Do monkeys risk Human Pox? bet they do. Bet we are a major reservoir for nasties to be visited upon the rest of the biosphere. Host to pestilence, yes, that sounds like us. Hospitable to a fault. But enough of guilt. Back to being a victim. A victim of the tick. Dog tick and black leg I think. Its hard to tell even with the microscope. They don’t tell me. By the time I get them they are well sedated. Thanks to garlic, bane of vampires (and ticks too it seems), they are compliant when I pry them off my skin. Thanks to garlic the little bastards don’t bite (unless trapped in clothing) and can be pried off without removing a divot of epidermal turf. The five grams a day I ingest is good protection but I still put pant cuffs into sox. They don’t know about the garlic until they jump onto me. I’d rather they wait for the next fool. Anyhow, as of yesterday when a medium sized tick came off my midriff, the collection for this spring is five. I keep a roll of transparent tape handy and attach them side by side, forever at attention. They are immobile and might be alive for a while, not sure. If so, they’ve time to ponder what they’ve done and how just it is that their fate has been sealed…in plastic.
They say the monkey pox isn’t as bad as the Corona thing. Not as virulent or life threatening. We shall see. It seems to be spreading around the world and here in Los Estados no Unidos. All the worry, however much there ever was, has been squeezed out of me by now. You wana nuke me, go ahead. You wana bite and Lyme me, have at it. Life is really out in the garden. The predator and the prey among the weeds and flowers all under the weather and subject to fate’s tender mercy. Would you rather a cruel fate or a random fate. Cruel is more human. Random is difficult, for computers anyhow. Finite state machines just can’t do it, its not in them. A lava lamp and video camera comes close they say. But fate? Proving randomness (ie fairness?) in the actions of fate would be difficult.
In the middle of north America another week brings another atrocity. The all too familiar slaughter of innocents. There is a parallel with the global risk of a scaled atrocity with tens or hundreds of millions of innocents. Same behavior by the same human types. Nukes or guns are not the problem as gun and nuke wielding patriots rightly point out. My favorite prince (Hamlet, of Denmark) identified the problem four centuries ago.
The stamp of one defect,
Being nature’s livery, or fortune’s star,–
Their virtues else–be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo–
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault:
When so many have guns and too many have nuclear launch authority even the one defect is too much. Maybe random virtue like random fate is kinder to us. Just one fault is enough and humans with only one are rare. Keeping nuts away from guns and nukes is impossible and keeping nuts out of societies somehow even more impossible. The particular fault seems to be a feeling of victimhood. Putin and the kid in Texas getting even for ill treatment. Down out of the trees and on the savanna but the same vicious monkey at heart.
A check of the weather and maybe a motorcycle ride on the coast. A visit to one of the light houses. A sojourn thru the pines along the shore. There is a microbrewer with a view of the islands south of Owl’s Head. Maybe some meditation there.
Go out and enjoy, where ever you are. Our time is finite and short. Ciao
CSB 