Notes on, in, and around Dan Flores’ Coyote America
1
“… fetch it in. …” phrasing
2
“… Stan Gehrt, …”
human hubris
3
“… reverse-direction coyote manifest destiny. …”
6
“… the only thing smarter than a coyote is God. …”
10
“…, Nezahualcoyotl, …” Apollo
“… Until dogcatchers, dog pounds, and leash laws (as I detail at some length later in this book) began to curb impressive stray dog populations in the cities of the late-nineteenth-century United States, coyotes had a difficult time infiltrating American cities. …”
13
“… genetic memory. …”
preydator
14
“… Darwinian mirror, …”
16
“… Persecuting an animal in a battle you can’t win is an act of political ideology. …”
18
“… Old Man Coyote … is … one of the oldest gods of which we have record …”
20
“… national coyote acolytes. …” I’m in!
“… connate …” same; similar
“… pathos. …” suffering
21
structure
“… released animals … from underground …” Unlike the Greeks who fought to keep their monsters underground.
22–24
Wile E. Coyote
“… One morning Coyote was going along and spotted a handsome young warrior who told Coyote he was embarking on a journey of war against his enemies. Although Coyote was actually a peaceful sort who thought war and battles to the death were very bad ideas, he told his new companion that he was a famous warrior and would be indispensable on the quest.
That first night, the warrior said, they would camp a a place called Scalped Man by the Fire [1]. Coyote did not like the sound of that, but he went along. At the camp Coyote relaxed while the warrior cooked and did all the chores. Then Coyote took the best pieces of the meal for himself, even laying extra meat over his chest and legs in case he awoke hungry during the night. Sometime in the night Coyote heard a sound, and when he looked, there was Scalped Man standing over him. Quick as he could, Coyote swung his club, but somehow he hit his own knee, which caused him to yowl in pain, waking the warrior. “I have taken care of Scalped Man,” Coyote told him, and they both went back to sleep.
Having clubbed his knee badly, Coyote limped through much of the next day but made it OK to a camp called Cooked Meat Flying All Around [2], which sounded more like it. But that evening, dining on the chunks of meat whizzing all around, Coyote heard the warrior describe the next night’s camp, Where the Arrows Fly Around [3]. Suddenly his knee took a turn for the worse. Coyote lagged far behind that next day, hoping to camp somewhere else, but the warrior led them on. That night arrows began to fly from every direction. The warrior stood and caught one after another, while Coyote twisted and twirled and crawled on the ground trying to avoid them, until one arrow grazed his arm. I have been killed, Coyote shouted. But when the warrior pulled him to his feet and he found himself still alive, Coyote asserted that actually his hurt knee had caused him to fall asleep, and he had been dreaming.
The next night they would camp at Where the Women Visit the Men [4]. This sounded like an excellent camp to Coyote. His knee improved so remarkably that day that he got far ahead in their march. That night, after much fidgeting and anticipation on Coyote’s part, a woman did come to him, but in the darkness he decided she was an old crone. Hoping for a much younger woman, he sent her away, only to see in the firelight as she turned from him that in fact she was young and very beautiful. Coyote cried out for her to return, claiming it had been some spirit who had told her to leave, but she vanished into the night.
The next camp was called War Clubs Flying Around [5]. All that day Coyote’s knee hurt so much that he barely managed to arrive at the spot. Sure enough, that night clubs hurled at them from every direction. The warrior caught two, one for each of them, but Coyote dodged and weaved so much that a club finally beaned him. When he came to, Coyote told the warrior that in his boredom he had actually fallen asleep. That’s why he had been lying so flat and still.
Then the warrior told Coyote that their next camp would be at a place called Vaginas Flying Around [6]. Coyote’s knee at once felt entirely well, and he was ready to depart then and there. He pleaded for more details, but the warrior fell asleep. Coyote sat by the fire all night thinking of vaginas and how many he might be able to carry with him. His knee now stronger than ever before in his life, Coyote left early and ranged far ahead the next day.
That night, as promised, vaginas began to sail into camp, and Coyote could tell they were just the kind he liked, very young and very plump. For most of the night, juicy vaginas sailed by, maddeningly out of reach with Coyote flailing and chasing and panting until he was near collapse. Finally, near dawn, Coyote caught one. But exhausted as he was, when he finally pinned and mounted it, his organ refused to rise to the occasion.
The next night they would reach their final camp, and the warrior told Coyote this one was called Where the Enemy Attacks [7]. Without delay Coyote’s knee began to throb, and all day he hung back on the trail, crying piteously. And sure enough, when the next morning came, enemies attacked from all sides. Coyote at once ran for far horizons but was overtaken, clubbed, and scalped. Meanwhile the warrior subdued all his enemies, then looked for Coyote.
When he knew all was clear, Coyote stood and announced that he was going along now, but the warrior should consider himself lucky that he had happened upon Coyote. Otherwise he would have had to engage in this adventure with no help at all from a famous warrior.
20210108
25
That Old Man Beringia should lope along, finding rest when possible, sustenance where others couldn’t, and never knowing where either would next be, was The Creator’s wish; or not, there was no way to know.
There could be no changing this path. For when Old Man Beringia turned to find their origins, though the signs and signifiers seemed familiar, they never returned to their creator. But in this way they did spread themselves across the land.
Along that labyrinthine path they moved. The sun rose and set, they saw their shadows or were blinded as their path was trod. Old Man Beringia, after they had traveled, sheltered, told their stories, and eaten would sleep, dreaming dreams of The Creator. And when they woke they would begin their journey again; weaving those dreams into everything along their way.
One day Old Man America came to visit. Despite their name they were young as evidenced by their Creator, Who The Creator had produced after the first of Their Creation had wandered away.
26
“…, if you can find a piece of native prairie somewhere on the Great Plains that’s away from the sounds of interstate traffic and beyond the stench of hog farms — anywhere will do, from Montana to West Texas — and if you’re good at opening your mind to the possibilities of deep history, a few moments of imagining can bring this landscape back to life. …”
Imagination of conditions — slight changes and canidae changes places with homo- or did that already happen? :)
“… 2.8 and 3 million years ago …, 5 to 6 million years ago, …”
27
“… philosophies of meaning we call religions, … being alive, sacred existence.”
“… Paleolithic …” Old Stone Age 2.5 My-12 ky
Jesus Christ
28
Those who hang about us — and we likewise — ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶l̶d̶ appear the most in our stories. But, has this changed?
“… symbolic potential; …, the number of ideas he can stand for … ….”
Of a different necessity.
“… obscured out deep dependency on nature … diverted our powers of observation, we humans were profound observers of the natural world. …”
31
35
“… fission-fusion. …” boom? :)
37
“… Coyote takes the basic structure of the world as set in motion by the First Cause, then “improves” on it … . He is a god who is not merely good but also, transparently, very, very bad. …” Which is the problem with Christianity. Jesus almost gets there, but is never quite more than a human. Eventually, we all become the body of Christ, but this changes Christianity’s role in humanity’s improvement.
38
the inventivity of masturbative possibilities. Heraclitus might have said something about this. “… advanced, creative horniness, …”
39
“… “Instead, we are selfmade, independent, alone, and fragile, a biological species adapted to live in a biological world.” …” What is is that makes this truth seem melancholy? There is a sense of missing possibilities, those imagined events of a far-flung future; if only we can move beyond each tenuous present.
40
Scale; intimacy; relationship. “… survival in nature; … response to our social lives in primate groups. …”
evolved human neurochemistry
41
“… . If we could somehow invent a modern art form that combined the religious/philosophical explanations of holy texts with the spectacle of modern movies, the entertainment value of video games, and the magic realism of Latin American novels, maybe it would rival the impact Coyote’s adventures once had on audiences. …” I can imagine looking forward to Coyote stories, anticipating when they would come up — knowing the season.
42
Nietzsche
53
“… the vast prairie sweeps belie your instincts about such country. Their sublimity, I think, arises from their unfathomable boundaries and their self-confident grandness of scale, combined with an echoless, calm monotony of sensory affect. …”
genetic memory — Severian; Train ride with Hazel 2011
54
“… the literature of exploration, …”
56
“… inferior. …” ? capitalism
57
“…, confusion was naturally the theme. …” Is an initial attempt at pattern-making really confusion? I don’t think so. Then any curiosity would be confusion.
It was about 1804 when Old Man Coyote gave the White Man an audience. “Now this is a human I must watch,” He said, “they cannot take their sun, they kill for pleasure, and they are curious beyond any rational end. They might replace me if I don’t keep an eye on them.” From then on he followed them everywhere they went.
58
“… “a persevering revenger of injuries” but also “grateful to those who do well by it.”
64
“…, the debate set the naturalists of the Philadelphia Academy against those of the new Smithsonian in the capital city. …”
65
“… taught himself the basics of natural history …” Tool-kits for each discipline. … and where they come from.
20210114
68
Narratives of Two Journeys in the Prairie, Albert Pike
69
Commerce of the Prairies, Josiah Gregg
70
“… Commerce of the Prairies, …”
“… a crank, … a hypochondriac, … a pseudointellectual. …” Me. Jack of all trades; neither master nor slave of one (I, too, suffer from dialectic).
“… St. Louis botanist George Engelmann. …” How was Henry Shaw influenced by these botanists? How did he influence them?
71
“… absolutive suffix …” possessedness
“… cowardly …” sensible; assessive — don’t rush in; know your own ignorance; Socrates
“… hideous. …” i.e. lovely
72
“… Colorado, …” see also Isabella Bird
Life in the Far West, George Frederick Ruxton
76
How does one culture develop an interest in another culture’s distinctions?
81
“… coyote song spreading like contagion, picked up by pack after pack until it fades into far distances, faint howls winking out in the mind in a kind of aural canine redshift. …”
83
“… A sense that so much about North America was strange and frightening and that we ought to terraform and remake it extended to every element of continental ecology, from grasses to animals of all kinds. …” Links to manifest destiny?
84
“… a puritanical loathing of our own animal natures. …”
Something we must forever battle; this strange loathing of who we are.
20210116
85
Strychnine
Is the sign at the end of the sentence a poisonous symbol of death; or some less malevolent line?
What little white pills do we purchase today and, as we travel, carefully place in the forlorn bodies of the dead livelihood of others to kill a little more so we can survive and maybe die a wealthy death?
“… Strychnine, made from the seed of an East INdia fruit, was in commerical production in Pennsylvania as early as 1834. Cheap and entirely unregulated, it became a key tool of biological warfare against the natural world in America for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. …” see also Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
86
Is the mark at the end a sign of strychnine; or some less malevolent line?
87
“… stock associations …” KKK
93
“…, religious teachings encoded a morality that sprang from human social evolution. …” What do you code and which version
20210117
How does the, literally, wholesale deconstruction of species in the United States compare to other mass die-off events?
At what point in a die-off event does a niche open and ecology adjust?
114
“… . American policymakers have always needed enemies, …”
“… a bureau that had once been a vehicle for pure science now only devoted 3 percent of its budget to scientific study. …” Popper. Also thinking about box upon box of theses. Clearly, we need more librarians and researchers.
The role of librarians. A simple role of many or of one, is to read. Read all of that unread stuff. Store it. Regurgitate it when an other seeks a slightly tweaked similarity. Without librarians the ecology of information becomes barren and mundane.
20210118
115
“… he “wished to know an entire heaven and an entire earth,” …”
And when he did he was dead or not ever born or all of the other things humans are.
116
“… 1931 to 1950 between science and federal policy …” Where do the ranchers fit into this timeline? How are we feeling this today?
“… Shot at on sight, run down with cars, trucks, and dogs, and endlessly tempted with easy treats that disguised mortal danger in the form of traps or poison, coyotes in the early twentieth century found themselves pushed hard to explore new chances in a modernizing world. …”
117
“… It shouldn’t surprise us now that the first group of Americans after Indians finally to “get” coyotes were scientists. …” curious rationalists; those who know nothing and still endure
120
“… Humans introduced wild dingos to Australia 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, and with the extirpation of the marsupial carnivores, these true canids then occupied that ancient niche. …”
“… Lotka-Volterra …” niche dynamics
20210119
123
“… ”Large predatory mammals, destructive to livestock and to game, no longer have a place in our advancing civilization.” …”
124
“… The balance of nature might have been fine for Indians, but with white people on the scene, the balance of nature on the continent had been, as he put it, “violently overturned, never to be reestablished.” …”
And yet here we are.
139
“… Indeed, contrary to Major Goldman’s insistence that the arrival of white Americans had destroyed the balance of nature, Murie concluded from his research that the coyote’s relationship “to the rest of the fauna is today similar to what it was formerly.” …”
143
“… mouflon …” species of wild sheep — ovis orientalis musimon
154
A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
169
The vision of reilient Westerners obfuscated by their scaredness and passive-aggressive tactics.
“… hardworking sheep to fund a food stamp program for homeless coyotes. …”
171–172
“… Since the courts had now ruled that carpet-bomb poisoning the world with 1080 violated the Endangered Species Act, by the 1990s newly labeled Wildlife Services was at something of a loss for how to carry out its coyote-killing mission. But in truth, it had already invested decades in perfecting a new anticoyote technology anyway. With a little tinkering, an old southwestern story works to explain Wildlife Services’ resolution of its dilemma: how to continue mass-killing coyotes for the ag community without mass poisoning. If the Indians had a coyote problem, according to the story, they’d send out one guy in a pickup. The Hispanos would shrug fatalistically: What can one do about a coyote? But the folks at the federal agency had a different reaction. When God (so the story always goes) looked down and said, “Look at those poor, ignorant Wildlife Services people. I gave them the rifle, the snowfields, and the airplane, and they didn’t have sense enough to put them together,” they looked at one another in wonder, imagined coyotes trying to escape pursuit from above, and bought some airplanes. …” Story
20210120
172
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sKjyr87kl4uSXICncKXZiwp4vCnZ83mZ/view?usp=drivesdk
Wondering about parallels between coyotes and feral hogs.
176
“… They’re used to getting our help nearly free, …” Role of society … “handouts” vs. “diy” -> parameters & compromise
“… ”Son, I don’t think you understand our problem. Them coyotes ain’t fucking our sheep, they’re eatin’ ‘em.” …”
Why not just pay ranchers for every dead sheep at the current market value?
207
“… Although rare, these are the kinds of moments millions of us need to have so we can coexist with coyotes, urban and otherwise. …”
229
“… the greatest story ever told, the miracle of ongoing evolutionary adaptation to an endlessly changing world. …”
20210121
239
Chuck Amuck, Chuck Jones
“… ”Humiliation and indifference — these are conditions everyone of us finds unbearable — this is why the Coyote when falling is more concerned with the audience’s opinion of him than he is with the inevitable result of too much gravity.” …”
240
“… eventually the modern world required a Coyote who could explain how to attain the unattainable. …”
The desire by the public for a voice. The desire by advertisers for a voice. The desire by the voiceless for a voice.
“… “Acme …” The top: highest point; pinnacle
242
Coyote V. Acme, Ian Frazier
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1990/02/26/coyote-v-acme/amp
245
God’s Dog: Conversations with Coyote, Webster Kitchell
247
“… federal killing agency …”
248
“… If we actually want fewer of them or want to slow their saturation of the continent, the obvious solution is to stop killing them and allow their population to stabilize. …”
So true for humans too.
