https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih Made with a hungry belly. en-us 2017-02-15 19:27:16 UTC 2017-02-17 17:04:47 UTC hello@padlet.com epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154138236  "The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity-it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can."
-Yann Martel

]]> 2017-02-15 19:29:32 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154138236 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154139561  "I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful."
-Yann Martel

]]> 2017-02-15 19:32:39 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154139561 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154632057  "I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe that chops at my heart." 

]]> 2017-02-17 16:34:40 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154632057 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154633988  "Mamaji remembered, Father dreamed." ]]> 2017-02-17 16:41:19 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154633988 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154634801  "You see a low wall. What can you expect beyond a low wall? Certainly not a shallow pit with two mighty Indian rhinoceros. But that is what you find. And when you turn your head you see the elephant that was there all along, so big you didn't notice it. And in the pond you realize those are hippopotamuses floating in the water. The more you look, the more you see. You are in Zootown!" 

]]> 2017-02-17 16:43:41 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154634801 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154636280 " I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it."
 ]]> 2017-02-17 16:47:48 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154636280 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154637877  Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal relations. In theory-that is, as a simple physical possibility-an animal could pick up and go, flaunting all the social conventions and boundaries proper to its species. But such an event is less likely to happen than for a member of our own species, say a shopkeeper with all the usual ties-to family, to friends, to society-to drop everything and walk away from his life with only the spare change in his pockets and the clothes on his frame. If a man, boldest and most intelligent of creatures, won't wander from place to place, a stranger to all, beholden to none, why would an animal, which is by temperament far more conservative? For that is what animals are, conservative, one might even say reactionary. The smallest changes can upset them. They want things to be just so, day after day, month after month. Surprises are highly disagreeable to them. You see this in their spatial relations. An animal inhabits its space, whether in a zoo or in the wild, in the same way chess pieces move about a chessboard-significantly. There is no more happenstance, no more "freedom", involved in the whereabouts of a lizard or a bear or a deer than in the location of a knight on a chessboard. Both speak of pattern and purpose. In the wild, animals stick to the same paths for the same pressing reasons, season after season. In a zoo, if an animal is not in its normal place in its regular posture at the usual hour, it means something. It may be the reflection of nothing more than a minor change in the environment. A coiled hose left out by a keeper has made a menacing impression. A puddle has formed that bothers the animal. A ladder is making a shadow. But it could mean something more. At its worst, it could be that most dreaded thing to a zoo director: a symptom, a herald of trouble to come, a reason to inspect the dung, to cross-examine the keeper, to summon the vet. All this because a stork is not standing where it usually stands! ]]> 2017-02-17 16:52:28 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154637877 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154638194  If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, "Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!"-do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've just evicted would sputter, "With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel." ]]> 2017-02-17 16:53:25 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154638194 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154638799  The cruelty of children comes as news to no one. The words would waft across the yard to my ears, unprovoked, uncalled for: "Where's Pissing? I've got to go." Or: "You're facing the wall. Are you Pissing?" Or something of the sort. I would freeze or, the contrary, pursue my activity, pretending not to have heard. The sound would disappear, but the hurt would linger, like the smell of piss long after it has evaporated. 

]]> 2017-02-17 16:54:59 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154638799 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154640076  And so, in that Greek letter that looks like a shack with a corrugated tin roof, in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge. 

]]> 2017-02-17 16:58:32 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154640076 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154640832  I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. 

]]> 2017-02-17 17:00:39 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154640832 epicskitty https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154641921  We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man. In a general way we mean how our species' excessive predatoriness has made the entire planet our prey. More specifically, we have in mind the people who feed fishhooks to the otters, razors to the bears, apples with small nails in them to the elephants and hardware variations on the theme: ballpoint pens, paper clips, safety pins, rubber bands, combs, coffee spoons, horseshoes, pieces of broken glass, rings, brooches and other jewelery (and not just cheap plastic bangles: gold wedding bands, too), drinking straws, plastic cutlery, ping-pong balls, tennis balls and so on. 

]]> 2017-02-17 17:03:39 UTC https://padlet.com/epicskitty/b6gwaom9q3ih/wish/154641921