05-30-2021, 11:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-30-2021, 11:16 PM by RiverNotch.)
(05-29-2021, 09:44 PM)TranquillityBase Wrote: It must be hell
to be known to the Universe
as a "living fossil". Full stop.
Then again, maybe not.
I'm happiest when I'm alone
and to be alone on an evolutionary scale Busker's note on "to be" is fascinating -- at first I found it almost unnecessary, with this and the previous line able to be compressed.
crawling peacefully through the cold mud
at the bottom of an oceanic trench
untainted by religion or science
or seldom even a photon, Comma?
I find this and the previous line fascinating -- two ways, so to speak, of seeing a thing, that thing being the basic unit of light, though the focus and terminology throughout betrays a bias towards the latter way. Only perhaps the bias is because religion -- at least, religion as obsessed over in the west -- doesn't have the terminology for it? No "living fossil" or "evolutionary scale" or "oceanic trench" in the Bible....And this bias, of course, along with what's contemplated -- along with "hell" and capital-u Universe and the use of light as some sort of metaphor -- betrays the lie.
ugly but undemanding and begin this line with another "to be"?
with my fins
a parody of limbs Remove "like".
and all my relatives
dead for millions of years.... Again, the lie. I don't profess much kinship with people from, say, two thousand years ago, much less forty-two million, or else by a religious obsession with virtue or a scientific obsession with phylogenetics I don't see them as dead. And it feels....funny....that the fish would see its fins as a parody of limbs, than limbs a parody of fins.
Why not? The question does nothing for me. There's a drive to it, of course, with "happiest" and "peacefully" and "undemanding", but to me there seems nothing but a summary of the piece's last sentence in this ending, a summary that seems to me unnecessary. I'm sure there's an ending to be found that's as captivating as the rest. Or maybe it doesn't need one, considering all the pleasant twists and turns already there.
Oh, another important note:
Coelacanth, not Coelecanth.