Botany is beginning increasingly to interest me.

I mean, I'm not really generally the sort of person who puts up Journal entries about how he's stumbled upon a free subscription to dA today.

Note how I say 'stumbled upon', in likeness of many specially favoured by Fate.

So I'm not generally that sort of person. But today, on account of the subscription (and the stumbling upon therebefore pregendered), is not a day that abides generality. I thus, today, cast aside my general-ness, if only for this short bit.

And I shout it out!

No ads!
Large thumbnails!
Polls so I can annoy everyone else!
And
Complicated Journals!

I'm pretending to be so excited that I'm almost pretending I'm drunk!

Exclamation! Yes!

P.S. Pasties are cool.

This [link] made me cry.

Edit: dA doesn't seem to be able to display the entire link. There's a 'sort by' list at the very top-- Click on 'popularity' please.

It's a list of dA smileys sorted by popularity. Why cry, you ask? Scroll down to the bottom (hit the 'End' button) and you'll find the following five emoticons are the least popular:

5.
4.
3.
2.

And at the very bottom of the ladder, the very unfortunate



Now I don't care much for numbers 2, 3 and 4. 2 and 4 are flags, which are national/nationalistic symbols, which translate eventually into a consummation of border-lines and *hippy voice* like, put up walls around people, dude. Number 3 () is a rotating head, which also I don't care much for. I like my disembodied heads to float or stay still-- not rotate, sorry.

Therefore I shall be replacing them with numbers 7, 9 and 11:

11.
9.
7.

All of which have my sympathies to some extent.

The revised least-popular emoticon list, then, is:







Now, I ask of all ye, are these poor prodigals, these 'waterflies, dimunitives of nature' really all that bad?

Not bloody much.

Popularity is a fickle whore.

I beseech any and all those reading this to please, in the name of good works and philanthropy (philemoticy?) make more frequent use of the following five smileys, and help knock them off the least-popular slot.

Dedicated to ninjaplot, spyed, noir, alphaosiris, and halfliquid.

One day as Manjusri stood outside the gate, the Buddha called to him, "Manjusri, Manjusri, why do you not enter?"

Manjusri replied, "I do not see myself as outside. Why enter?"

--Gyomay Kubose, Zen Koans

In 1851 Seattle, chief of the Suquamish and other Indian tribes around Washington’s Puget Sound, delivered what is considered to be one of the most beautiful and profound enviromental statements ever made. The city of Seattle is named for the chief, whose speech was in response to a proposed treaty under which the Indians were persuaded to sell two million acres of land for $150,000.

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.

If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man.

The white man’s dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man—all belong to the same family.

So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. the Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves. He will be our father and we will be his children.

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us, this shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father’s grave, and his children’s birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring or the rustle of the insects’s wings. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond and smell of the wind itself, cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine.

The air is precious to the red man for all things share the same breath, the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The earth is our mother. whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected. We may be brothers after all. We shall see. One thing we know which the white man may one day discover: our God is the same God.

You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

But in your perishing you will shine brightly fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man.

That destiny is a mystery to us for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tame, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires.

Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone.

The end of living and the beginning of survival.