For decades now, scientists at the NOAA have been tracking a mysterious whale song that sounds like the ghostly howls of a drowned tuba player. The sounds have been identified as belonging to a single whale, who sings at a frequency unlike any other whale in the world.
Dubbed “52 Hertz” after the frequency range in which he typically sings, the animal has been called the loneliest whale in the world, since his love songs seem destined to go unanswered. Most other species of baleen whale, such as blue whales and humpbacks, sing at frequencies much lower, between the 15-25 Hertz range.
Yawning in the womb
Fetuses yawn repeatedly in the womb, a new study finds. The reasons are as yet unknown. Are they losing sleep? Are they stressed or overworked? Do they find their limited entertainment options insufficiently stimulating? The researchers suggest that the yawning is linked to brain development, but also admit it’s still a mystery why anyone yawns, before or after birth. It’s safe to say, however, that contagious yawning — something humans share with dogs and chimpanzees — is not a factor in the womb.
Almost all vertebrates yawn, including fish. If the James–Lange theory of emotion is to be credited, yawning reinforces bodily consciousness. Or so suggests the author of a 2006 article in the journal Medical Hypotheses.
Yawning can be seen as a proprioceptive performance awareness which inwardly provides a pre-reflective sense of one’s body and a reappraisal of the body schema. The behavioral consequences of adopting specific regulatory strategies and the neural systems involved act upon attention and cognitive changes. Thus, it is proposed that yawning is a part of interoceptiveness by its capacity to increase arousal and self-awareness.
I like the idea that nascent self-awareness finds expression in yawning. “I yawn, therefore I am”?
Pavor Nocturnus
All night, he said, I’d thrashed and snarled
thick bits of indecipherable language through
clenched teeth; and even after he’d shifted
my unconscious, evidently dreaming body
into another position, whatever its source
would start me up again— In the morning,
limbs aching as if from deep muscle strain,
I tell him I’m still trying to remember,
reluctant to name the same old ghosts
that have come here again to haunt me—
First, the boy my mother hired from down
the street to cut the grass and scrub
the floors, and how he slit gladiolus stems
and yellow snapdragon throats in the garden
from boredom, before turning to me to say
he’d show me how to play doctor; then,
not long after, the uncle whose unexpected
fingers broke into my afternoon naps—
How could you remember something like this,
they said to me years later, implying lies,
invention, refusing to believe a three-
year-old could come to such swift understanding
of how something could untether from the body
suspended within a bathroom’s cold white tile,
climb up the wire dangling the lone light bulb,
out the window, past the twisting trees
to where the thin, high notes of some
small bird beat through the air—
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Canción sin fin
“Paciencia y barajar.” (Patience and shuffle the cards.)
~ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote
Open certain books, and windmills
become giants, most certainly arrived
to take over or worse, defile the earth.
Since no one else apparently sees
the impending danger, you have to be the one
to don your suit of armor, fix the brass
washbasin on your head, hoist the pennant
of your dirty dishrag— Turn the ignition
of your trusty, pre-owned chariot and ride
through fields of goldenrod drying in late
winter light, as birds scatter cryptic
messages in the air. And who’s to say
this isn’t the waking world, after all?
The stakes remain the same: beneath
its newfangled disguises, love; honor,
in a world where it grows harder
to tell the nobleman from the thief.
The story that knighted you, the song
you were given, that you have
to keep trying to sing.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Necessity
Nothing went to waste:
sweetened skins from gourds,
pickled rinds as edible
scherenschnitte. Their seeds,
sprinkled with salt and roasted
on a tray— we cracked them
between our teeth while gossiping
on Sunday afternoons. We snipped
every last button from shirts
rubbed thin at the elbows,
and saved them like coins
in jars. I loved best the ones
covered with lattice strips
of leather— each nubbed
surface, a little luxury.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Thankery
Being thanked is in some ways harder than giving thanks. It can feel a little awkward to be so gratitued. Over-demonstrative hanky-thankery, I think, can seem down-right gratitewd. When it gets to the point where special thanksgivery is required, that’s pure gratefulishness. I mean, just say your peace and sit down — don’t act all thanktified, whether you’re in a thanktuary or not. Otherwise, some thanker management might be in order. Of course, one can expect things to get a little out of hand during a thank holiday, but it’s important to stay thanguine and greetful toward all one’s relatives, however much private thangst one might be feeling. That’s why we feast! It’s all about the gratitouille, the celebration of harvest and plenty — for which, and because of which, we all must be great-full.
Words on the Street
Educational Films
In elementary school, sometimes we would drop everything & watch movies in the middle of a slow afternoon, old educational films from Coronet, Encylopedia Brittanica & Disney. My favorites were the ones with time-lapse photography. A great boat would take shape in minutes as scaffolding expanded like notebook doodles & workers leapt & swarmed as quick as thought. Or the classic: the wonder of a bud becoming a bloom, shedding its petals & swelling into a fruit.
Most educational of all were the rare occasions when the teacher would decide to feed the film back through the projector as she rewound it, so that everything went backwards at high speed. The law of gravity was replaced by the law of levity. We laughed & laughed as raindrops rose from puddles & cars sped through intersections in reverse gear without a single crash. You had to pay attention; everything happened so fast. I saw an oak shrink, furl its first green flags & curl up, the acorn closing around it like a healed wound. I saw a collapsed building rise from the dead, bullets return to their guns like homing pigeons & an ashen cloud condense & give birth to a bomb.
Openwork
How flimsy, this work of wish-making: of knotting
thread after thread to necessity, if only to make
beauty from the awareness of our perishing.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Two years of a poem a day
The Official Website of Poet Luisa A. Igloria:
As these things usually go, I hadn’t intended to do a daily poem “project” when I first wrote this poem in response to Dave Bonta’s Morning Porch post on November 20, 2010. But the experience of making a clearing, right then, right there, and dropping everything in order to sharply focus on nothing else but the immediate goal of writing a poem within a brief window of time, proved to be exhilarating. I kept coming back, and the rest, as they say, is history.
[…]
Two of most important things I’ve learned from my daily writing practice over the last two years have included the following (and the learning, if I might stress, continues): letting go (of the fear of the blank page, of the ego, of opinion, of criticism— Who do you think you are and why are you writing? Who do you think you’re writing to or for? Why do you think others will want to read your crap?); and just using that brief, blessed time to find a way to tune out whatever noise there is, outside or inside, so you can drop quickly down into that part where the you might find the poem and the poem might find you.
Two years of writing (at least) one poem every single day is a remarkable achievement. Congratulations are very much in order… as well as my heartfelt thanks. Via Negativa is much the better blog for Luisa’s daily contributions, and I’m honored to have been able to supply so many useful writing prompts over the past two years.