November 27, 2010

• this penguin slides from right to left at snoring he seems vastly deft great blocks of ice this bird will vanquish who travels far with frozen fish
• Me and penguins go way back. (Blatant Self-link) (Follow-up) (Related penguosity) Going back even further, my most pleasant memory of one ex-GF from my dating days was her referring to her collection of plush penguins as "Ursula K. LeGuins" which has colored my reading of the author ever since. I mean, just try visualizing the characters in "The Left Hand of Darkness" as flightless waterfowl.
• Works for me. ;]
• Watch penguins (they're Gentoo) at Edinburgh Zoo.
• Magellanic Penguin Pablo Neruda Neither clown nor child nor black nor white but verticle and a questioning innocence dressed in night and snow: The mother smiles at the sailor, the fisherman at the astronaunt, but the child child does not smile when he looks at the bird child, and from the disorderly ocean the immaculate passenger emerges in snowy mourning. I was without doubt the child bird there in the cold archipelagoes when it looked at me with its eyes, with its ancient ocean eyes: it had neither arms nor wings but hard little oars on its sides: it was as old as the salt; the age of moving water, and it looked at me from its age: since then I know I do not exist; I am a worm in the sand. the reasons for my respect remained in the sand: the religious bird did not need to fly, did not need to sing, and through its form was visible its wild soul bled salt: as if a vein from the bitter sea had been broken. Penguin, static traveler, deliberate priest of the cold, I salute your vertical salt and envy your plumed pride.
• Ah, yes, the game. My grandkids loved it. (Me, too!)