Ohne Umschlag

Well, regarding the last post... it was so la la.

Yesterday, however, saw one called "The Secrets" which was the best I'd seen so far....
It involved religion, an all-female seminary school, sadomasochism, art, rituals, and the intellectual vs. emotional. One of those films that makes one want to try to become Jewish. Two girls. A seminary school. A murdereress. Disease and hospital scenes. Purification rituals. Girls in bed. A realistic ending. I'd endorse that film. After that was a spot of dancing. It's funny here, well it happens all the time but I still find it funny... how everyone knows everyone else somehow.

Today was orange pants day, for moving stuff and then sorting it out and hooking things up to other things. Then a six-mile walk in the woods on a multi-use trail... a peachy sunset through the trees.... I heard the trees are all red, orange, and gold in CO... aha, now I know what season it is. They're all green here. Green and lush and rainforesty... but in the pacific northwest, one notices the markings of changing seasons by the arrival of the pumpkin spice latte, I have come to believe. Every so often, there was a rustle in the underbrush as though a snake thought about venturing onto the multi-use trail, before its ancestral imprintings warned it away; I am quite certain that many snakes have been smashed by bike tires there. That's where all the nutsoid bicyclists go past in flashes of spandex, but taper off into the evening. It is, however, still possible to envision oneself in a different country at a different time while traipsing along.

My theory is that the new baby elephant, Samudra, has two moms. I looked it up, and supposedly a full 45% of sexual behavior among asian elephants in zoos is homosexual behavior... one part may be that the elephants of different genders are kept in different places. Well, okay, that's according to Wikipedia's "homosexuality in animals" article. Samudra's mother, Rose, spends most of her time with Chendra, and the three of them make such a sweet, protective family together. Chendra seems to have taken on many childcare tasks. They run around in a little pod together in which Samudra is completely esconced from the public eye. And there certianly is a public eye to be had: one must wait in a line filled with screaming, wandering, bumping-into, ceaselessly questioning, small children with their parents. Then one has about 10 minutes to see the elephants before the appointed elephant guards usher one away. The zoo here has some other good animals, I have not been to one in about 15 years and it was interesting to go. But I would never ever ever go again on a Saturday.

At times, I've had the sense that sometimes professors like to play shakespearean games... for example, the game of the witches who pass the eye around. So that when one goes other places, or other countries, they passed the eye from one to the next to keep an eye on one, before passing it over to the next one. Auge auf, gut aufgepasst. Samudra must sometimes feel like a watched pot with these three female elephants paying such close attention to him, but much better that than the media, I think.