Pikas and Wittgenstein

Sat. I woke up and this poem popped into my head:


Another lagomorph poem:

a pika peeked
above high mountain peaks
and piped a squeak



Pika’s are pretty cute, and yes, I had pika on the brain because I read a sad article of how global warming could drive the pika to extinction. Here’s an article.

and an image




I spent most of Sunday reading Norman Malcolm’s Memoir on Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein and Xenakis are two men I would have loved to have met, they fascinate me with their unique minds, however, I think they would have been very difficult and moody.

Here are some excerpts:

“When a dish that looked especially appetizing was brought to the table, I sometimes exclaimed “Hot Ziggety”- a slang phrase that I learned as boy in Kansas. Wittgenstein picked up this expression from me. It was inconceivably droll to hear him exclaim “Hot Ziggety” when my wife put the bread and cheese before him.”

“Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life! By ‘them’; he undoubtedly meant his close friends. When I think of his profound pessimism, the intensity of his mental and moral suffering, the relentless way in which he drove his intellect, his need for love together with the harshness that repelled love, I am inclined to believe that his life was fiercely unhappy. Yet at the end he himself exclaimed that it had been wonderful! To me this seems a mysterious and strangely moving utterance.”