From: marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski)
Subject: fair is fair / Marek (1990)
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 04:26:12 GMT


		fair is fair
		---------------------------------------------------------------
		
		i was lying in my kayak, in the middle of the lake,
		the sun setting.  i was thinking about the canadian
		geese and how rare it is to see them, and how i
		have not seen a pair (i always see them in pairs)
		since last fall.  And how i heard them as recently
		as 3 weeks ago.
		
		the weather was perfect.  little fluffy clouds
		drifted slowly towards me from the west, made gauzy
		and see-through against the perfect blue by the low
		sun.  the rather rare in these parts aura
		registered sharp and clear.  the aura is what i call
		the common dominant stylized characteristic of
		nearly every official american state emblem, and,
		incidentally, every soviet socialist republic's:
		the sunlight rays streaming radially out of the
		clouds at sunset or sunrise.  in new mexico they
		have auras coming off from both above and below the
		clouds.  but then, everything about clouds is
		always better in new mexico.  i was thinking that
		too.
		
		the world was turning golden, soon to become
		orange, in the setting sun, and then i saw them.
		there they were, coming from the east, over water,
		a pair of canadian geese.  they were not honking.
		their wings made an audible, measured swoosh.  how
		amazing that anything this big can take to wing and
		support itself by mere flapping.  geese may not be
		all that big comparing to the other large birds,
		but they sure work hard to project most convincingly
		the heroism of the miracle of not plummeting from the
		air.
		
		they were magnificent, those geese.  one flew slightly
		lower, trailing the other.  i still can't tell
		male from female in these geese.  now, i have read about
		homosexual female geese pairs up north, which is worth
		mentioning, especially since my mentioning this to
		frances upsets her to no end.  frances thinks that
		this is something extra lewd i myself made up just to
		spite her tender sense of nature.  while she is a
		hardcore naturalist, frances is a bit softcore on
		the immoral aspects of animal sexuality, such as gay
		and lesbian behavior and masturbation, but then frances
		is only 15, genius at harp or no.  as much as i would like
		to shelter frances from this fact, homosexual geese are
		apparently that way because god made them that way,
		not that i expect this to be played up in the church on
		sunday.  maybe to say that the homosexual geese are
		that way because the absence of god made them that way
		would be a good compromise way of putting this fact into
		words.  frances and i differ on religion, you see, so
		compromises help a whole lot.
		
		anyway, the canadian geese around here are mostly all
		dark: dark feathered bodies, dark wings, dark necks, dark
		heads.  they fly maybe 200 feet over the water,
		close enough for identification if you are in their
		way, but never close enough.  they never fly close
		enough for me.  they fly well over the water,
		following the lake's curve, in this case, towards the
		sunset.  i only see them at sunsets.
		
		the geese have been on my mind, because my neighbor,
		bob, down for the weekend, was telling me at sunset
		the day before, which we were taking in ashore, in
		official tornado watch weather, admiring dangerous
		clouds and water the color of sick seas, that
		people hunt the geese in the hunting season in the
		spring and likely pick them off illegally at other
		times.
		
		i wanted to ask bob how come it wasn't legal to
		pour herbicide under the trees such as the treaty
		oak in austin, texas, in some spring tree-poisoning
		season, but i held my tongue.  must be the
		community values are different.  what's obscene in
		texas is not necessarily obscene in indiana, and in
		any case, might apply differently to the case of
		geese and to trees.
		
		incidentally, the astute individual who picks off
		canadian geese probably would have used the ammo on
		something breathing, anyway, although the telephone
		junction boxes at the forest roadsides appear to bear
		false witness to this assertion, so why get hung up on
		the geese just because they pair up for life, are
		slow and too easy a target and are just so
		magnificent to hear and see.
		
		just the same, i'd like to shoot any geese-shooting
		individual's color tv right in the middle of his or
		her favorite program.  tit for tat, you know, and a
		nearly identical degree of difficulty.  sorry for
		being such a bad sport, on reflection.  maybe i
		should only take aim at the thing on the wing, you
		know, after someone chucks it from the window and
		before it lands.  Better yet,maybe we could arrange
		for pairs of tv sets flying at the same time.  when
		we run out of tvs, i can always shoot the telephone
		junction box.  but i'll have to borrow his or her
		gun to do all this shooting.  wouldn't want me to
		have a better harvest on account of better
		equipment, now, would you, since all this canadian
		geese-sniping inspires me to seek an uzi for the
		reciprocal harvest.  naaah, fair is fair.


			Marek Lugowski
			10-11 June 1990
			Lake Monroe, Indiana