Neanderpundit

runs the gamut. Some are cruel fuckers that just like to see stuff in pain. me, I hate to see an animal suffer, and work extra hard to be able to take that shot when the time comes, put the animal out of it’s misery, put it in my freezer.

Birds and squirrels and rabbits and such are such small beasts that their lives end quickly at the behest of some small shot. Larger game, of course, has to be approached differently.

I have always been partial to Psalm 22, Davids’ “Deer of the Dawn”. In it, David speaks of abandonment by The Lord; this is the psalm Jesus quotes while dying of his wounds- “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabacthanii”, or ‘My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me!”

David also speaks- or sings, really, of his trust in the Lord, that the Lord will deliver him from the bull, dogs, lions. That’s the line, in fact, that sings most clearly to me, Psalm 22:19. “be thou not far from me, O Lord” It’s actually a misquote, the line is actually “Be not thou far from me” but I’ve been using it the other way so long now it’s stuck for good.

The moment when David’s fear turns to trust, and he draws strength, and begins to praise the lord.

For this reason, since I started hunting, this is my hunting prayer. When my finger touches the trigger, I say this in my heart: Be thou not far from me, O Lord. It reminds me how small I am. It reminds me how powerful the Creator of the universe is. And it helps me to calm myself and marshall my strength for the task at hand.

When I heard Private Jackson use it in Saving Private Ryan, i was at first a little stunned that someone else used it as well, even as a line in a movie. I guess i thought there was only just me that felt like this, and prayed before taking a shot. Then I began to talk to other hunters, and it dawned on me, that almost all of them- certainly all of the deeply spiritual ones, anyway- they all had their own prayer. Some too personal to share, but they had them, they’d freely admit it. What’s your prayer? You don’t have to leave it in comments. Just think about it.

If I want to dial someone, I can dial, or I can look up their number, or I can even harvest the number from a text message or an email.

You simply click on the number. Then answer the question
“Call this number?” or if it’s voicemail you answer “Do you want to call Voicemail?” and then you push the trackball and as often as not it asks you AGAIN.

A lot of damned steps to get to place a call.

On the other hand, if I stick it in my shirt pocket without locking it, my apparently adept nipple can accurately and rapidly dial fiji.

The week in the Great White North is predominantly so the wife can spend quality time with the family, and she did plenty of that. I, on the other hand, settled in with herr’s Twain and Kipling on my Crackberry.

It’s nice to be able to sit for eight hours at a stretch and read, especially such incredible authors. I’m boggled at the high powered snark of Twain and the deft way he paints a picture. From “A Tramp Abroad”:

The first discovery I made was that the
beauty of the lake had not been exaggerated. Within a day or two I made
another discovery. This was, that the lauded chamois is not a wild goat;
that it is not a horned animal; that it is not shy; that it does not
avoid human society; and that there is no peril in hunting it. The
chamois is a black or brown creature no bigger than a mustard seed; you
do not have to go after it, it comes after you; it arrives in vast herds
and skips and scampers all over your body, inside your clothes; thus
it is not shy, but extremely sociable; it is not afraid of man, on the
contrary, it will attack him; its bite is not dangerous, but neither
is it pleasant; its activity has not been overstated–if you try to put
your finger on it, it will skip a thousand times its own length at one
jump, and no eye is sharp enough to see where it lights. A great deal
of romantic nonsense has been written about the Swiss chamois and the
perils of hunting it, whereas the truth is that even women and children
hunt it, and fearlessly; indeed, everybody hunts it; the hunting is
going on all the time, day and night, in bed and out of it

That kind of subtle and yet incredible sarcasm is the kind of thing you don’t find most places. You have to read it several times to catch all the little double entendres located therin.

Likewise, Kipling has a gift that is stunning to behold. Having seen the spencer tracy crap called “Captains courageous” I can say, that until I read the story on thursday, I never saw even the slightest glimmer of the genius of the piece, nor the clear analogies to the world of today. This is going on the Oglet’s summer reading list, she has a week and change left before school starts. It’s an amazingly quick read.

I don’t know if this can be taught. I don’t know if, once you get past the basic rules of grammar (many of which which most of the great authors break at will anyway) a lot of writing seems to be about developing your own way of viewing the world, and expressing your perceptions in a way unique to you, and interesting to others. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. Certainly, I’ll never be Twain or Kipling. Still, I want to sharpen those chops, and I need to spend more time doing so. I’ve been to a few writer’s workshops and even found some helpful. What I need to do, is write. I need, probably, to go someplace without internet access and just write.