school.
Are his hands cold?
Ranchland, with pasture and oaks,
on both sides of this road,
sun shining, no houses ...
in this out of the way place.
Soon to Harbin ...
Harbin ...
yes ...
It's always different,
its own thing,
and enlivening.
*
The Harbin RV/trailer park is gone, completely,
after decades and decades, -
I walked up through its main road,
off of which were about 7 dwelling-spaces on each side,
almost like a fern frond.
I had only visited it possibly 2-3 times in 2005.
And at least two of its residents I know,
who lived there for years, are now in SG, 3 miles away.
I spent a longer time in the pools than I have in a long time ... Saw many familiar faces, from the quiet in the pools ... more than usual, - curious & not sure why.
*
b & e c were walking near where I ate my picnic dinner on the back tailgate in my car (Subaru Legacy L, 2.2 liter), and as I was practicing piobaireachd on my practice chanter. (These days I regularly sleep in my car, when at Harbin, 'in the field,' for my ongoing, actual/virtual Harbin ethnography). Nice to see them ... With atheistically Friendly inclinations, I went to a number of silent meetings (4 -7) at different Quakers' homes in Lake County in 2008, and got to know them that way ... We had a little silent meeting in the harbin temple together in 2005, as it was being built ... :), when I first made contact with Lake County Friends.
nice dance in the temple this evening
curious, well-done, 2nd film in the theater - 'hedwig and the angry inch' - about a tranny, a transgender person, who was born in east berlin and came to the US, - Providence, RI - and became a kind of tranny rock star & celebrity, in a way singing his anger at his American army father, who had fondled him when s/he was a little kid.
It might have been shocking at one time to me, but seen in the light of my current thinking vis-a-vis common chimps (as primates that do harm, war, violence, are male-dominated, and, of course, sexual) & bonobo chimps (as very sexual in all couplings, egalitarian, matriarchal, relatively peaceable - no known instances of fatalities, and left bank-chimps; humans can learn!), the tranny (Hedwig) - male ('Tommy Gnosis') attraction depicted in the film was far less sexual than what I understand bonobos, in all kinds of sexual pairings, to engage in sexually. I see these somewhat sad narratives of 'Hedwig' as so emergent from modernities' cultural cross-winds (e.g. with GI/army father, east german mother, stationed forces, u.s., germany, varying sexual mores) ... Interesting insights into the '60s and its 'winds', as well. Hedwig was born in 1961, and later, herself (now), around the time of a botched sex change operation, married a male African American US officer while in Germany. Curious what I might learn about eroticism ... between men & women from this film ... Cultural craziness ... culture and biology (we, as human primates) create so many interesting processes and temporalities, which we don't even see as cultural or biological, or are even aware of as such, as we are living these processes and temporalities, - painfully, for Hedwig, although it needn't have been, except for the ways people see things socioculturally and biologically ... :)
*
Fern community kitchen at Harbin has new cabinets and countertops ... More nice wood & wood color ... (I think the job was finished on or around this day).
*
but more curious about bliss, harbin, and eliciting this
... and love with a friend
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/05/chillingham-wild-cattle-saw-little.html - May 24, 2011)
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