If this is love

Back when I was five, I used to stick yellow Hula
Hoops on my fingers and pretend to be engaged. Tiny
hands all salty, our big maroon-grey rescue Mastiff
– a girl, like me – licked them clean. Bundled in duffel
coats and balaclavas we’d meet Dad at Seal Sands
after work, watch the black-footed Little Stints wade
in the froth by the pipeline.

Dad had a stroke in the year that Lady had her first
litter. The nurse taught me to inject Lovenox (“if this is
love,” we’d grimace) straight into his stomach. He
was so angry, that’s what kept him with us so long.

But last year, we threw Dad’s ashes on the Estuary,
and skimmed stones after him.

I love walking by water, talking to him.

In pink jeans, walking Lady’s daughter (all grey now)
by the chilly inlet off Scotts Road, I catch a sapphire
sparkle – steel hoops and a furled wire net – “Planet’s
Biggest Public Art Project”, the Gazette said. Far
across the water, in silhouette, one giant loop is a
half-inch circlet. My ring finger fits right inside it.

Gallery texts written to accompany an exhibition by Annie O’Donnell, from a conversation with Becky Hunter. By Marika Rose.

Of godly life and sound learning

Totter legged and pilled priest; stinking
knave priest; scurvy, stinking, shitten boy;
Polled, scurvy, forward, wrangling priest;
Runagately rogue; prick-eared rogue;
Drunken-faced knave; copper-nose priest;
Wrangler and prattler; Scottish jack;
Jack sauce and Welsh rogue; black-coat knave.

Insults suffered by members of the clergy in 16th and 17th century Britain, taken from a review of The Plain Man’s Pathways to Heaven: Kinds of Christianity in Post-Reformation England, 1570-1640 by Christopher Haigh. By Marika Rose.

Hamlet R.I.P.

Hamlet was a young man very nervous.
He was always dressed in black because his
uncle had killed his father, shooting him
in his ear. He could not go to the
theatre because his father was dead
so he had the actors come to his house
and play in the front parlor and he learned
them to say the words because he thought he
knew best how to say them. And then he thought
he’d kill the king but he didn’t. Hamlet
liked Ophelia. He thought she was a
very nice girl but didn’t marry her
because she was going to be a nunnery.
Hamlet went to England but he did not
like it very much so he came home. Then
he jumped into Ophelia’s grave and
fought a duel with her brother. Then he died.

From English as She Is Taught: Genuine Answers to Examination Questions in Our Public Schools, 1887.

Siamese

A kitten is so flexible
that she is almost double. The
hind parts are equivalent to
another kitten with which the
fore part plays. She does not
discover that her tail belongs
to her till you tread upon it.

A quotation from Thoreau, via Futility Closet, 25 April 2011. By Marika Rose.

For Whom The Earth Was Made

What great births you have witnessed! The steam press,
the steamship, the steel ship, the railroad,
the perfected cotton-gin, the telegraph,
the phonograph, the photograph, photo-gravure,
the electrotype, the gaslight, the electric light,
the sewing machine, and the amazing,
infinitely varied and innumerable
products of coal tar, those latest and strangest
marvels of a marvelous age.
And you
have seen even greater births than these;
for you have seen the application
of anesthesia to surgery-practice,
whereby the ancient dominion of pain,
which began with the first created life,
came to an end in this earth forever;
you have seen the slave set free, you have seen
the monarchy banished from France, and reduced
in England to a machine.
Yes, you have seen much —
but tarry yet a while, for the greatest
is yet to come. Wait thirty years, and then
look out over the earth! You shall see
marvels upon marvels added to these
whose nativity you have witnessed;
and conspicuous above them you shall see
their formidable Result — Man at almost
his full stature at last! — and still growing,
visibly growing while you look. In that day,
who that hath a throne, or a gilded privilege
not attainable by his neighbor, let him
procure his slippers and get ready to dance,
for there is going to be music.
Abide,
and see these things! Thirty of us who honor
and love you, offer the opportunity.
We have among us six hundred years,
good and sound, left in the bank of life. Take
thirty of them — the richest birth-day gift
ever offered to poet in this world —
and sit down and wait. Wait till you see that
great figure appear, and catch the far glint
of the sun upon his banner; then you
may depart satisfied, as knowing you
have seen him for whom the earth was made,
and that he will proclaim that human wheat
is worth more than human tares, and proceed
to organize human values on that basis.

From Mark Twain’s letter to Walt Whitman for his 70th birthday, written May 1889.

Long-lived and Manly

I woke up at 4am, before dawn.
You should be asleep. You’re all tired after
a sleepless night. I am like the Queen
of England. I am much bigger
than any rank, for those who are talking
about rank, I am a fighter. Your face
will melt off and your children will weep over
your exploded body. These resentments,
they are the rocket fuel that lives in the
tip of my saber. I have defeated
this earthworm with my words – imagine what
I would have done with my fire-breathing
fists. Life without dignity is worthless
Every great movement begins with one man.

Quotations from recent statements by Charlie Sheen and Muammar Gaddafi, taken from a Guardian quiz, 1 March 2011. By Marika Rose.

This is the cow

This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’

The cow is a successful animal.
Also he is quadrupud, and because
he is female, he give milk, but will do
when he is got child. He is same like God,
sacred to Hindus and useful to man.
But he has got four legs together.
Two are forward and two are afterwards.

His motion is slow only because he
is of asitudinious species.
Also his other motion is useful
to trees, plants as well as making flat cakes
in hand and drying in the sun. Cow is
the only animal that extricates
his feeding after eating. Then afterwards
she chew with his teeth whom are situated
in the inside of the mouth. He is
incessantly in the meadows in the grass.

His only attacking and defending
organ is the horn, specially so when
he is got child. This is done by knowing
his head whereby he causes the weapons
to be paralleled to the ground of earth
and instantly proceed with velocity
forwards.

He has got tails also, but not
like similar animals. It has hairs
on the other end of the other side.
This is done to frighten away the flies
which alight on his cohoa body
whereupon he gives hit with it.

The palms
of his feet are soft unto the touch. So
the grasses head is not crushed. At night time
have poses by looking down on the ground
and he shouts his eyes like his relatives,
the horse does not do so. This is the cow.

From an essay on ‘the cow’ for the Indian Civil Services Exam.

Not The Tiger

Begin by not thinking about a jungle
at dusk, then don’t think about a bush
rustling behind you though there is no wind.
Then don’t imagine turning too late, your
helpless shriek cut short by the rushing
onslaught of a powerful stripy carnivore
hurtling at you, its jaws agape. There
are about 3,000 tigers in the wild,
so if you follow this procedure once
every day in a little over 8 years
you’ll have not thought about all of them.

From Smoothies of Good and Evil, and Unconsidered Tigers, 31 October 2010. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Where’s Warner?

Where to begin? Top left corner.
Hidden somewhere in this noisy,
chaotic morass of society
is our fellow traveller, Waldo,
a man unstuck from place and time.

He travels the world on foot, his
only lifeline to his friends and
family a litany of dreary
picture postcards sent from arbitrary
locations the world over. His
postcards do nothing to convey
the humanity, the madness
of Waldo’s adventures. For that,
we must go find him. Waldo leaves
trinkets scattered behind him, shedding
a wake of objects as he goes.
What story do these leavings tell?
They are a series of transmissions
from the past, sent in a code we
cannot decipher. Is that a
scroll, or merely a rolled up towel?
After trying so hard to find
the scroll, are we sure we can handle
the real answer?

Occasionally, Waldo is all
but impossible to ferret
out; sometimes it seems like he’s barely
trying. At the ski slopes, I find
him almost immediately. At the
sea, I hunt until I am mad,
yet Waldo does not reveal himself
to me. Oh, there he is. Hello,
my little friend. Wait a moment.
Who is that man with the beard? I
have seen him before. Is he pursuing
Waldo from place to place, country to
country? Someone must warn our hero.

What is everyone so preoccupied
with at the airport that they miss
the man of the hour right before
them? Perhaps they are experiencing
a collective nightmare of
impending disaster. Who is
Waldo’s pursuer meeting with
at the museum? If only
I could warn Waldo of this conspiracy.
His naϊveté will be his
undoing, as it will be for
each of us in turn.

Why all this travel? We search for
Waldo; but what is Waldo searching
for? Perhaps he is not searching
at all, but running from something.
Does this man even want to be
found? Or, in searching for Waldo,
did we really find ourselves? No,
probably not.

From Warner Herzog Reads Where’s Waldo, 22 April 2010. By Marika Rose.

Freelancing

Freelancing means walking from the West Village
to the Upper East Side and back because
you don’t have enough money for the subway.
Freelancing means being so poor and so hungry
for so long that you “eat” a bowl of soup
that’s just hot water, crushed-up multivitamins
and half your spice rack (mostly garlic salt).
Freelancing is being woken up on a Monday
at eight a.m. by an editor who
gives you the following assignment: “Put
together everything interesting about
all the city’s airports by Friday,”
doing it, and then not getting credit
when it runs … as an infographic.
Freelancing is having your mother send
you a book called $ix-Figure Freelancing
which lists as helpful resources, on page
one nine eight, the dictionary, thesaurus,
and sree.net. Freelancing means your editor
will reject your pitch and then, seven months later,
run the story you pitched—with the same language
as your pitch—and then have it submitted
for a National Magazine Award.
Freelancing is having an editor tell you
that he really loves the story you’ve filed
and wouldn’t change anything, and in fact
suggests you expand upon the characters
a bit—and also cut the story in half.
Freelancing means having to chase down checks
every time, even when that means waiting
two years for one thousand dollars. It means
having stories killed and being told that the
editor-in-chief gave no reason, but
that the same editor would love to work
with you some more.

From Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or, How to Make Vitamin Soup, The Awl, 2 August 2010.