![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hundred-eyed gaze
Jun. 7th, 2007 05:49 pmWednesday was a kindling day, like when dry loose wood first catches. Feathery cedar, bright orange sparks. Hints of the age of summer that I really love; I like this green and the bright flowers, but what I like best is the grass burnt gold and the sky flame-blue, hot as metal.
Wednesday evening I followed the wailing and mewing of the peacocks, and stood with a few others watching the birds through the wire fence.
The albino peacock's tail feathers were like strands of dust bunnies, like ancient lace, like cottonwood caught in a spider web. He rattled his tail like an insect.
I know a peacock is one of those animals we've seen so long as a symbol that we can hardly see them as a living thing, but they are still extraordinary to look at. The males turn and preen exactly like shopping channel models. Under the decorative tails they have a pad of loose cotton stuffing. It's hard not to see them as petulant animals, with those voices and the strutting. And the strange history in them, as in all animals bred for effect.
When the full-colour male shakes, the eyes on his crest undulate. It's unsettling. A wavering alien gaze, unblinking, yet not quite solid. You can't meet those eyes and you can't escape them.
And there is, you know, something vaguely compelling about the whole display. The faintest trace of desire to succumb to that bravado.
Or maybe that's my demographic of one there, just begging to get itself shut down.
{rf}
Waving to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
argus_in_tights, who is usually more glamorous than alien.
Wednesday evening I followed the wailing and mewing of the peacocks, and stood with a few others watching the birds through the wire fence.
The albino peacock's tail feathers were like strands of dust bunnies, like ancient lace, like cottonwood caught in a spider web. He rattled his tail like an insect.
I know a peacock is one of those animals we've seen so long as a symbol that we can hardly see them as a living thing, but they are still extraordinary to look at. The males turn and preen exactly like shopping channel models. Under the decorative tails they have a pad of loose cotton stuffing. It's hard not to see them as petulant animals, with those voices and the strutting. And the strange history in them, as in all animals bred for effect.
When the full-colour male shakes, the eyes on his crest undulate. It's unsettling. A wavering alien gaze, unblinking, yet not quite solid. You can't meet those eyes and you can't escape them.
And there is, you know, something vaguely compelling about the whole display. The faintest trace of desire to succumb to that bravado.
Or maybe that's my demographic of one there, just begging to get itself shut down.
{rf}
Waving to
argus_in_tights, who is usually more glamorous than alien.
