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http://www.bettinamay.com/poem/2008/10/the-waking-galway-kinnell.html

"The Waking", Galway Kinnell

What just just happened between the lovers,
who lie now in love-sleep under the owls' calls,
call, answer, back and forth, and so on,
until one, calling faster, overtakes the other
and the two whoo together in one
shimmering harmonic -- is called "lovemaking."
Lovers who come exalted to their trysts,
who approach from opposite directions
along a path by the sea, through the pines,
meet, embrace, go up from the sea,
lie crushed into each other under
the sky half golden, half deep-blueing
the moon and stars into shining, know
they don't "make" love, but are earth-creatures
who live and -- here maybe no other word will do --
fuck one another forever if possible across the stars.
An ancient word, formed perhaps before
the sacred and profane had split apart,
when the tongue was like the flame of the heart
in the mouth, and lighted each word
as it was spoken, to remind it
to remember, as when flamingos
change feeding places on a marsh,
and there is a moment, after the first to fly
puts its head into the water in the new place
and before in the old place the last to fly
lifts out its head to see the rest have flown,
when, scattered with pink bodies, the sky
is one vast remembering. They still hear,
in sleep, the steady crushing and uncrushing
of bedsprings; they imagine a sonata in which
violins' lines draw the writhing and shiftings.
They lie with heads touching, thinking
themselves back across the blackness.
When dawn touches the bed their bodies re-form,
heaps of golden matter sieved
out of the night. The bed, caressed threadbare,
worn almost away, is now more than ever
the place where such light as humans
shine with seeps up into us. The eyelids,
which love the eyes and lie on them to sleep,
open. This is a bed. That is a fireplace.
That is last morning's breakfast tray
which nobody has yet bothered to take away.
This face, too alive with feeling to survive past
the world in which it is said, "Ni vous
san moi, ni moi san vous," so unguarded
this day might be breaking in the Middle Ages,
in the illusion fateful randomness chooses
to beam into existence, now, on this pillow.
In a ray of sun the lovers see motes cross,
mingle, collide, lose their way, in this puff
of ecstatic dust. Tears overfill their eyes,
wet their faces, drain quickly away
into their smiles. One leg hangs off the bed.
He is still inside her. His big toe
sticks into the pot of strawberry jam. "Oh migod!"
They kiss while laughing and hit teeth
and remember they are bones and laugh
naturally again. The feeling, perhaps
it is only a feeling, perhaps mostly due
to living only in the overlapping lifetimes
of dying things, that time starts up,
comes over them. They get up, put on clothes,
go out. They are not in the street yet,
however, but for a few minutes longer,
still in their elsewhere, beside a river,
with their arms around each other, in the aura
earth has when it remembers its former beauty.
An ambulance sirens a bandage-stiffened
body towards St. Vincent's. A police car
running red lights parodies
in high pitch the owls of paradise. The lovers
enter the ordinary day the ordinary world
providentially provides. Their pockets ring.
Good. For now askers and beggarmen
come up to them needing change for breakfast.

I'll bore you with my own little tale of getting caught in this kind of shit. A few friends came into Vegas a few years ago and we parked ourselves square in the center of the Strip and Flamingo. 12 hits, the fire works go off and everyone starts moving again. But by now we're packed, in, and getting more and more compressed. It's fascinating to me to see a relative relation to other forces in nature. You ever been out in the ocean? Because when that surge hits, it's like you're getting carried off on a wave. No control.

Long story short, a tragedy that could have been easily prevented, on all accounts, had people THOUGHT.

WOw, I never knew this existed.

http://www.tv.com/ferris-bueller/show/200/summary.html for more details.

Parker Lewis, yeah! Pink Flamingo HS!

Las Vegas should have a flamingo buffet.

Book review from Publishers Weekly:

A brilliant and important exercise in exposing the limitations of received opinion, this book presents to the lay reader and specialist alike an exhaustively argued case that animals have multiple shades of sexual orientation.

The book is broken into two sections, the second containing species "portraits" detailing recorded homosexual/transgendered behaviors. The main portion of the book sets out to reveal and, indeed, revel in the documented evidence to date that some 450 species engage in both sustained and occasional "gay," "lesbian" and transgendered pairing, parenting and play. Animals (both heterosexual and homosexual) also rape and divorce, commit "child" abuse and infidelity and can be lifelong celibates.

Human claims to uniqueness in this arena are shown to be increasingly difficult to maintain. The overall effect is to detonate the myth that animals are solely driven by heterosexual reproductive urges, as Bagemihl, a biologist, amasses evidence with case study after case study of species ranging from whiptail lizards to bottlenose dolphins, flamingoes, vampire bats and giraffes.

But his book offers more than a zoological laundry list. Biologists who have long classified these behaviors as taking place only in "abnormal" conditions or as "pseudo-copulation," "mistakes," "practicing" and domineering sexual bullying are frequently shown to be willfully ignoring behavior that does not reflect their own worldview or accepted scientific thought.

What might so easily have turned into a tub-thumping activist tract hitched to the need for acceptance of homosexuality among humans is instead elevated to a hugely inclusive, celebratory biological interpretation of the world. Bagemihl convincingly overturns previous inviolable "truths" that scarcity and functionality are the prime agents of biological change, and advances instead the idea that abundance and extravagance ("biological exuberance") are just as crucial to the mosaic of life. Numerous illustrations by John Megahan.

>> ^rottenseed:
it's stupid and unnecessary in my opinion. I really don't care if it's there or if it's not.

Hey, thanks to your featured comment I learned that ALL Europeans hate us because of our lawn flamingos. That's news you can use, brother.

I still think the Featured Member Comment is cool, but maybe it needs some more tweaking. Also (I believe it was ant who first suggested it), maybe registered members should be given the option to hide this feature if they elect to. Maybe that will encourage more people to become members, just so they don't have to read about choggie's nipples (also a Featured Member Comment once, I distinctly remember).

BTW, check out how many times choggie talks about nipples.

Inspiration for this, no doubt:
Fantasia 2000 - Flamingo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BmkAh_1SmQ

Vote up for the best movie from fantasia 2000..

...after the flamingos

Ok, thats a first. I have never seen a baboon catch a flamingo

The redneck's yard flamingo......

the soundtrack goes perfect with the generic subjects these kinda wood-carvers do...
eagles in fight and bears....(that is the song in Windows Media Player when you download it)
How about one with a succubus manifesting herself in a nightmare...or a beaver with a miner's hat......or a B-29 banking at 90 degrees.......

Go pelicans!
Um Tony they are flamingos..

Kinda reminds me of the music in old Lucasarts DOS Star Wars games. BTW, would you call that a hot pink, or more of a flamingo pink?

i wish the visuals were stronger too.

After viewing and posting Happiness in Slavery, I wanted to put something dreamier up.

and that Flamingos song never disappoints

Waters for sure.... although I can only handle so much divine, and the jury is still out on whether or not Pink Flamingos is actually art.

Some coordinates of cool stuff on Google Earth (not in order and some extras):

Indian Head - 50° 0'38.20"N 110° 6'48.32"W
Mayan guy: 19°56'58.08"S 69°38'2.25"W
Lady's Head - 50° 0'36.09"N, 110° 6'35.17"W
Swastika Building - 32°40'37.25"N, 117° 9'22.02"W
White Building - 25°57'0.39"N, 97° 8'48.34"W
Giant bug: 48°51'28.95"N 10°12'17.88"E
Korean Ship: 35° 9'18.21"N 129° 8'51.37"E
Bomber= 52°20'10.98"N 0°11'43.17"W
Hovering car= 32° 0'42.88"S 115°47'10.97"E
Firefox crop circle: 45° 7'25.87"N 123° 6'48.97"W

BUFFALOES: 4°17'21.49" S 31°23'46.46" E
CAMELS: 15°17'40.32" N 20°28'47.42" E
ELEPHANTS: 10°54'13.66" N 19°56'06.15" E
FLAMINGOS: 21°50'36.15" S 35°27'00.60" E
HIPPOS: 6°53'53.00" S 31°11'15.40" E
6°54'00.10" S 31°11'11.67" E
ORYX: 24°57'18.60" S 15°51'30.61" E
SEALS: 18°26'45.45" S 12°00'44.20" E

Bonus:

Kitty in a bottle:

28°27'13.48"N, 96°20'54.23"W

How to find odd places on Google Earth:

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/

http://www.googleearthcoolplaces.com/

http://www.gearthhacks.com/