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The Language of the Birds: Tales, Texts, & Poems of Interspecies Communication
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- GenresBirdsNonfiction
359 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 28, 2007
i am always reading this book
highlight (among many):
how to apologize to a seal.
highlight (among many):
how to apologize to a seal.
October 14, 2016
xi
Or put another way: every tribal person, shaman or not, knew that real power exists not in the external form of a thing, but in its secret, inner one, and that to reach that hidden world was the purpose of ritual, while to record that meeting was the purpose of myth.
53
At every stage of his life his culture has provided symbols that help him organize and understand his experience, and these symbols are always literally compacted and bundled together in a little pouch that hangs above his head as he sleeps in anticipation of the sun's return to the earth and an animals' return to the sky. The songs of his medicine are always in his inner ear for they tell him what it is to be a man.
96
The machines are too dull when we
are lion-poems that move & breathe.
129
Blind swimmer, I have made myself see. I have seen. And I was surprised and enamored of what I saw, wish to identify myself with it.
211
Animals are the concrete prey available to thought for grasping the difficult and unknown, their interrelationship a frame of reference, thought-scantlings among towering concepts. The ecology of creatures is the model for the "society"of abstract ideas.
213-214
According to the prophet of this vision of totemic thought, Claude Levi-Strauss, Nature for the mature human mind is a system of connected ideas, a language, represented by the species and its attributes. It relates the abstract to the concrete by using real creatures as sign-images bearing messages and ideas. It starts with a straightforward classification and progresses to symbolic classification, begins in observation of natural history and derives a way of thinking and explaining human social interactions. It does not copy nature; adults do not imitate animals. It is a homology between parallel series--species and human societies--in which the latter is rationalized by references to Nature, a medium translated by myth, using epic tales, music, and the other arts.
276
Animals are born, are sentient, and are mortal. In these things they resemble Man. In their superficial anatomy--less in their deep anatomy--in their habits, in their time, in their physical capaciities, they differ from man. They are both like an unlike.
The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal's look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look.
The animal scrutinizes him across a narrow abyss of non-comprehension. This is why the man can surprise the animal. Yet the animal--even if domesticated--can also surprise this man. The man too is looking across a similar, but not identical, abyss of non-comprehension. And this is so where he looks. He is always looking across ignorance and fear. And so, when he is being seen by the animal, he is being seen as his surroundings are seen by him. His recognition of this is what makes the look of the animal familiar. And yet the animal is distinct, and can never be confused with man. Thus, a power is ascribed to the animal, comparable with human power but never coinciding with it. The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas, are specifically addressed to man.
308
Life-biomass, he says, is stored information; living matter is stored information in the cells and in the genes. He believes there is more information of a higher order of sophistication and complexity stored in a few square yards of forest than there is in all the libraries of mankind. Obviously, that is a different order of information. It is the information of the universe we live in. It is the information that has been flowing for millions of years. In this total information context, man may not be necessarily the highest or most interesting product.
319
(Of Fire.)
One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost everything from its own nature into another.
Or put another way: every tribal person, shaman or not, knew that real power exists not in the external form of a thing, but in its secret, inner one, and that to reach that hidden world was the purpose of ritual, while to record that meeting was the purpose of myth.
53
At every stage of his life his culture has provided symbols that help him organize and understand his experience, and these symbols are always literally compacted and bundled together in a little pouch that hangs above his head as he sleeps in anticipation of the sun's return to the earth and an animals' return to the sky. The songs of his medicine are always in his inner ear for they tell him what it is to be a man.
96
The machines are too dull when we
are lion-poems that move & breathe.
129
Blind swimmer, I have made myself see. I have seen. And I was surprised and enamored of what I saw, wish to identify myself with it.
211
Animals are the concrete prey available to thought for grasping the difficult and unknown, their interrelationship a frame of reference, thought-scantlings among towering concepts. The ecology of creatures is the model for the "society"of abstract ideas.
213-214
According to the prophet of this vision of totemic thought, Claude Levi-Strauss, Nature for the mature human mind is a system of connected ideas, a language, represented by the species and its attributes. It relates the abstract to the concrete by using real creatures as sign-images bearing messages and ideas. It starts with a straightforward classification and progresses to symbolic classification, begins in observation of natural history and derives a way of thinking and explaining human social interactions. It does not copy nature; adults do not imitate animals. It is a homology between parallel series--species and human societies--in which the latter is rationalized by references to Nature, a medium translated by myth, using epic tales, music, and the other arts.
276
Animals are born, are sentient, and are mortal. In these things they resemble Man. In their superficial anatomy--less in their deep anatomy--in their habits, in their time, in their physical capaciities, they differ from man. They are both like an unlike.
The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal's look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look.
The animal scrutinizes him across a narrow abyss of non-comprehension. This is why the man can surprise the animal. Yet the animal--even if domesticated--can also surprise this man. The man too is looking across a similar, but not identical, abyss of non-comprehension. And this is so where he looks. He is always looking across ignorance and fear. And so, when he is being seen by the animal, he is being seen as his surroundings are seen by him. His recognition of this is what makes the look of the animal familiar. And yet the animal is distinct, and can never be confused with man. Thus, a power is ascribed to the animal, comparable with human power but never coinciding with it. The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas, are specifically addressed to man.
308
Life-biomass, he says, is stored information; living matter is stored information in the cells and in the genes. He believes there is more information of a higher order of sophistication and complexity stored in a few square yards of forest than there is in all the libraries of mankind. Obviously, that is a different order of information. It is the information of the universe we live in. It is the information that has been flowing for millions of years. In this total information context, man may not be necessarily the highest or most interesting product.
319
(Of Fire.)
One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost everything from its own nature into another.
February 28, 2008
A really fun resource book all about birds, folklore, history and other interesting facts.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews