Can there be a more poetically potent act than that of drinking, and literally drawing sustenance from, another creatures tears?! Drinking tears for christ sake! Really, in human terms, it does not get much more poetically evocative than that, unless of course there is an animal lurking out there in the underbrush who subsists exclusively on the torn-out hearts of pregnant war widows.

For the animals who engage in this behavior, mainly a few species of moth, nothing could be more straight forward. Tears are as good a source of water and salt as any other (not to mention those delicious trace-levels of protein! Yum.) and hell, if no one else is gonna make use of it… Mommy didn’t raise no dummy-larva!

Even so, as a human it would seem nearly impossibly to explain lachryphagy without at least tacitly acknowledging the crazy, unintentional drama the whole undertaking is fraught with from our emotional and symbol-ridden point of view.

Quote: “Some species of moth engage in an almost romantic kissing of the eyes. Mara elephantophila, for example, which drinks the tears of elephants, is among the smallest of such moths. A shy, delicate creature, its tiny size allows it to steal a tear without elephants seemingly noticing.

The highly specialized Lobocraspis griseifusa Does not wait for an animal’s eyes to moisten. When it has landed, it sweeps its proboscis across the eye of its unfortunate host, irritating the eyeball, encouraging it to produce tears. It can even insert its proboscis between the eyelids, ensuring it can feed even while its host is sleeping. Whereas a moth of the genus Poncetia goes to the opposite extreme. It’s proboscis is so short it must cling to the eyeball itself to drink. But it must be careful. If its weeping host blinks, the moth is often crushed to death.” -Matt Walker, from Fish That Fake Orgasms: And Other Zoological Curiosities.

Yes!!!

I literally can’t read that without my brain just shivering in delight. 

“Delight?” you ask. Well, yeah, I mean, we’re talking about insects drinking animal tears. As with Love and War, all’s fair in Nature baby, that’s just plain good times. If, on the other hand, moths were dunking those proboscises (who knows where they’ve been!?) and greedily guzzling the wine of human sadness, well…

Quote: “I was observing zoophilous moths in a herd of zebu. One C. ludovicae took tears from a zebu at 1840 h. Shortly afterwards the specimen flew onto my wrist where it sucked perspiration for 10 minutes before it flew onto my naked leg and back onto the front of my head where it continued to take sweat. It flew off and back to my cheek, climbed towards my right eye. finally settling near its lower edge. The perception I now felt was unpleasant and was comparable the that of a particularly edgy grain of sand being rubbed between eye and lid. the source of th epain is revealed in a flash photograph (pictured above) I took 1.5 minutes after the moth settled: the right fore tarsus was hooked onto the delicate conjunctiva of the lid near the eyeball, while the the tear sucking proboscis applied to the eyeball caused less disturbance. Unfortunately the flash scared the moth away which did not return.” - Hans Biinziger, from the paper Remarkable New Cases of Moths Drinking Human Tears In Thailand. (pdf)

No!!!

That moth got away and its tear-fattened progeny are almost surely licking a human eyeball somewhere in Thailand at this very moment! Not to mention these guys…

Yeesh. See, now my brain is shuddering in repulsion, and rather than the sensitive and knowing Emersonian verse which had been growing in the back of my mind, I find poorly written scripts for low-budget horror flicks scrolling across my mind’s eye… Hey! Stay away from my mind’s eye, you damn pesky tear-burglars.

Anyhow, thinking it over, I cant help but get to wondering. Were it not for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth scaring them away, would moths prefer the hormone and painkiller-rich vintage of “psychic tears” (i.e. the type created by stress, suffering, or pain induced weeping) over the run-of-the-mill “reflex’ brand? And for that matter would, say, a toddler’s skinned-knee tears be more or less delicious than a 17 year old’s “we’re both going off to different schools and will want to see other people” tears? Are the tears of a Cubs’ fan in September any good? And what about crocodile tears or the tears of a clown?

Your average elephant or water buffalo doesn’t care much about such things, they just make a loud noise and shake their head about to scare off the moths and then get back to their business, but as I said in the beginning, such is the joy of being a deliriously “aware” human. It is our purview, and ours alone, to get wrapped up in the poetry and metaphorical emotional payload inherent to the survival strategy of an insect, who given the chance, will fly directly into an open flame.

Afterword 1-

The image which began this post, of a deer’s eye surrounded by tear bandits, is a fabrication. I concocted it to resemble a very low resolution image I found showing a similar gathering around a water buffalo’s eye. As much as it pains me to admit it- the deer is stuffed, the eye is glass, and the moths are, well… I don’t know what they are.

How is this even remotely relevant to the discussion at hand you ask? Well, coincidentally (or not), in seeking to create the illustration I found that, for a layman at least, the act of searching out images of specific moths, armed with nothing but the maddeningly complex knot of Latin genus/subgenus/family/sub-family/tribe/ names also happens to induce lacrymation, rather quickly and angrily I might add, and I half expected my face to be swarmed with fluttery little wings terminating in thirsty barbed probosci.

Afterword 2-

In the year 2048, after the fall of western civilization, when an individual’s knowledge and skill-set no longer qualify he or she for well paying jobs but rather automatically initiate them into vicious, roving, cannibalistic street gangs, murderous and vengeful lepidopterologists (and Nabokov scholars) will appropriate the image of the lachryphage, potent and poetic as it is, and use it in the following manner-

And this tattoo will strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. 

Hope you enjoyed.

Related from New Scientist:
Moths with a taste for tears
Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds

Possibly related:
The Jimsonweed Junkies

Religiosity penetrates language like mold veins an exceptionally blue cheese. This is true for the English language in general but is particularly pronounced when it comes to profanity. This fact is not remotely surprising if you take even a second to think on it. The word profanity itself is a religious one for Christ’s sake! ⊕ Were it not for the act of measuring all utterances against God’s hair-trigger wrath, there would, strictly speaking, be no such thing as “profanity.” 

Profane,  from the Latin profanare “to desecrate,” from profanus “unholy, not consecrated,” from pro fano “not admitted into the temple (with the initiates).

The term has been broadened, in modern usage, to encompass any “naughty” words not fit for “polite” company ⊕ Even so, the desire to have something forceful to say, which properly utilizes a good long row of exclamation points ⊕, when we stub our toe, or cum, or get punched in the neck, or open a cable bill while in public has lead us to coin a plethora of seemingly benign substitution expletives.

Today these substitutes, so numerous as to vastly outnumber the “curses” they stand-in for,  are mostly the kind of limp, forceless words you associate with grandparents, cartoon characters, and 7 year-olds. They are also the kind of words that are so ingrained in our language and minds that we never give a thought to their origins or what they are actually standing-in for. A euphemistic substitute of this kind has a name, if you were not aware, and that name is “minced oath.” ⊕

Minced Oath.  A semi-technical term for a specific kind of euphemism or disguise mechanism, whereby an offending term or taboo phrase is modified so as to be used without giving offense. Periphrasis or circumlocution is the most common modification, that is, to “speak around” a profane word, implying it without saying it.

While there have long been linguistic taboos associated with the scatological and the sexual ⊕ it will not surprise you to learn minced oaths are, as a group, overwhelmingly Religious in origin.

Just a few examples:

Gosh darn it — God damn it
Jeepers Creepers — Jesus Christ
Tarnation — Damnation
Dad gum — God damn
Doggone it— God damn it
Jiminy Cricket — Jesus Christ
For Pete’s sake — For St. Peter’s Sake
By golly — By God’s body
By Jove — By Jupiter/Jehovah
Judas Priest — Jesus Christ
Good gravy — Good God
Drat — God rot it
For crying out loud — For Christ’s sake
Goodness gracious — Good God
Holy mackerel — Holy flesh
Jumping Jehosaphat — Jumping Jesus
Suffering succotash — Suffering saviour
Blimey — God blind me
Dangnabbit — God damn it
Gee whizz / geewhillikers — Jesus’ whiskers
Good grief — Good God
Egad — Oh God
Gadzooks — God’s hooks
Zounds — God’s wounds +
Etc…

That there are so very many of these types of minced oaths is actually somewhat comical, not to mention quite revealing in regard to Man’s outlook on taboo language.

Why comical? Because these archaic forms sound silly to our modern ears? ⊕ No. Because as a good hardline theologian (or hardline amateur) will happily remind you, any God worth the knee-pains of prostrating oneself before would not, could not, be fooled by a bit of loophole-exploiting linguistic flimflam. Which is to say, minced or not, the intention is identical and so the iniquity is equal.

 
Quote: “It is a vain endeavor on the part of some to avoid the guilt of profane swearing by mincing their oaths, as is the practice of many whose consciences still trouble them so much as to hinder them from the more out-breaking forms of this sin. Minced oaths are either oaths, or they are nonsense. If oaths, they are of course profane. If they are nonsense, they are not “good nonsense,” and are clearly forbidden by Matt. xii. 36. -William S, Plumer, D.D. LL.D., The Law of God, 1864.

It’s our persistence, in spite of this fact, which I find revealing. It would seem that we modify our speech knowing full well that the modification does not successfully solve the “problem.” We are motivated not by fear of God’s wrath ⊕ evidently but by fear of more tangibly immediate reprisals by the morality patrol. In short we will modify our behavior so as not to hassled by other (very real, persistent, and annoying) humans but not to protect against “eternal damnation” in the (very theoretical, abstract, quite possibly imaginary) afterlife.

Eeentahresting.

I am tempted to say that not only has profanity been historically framed by Religious attitudes, but that ultimately, and in more than merely a semantic way, it’s precisely Religion’s imperative against profanity which powers the great profanity dynamo. The whole purpose (and satisfaction) of cursing is the emphasis it affords, the action of saying something instantly an unmistakably recognizable as apart from genteel speech. Had Religious attitudes, over centuries, not explicitly shaped an entire canon of taboo utterances for us to utilize… well, where would we be then? We’d be grunting and groaning in exclamatory frustration.

Either that hurling fistfuls of feces.

Anyhoo, let’s amble back around to profanity and my atheism shall we?

As I said, I tend to feel betrayed by my own profane vocabulary when cursing. As though using Religious words, in the service of that perfect angered emphasis, were offering free press to Christianity, or worse, an implicit acceptance of their “sacredness.” It is habitual, after all, yet I can’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance that even in the midst of my passionate, animal, fist-shaking, secular tirades Religion ought to impose itself into my life. Of course, when I take the time to analyze this reaction, the irony of it, I can’t help but laugh.

For one thing our modern take on the term “profanity” has clouded an important distinction…

“The person on the street uses the term “profanity” broadly to refer to all categories of offensive speech. however, profanity and blasphemy are specific categories of religious speech sanctioned by religious authorities. To be profane means to be secular or indifferent toward religion. Blasphemy is more troublesome; it is an attack on religion and religious figures. It represents and intentional and offensive threat to religion…” -Why We Curse: A Neuro-psyco-social Theory of Speech, by Timothy Jay

So adhering to this more precise definition my existence is the “profanity,” while my use of Christian terminology, when swearing oaths, is more accurately “blasphemy.” That distinction goes a long way in easing my mind since blasphemy is something, as an atheist, I really don’t need to lose any sleep over or shy away from. 

Moreover, when you get right down to it, were I able to remove all references to “bearded men in the sky” from my angry outbursts, what would be the result? I’d be very obediently following the 2nd commandment in a way most devout, minced-oath-bandying believers can’t seem to manage, and that, my potty-mouthed friends, is just plain crazy talk.

In closing-

Having thus, worked it all out in my mind I’m confident I will no longer feel embarrassed by involuntary blurtings of “Jesus fucking Christ!” when, say, a rabid squirrel scampers up my pant-leg or a coworker, smilingly, asks me about my weekend.

Still, I think that it would be useful to have a good long list of non-religious oaths at our disposal should we choose to “go in another direction” with our anger. In as much I’ve started a post over at the annex where I’m soliciting your best minced oaths, in-use, inherited, or invented. If you’d like to contribute click here.

Hope you enjoyed.

First let me get you up to speed on what exactly Klein’s invention is all about in case you missed the story-

NPR’s site explains it as follows:

Quote: “Klein says this all started when he used a modified version of Skinnerian training to teach his cat to use the toilet, and it worked really well. That made him think that he might be able to use the method with crows. The first inklings that he would work with crows came about 10 years ago, at a cocktail party, when he argued that harnessing the birds to do something useful would be a much better plan for his native Seattle, plagued by crows, than mass slaughter.

In the first two steps of his four-step experiment, Klein says he provides crows with coins, peanuts and the vending machine, in order to get them used to the materials. Then he provides the birds only with coins, and in frustration they bang around until the coin gets in the machine’s slot. That introduces the next step, when the machine dispenses a peanut as a reward for each coin. In the fourth step, he gives the birds nothing. But the crows see that coins have been spread on the ground near the machine. This reveals what’s special about crows. Squirrels, for example, look at the box a half-dozen times, then disappear to play in traffic. Crows make the connection: Pick up the coin, put it in the box and receive a reward.”

Because the crows “make the connection” the vending machine idea works, as might more complex ones some day.

Crows have demonstrated their intelligence time and again. They have a penchant for trickery (a.k.a. tactical deception), seem to create their own “dialects” as a means of differentiating family groups, and have exhibited the ability to solve a problem spontaneously by crafting a tool, a feat not even our cousins the chimps have managed. All of this seems to points to sophisticated cognition skills, a trait which itself suggests crows share some abstract thinking skills with us humans.

So… the point is crows are smart.

Which got me thinking.

If we start stimulating their abstract thinking, with that most stimulating of abstractions– cash, what associated experiences might we be opening them up to? I mean, what else might our cognitive brethren learn, that we ourselves have learned, by being placed on this fast track of abstract thought? What epiphanies and what unpleasant shocks lay between them and their eventual empire of the birds?

These are questions responsibly-all-powerful and world-shaping beings must consider. For instance…

Will they learn the gut-twist and discomfort of the “awkward encounter” as multiple crows arrive simultaneously at the vending machine? Will they stare at their claws after a polite, but not overly welcoming, caw? Will they learn to feign interest in some banal object in the safe haven of the middle-distance? Will they pretend the machine is out of the particular peanuts they like and walk away, preferring to sneak back later when that super-annoying crow from accounting is gone?

Will the crows learn the infuriation of trekking all the way from their nest, with exact change, only to have their quarter clank through the innards of the machine and spat out again, and again, and again, until they, feathers beginning to rustle, inspect the coin and find it’s… Canadian!? Will they caw a beak-clenched epithet at Canada? Or at the deli clerk who passed the thing off? Will they throw the coin in disgust before flying away or, irrationally, and with no good reason whatsoever, keep it?




And what if after a few generations of commerce their abstract thinking improves to the degree that they notice the variances in iconography which help to differentiate one coin from another? And what if their jump-started cognition actually produces some sparks of recognition?

What if, in the lazy hours of the afternoon while distractedly fondling a smooth coin with their wings, they begin to look more closely?

I would assume that the fierce eagle, so beloved as symbol in these United States of America, might have somewhat different associations for the moneyed crows about town.

And the feathers in some American Indian’s headdress? Surely a celebration of the proud splendor and noble traditions of indigenous cultures would not be the very first thought to pop into their minds?

As for our mythologies, our winged women and our Mercury’s and Pegasi and Griffons and Sphinx’s… well, I can’t even begin to imagine the crows’ consternation at the thought of these, most likely hungry, abominations.




Lastly, I wonder what, a hundred successfully-vended and belly-filled years from now, when the crows have learned well and their dependance on the coin has increased… when the first few murders of young have already been born with enhanced coin-detecting vision that sees straight through pants pockets and purse leather… when a crude “pawnshop dialect” has been invented approximating human-sounding phrases like “oh hell naw!” and “c’mon mister, that’s a family heirloom!”... I wonder what those unfortunate crows not fortunate enough to be hatched with a silver dollar in their beak might be reduced to?

Not so funny is it?

Anyhow, it’s a fascinating invention, so kudos to Mr. Klein… my low-browed, yuk-yuk, ah-cha-cha-cha! sullying of it notwithstanding. You can read more about the vending machine, Klein’s ultimate aims, and see a short video as well, at the official site.

Hope you enjoyed.

News was just recently released that Penguin will be publishing a novel co-authored by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs which was written in 1945, before either achieved fame, or, one might argue, before either achieved talent. Not that this is necessarily a case such as that sketched in my over-dramatic first paragraph, but I can say with something approaching certainty that there is a reason why artists decline to put particular works out there.

Is this one a festering pustule on the golden, glorified legacies of two beat luminaries? I have no idea. Burroughs himself dismissed it as “not a very distinguished work.” ⊕ So the question begs to be asked, though we hail famous artists as “geniuses,” and fawn over their pronouncements, and make pilgrimages to their grave sites, and gobble critical texts parsing their brilliance, does it just so happen that the one area in which they are totally deficient is judging the merits of their own work?

The title of this “undistinguished” novel is evidently something Burroughs heard on a newscast about a zoo fire: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. I actually love the title, though perhaps And the Artists Were Exploited in Their Caskets would be closer to the bone.

The events which inspired And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks certainly sound novel-worthy, complete with obsession, drunken knife-fights, murder, body dumping, and the incarceration of our intrepid beat luminaries. Surely its publication will have some redeeming value? Whether just for historians and completists and rubber-neckers, or as a work in and of itself, is yet to be seen.

I have to wonder what the artists themselves would think were they alive? Would they be embarrassed? Displeased? Would the fact that even their “undistinguished” works made it to a clamoring marketplace simply satisfy their egos and overrule their internal editors? Would they grin from their easy chairs unable to beat back the maniacal words, “I am legend”?

Letting “unsuccessful” works linger in drawers and boxes under beds is a weakness for most artists I’d say, but then, when they are your creations, even abortive ones, abhorrent ones, embarrassing ones, and your intention is to mournfully review them every decade or so as you would review old correspondences or family photographs, they retain a definite personal value. A personal value.

After Henry Miller’s death Moloch and Crazy Cock came to light, neither of which were sterling examples of his incredible talent ⊕, likewise Bukowski has had damn near as many books of poetry published since his death as before. At what point does the pile of “not ready for prime time” work of an artist begin to tarnish his or her legacy? Does it ever? Is our insatiable desire to know everything about those we’ve immortalized self-defeating? And are we actually entitled to see the things artists didn’t want to have seen? It may well be that we afford our idols more “personal space” physically, after their deaths, than we do metaphorically. 

It’s a moot point I guess. There’s money to be made and industry marches on. ⊕ And perhaps, just perhaps, the rationalization that even a turd from a master is better than nothing is true. One thing we can be sure of is that neither Jack, nor William, nor Henry, Nor Buk give a good god-damn either way right now, and we can take heart in the fact that while they lived, their art was their own.