In places dark and deep rests a monster, and that monster is the culmination of those people who blame innocent creatures for the misfortune of having been introduced by we humans.  Instead of blaming us, the very guilty parties responsible for bringing invasive lifeforms to every corner of the globe, the monster seeks to shun and punish nature’s children for the sins of another species.

I admit my mood of late has plummeted into the depths of despair.  Should that be the only reason for culling my blogroll, so be it, for this action rests entirely upon those whose work I have enjoyed immensely but who as people delve to the very depths of hatred by reviling the beauty of the world simply because that beauty is not native, as though the interloper must carry the burden of what foul deeds we perpetrate.

Think a European starling is disgusting?  Think a musk thistle represents the ills of the universe?  Think a nine-banded armadillo must be abused and mistreated?

What vile fiends you are.  What ghoulish characters on the page of life you have become.

Not one invasive species can be blamed for its whereabouts.  Not one of them can be accused of unnatural behavior.

But people can.  And people are to blame for those invasive species, for the creatures only doing what nature built them to do even if those actions occur in an alien environment.

Yet so many “naturalists” are actually “purists,” cretins who feel nature can only be appreciated when it’s native in the habitat in which it dwells.  And not one of them—NOT ONE FUCKING ONE OF THEM—deigns to accuse people of any harm, but instead they badger and abuse and curse the lives of flora and fauna that would not be there were it not for the greatest virus our planet has ever seen: people.

So I’m purging my blogroll.  I’ve seen some of these people allow their dogs to torment armadillos before they themselves abused the creature; I’ve seen some of these people wish death upon an entire species of bird simply because we humans introduced it to their area; I’ve seen these simple minds express disgust at the sight of nature’s wonders only because that same person’s forefathers brought that life here to North America and let it invade the continent.

I say the disgust is misguided, the torment misdirected.  Want to blame the progenitor of all your ills?  Point those bony fingers at yourselves, at your ancestors, at the infestation of humanity that carries with it the extinction of innumerable species.

For only humans have caused extinction.  No other creature ever, in any time, in any place, has ever brought about the complete destruction of another species.

Yet I don’t see you taking offense with that…

Pathetic.

“Die achte Elegie” (“The Eighth Elegy”) from Duineser Elegien by Rainer Maria Rilke (called Duino Elegies in English).  The title of this selection is “Mit allen Augen sieht die Kreatur” (“The creature gazes into openness with all”).  That profound darkness I find myself in at the moment somehow becomes me within this text, finds me shivering in the darkness and holds me unto the curling of the ends around me as a blanket wraps a babe…

The creature gazes into openness with all
its eyes. But our eyes are
as if they were reversed, and surround it,
everywhere, like barriers against its free passage.
We know what is outside us from the animal’s
face alone: since we already turn
the young child round and make it look
backwards at what is settled, not that openness
that is so deep in the animal’s vision. Free from death.
We alone see that: the free creature
has its progress always behind it,
and God before it, and when it moves, it moves
in eternity, as streams do.
We never have pure space in front of us,
not for a single day, such as flowers open
endlessly into. Always there is world,
and never the Nowhere without the Not: the pure,
unwatched-over, that one breathes and
endlessly knows, without craving. As a child
loses itself sometimes, one with the stillness, and
is jolted back. Or someone dies and is it.
Since near to death one no longer sees death,
and stares ahead, perhaps with the large gaze of the creature.
Lovers are close to it, in wonder, if
the other were not always there closing off the view…..
As if through an oversight it opens out
behind the other……But there is no
way past it, and it turns to world again.
Always turned towards creation, we see
only a mirroring of freedom
dimmed by us. Or that an animal
mutely, calmly is looking through and through us.
This is what fate means: to be opposite,
and to be that and nothing else, opposite, forever.

If there was consciousness like ours
in the sure creature, that moves towards us
on a different track — it would drag us
round in its wake. But its own being
is boundless, unfathomable, and without a view
of its condition, pure as its outward gaze.
And where we see future it sees everything,
and itself in everything, and is healed for ever.

And yet in the warm waking creature
is the care and burden of a great sadness.
Since it too always has within it what often
overwhelms us — a memory,
as if what one is pursuing now was once
nearer, truer, and joined to us
with infinite tenderness. Here all is distance,
there it was breath. Compared to that first home
the second one seems ambiguous and uncertain.

O bliss of little creatures
that stay in the womb that carried them forever:
O joy of the midge that can still leap within,
even when it is wed: since womb is all.
And see the half-assurance of the bird,
almost aware of both from its inception,
as if it were the soul of an Etruscan,
born of a dead man in a space
with his reclining figure as the lid.
And how dismayed anything is that has to fly,
and leave the womb. As if it were
terrified of itself, zig-zagging through the air, as a crack
runs through a cup. As the track
of a bat rends the porcelain of evening.

And we: onlookers, always, everywhere,
always looking into, never out of, everything.
It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses.
We arrange it again, and collapse ourselves.

Who has turned us round like this, so that,
whatever we do, we always have the aspect
of one who leaves? Just as they
will turn, stop, linger, for one last time,
on the last hill, that shows them all their valley – ,
so we live, and are always taking leave.

[something perhaps more creative from me tomorrow, or the next day…  perhaps…]

When I ran out of money near the end of last month, I feared my own stupidity was responsible: too many charges without paying attention to what was in my main account.

After deposits from the first of this month vanished in less than a week—to the tune of several thousand dollars—and major payments bounced higher than a basketball ever thought possible, I knew something was amiss.

Come to find out, as of today, someone has been increasingly sucking funds from my account since November.  First in small increments, so small that they passed unnoticed; then in larger and faster increments, but only large and fast enough to make me think myself a fool for spending too much; but finally in massive deductions that stripped thousands of dollars in less than seven days.

That’s where I am right now.

A violation so profound as to be the end of life.  As though the thieves walked into my home and robbed me of everything I owned while I sat there watching.

I transferred $1,000 yesterday; it’s all gone now.

I transferred another $300 today; all but $3.54 is gone now.

Thankfully, Wells Fargo is being as understanding and helpful as any bank can be.  We’ve documented all of the illegitimate charges; they hope they can credit them back to me soon.  We’ve frozen the account; tomorrow we can transfer all deposits to a new account while issuing new cards, new checks, new everything.

And I’ve wept.  I’m crippled beyond words, out so much money that I can hardly comprehend the losses.

Ultimately, and unfortunately, there are no clear answers.  I hope to get the money back; I have no promises to that end.  Freezing all transactions now helps in the immediate future, yet it doesn’t resolve the outstanding transactions that maintain life, home, necessities.

That my card was compromised means one thing: A vendor with access to it no longer has control over their infrastructure.

Therefore, and without any sense of responsibility toward those involved, I will compile and post a list of all companies who had access to my account immediately before this compromise took place.  That will include names and addresses for both local and online vendors.

Any company not involved will enjoy my full support and proclamation of their innocence.  Assuming as much can be proven to me, that is.

Meanwhile…