.

details


today, an unprecedented
visit to a St*rbucks-bookstore
led to some randomly chosen
literature and a small table
near the back under a big
red wall of names, and while
trying to stir Neruda's thoughts
into a cup of vanilla latté
(peppered with a little cinamon),
I unintentionally tore the poem
I was writing, my gel grip unibel
black fine tip marker grazing
a little too hard, haste and
friction dragging a brown
paper napkin across its
promise (of 100% recycled
fibres) and inadvertently
ripped a hole in my words;
this gap of a distraction led
to another divergence, to
a book with colour plate
photos of Adelié penguins
nesting near a South Pole,
this in stark contrast to
the whiz of a nearby expresso
machine, but after a clerk
confirmed the $29. 95 book
jacket price on Meredith
Hooper`s hardcover version
of The Ferocious Summer
to be Canadian, I sipped
and sank into random
paragraphs that described
various penguin behaviours,
thinking how great it would
be to spend time in the
Antarctic for the sake of
sitting next to them and
watching them from day
to day, becoming familiar
with their individual
personalities along-side
the biologists who study
them, and when I finally
closed the book, David Suzuki`s
endorsement on the cover
stated;

"Like canaries in a coal mine,
penguins present an undeniable
and urgent warning of the devastating
effect of climate change on the planet.
This timely book must be read."

(Copyright 2008 by Greystone
Books, Vancouver B.C.)

... and this is when Bill McKibben's
turn of phrase came to mind, his
"end of nature" plea which heralds
t/his time in human history as
technologically catastrophic to
the "Natural World", his heart-felt
words always overlaid by my
reverence for birds, and all of
this a momentary oasis in an
otherwise busy-peopling place,
and it was there, taken from
the brow up, that I remembered
an expression someone once
shared with me, one that I've
since pondered long and hard,
and one that has ultimately
added yet another layer to his
overall mystique (if I can call it
that, or, more likely, the aura
of his distance), his curious
'the devil is in the details'
expression which I still
ponder ... what currently
constitutes 'details', or rather,
how do we assign value to
those seemingly simple things
we simultaneously acknowledge
and dismiss?

like Deleuze's notion of the Sorcerrer;.

"becoming-animal always ... a pack,
a band, a population, a peopling,
in short, a multiplicity."

... a Lord-of-the-Flies kind of Devil
sans religious dogma, not taken too
seriously by anyone from day to day
perhaps because 'it' sits "independent
of the population it appeals to or
takes as its witness", perhaps
because of its ubiquitous presence
in our lives, the Devil in the daily
taken for granted like wild birds
and beasts, that it is always there,

quite harmless until we pay it
some attention, and if every
animal contains a pack, a faceless
mob, (as Deleuze suggests), this
is what his becoming-animal
means and if so, does it also
define his fascination for the pack
(ie. for multiplicity)?, his notion
of becoming-animal as a desire
for (control of) the outside?

but does his notion of a
pack-becoming reduce animals
to a swarm of socially inferior
forms and faceless entities? if so,
D's irony lies in the involution of
his Devil as a desire to occupy
seats of power by proliferating
'contagions, epidemics, battlefields,
and catastrophes'.

... perhaps the antithesis of D's
Devil-notion is not some abstract
idea of Go(o)d (theological or otherwise),
but rather, pertains to the fringe,
represents the Loner, is someone
who stands apart from the pack in
anomalous alliance with something
Unique, as poet, artist, musician,
inventor, seeker, is anyone who
sits on the edge of their own
deterritorialization as if to maintain
a borderline view of self, is a
counterpoint to the peopling
notion of a Deleuzian Sorcerrer,
and if this appears to be a
misreading (or half-reading) of
Deleuze & Guattari, perhaps it
is my disagreement with their
Memories of a Sorcerrer (ATP),
with the way D&G misrepresent
animals by reducing them to
the dichotomy of pet-or-pack,
and all this sits in stark deviation
to my simply-Friday vanilla
latté with its stirred-up images
of icebergs and penguins
perched at the pole, coupled
with an enduring desire to
see them up close, to prove
each one's individuality and
to erupt the notion of the
faceless pack we trap them
in, and all this to indulge in
a little week-end thinking
without the restrictive
pressure of philosophical
borders, but most of all,
is a desire to travel to the
edge (however surreptitiously),
go south-to-the-extreme
and come back again.