Mysoon

magpie robin
inspects the raindrop
on its wing

-

Clear and present duty

Jaanta hoon sawaab-e-taa’at-o-zahad

Par tabeeyat idhar nahin aatee

-Ghalib

Is there anything as perfectly designed to bore you to death and make you drum your heels in defiance and explore all other avenues of temporal occupation as the inescapable knowledge of what constitutes your present duty? Dear God, grant me some subuddhi before it is too late and I am sunk in a mire of guilt.

Doors of perception

There must be dozens of anthropology or behaviour science papers about this, skulking away in the ungoogle-able recesses of the internet, but I only began actively thinking about the evolutionary significance of the size of doors about an hour ago.

We have a cat that lives around us. This cat has had kittens and in the routine moving around they do en famille, one of their favourite pit stops is under the car. I was getting antsy because I have already sacrificed a brake fluid filter/pump (?) to the previous batch’s socialisation. I was thinking that it must be a bit cramped under there but also that they would be at a distinct advantage if I tried to crawl under to try and shoo them. So much easier to fly at my face.

From that, I started to think of all those animals and birds that chose to live in homes with impossibly tiny openings. Animals that will squeeze into minuscule burrows in the ground, crawl under rocks, birds with humongous tails that will undertake all manner of acrobatics to get into nests that have openings that are two inches lesser in diameter than their heads. One part of my brain is thinking “yes, yes, predators”; the other is wondering about this…what do I call it... gene for discomfort. Surely they live disproportionately uncomfortable lives for the degree of safety they are able to achieve on an average? In most cases, say, the snake’s jaw, the monkey’s paw, or the fox’s snout, are all counter-evolved to defeat these tiny stratagems. But it seems the less comfortable they are, the safer they feel.

Next of course I am thinking humans. Through societies, ancient tribes and modern urban cityscapes, almost evenly, we find that the humblest members live in small homes (even where space or building material are not a constraint) and even more significantly in homes with doors which they themselves have to stoop to enter. Small doors don’t keep out wild animals or more powerful humans. So it has to be a psychological need. Is it then an atavistic need in the insecure to be holed up? Is a small door a symbol of sociological submission, a crotch-covering device perhaps? Big doors of course are a symbol of power. Palaces and mansions have big doors, attention-seeking doors even. But of course they are always guarded. Security, guards or electronic anti-invasion devices – even the big man needs his defences. Who then is the king of the jungle in humankind? One who can live with open doors? Live without doors? Without walls perhaps? Without a sense of self to defend?
Do we diminish our minds with worry and fear to feel safe? Do we narrow the entryways to secure whatever little we think we already have? Perhaps we do. Of course we do.
Who is the predator?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Mind
Richard Wilbur

Man in his purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

_