Jacques the jackdaw came into our lives on 27 May aged about 3 weeks – and therefore into our care. He is thriving and thus reminding us of the importance of the basics in life: food in our bellies and security … love and ‘being watchful’ … and, as with all babies and infants, cleaning up after poo – and that’s a privilege also!
Animals see the unobstructed
world with their whole eyes.
But our eyes, turned back upon
themselves, encircle and
seek to snare the world,
setting traps for freedom.
The faces of the beasts
show what truly IS to us:
we who up-end the infant and
force its sight to fix upon
things and shapes, not the
freedom that they occupy,
that openesswhich lies so deep
within the faces of the animals ... A gentle reminder of words from a favourite series of poems by Rilke - his Duino Elegies, this one from VIII - translation by Robert Hunter
Or, as Jacques Derrida would have it, on discovering he was being looked-at by a cat, rather than looking-at 'it'! ... 'The Animal Therefore That I Am' (2002).
Jacques Derridad. 2004 Paris
From 2009 Peter Sloterdijk's ‘Rules for the Human Zoo’, his ‘response’ to Heidegger's ‘Letter on Humanism’ (1977). In this account of the history of humanism as the ‘taming’ of men and the breeding of good citizens, Sloterdijk pauses briefly to discuss the ‘domestication of men’, their construction of houses, such that men became ‘not only sheltered by their language, but also tamed by their accommodations.’ He notes that: 'historians of culture have made it clear that with domesticity the relationship between men and animals changed. With the taming of men by their houses the age of pets began as well. Their attachment to houses is not only a question of civilizing, but also a matter of direction and upbringing.'
The Fugitive Stag 