My reaction: "Birds don't have dark reasons." You might have read that as if I were saying, birds are, in fact, thoroughly virtuous. I should have allowed for darkness, at least, in some birds. What about Poe's "Raven" or the albatross in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? But it was more a matter of choosing to talk only about the possible dark side of birds, because that's all Miller brought up.
If the Glamour bird's motivations are unknowable, how does Miller know they are dark? Maybe Miller thought of that question and threw "largely" into the sentence as a quick fix. I don't know much about the mind of Miller, but I read it to think: I don't know much about the mind of the bird, but I do know this: The one called Glamour has dark reasons.
In the comments tcrosse said, "Why did the chicken cross the road? For some dark reason?"
We thought that was a very funny line and laughed about it before we went out for the sunrise. Driving home in the sun, we saw an odd bird standing in the road, then 2 birds. The light side of birds was demanding attention. Baby sandhill cranes just had to cross the road.
Why? No reasons at all. Never any reason.
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38 ટિપ્પણીઓ:
At least they tried to cross legally in the crosswalk…😏
To peck out some eyes, pitilessly. Which are of easy access, unprotected by skin, scales, or feathers. Also a good source of protein, omega 3, and mostly retinal, needed for vision and scarce in the food chain.
Why'd the chicken go halfway across the road?
She wanted to lay it on the line.
Boys Life 1964
The Albatross by Charles Baudelaire:
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8506083-L-Albatros--The-Albatross--by-Charles-Baudelaire
We have 2 cranes and 2 babies in my neighborhood. They cross at the crosswalk. Some lady was so engrossed in her phone that until they were almost on top of her did she react. It was hilarious! I said what I say to everyone who’s crossing the street near me “Get your face out of your phone. Pay attention!” (I’m an annoying, old lady jerk!)
And just to be clear this time I wasn’t worried about HER getting hurt I was worried for the babies getting hurt!
To peck a patch of dark raisins.
I live in a place dominated by many different species of birds. Birds are shitheads…
Birds are shitheads…
You're looking at the wrong end.
A bird will fall dead drunk from a tree without ever having felt ashamed of itself.
"At least they tried to cross legally in the crosswalk…😏"
Yeah, before I started the video, I mentioned "Abbey Road."
"Reason?"
"REASON!!??"
"I don't need no stinkin' reason!!!!"
Ann Althouse said...
"At least they tried to cross legally in the crosswalk…😏"
Yeah, before I started the video, I mentioned "Abbey Road.”
All the birds want to be like Paul McCartney and not wear shoes.
"At least they tried to cross legally in the crosswalk…😏"
Illegal crossings are limited to the jays.
"the possible dark side of birds, because that's all Miller brought up."
I don't read that as Miller's intent. I read "dark" as referring to our inability to understand their actions; that is, we're in the dark about them.
This is the type of peak Althouse post that is wonderful to read on a Sunday. Morning.
I am reasonably confident they sing to get laid.
Three Little Birds
Birds don't have dark reasons.
Crows crossing the road to peck the eyes out of baby sheep is pretty fucked up. Does that count as a dark reason?
I just read about that in relation to uninformed environmental regulations in the UK. The article was primarily about free-range horses in Devon, England.
I read "dark" as unlit not as malicious.
The reasons are unseeable and unknowable.
I have had much the same thoughts watching our local stellers jays. Raven thoughts, having watched them a lot. Are indeed sometimes just purely malicious, for a laugh or a bother. Ravens are the trolls of the forest.
yesterday an owl was on my back patio. squashed in a buddha pose, wings extended and resting on the tabby. I thought he might have killed something and was standing on it to suffocate- they do that. Nope, just sunning itself. I startled it when taking a video and it flew off…
Yesterday there were 5 or 6 turkey and black vultures perched on the roofline of my barn. For dark reasons. Went out and found a deceased doe in the dry watercourse in the woods behind the barn. The vultures are working on it. I appreciate it because otherwise things will get very stinky very fast. But it is kind of creepy.
My wife informs me that a group of perched vultures is called a "committee." Someone has a sense of humor.
In what sort of world do we question the motives of a chicken?
I have to go with grimsom, like The Dark Ages, though I guess we are not supposed to call them that anymore.
This post and its comments prompted me to bring up Adrian Belew's "I Am What I Am."
I first thought about posting the lyrics, but it's very long. I can if people are interested, or folks can just Google it (or ignore it, most likely, whatever).
Althouse said…
“ I should have allowed for darkness, at least, in some birds.”
I say that every Thanksgiving.
“If the Glamour bird's motivations are unknowable, how does Miller know they are dark?”
Because it’s the same thing. He could have said “unknown and largely unknowable”, but likes a little variation in his adjectives. Nothing sinister implied.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Great minds have wrestled with this question for centuries. The Harvard Physics Department has a web page with the answers that have been proposed by prominent scientists. Samples:
Albert Einstein: The chicken did not cross the road. The road passed beneath the chicken.
Erwin Schrodinger: The chicken doesn’t cross the road. Rather, it exists simultaneously on both sides…..just don’t peek.
Galileo Galilei: The chicken crossed the road because it put one foot in front of the other and took a sufficient number of steps to traverse a distance greater than or equal to the road’s width. Note that the reason is not because the earth is the center of the universe. Oh, great… another jail term.
I guess that the reason we are not supposed to call The Dark Ages "The Dark Ages" is because of the same misinterpretation of the word "Dark"
It looks like Miller was using "dark" the way Borges did, as a synonym for "obscure".
It has been argued that the reason so little happened during the Dark Ages is that “the three centuries between roughly A.D. 615 and 915 never existed at all and are ‘phantom’ years inserted into the calendar during the early Middle Ages”.
Eh. Plausible. Not proven, but there is apparently archeological evidence.
In Miller’s defense, it was a metaphor. He was neither asking why birds act as they do nor imputing motivations for birds in general. He was poetically claiming that glamor is bestowed by a mixture of factors which are poorly understood giving the appearance of a dark selection process. He was perhaps hinting that glamor is not deserved by the recipient.
The issue is never the bird, the issue is always the revolution.
“ This post and its comments prompted me to bring up Adrian Belew's "I Am What I Am."
Blatant plagiarism from Popeye.
"Plausible. Not proven, but there is apparently archeological evidence."
Oh, come on!
Well, of course they're in the crosswalk. They're cranes, not jays.
Arthur miller was really into birds. Here are three quotes:
"A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime." (Death of a Salesman)
"The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost."
"Birds must be really brave to live out here. Especially at night" - Misfits
Don't usually see baby cranes without their parents. Perhaps something dark and awful happened to their parents. Perhaps they are Lyle and Erik Menendez of the Crane World. Maybe there's more to a crane's life than we know.
More bird quotes from "View from the bridge:
"It’s terrible! We stand around all day in the piazza listening to the fountain like birds"
"If I take in my hands a little bird. And she grows and wishes to fly. But I will not let her out of my hands because I love her so much, is that right for me to do?"
Cranes, like all birds, walk somewhere because:
A) they think they'll get food
B) They think they'll get shelter or to their nest
C) They'll be more safe
D) Hot chicks
E) dark and unknowable reasons.
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