26.10.09

Locality 46 (Little Falls, NY) Keeping out of trouble




Explorer Bartzilla reports from an expedition into his own youth:

"Whoever nailed that ladder into the side of the tree must have done it long ago since those slats of wood couldn't support anything these days. This wasn't our original ladder into the fort. Ours was on the other side and a bit more accessible.

The fire pit we had dug and circled with rocks was also washed away, as were the log benches we had put around it. I'm tellin' ya, we went all out on this project. Plus, for the most part, it kept us out of trouble on summer vacations, even if we might have been up to no good up there.

One afternoon of construction, I was blowing off some firecrackers and we saw a policeman doing his commando thing with his shotgun up to the fort. He knew what we were up to and actually just told us to knock it off with the firecrackers and then proceeded to admire our handy work and give us his history of the tree fort that his friends had built in this tree."

23.10.09

Locality 45 (Fevik) We need shelter



"You wouldn't care to help with the shelters I suppose?"
"We need meat"
"We need shelters"
"Are you accusing-"
"All I'm saying is we've worked dashed hard. That's all... Do you want to be rescued? All you talk about is 'pig pig pig'"
"We want meat"
"And I work all day with nothing but Simon and you come back and don't even notice the shelters"
"I work too"
"But you like your work. You enjoy yourself hunting. While I-"
"Do a bit for you before I have a bathe"
"Don't bother"

Peter Brook, screenplay adaptation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, 1963, deleted scene.

Søm-Ruagerkilen Nature Reserve at Fevik, 2009.

Locality 44 (Brentwood, TN): I sit and look

I sit and look
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer
of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
hid--I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea--I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these--All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out
upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass - 1871 ed.
Photo: Majtek862