Essay for Tao Lin re "Marina Abramović, “The Staring Woman at MoMA”" re "The Artist is Present".

Dear Tao Lin, here is my “essay”, which I wrote quickly and did not edit (much) for typos and grammatical mistakes:

Tao Lin wrote a “humorous piece” about Marina Abramovic’s art piece at the MoMA, “The Artist is Present”. “The Artist is Present” is a performance art piece in which Abramovic sat in a room at the MoMA everyday from March 14 to March 31 and stared at museum guests. Guests to the museum would sit across from Abramovic for a duration of their choosing, and stare at Abramovic, who would stare back. (“The Artist is Present” isn’t really a staring contest, though if you were at the MoMA during the exhibition you could treat it that way. You could sit across from the present artist and stare with all your might. You could fight the blinks. She would blink first or you would. Depending on the outcome you could scream “YOU LOSE!” or “I LOSE!” Then you could walk away.) Lots of people showed up to this thing to stare at this woman. There was a live internet video feed of all the starers, many of whom cried (as in “boo-hoo” not “AAAAHH!”). (Honestly, after I read about the art piece, I thought I’d just recreate the art piece throughout the rest of my day, by looking at people. Whenever I looked at somebody and they happened to look back, BAM, impromptu and unannounced art. Little bits of art everywhere, masquerading as little bits of social awkwardness.)

Tao Lin’s “humorous piece” isn’t really about “The Artist is Present” as much as it is about his and his friend’s considering to go to the art show, attempting to go a couple times, but ultimately not going. In the “humorous piece”, most of Tao Lin’s saga of trying to go the art show is related to the reader via Google chat transcripts. Really, the “humorous piece” reads just like an entertaining blog post: the main thing that seems to set it apart from a blog post is its not appearing on a blog. This is OK. I unabashedly like that contemporary fiction of the sort created and published by Tao Lin is blending form with available story-telling media, like blogs and Gchat. (All my quoting the words “humorous” and “piece” so far, incidentally, has been non-ironic; I only quote the words because they are what Tao Lin refers to the piece as within the piece itself.)

The situation gets better though. The reason I am writing this “essay” about Tao Lin’s “humorous piece” is because he posted on his blog a solicitation of readers to write and “essay” about his “humorous piece”. If you write such an “essay”, say Tao Lin, he’ll send you a copy of one of his books. I really want one of those books and so I’m writing this. I unabashedly like that Tao Lin is inviting critical/non-critical/creative/non-creative/scholarly/non-scholarly responses to his “humorous piece” in this way, with a straight-up book bribe.

I like the form that Tao Lin adopts in his writing and I like his straightforward self-promoting for pretty similar reasons. Maybe for the same reason. I like them because, by being straightforward and intuitive, they appear to flout some kinds of arbitrary and unfounded social norms about the nature of creative literary production. There is a cultural expectation that literary creation stick to some guidelines governing form and content, and that literary production stick to some established conduits for delivering writing from writers to readers. But there is no reason that “literature” needs to have plot, themes, morals, or even clearly stated projects. It can have these things, and it might benefit from any or all of the above, but it’s not a rule. And there is no reason that “literature” needs to be accessed by “readers” via things like Barnes & Noble. The facts are that we’re just a bunch of people writing and reading stuff for a multitude of reasons; we write and read for information, for kicks, for emotional enrichment, for understanding of the world, for the sound of it, for the look of it, for no clearly stated reasons at all; but whatever we decide to write “counts”--we can argue over whether our reasons for reading or writing are the best or are worthwhile, but I don’t understand calling one thing literature and another not based on its sticking to some arbitrary, inherited set of reasons for reading and writing stuff. So there.

It’s funny, though. Given my kinda-sorta-more-or-less pluralist position on literature, as just stated, you’d think I’d be all for “The Artist is Present”. It flouts some apparently established rules about artistic practice and accomplishes something kinda novel in the process, and has gained some cultural currency in doing so. But something about “The Artist is Present” rubs me the wrong way. It’s fishy to me. I think what I mean by “fishy” is something like “seems posturing and disingenuously trying to be thought as profound when really it’s just a gimmick”. I can’t help but even feel this fishy feeling about the guests who sat across from Abramovic: how many of them cried just because they want to appear to be emotionally involved in something intense? So go my suspicions. But do I have any ground, given my almost total toleration of Tao Lin’s unorthodox style and means of self-promotion?

Here’s one way I could defend myself in this position. Yes, I can like that Tao Lin’s stuff, and stuff like it, exists, and, simultaneously, consistently, feel fishy about the success of “The Artist is Present” (how do you like all the commas in that sentence!?). The nature of my evaluation of each is a little different, in a few different ways. First, my position towards Tao Lin is a (kinda sorta more-or-less) thought-out position, whereas my hunch about Abromovic is a hunch, a feeling, a suspicion, to which I do not necessary commit myself but nevertheless admit to having. (I actually have just now spent like an hour watching stuff about her art project(s) and now feel a little less of that suspicion, but I’m going to keep writing as if I didn’t just do research and still had my unformed suspicion about her work). But lets assume I did just say “Tao Lin’s work and behavior regarding it is a-okay; Abramovic’s is no-way-jose”; I still think I could do this. There are a few things to evaluate with each artist and their work: the thing they did, why they did it, whether they succeed in doing the thing they meant to do, how they deal with the thing they did as an object in the world and why they deal with it that way; how people respond to the thing they did.

Tao Lin wrote a “humorous piece” that blends a couple unorthodox means of literary expression (Gchat, e-mail, first-person creative non-fictiony sprawl, etc.); he intended it to be funny, and probably a little interesting in it’s own right, but probably not really deep or meaningful or earth-shattering (I am guessing a bit here); he succeeds in being funny and interesting (I laughed at a couple points during his gchatting; I laughed when he said he thought Abramovic looked like she should exist as a NPC in “Diablo II”; I laughed when he kept “bleeping out” the [subplot] in the story, AND I found it interesting too because now I want to know what the [subplot] was (I think Tao Lin should write a very short “humorous piece” as a supplement to the one he just wrote, where the [main plot] of it is the [subplot] from this one--like behind-the-scenes features on a DVD: THINK ABOUT IT TAO LIN (Or, he should just e-mail me what the subplot was about to satisfy my curiosity)); other things struck me as funny in a way that didn’t make me laugh but nevertheless should count as funny because lets be honest lots of things are funny but don’t make people laugh, including just the very notion of Tao Lin’s project (short “humorous piece” about thinking about but not going to an art exhibition), its self-referential moments; other stuff); he bribes the internet at large with his books if they will comment on the thing he did--this must be done knowingly, both with an honest desire to self-promote, sure, (which is funny) and a straight-up understanding that it’s just fun/funny to go about it that way (I like this bit particularly for the reasons I cite way up above: Tao Lin isn’t sticking to some cookie-cutter way of creating his art or in treating his art as a product; he’s just doing his thing, man); people probably are responding to Tao Lin’s “humorous piece” as a mildly enjoyable “humorous piece”, but not going gaga about it. When all is said and done, Tao Lin’s thing is a clever little thing that has every right to exist in the world and which I think is kind of fun and I’m happy I spent the time to read.

Abramovic put on a piece of “performance art” where she stares at people who stare back; she probably meant it to be pretty meaningful/deep/passionate/vulnerable/thought-provoking/communicative or something else pretty heavy/intense; I don’t think she succeeds at that: I think it’s a clever gag, staring at people in the MoMA, but I can’t see too much past the gimmick of it--don’t get me wrong, I love gimmicks, but I love them when they are executed as gimmicks and understood as gimmicks--the thing that really bugs me is when people employ gimmicks as something deep/profound/emotional/whatevs: (incidentally, have you noticed how out of control my punctuation has become? I think it’s because i’m listing these long things with semi-colons, but then don’t know exactly how best to indicate with my punctuation all the side-comments/subordinate clauses/extra info/etc that I want to express in the process of doing that without breaking up the list; however, now I’m just enjoying going crazy with my punctuation and will probably start deliberately misusing it) what she does appear to succeed at is executing a clever little gag on a large MoMa-RAMA-sized scale, and snowing a lot of people into thinking it’s way more than it’s cracked up to be in the process; blah blah; most people who respond to her work appear to be impressed by it’s depth and meaning and etc--lots of people--for instance--cried while staring at this--woman----this bugs me too, because I think they are reifying some worth/meaning in the art piece and end up being a little--silly--in the process--I wish that everybody just thought it was a fun way to pass the time, thinking about the boundaries of art, thinking about people, thinking about what it is to be stared at, just enjoying the physical act of staring into somebody’s eyes, etc., instead of getting all weak-in-the-knees about a woman staring at people. So, I don’t mind the art project as an object or experience or performance, but I do mind its particular instantiation in this world and the way everybody appears to be treating it (THAT SAID, remember that I recently went and researched the project a bit and now feel, a little, like it isn’t as much of a failure--though, honestly, the fishy feeling abides).

So there it is. Evaluating the two things at length shows how they’re really different in nature and also that I’m taotally entitled to like Tao Lin’s stuff and behavior but be suspicious of Abramovic’s stuff and behavior. I admit that both are kinds of art, but when it comes to the latter I think it fails in what it tries to do and I am suspicious whether what it’s trying to do is worthwhile in the first place, whereas with Tao Lin’s stuff I kinda-sorta get the idea, I think, of why it’s fun/worthwhile, and I think he succeeds in what he tries to do, and so I’m all for it.

P.S. For anybody reading this who doesn’t like the F-Word and is thinking of reading Tao Lin’s thing, WATCH OUT.

Excerpta.

The following excerpt is from a paper from one of my 6th-grade students, about his Spring Break.

I learned three things from this trip. First, going on an airplane is very tiring. Second, don't eat lobster without the butter. And finally, a trip to New York is AWESOME!!!!!

Another essay of his, about a field trip on a 19th-century ship, concludes as follows:

From this experience, I learned three things. First, cleaning is basically torture in disguise. Second, never eat oatmeal without brown sugar. Third and last of all, never sleep next to Derrick's STINKY socks!!!!!

Last Thursday, April 22nd: A Rush

It was 2:30, fifteen minutes before I had to exit my car, walk to the after-school program, and instruct some gifted (and some not-so-gifted) Asian kids in the ways of grammar, reading, writing, and vocab. It was cloudy, even a little rainy.

I decided to take stock:
- Hours earlier, my car's alternator had just been repaired and my car's battery had just been replaced, at (what to my bank account felt) exorbitant price. I borrowed money from more than one person that day to pay for it. But I had my car, and it was running. It wouldn't stall in the middle of the road again like it did the night before. Okay.
- I didn't want to teach the kiddos right now, but didn't hate the idea. Okay.
- Right at six, I was to leave the after-school program immediately after I was finished to safely make it up to Rancho Cucamonga, where I was to go to an open interview. At Anthropologie, the clothing store. (A couple weeks earlier I had helped to put together a new Anthropologie store in Canoga Park and had done well at the job--this was my 'in'.) I. need. money. I must be quick to get there on time. Okay.

It was 2:35. Ten minutes. Still drizzling. I decided to set my alarm and nap. Nine minutes later, worried I overslept my alarm, I got up and checked my alarm, which hadn't gone off yet. I get out of the car, school materials in hand. I simultaneously push the door softly, quickly closed and see that my keys are lying on my driver's seat.

"Oh My God Why God."


Class went quickly. If there's one thing I can say in my behalf as a human specimen, it's that I have a keen sense of when I can't do anything to solve a problem. And when I sense I can't do anything to solve a problem, I leave that problem alone until I can do something about it.
Break-time came and I called Brianna. Brianna Safe is one of my closest friends. She has an AAA card I hoped to use.
After break-time was over, I went back to teaching, serenely and quickly enough. We read a story in class. I explained the meaning of the word "conscientious".
After school, while waiting for Brianna, I tried for thirty minutes to open my car door with a coat hanger. Calm like a bomb. "Must go fast." "Must try anything to speed up process." "Please work, hanger."
Nice effort, but a failure.

AAA opens my car.
Peace out Bsafe, gotta go.

It was 7:00. SPEED TO INTERVIEW. IN CAR. ON FREEWAY.
During this part I kind of lost my cool, I admit it. Maybe I don't have much to say for myself in the human specimen department after all. I swore in the car. I drove aggressively in a way I don't usually appreciate from others. I swore to myself loudly. I calculated possible routes aloud. I felt guilty for speeding. I felt guilty for not going fast enough. I swore at traffic lights loudly.

7:45. I pulled into a parking lot at Victoria Gardens. "Still time--the interviews were supposed to be anytime between five and eight. I should be fine."
Metered parking. I had two dimes--like nine minutes' worth. "Think, you panicking fool." Should I risk getting a parking ticket? "Think." I saw a blinking meter: it had seventeen minutes on it. No car parked there. I moved mine there and used my dimes.
My tie flapped as I ran.

7:46. In front of Anthropologie.
I double-check the sign on the door to make sure I got the time right:

"Open Interviews:
April 29th, 5pm-8pm"

April 29th. 29th.

I turned around. As I walked back to my car, my smile beamed uncontrollably.

A poem I haven't named (yet?).

There were probably eight of us in the choir,
and I thought I had the best voice
even though the older men could sight-read better.
No one but the choir director, and maybe his wife,
will remember the anthem we sang that day.
Some of the anthems are in Latin,
but I'm pretty sure this one was English.
No one will remember my voice, strong and conjectural.
That's not to say that either the anthem
or my voice
aren't worth remembering--
but the anthem only happened once
and my voice was one good voice
in a group of okay voices,
most of which sight-read better.

Who can remember anything good
when it isn't spot on
and when you only catch it once.

I remember the priest's weekly singing
before the eucharist.
Everyone remembers it.
It's strange to think to myself that my voice
is better than a priest's.
But he was the weekly singer. His song was the ceremony,
and the ceremony was to ask something of God.
I remember the organist's weekly giving
the priest his starting note,
and some weeks forgetting to give
him his starting note.
That giving and forgetting has got to be
part of the ceremony.
The choir director's wife's ceremony
was discreetly to take off her shoes
when she sat with the choir.
I could see her toes beneath her nylons.
Some people didn't have ceremonies,
apart from the liturgy itself.
I liked those people.
They were part of the liturgy,
without their own littler liturgies.
I don't remember them,
but I remember the liturgy
and I remember the movement they gave it.
They'd walk past me after the anthems,
on their way to kneel for the wine.
I looked at each one of them,
and I forget them now.
And they forget my voice.
But we all remember that every week
the priest sang to ask something.

I forget the anthem.
But we sang it. We sat down.
And I looked at each person
walk past me toward the wine.
I watched the kids walk past me
toward the wine.
They didn't have crafts in their hands that day.
I watched them kneel
and squirm and poke each other.
And the lay minister, thick glasses,
crouched down and took their wafers,
dipped them in the wine,
and with steady hand made sure
each little mouth got its share.
Little bodies sprawling in front of his steady hand--
but the bodies they couldn't control
couldn't break his focus.
He wasn't smiling at them because they were kids.
He wasn't smiling or frowning at the kids.
Little souls, little understanding
the liturgy or his hand,
but the souls they couldn't control
couldn't break his focus.
"The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ."
"Heartbreaking", I said.

I've decided to go to Tufts. If all goes aright, I will be studying there in five months.

Dr. Dog: Shame Shame

Dr. Dog's new album, Shame Shame, is out.

MGMT's Congratulations

Yes yes yes. MGMT's next album leaked. Listen to it here.

Virginia Tech for the win.

I just got an e-mail accepting me to Virginia Tech's Masters program. I am on a waitlist for funding.

So far I've been accepted to three of the four places I've applied:
NIU
Tufts
Virginia Tech.

Now I'm just waiting to hear from CUNY, the one PhD program I applied to.

Why did I apply to these schools? Let me tell you.

I studied philosophy at Biola University, a small private school that is not well known. Accordingly, my professors recommended to me that I apply to terminal Masters programs to use as a stepping stone from my small school, at which I did well, to a top-notch PhD program.

According to the Philosophical Gourmet Report, which is more or less respected as authoritative on the matter, Tufts is the top terminal M.A. in philosophy in the U.S. So I applied there. They have a few professors who are doing neat things in philosophy of language and philosophy of logic. (Though, this guy left for Harvard this year, which is sad.) (They also have the famous "bright" Daniel Dennett.) After Tufts, PhilGourmet ranks a little group of schools as having good M.A.'s; so I searched through those to see whether any of them did stuff I was interested in. NIU had plenty of folks doing work in metaphysics (not magic crystals metaphysics; more like the Aristotle kind); Virginia Tech folks doing philosophy of science and logic.

I applied to CUNY because of their emphasis on logic, and because they aren't ranked so prohibitively high that I'd have no chance of getting in. Though, even if I do an M.A. (which would put me in a better position to get into a really good school) I will re-apply to CUNY in a couple years time anyway, because all that I've read of their program really does make me like it and want to be a part of it. I want to go here. The professor that drew my attention to CUNY is Graham Priest, who is awesome.

In other news, still no job.

Jacques Brel: Je ne sais pas

Also: I'm in love with Jacques Brel, and this video.



To see the video with decent English subtitles, go here.

Videos of a talk.

Here's a couple videos of a lecture by Graham Priest, now a professor at CUNY (which I'm still waiting to hear from whether they've accepted or rejected me). In these videos Priest gives a very intuitive and straightforward summary of Gottlob Frege's work. It's really cinchy to understand, but gives you a good understanding of the basic terrain. Enjoy.

Life's deliverances persist.

I still don't have a job. Still looking.

But I just got accepted to Tufts for a Masters in Philosophy.

If there's one thing Hasbro's Monopoly has taught me, you have to take Chance cards as they come. The same goes for Community Chest cards.

A couple stipulative definitions.

hu (pronoun): used to refer to a person of unspecified sex.
hut (possessive adjective): belonging to or associated with a person of unspecified sex.

----------------------------------------

Ben Rohrs may have made up "hu"--I remember discussing it with him years ago. I have just made up "hut". I have used a "t" to finish this word as a way to distinguish it from "hu" without making it too closely associated with either "his" or "her".

The proposed words above, if added to the English lexicon, should obviate much trouble experienced when writing academic papers in which one is to describe persons in the abstract, and wants to avoid both the ungrammaticality of "they" and the general awkwardness of "his or her", without falling into linguistically sexist tendencies.

Toodle-oo.

I wrote the following on December 31, 2009:

It is the last day of the year, and I have just walked from Colorado and Pasadena to Colorado and Lake, and back.

Already by 2pm today the south side of the street had been exhaustively divided by masking tape on the sidewalk into 4x10 sq. ft blocks of 24-hour realty. Sometimes this property was adorned by the names of its proud, territorial inhabitants; sometimes they were actually fenced off. They were staging areas for folding chairs of every shape and color, a surprising profligacy of mattresses, and gads of people people people. Most people played games: according to my personal field research, these games included, but were not limited to, monopoly, sorry, chess, checkers, texas hold'em, solitaire, scattergories, operation, dominos, risk, and mah jong. Some people read books, some played musical instruments, many from a sweeping assortment of socio-economic/cultural groups blasted inexcusably bad music. Some people drove "tricked out" automobiles. Some people took shelter from the maddening crowds from behind restaurant windows, out of which they gazed back at those maddening crowds into which they would soon be subsumed. Oregon, Ohio, and Jesus were all well represented--most seemed to be rooting for Oregon. Some people sold cotton candy, some sold hats, some gave hats away. People moved together until hardly perceptible as individuals. People spoke in ambient noise. It was a complex network of trajectories, attempting to navigate the maze it composed.

A stone's throw from Colorado and Lake I found what I was looking for: a used book store, to which I had been months before. Or, more specifically, a book I had seen months before, within said store. It had waited for me: "The American Language" by H.L. Mencken. There were majestic old volumes of both the text itself and its 600-page supplement. I may have salivated. The temptation was strong. I felt the weight of the large black volumes in my hands as I weighed mentally the magnitudes of my desire and my penury. I could not justify purchasing the expensive books, and did not. Instead, I will continue to aggrandize my desire, which has grown beyond the simple want of an object, and, feeding on itself, has become, in addition to mere desire for some erudite text, a desire for its own satisfaction. There is pleasure to be had in my snowballing covetousness, the gradual accretion of which is delightful pain, promising to me, as it grows more difficult to endure, greater pleasure in its eventual fulfillment. As I left the bookshop, I winced and inhaled through my teeth, savoring the delay.

On my way back, threnging through the throngs that had chosen the streets of Pasadena for their year's birthplace, I was impressed less by the mass as a single phenomenon, and more by its components. I saw a portly security guard, guarding a door, asleep on his feet; I saw two very young children, just older than babies, pretending to play monopoly; I saw a young woman toting freshly bought art supplies, including a 5x5 ft frame; I saw a boy playing an xbox that was connected to a big screen TV and powered by a rumbling engine that could have belonged to a jeep from the earlier half of the 20th century; I saw, and heard, two boys blaring horns at every car that passed, especially the cop cars; I caught a girl checking me out.

I made it back to the coffee shop from which I began--my feet ache of payment, my shoulder of a full book bag; my mind dwells not on the year behind me, but on the burgeoning present, as it seems always to do, and perhaps must do. Thus will I let another year die, most of it lapsing unnoticed.

A poem.

I wrote this poem, like it, and now post it.

The James Wright mentioned in this poem is the poet, not my father

Now I get what James Wright means
when he mentions the delicacy
of a girl's wrist.
I got it when I saw her lift her tote bag,
the straps wrapped around her index finger
and her thumb,
like rings.
I imagined circling her wrist with my index finger
and my thumb,
like a bracelet.
And I imagined her turning her palm upward
delicately,
adjusting slightly her bracelet,
my hand.

E-ri-e Canal by Burl Ives

I have been listening to this song on repeat.

If you can make me rich, do not hesitate.

The felt absence of gainful employment is almost, perhaps, as bad as its felt presence. The principal, infuriating bother of a job, had or not had, is having to pay any attention to it. Jobs, like driving, are to be condemned because they make a chore of one's mental life.

There is probably nothing I cherish so much as my own free-wheeling thoughts, left to themselves--but it is precisely these which the duty to scrape for hourly pay and the nuisance of changing lanes aim to destroy. And they tend to succeed in their aims. It is not the strain on my body or my time that I cannot tolerate, but the taxing of my mind, my whole mind.

But, as I say: not having a job does no work to solve the problem. After two weeks of delightful, idling indigence, I am obligated by threat of insolvency and the nagging nags of loved ones to fill out my share of applications, and make my personal contribution to the working force. He does not want it, but in addition to my man-hours, the man shall take, free of charge, my very soul.

I am not surprised that so many refuse the life of the mind. I cast no contempt upon one who retreats from thought to television, when thought consists of solicitude over one's credit score.

What could you do for a million dollars?

A week ago I asked my brother if he thought he could make himself to believe that a given ordinary object were in a sealed box simply upon my asking him to, and he said he could: he would trust my testimony. So, if I said "Jeff, believe that there are scissors in this box", he thinks he could believe it, just like that. So he claims.

Then I asked him if he thought he could make himself to believe, for a million-dollar reward, that a given ordinary object were in a box, after my having opened the box, clearly showing him that nothing whatsoever was in the box, and then sealing the box in his presence. A million dollars to believe that scissors are in a box he had plainly seen moments before to be empty. He thought he could do it.

He said he would have to really lie to himself--deceive himself into discrediting the evidence that I'd just presented him with.

Then I asked, "what if you had to shake the box up and down?" That got him.

A reply to Dillard.

Read this bit from Dillard today:

Once, when the pond was younger and the algae had not yet taken over, I saw an amazing creature. At first all I saw was a slender motion. Then I saw that it was a wormlike creature swimming in the water with a strong, whiplike thrust, and it was two feet long. It was also slender as a thread. It looked like an inked line someone was nervously drawing over and over. Later I learned that it was a horsehair worm. The larvae of horsehair worms live as parasites in land insects; the aquatic adults can get to be a yard long. I don't know how it gets from the insect to the pond, or from the pond to the insect, for that matter, or why on earth it needs such an extreme shape. If the one I saw had been so much as an inch longer or a shave thinner, I doubt if I would ever have come back.

How do such parasites get to the pond, you ask? Let me help you out, Dillard. The internet has an answer: they turn their insect hosts into zombies.

Read all about parasites turning insects into zombies here, courtesy of Scientific American.
Watch a video of hairworms going all 'Dawn of the Dead' on crickets here, courtesy of the French internet.
Play a cartoony video game based on this biological premise here, courtesy of Nitrome.

Here's another little passage from Dillard that I dog-eared because it made me laugh aloud, not because it also mentions hairworms (but it does mention hairworms for those of you waiting to read any and all sentences about them).

Along with intricacy, there is another aspect of the creation that has impressed me in the course of my wanderings. Look again at the horsehair worm, a yard long and thin as a thread, whipping through the duck pond, or tangled with others of its kind in a slithering Gordian knot. Look at an overwintering ball of buzzing bees, or a turtle under ice breathing through its pumping cloaca. Look at the fruit of the Osage orange tree, big as a grapefruit, green, convoluted as any human brain. Or look at a rotifer's translucent gut: something orange and powerful is surging up and down like a piston, and something small and round is spinning in place like a flywheel. Look, in short, at practically anything--the coot's feet, the mantis's face, a banana, the human ear--and see that not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He'll stop at nothing.