I

“Auf dem Fliegenplaneten”

Auf dem Fliegenplaneten,
da geht es dem Menschen nicht gut:
Denn was er hier der Fliege,
die Fliege dort ihm tut.

An Bändern voll Honig kleben
die Menschen dort allesamt
und andre sind zum Verleben
in süßlichem Bier verdammt.

In einem nur scheinen die Fliegen
dem Menschen vorauszustehn:
Man bäckt uns nicht in Semmeln
noch trinkt man uns aus Versehn.

—By Christian Morgenstern

II

It's a well known fact that Hellboy loves kittens—Clay says “He has a thing for cat,” he saves a box of them at the subway station, they run wild through his room/apartment/chamber, and Liz remarks, “Look at 'em all. Who had babies?”—but my own appreciation of cats these days is mainly a vicarious one. When ana and toxicfur came to town I was ashamed that I couldn't offer the same level of hospitality they'd provided: one dog and two cats (hey, that scratch healed!).

Last night after watching the movie again I heard some of the most disturbing screaming and screeching and tortured sounds I've ever encountered. While visiting a friend in Manhattan I had opportunity to ponder a few sounds from the comfort of her under-cooled and over-priced apartment, in particular the grunts and screams that could have been either from someone being assaulted in the alley below or from a screamer's idea of the sweet moans of ecstasy. When the soundtrack repeated night after night I concluded the latter. I could time time for bed by them. In college, I missed the local screamer, one of the only other majors in my field, while I was abroad the semester her escapades made the rounds at the breakfast table. In these Morningside Heights back alleys, though, with apartments on most sides, a chorus of echoes turned one couple's nightly pleasure into a symphonic orgy.

I live in a quiet neighborhood. A block and a half or two further west live younger people, students even, but I can't hear their parties. A block north is a popular street, but I hear nothing from there, either. During the day and down the block at the playground I hear children at play and teens and adults shooting and dunking basketballs. But otherwise it's quiet, only the wind and the birds. A tad pastoral.

So I'm done with the movie, reading bits of Metaphysics and British Empiricism by Robert L. Armstrong (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970)—the press has or at least had its own little logo up front (not a colophon), a line drawing, a tad abstract, that could almost be a wire insect or an insane road map with dots at intersections to indicate cities and towns. Upon further consideration, I think it's a plow—and I hear rabid, baritone mewing, then the sound of something crying as if you're just talking and suddenly someone twists a giant corkscrew into your gut, yanks it back and forth, and you try to keep talking. A gang of kids armed with broken bottles beating up another in a midnight mugging.

Moving to my kitchen window, I listened and listened and could not decide whether it was a dog mauling a cat, a raccoon and a cat or dog, a raccoon and the squirrel mafia? I couldn't tell. Was it in the tree, on the lawn or in the shrubs? I don't know. Two minutes later the battle ended and the cries—and the animal?—died.

Back in the 9th grade we drove one Saturday to an autumn soccer game and when we were between Eagle and Cloverdale on Overland a car passed us, coming the other way after hitting a kitten. We kept on driving—in the traffic there wasn't much else to do—but as we drove past I saw the cat—its neck broken, its head plastered to the asphalt—flopping around, waiting for another car to come by and finish it. A furry fish out of water. But inside the car reigned silence but for the hiss of air conditioning.

III

“At the Housefly Planet”

Upon the housefly planet
the fate of the human is grim:
for what he does here to the housefly,
the fly does there unto him.

To paper with honey cover
the humans there adhere,
while others are doomed to hover
near death in vapid beer.

However, one practice of humans
the flies will not undertake:
they will not bake us in muffins
nor swallow us by mistake.

—Translated by Max Knight