The rites of fall begin anew

Currently at Toronto Pearson: 15. High today: 23.

Back to the Greyhound! This would be where we came in, but going the other way.

After hanging out around Laurier for much of three years, going in to work there is weird and amusing.

There was a guy on the Greyhound I knew vaguely from York--actually, he had a better idea who I was; my best guess was he was some guy I used to see in Kitchener--who told me that it was his first day at Laurier, too, and he volunteered something that was also amusing because I had been thinking this myself after my class today but I was wondering if it was just me: the students at Laurier seem more cheerful than the students at York.

I am pleased to report that the no-tail squirrel is still alive and kicking and I gave it three almonds today, which I hope don't kill it with salt. (How long do squirrels live, I wonder? This no-tail squirrel has been living with no tail for at least a couple of years now. I always see it within maybe a thirty foot radius of the same spot, unlike our half-tail squirrel that we see out the window here, which wanders across the road and down the street and up the alley--which reminds me that, a week or two ago when I was coming home, a rat was ambling down the sidewalk toward me. For a couple of seconds I hesitated to ponder whether I ought to tip my hat as we passed, but it sauntered into the bushes.) I learned today that the squirrels in Waterloo Park are incredibly attuned to throwing motions. Look like you're throwing something and little pointy heads pop up all around.

There is, again, a tortoise in the rabbit pen. Its name is still Crush, it is still six years old, and it still weighs thirty kilograms (or something).

There are still, as last reported by pnijjar some time ago, no more emus. However, in the pen where there were emus, now there is a zebu.

(I always had the vague idea that zebus were some kind of zebra-cow. But actually, it turns out, zebus are basically any of those skinny humpy cattle from Africa and Asia. Thanks, Uncle Wikipedia!)

Today there was a heron in the pond. Last week there was a chipmunk beside the path around the pond.

Also in the rabbit pen: one very small half-naked baby guinea pig. I heard it before I saw it. I was looking around to see what this new loud bird was. The baby guinea pig is completely ridiculous looking and sounding and I wonder if something will eat it. I've always thought this about the rabbit pen: that's like a hawk feeder, isn't it?

Following the baby guinea pig around, I noticed a rabbit stretching up to eat some green stuff that looked like it was growing up the fence, so I went to inspect it, and actually it was clover that someone had stuck in the fence. Then this little kid comes marching over and asks, "Were you wondering who put that stuff there?" (Yes. I was wondering who put that stuff there. Was it that man over by the llamas? Was it that little dog? Perhaps it was the little baby Jesus.) "Was it you?" I inquire. "Yes!" he exclaims, and adds: "there's a naked mole-rat in there somewhere." "I think it's a baby guinea pig," I helpfully supply. This seems to dent his confidence, but only slightly, because: "My mom says it's a naked mole-rat." "Well, that's possible," I concede. He stuffs a clover flower in the fence and proclaims that the rabbits love these flowers[1]. His mother catches up and informs me that she has him weed the yard, and then he feeds the weeds to the rabbits. "It's a good system," I assess, and move along.

I have to say, as much as Toronto beats the hell out of KW in whole bunches of ways, that park is so vastly superior to the ravines over here as to make up maybe all the difference and maybe more. I think I may have seen a mouse in one of the ravines once; I'm not sure. The lack of interesting fauna in the ravines is really rather stunning. No rabbits, no raccoons, no chipmunks, no groundhogs, no snakes, no frogs ... so far this year, one hawk of some sort, one woodpecker hammering away somewhere, and apart from that, not even any interesting birds, not even any nuthatches, which I saw so many of last year.

I think I have figured out my basic hitting problem, and also Alex Rios's, and this basic problem isn't really anything about clearing your hips or weight shifts or keeping your hands back or anything like that. The problem is, you think you want to swing and hit the ball, but that's not what you want to do. You want to attack the ball. Here comes that ball; don't let it! Get the hell rid of that ball! Get out there and get that sucker and kill it! (This, I think, is related to "trust your stuff". This is something I'm just learning to do as a teacher.)

Relatedly, I am starting wonder whether "seeing the ball well" really means what most people take it to mean, which is "picking it up right out of the pitcher's hand". (Not that seeing a slow-pitched softball well is necessarily the same thing as seeing a 94-mile-and-hour fastball well.) The balls I hit well, the balls I get out there and attack, it's like they're freeze-framed when the bat hits them. The balls that sneak up on me and I just hit, they're there and gone and bouncing out to third base before I know where they were.

1. Ah, what do I love when I love you? I love you so much I could eat you up! Rabbits eating always make me think of this, my favourite bit of high philosophical comedy: "We can tell those who assert the truth and certainty of the reality of sense-objects that they should go back to the most elementary school of wisdom, viz. the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, and that they have still to learn the secret meaning of the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. For he who is initiated into these Mysteries not only comes to doubt the being of sensuous things, but to despair of it; in part he brings about the nothingness of such things himself in his dealings with them, and in part he sees them reduce themselves to nothingness. Even the animals are not shut out from this wisdom but, on the contrary, show themselves to be most profoundly initiated into it; for they do not just stand idly in front of sensuous things as if these possessed intrinsic being, but, despairing of their reality, and completely assured of their nothingness, they fall to without ceremony and eat them up." (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit)