online: 2 september 2006
modified: 2 september 2006

27 august 2006 music loud / slugs silent


16:17 forest, sunday afternoon... too dark to write (the screen of the handheld is not visible when reflected sky light is blocked by trees)...

16:27 i find a seat with access to sky light in an ornamental park surrounding a mansion...

...on my way here i walked out of the forest to ascertain the source of loud music (amplified female voice and drums) audible over most of this city forest and park... it came from the enclosed garden of a large house several streets away... i am surprised that no one in the other large houses nearby seemed to be objecting to its loudness... and i wondered yet again at this predominance of Afro-American music, world wide... it's popular among the rich as well as among the poor and the oppressed (from whom it is taken)...is it that most people dislike the industrial culture... and that jazz (and its derivatives) express this as a lively but non-violent rebellion... or sadness?

...today i've been re-reading Walden and now i wonder what Henry David Thoreau* would think of the popularity of the music of the slavery that he opposed?

...while i wrote that, four brown slugs (which were gathered together on the mud beneath my feet) moved each about 20-40 cm in different directions... timing one (which seems to be moving at full speed!) i see that it moves at about 3 cm a minute...

...looking further under the seat i see three more slugs - they seem to be attracted to the discarded wrappings of some kind of sweets...

...i don't think i've looked closely at slugs since i was a child - when my father used to pay us to catch those that were eating the lettuces and peas that he planted...

...observing their eyes on retractable stalks, and the slow heaving of their bodies, is (i see now) as fascinating as ever...

...and the slugs are soundless!



*Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Signet Classic, New American Library, New York 1960, twenty-seventh printing, first published 1854.



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