Extinction

It's a difficult (but undeniably popular) subject, extinction, with all manner of claims being made about how many species are 'facing extinction' and how many extinctions are happening each year. Consider this - a pretty representative story - and wonder, as I do, what it actually means and how seriously we should take it. Then ponder the implications of this finding, and throw into the mix the fact that all estimates of the number of species on Earth are guesswork - no one really has a clue, and there's probably no way of ever knowing. Every time the more biodiverse and/or less thoroughly explored habitats - rainforest, deep oceans - are examined closely, they yield hundreds, thousands of new species. My suspicion is that we know too little about the natural world to make any kind of authoritative judgments about matters of extinction. The Earth is always bigger and infinitely more complex - and resilient - than we take it for.

Ed, Meet Kay...

This blog doesn't really do Politics (apart from Old Nige's uncannily accurate prognostications, at which markets and empires tremble) - but there's been no escaping this Milliband business. I doubt the Second Coming itself would get more coverage than the elevation to the Labour leadership of 'Ed', a man with the charisma of a tent peg and the appearance of something Aardman Animations thought better of. His lamentable speech proclaimed that 'We're the new generation' (and no doubt, like the Monkees, 'we've got something to say'). It was of course (what political speech isn't these days?) peppered with talk of 'change' and 'vision' and a 'new start'... With all this ringing in my ears, I stumbled into bed last night and sought escape in my trusty volume of Kay Ryan. Opening it I found not just escape but a curiously apposite blast of wisdom. I'll let it speak for itself...

Least Action

Is it vision
or the lack
that brings me
back to the principle
of least action,
by which in one
branch of rabbinical
thought the world
might become the
Kingdom of Peace not
through the tumult
and destruction necessary
for a New Start but
by adjusting little parts
a little bit – turning
a cup a quarter inch
or scooting up a bench.
It imagines an
incremental resurrection,
a radiant body
puzzled out through
tinkering with the fit
of what’s available.
As though what is is
right already but
askew. It is tempting
for any person who would
like to love what she
can do.

Walerian Borowczyk

The other evening The Yard (he may have fallen silent blogwise but he still walks the earth) and I were talking about the film-maker Walerian Borowczyk. This often happens. Borowczyk's weird early films were one of the surer delights of our intensive cineaste days when we would haunt arty cinemas and film clubs, taking whatever they could throw at us. Rather amazingly, Borowczyk enjoyed mainstream success for a while when he moved into feature films (Blanche was especially big over here) but it didn't last, and he gradually sank into making films that were barely distinguishable from standard pornography and were often marketed as such (he even directed one of the Emmanuelle franchise), until he gradually faded from view...
I've all but forgotten those early films of his, but they came back into my mind when I read the latest luminous piece by RetroProgressive Susan and watched the film of that extraordinary automaton. Didn't Borowczyk make some short films of automata? Looking on YouTube, I couldn't find automata as such, but what I did come across was this astonishing and moving piece of work. As you watch it, bear in mind that this was done in the days of celluloid - no digital effects here. As I say, astonishing.

Over there...

I'm in Dabbler Country again - and I should explain that that one was written a few days ago, before the weather took this nasty turn. I'm not so sorry to be in the office now. Might get in and edit it if I can find my way around WordPress or whatever it is...

Some Birthday Thoughts On Mickey Rooney

Today is the 90th birthday of Mickey Rooney, who no doubt has a great many more years in him yet. His enormous popularity - especially with the opposite sex - remains one of the enduring mysteries of the entertainment business. Married eight times, he took as his first wife Ava Gardner, no less - yes, Ava Gardner - Ava, what were you thinking of? Since his first appearance, playing a midget in a 1926 short, he was clocked up 323 acting credits in movies, plus countless TV appearances and appearances as 'himself'. Despite the fact that, since an angel appeared to him in a coffee shop, he has been a 'born-again' Christian, rumours persist that Rooney is actually an emissary of Satan. This, I suspect, is entirely based on his appearance, and he is no doubt a blameless and delightful man. My own theory is that one of his parents was an elf, or possibly a goblin.

Oh Kay!

The more I read of the extraordinary American poet Kay Ryan, the more I admire - actually love - her. I've passed on the odd poem of hers in the past... What I didn't realise was that she's equally gifted - and in much the same way - in prose. Yesterday I came across this wonderfully funny, blisteringly honest and expertly crafted piece of rapportage. Only Kay Ryan could have written this - the spare, wiry style, the tangy turn of phrase, the sharp insight, always the fewest words necessary - but I must say that I wholeheartedly share her aversion to all forms of co-operative endeavour in the 'creative' field. Never was it so well (and generously) expressed.

Real Grapes

I've been enjoying some real grapes - remember them? They rarely turn up these days, when seedlessness rules. Seedless grapes save you the minor inconvenience of dealing with a few little seeds, but there's a price to day - they are also mostly flavourless and juiceless, they feature gristly little bits that are the undeveloped seeds, and they're encased in a tough chewy skin. A real grape, by contrast, is fragrant, thin-skinned and bursting with juice and flavour. It's the kind of grape you can indeed, like Keats, burst against your palate - which leads me to his Ode On Melancholy (see lines 27-28). What a strange and beautiful ode this is, though there's something forbidding, declamatory, almost angular, about it that perhaps explains its relative lack of popularity, compared to Keats's other odes - but what an ending! And now for another grape...