Red Mosquito

Carl Sandburg wrote:There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

The Argonaut wrote:I can't remember ever regretting getting rid of anything.

tragabigzanda wrote:

epilogue wrote:A friend gifted my us a Brienne of Tarth and a Night King. I don't care about them at all but I feel bad getting rid of them because they were a gift.

I kind of want to offer a workshop on how to get over this stuff. If a gift I reserve holds no utilitarian value nor does it offer deep emotional connection, it goes straight into the trash or donate pile. I’m relentless with this stuff.

Jorge wrote:Getting rid of stuff feels great, but sometimes you miscalculate. About 10 years ago I took around 90% of the CDs I had accumulated over my lifetime and sold them off. Now I really wish I had kept them

Bammer wrote:Supposedly the Funko HQ in Everett, WA is really cool

Higgs wrote:My son is 22 and has had the run of playstations/Xboxes/handhelds that you'd expect in the previous 15 years or so. Nowadays though he seems fully PC gaming based.

He never looked after these things particularly well imo, but never actually broke anything either. But there were always bits and pieces lying around, games left out of covers on the floor, all that sort of stuff.

The other day we were sitting in the man cave watching a hoops game and I pointed out the Kinect sensor thingy from his old XBox One hanging about and he said "get rid of it". I mentioned that it would be kinda cool in future to have all those old gaming consoles available and complete, even just for display when he (finally) moves out. I could see the cogs whirring in his brain as he thought about it. I'm pretty sure he liked the idea but in the end it must have all seemed too hard as I was still told to get rid it.

Higgs wrote:

Bammer wrote:Supposedly the Funko HQ in Everett, WA is really cool

I'm betting it's pretty funky.