Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are.   1963. Wild, indeed.

  Through the dim forest came Liane the Wayfarer, passing along the shadowed glades with a prancing light-footed gait. He whistled, he caroled, he was plainly in high spirits. Around his finger he twirled a bit of wrought bronze—a circlet graved with angular crabbed characters, now stained black. By excellent chance he had found it, banded around the root of an ancient yew. Hacking it free, he had seen the characters on the inner surface—rude forceful symbols, doubtless the cast of a powerful antique rune . . . Best take it to a magician and have it tested for sorcery. Liane made a wry mouth. There were objections to the course. Sometimes it seemed as if all living creatures conspired to exasperate him. Only this morning, the spice merchant—what a tumult he had made dying! How carelessly he had spewed blood on Liane's cock comb sandals! Still, thought Liane, every unpleasantness carried with it compensation. While digging the grave he had found the bronze ring. And...

As of today, all lifeforms shall be equal in the eyes of the law.  Mammals only.  The Avian delegate above has not been located since the ceremony, fears abound. Art by Steve Davis    https://www.instagram.com/sdavis.howdy/  

 "Society proscribes certain means of competition detriment to its own survival.  Thou shalt not kill has been a social proscription written not just into the Judeo-Christian commitments but into the commandments of virtually every human community on earth.  Unwritten but understood is a comparable clause in the social contracts of monkeys and wolves, of gulls and hyenas; it was understood by the armies of Joshua:  'Thou shalt not kill, - except members of other societies". Robert Ardrey, The Social Contract.  1970. We finally had a nice day after all our cold weather.  I enjoyed feeding the birds while walking around in the cool, dry sunlight, I don't do well in the winter and almost felt joyous.  It sure is good to be alive, um hmm.  I stubbed out a cigarette and threw cold herring into the pelican pen. One group of birds that I don't have much to do with are the raptors.  I'll occasionally walk Rocky the one eyed hawk but I n...

Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost at his house in Berkeley Square, And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair— A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away, Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way: Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and cease, And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds the keys. "Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high "The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die— "The good that ye did for the sake of men on the little Earth so lone!" And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as the rain-washed bone. "O I have a friend on Earth," he said, "that was my priest and guide, "And well would he answer all for me if he were at my side." —"For that ye strove in neighbour-love it shall be written fair, "But now ye wait at Heaven's Gate and not in Berkeley Square: "Though we ca...

 Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively. In order to make my point understood without question. I have no words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, is a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysyllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences. And that’s why I’m here now waiting for Denny to come home—he should be here soon—lying on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor in a puddle of my own urine. I’m old. And while I’m very capable of getting older, that’s not the way I want to go out. Shot full of pain medication and steroids to reduce the swelling of my joints. Vision fogged with cataracts. Puffy, plasticky packages o...

      Hi Guys! I didn't think it was possible, but I found I found a nineteenth-century children's book author who's as nasty as Dame Dingle !  You might recall that I've posted several of DD's stories right here on Hybrid !  If you want to refresh your memory , just enter "Dame Dingle" in the handy Hybrid search box !  Anyhow, today's offering is Pauline and the Matches , by Aunt Grumble !   This is another McLoughlin Brothers classic from right around 1870 or so.  The idea is to teach kids not to mess with matches , but you can tell that Aunt Grumble is loving how this story turns out ! Hey, hold on , you might ask -- what's anthro about this poo-poo ?  Well, I'll tell you !  See, there's these kittens that act kinda like a Greek Chorus .  That means they just kind of show up and point out what the main character is doing wrong !  Check it out and you'll see what I mean !     Man, that's tough !  But A...

 

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The ringing of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and gray, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms,e...

He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different. There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. Niggle lost interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of h...