dugong

If anyone has a dugong photo to share here that would be great. They are beautiful undersea cows who graze on seagrass. In Australian waters they are under threat - especially from developments like unnecessary marinas - plans for which are forever cropping up along the coast.

what Queenie says about the philosophy cow (1)

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-philosphicus.

what is a cow?
an animal
a symbol
a statue
a vocalic
a smooth surface with all the hair going the same way?

an economy
a religion
a politics
a mysticism
an experiment: erste die Kuh, dann Du?

a love object
a lesbian motif
a good meal
a mother
a milkmaid’s best and only friend?

a danger
a lover
a droning sound
a-um
an ocean of milk for all?

a cloud
a constellation
a herd of stars
a word
a voice heard?


is the cow at the limits of my thinking?
what sort of cow am I seeking?
the native cow?
the underwater cow?
the marine cow?
the unseen cow?
the sea-grass eating dugong?
is the dugong a cow because of its shape and size?
or because it is a herbivore?
what happens to dugong dung?


what of intersecting worlds?
the moment when I see the centipede
pulling its hundred legs
over the rim of the wall above my line of sight
ein Blick of another world

the moment when I hear
unspoken histories
genocides
eliminations of the unwanted
every rewriting of history continues that erasure



Ludwig Wittgenstein. 1974. Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. Translated by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuiness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Mahabalipuram minotaur

Five years ago I visited Mahabalipuram and wrote about it in my long poem, India Sutra (which is in The Butterfly Effect). It's strange to revisit a place - the things you do and don't remember. I didn't recall having seen this rock, but when I asked, locals said it had always been there. I imagined that it was unearthed by the tsunami. It was just my memory failing me!



Mahabalipuram dp331

playing ocean and boat
the moon is full
behind a blanket of cloud

sea pounds the beach
waiting for the fishermen
to push off into the surf

the dogs as before
lounge on the sand
curled like coils of net

the same hotel spruced up
beach restaurants
with coloured lights

even the sari-selling woman
is here still plying her trade
five years older some new designs

not much has changed
but on the beach
an unremembered rock

a cow’s head carved
and human hands
minotaur unearthed

labyrinth caved in
no sacred string needed
to lead you out


A few days after posting this I saw a similar image in a book I've been reading called, Devi: The Mother Goddess by Devdutt Pettanaik which is captioned 'Durga attacking the buffalo demon'. This image I've called Minotaur is probably also the buffalo demon. That's not so far from the Cretan story since Theseus could not have killed the Minotaur without Ariadne's thread. Here in India thread is also sacred. It all connects!