Pilgebump’s Weblog


King Crimson, “Eyes Wide Open” dvd, circa 2003

Trophallaxis for Troglodytes

And now, ahem…, a formal exposition behind the title assigned to this glob, er blog. (Ah, who the hell cares?)

First, a definition. Quothing the infamous Wikipedia Galactica…
“Trophallaxis: is the transfer of food or other fluids among members of a community through mouth-to-mouth (stomodeal) or anus-to-mouth (proctodeal) feeding. It is most highly developed in social insects such as ants, termites, wasps and bees. The word was introduced by the entomologist William Morton Wheeler in 1918.”

This is what bloggers seem to do. They feed on the information in their environment. Then they spit it out, perhaps partially chewed, for some other blogger to snarf up on, and so on, or not. Or maybe they chew it up good all by themselves, then crap out whats left after they’d had their way with it – the beasts, and the bloggers that like to schnarf up crap will do so, hereby beginning a new cycle of trophallaxis.

As for troglodytes, well, I can tell you, at best, my ancestors probably didn’t start walking upright until they were damn well ready. They saw other folks doing it, but it just seemed like a kind of fad at the time. They wanted to tell them this. Explain to them that they were being tools of trendiness. But trendiness was so new at the time, there were no words for it. This is when the Trogs, as I like to call them, came up with a special chant, and it goes a little bit like this…

Wild Thing
You Make My Heart Sing
You Make Everything Groovy
Wild Thing



outside

goldfishoutside

there is a stone

the color of the evening sky

it disappears into the night

as the sound of rain

stretches into the future

a bird

a heron is fishing for his dinner

seeing through reflections

brighter than he is

for that sustaining pulse

the heartbeat

that feeds the stomach

the surgeon of the night sky

restores dead things

with the power of sound



monkey mind
February 11, 2009, 6:24 am
Filed under: Images, Mind, Words | Tags: , , , ,

monkey2as1Like a marble rolling down a hill
I found the place I’ve settled in
I’m here, but easily dislodged
by vibration
the temporary home I see
walls at times folding in
as good a place as any
but not what conjures rest
or reflection, or comfort

flavor bud living
as Captain. B once said
but then again,
if this roll was too cozy
I might fall asleep, again

I brought you unstructured ornaments
that could not be repeated
no matter how much I wanted to
rendered insubstantial
by their irreproducability
where was my follow-up?
where was the framework?
I had never been here before
a monkey at my typewriter

this is what my new home will look like
something I’ve never seen
but familiar



Trophallaxis for Troglodytes
September 14, 2008, 1:30 am
Filed under: Words | Tags: , , ,

Vainglorious.

No, this is not about the Greek electronic music composer.

I am not a morning person . I’m not a night person either.  I’d say I’m a 5 minutes somewhere between breakfast  and lunch person. Though I know not everybody eats breakfast or lunch.  I should have said morning and noon. Anyhow, if I can get in my 5 minutes of  personhood, then I have accomplished what I am capable of.  It has been awhile since I have done that. Yet I continue on, only mildly daunted, knowing that somewhere sometime along the way I will receive that reminder of why I am.

The world is turning constantly. Hurtling through space. An oasis of possibility. Blink, and then it is gone.

Words lie. People lie. People use words to lie. Words cannot really describe the truth. When I try to describe the truth with words, I end up lying. No way around that. The best we can do is perhaps just a lie of omission. Leaving something out. Because it doesn’t fit our version of the truth. Maybe its just something that we conveniently don’t remember. Or maybe we do, but we are so good at reshaping the truth to fit our lies that we can effectively ignore some things, almost as if they don’t exist. It is in this half-way realm between truth and lies that words carry us.