[MD] Coyote sings to the hive-mind

[John Carl]

"November 9, 1980


Early in the morning I hear coyotes singing again, callin the sun.  There's
something about the coyotes that reminds me of Henry.  What is it?  After a
moment, the answer comes.


Most evenings at twilight, the coyotes come stealing in from the desert to
penetrate the suburbs, raid garbage cans, catch and eat a few cats, dogs,
and other domesticated animals.


When this occurs the dogs raise a grim clamor,roaring like maniacs, and
launch themselves in hot but tentative pursuit of the coyotes.  The coyotes
retreat into the brush and cactus, where they stop, facing the town, to wait
and sit and laugh at the dogs.


They yip, yap, yelp and howl and holler, teasing the dogs, taunting them,
enticing them with the old-time call of the wild.  And the dogs stand and
tremble, shaking with indecision, furious, hating themselves, tempted to
join the coyotes, run off with them into the hills, but ...


afraid.


Afraid to give up the comfort, security, and safety of their  housebound
existence.  Afraid of the unknown and dangerous.


Thoreau was our suburban coyote.  Town dwellers have always found him
exasperating.


'I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere , in shops and
offices and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to be doing penance in a
thousand remarkable ways.... By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity,
they are employed, as says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth
and rust will currup and thieves break through and steal.  It's a fool's
life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.... I
sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous.... As if you could kill time
without injuring eternity.'


Oh come now, Henry, stop yapping at us.  Go make love to a pine tree (all
Nature being your bride:.  Lay off.


Leave us alone.


But he will not stop.


'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.    What is called
resignation is a confirmed desperation.... A stereotyped but unconscious
despair is concealied even under what are called the games and amusements of
mankind.  There is no play in them.'


There is no play in them.


As many have noted, the mass of men  -- and women -- lead lives uf unquiet
desperation.  A frantic busyness (business) pervades our society wherever we
look -- in city and country, among young and old and middle-aged, married
and unmarried, all races, classes, sexes, in work and play, in religion, the
arts, the sciences, and perhaps most conspicuousy in the self-conscious
cults of meditation, retreat, withdrawal.  The symptoms of universal un-ease
and dis-ease are apparent on every side.  We hear the demand by conventional
economists for increased 'productivity'.


Productive of what?

For whose benefit?

To what end?

By what means?

At what cost?


Those questions are not considered.  We are belabored by the insistence on
the part of our politicians, businessmen and military leaders, AND THE
CLAQUE OF SCRIVENERS WHO SERVE THEM  that 'growth' and 'power' are intrinsic
goods, of which we can never have enough or even too much.


As if gigantism were an end in itself.  As if a commendable rat were a rat
twelve hands high at the shoulders, and growing.


As if we could never have peace on this planet till one state dominates all
others."


Ed Abbey, Down the River



 - emphasis added for Krimel's benefit by yipyapping John