[9] Jacobin 雅各宾鸽
Objection!
As Executive Director of the State Animal Protection, I object to your calla-lily-shaped raccoon fur collar, object to your Venetian mask decorated with floor-length ostrich plumes, object to your orange pyramid-studded alligator leather bracelet, and…the ivory rose-skull pendant necklace dangling in your V-neckline
As an ascetic person, I object to your hot dance amidst the dry ice smoke, showing off the garnet-color band around your V-tapered[1] waist. I object to your ogling to backseat audience, to your taking the name of “Jacobin” in vain out of sheer narcissism…
Under the gaze of Queen Victoria, bloodlines were hybridized over generations: from tempera to oil painting–Cadmium red, Cobalt violet, Titanium white and Chrome yellow, there was linseed oil, walnut oil, poppy and safflower oil…all became a pungent-smelling mixture
It was a fashion out of the blue, engulfing everything, even Darwin was involved: cross-breeding of pigeons, experiments on Galápagos finches–I object to that too! I believe in natural selection instead of artificial selection, I object to your feathers being reaped by capital, and to the “Amusing Ourselves to Death” kind of consumerist beauty on you
As recorded by the legendary naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, Mughal ruler Akbar the Great had a flock of 10,000 pigeons following him everywhere, while Yul Brynner once flied to Kansas City in a helicopter alongside his Birmingham Rollers[3].–The sky is yours to design and to sail across. I object your pompously fiddling with the limbs of clouds
John Nelson asserted that “People don’t realize that there is more to pigeons than just the gray birds you see out under the bridge” It is an undeniable fact that your ancestor was Columba livia
You hid yourself under the flow of natural history: you are neither the kind of “sweet dove”that John Keats lamented, nor a resident in Wordsworth’ Dove & Olive Branch
It was not until 1906 that Emil Schachtzabel released a fashion magazine about you and your kinsfolk–“Illustriertes Prachtwerk sämtlicher Taubenrassen”. You ultimately graced the cover as a solo male model: retro padded fur overcoat & wide floral-embossed double-sided strap, but I object—I object to all this vanity, which has taken advantage of your fragility and was trying to tame your hollow wing bones (keeled sterna) inside your haute couture skin and flesh
Once Tesla fell in love with a pigeon, which died in 1922: “two powerful beams of light” appeared in the bird’s eyes on her deathbed, “it was a real light, a powerful, dazzling, blinding light, a light more intense than I had ever produced by the most powerful lamps in my laboratory.” He said that at that moment something went out of his life and he knew his life’s work was finished
The one who will love you for who you are has not been born yet. You approached the time of departure too soon: listen, you should be gone forever like the mythical yellow crane. In some space-time full of vapor and ice crystals, where even perfumes become odorless, you will rest your soaring wings
I object to your looking back on this sinking courtyard of the mortal
* The Jacobin is a breed of fancy pigeon developed over many years of selective breeding that originated in Asia. Jacobins, along with other varieties of domesticated pigeons, are all descendants of the rock pigeon. It is in the Asian feather and voice pigeon show group. The breed is known for its feathered hood over its head. Jacobins, along with other varieties of domesticated pigeons, are all descendants from the Rock Pigeon (Columba livia).
[1]V Taper: wide shoulders and back, small waist and popping pecs
[2]One of the greatest pleasure breeders was 16th-century Mughal ruler, Akbar the Great. His flock of 10,000 pigeons moved with him wherever he went, and he spent many hours in his dovecotes, picking mates for young squabs, and escaping the pressures of ruling an empire.
[3]Yul Brynner raised Birmingham Rollers. Moehlmann met Brynner at a national pigeon show in Kansas City in 1974. Brynner used a helicopter to fly alongside his birds and monitor them.
[13] Ramphastos Sulfuratus 彩虹巨嘴鸟
(Keel-billed Toucan)
You detached the image from the brown paper envelope, with your forcep, small cleaning brush and cotton-wool buds: he was from the volcanoes in El Salvador
Of course, he could have come from Panama, Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua or Costa Rica
“In 1781 John Latham painted you portrait, eating a Brazil nut. 1817 you made your striking debut in ‘Le Règne Animal’ by Baron Cuvier”
He never liked you, nagging Pygmalion. Yet you were obsessed and your eyes were fixed on those luminescent fibers, visible only in a macro mode: you can’t see the forest for the trees. He likes compounds:
Dual-blossom lotuses and stalks of millet hugging together in “Gathering of Auspicious Signs” by Giuseppe Castiglione, so their merged outlines eventually become permanent shades, as if embellished by Amaro filter. His beak looks like a vein bookmark under X-ray.
The color scheme of all creatures on the earth is a kind of simulation, like “Caudal luring”: pigmy rattlesnake raises and wriggles its tail shaped like a caterpillar to lure birds
He seduced you likewise. A staghorn sumac is lit against the background of gloom, there are black wildebeests passing by at times. Ecosystem is kind of similar to the fashion circle
He backs down to his dark room: a hollow in a tree, or a nest deserted by other birds. Sunshine twists into Fabian-Oefner-styled iridescent oil spills, with acrylic paint dripping onto the metallic rod of a drill
There is a loneliness like in “Rome, From Mount Aventine”[1]. He stands from the viewpoint of the lone umbrella pine in the picture, looking over the whole city, the Tiber and Trinità dei Monti. “Hoch wuchs ich über Mensch und Tier; und sprech’ ich – niemand spricht mit mir…ich warte auf den ersten Blitz.”(Friedrich Nietzsche “Pinie und Blitz”) He is a keel as well as a rainbow
In the melody of “Toucan à Carène”of “Forêts Maya” he falls asleep, like a screw tightened on a tree branch, he folds his late-autumn-hued beak and his tail under his body
You wait for him to nose-dive from the sky, his golden-ratio head like a little flag on a ship. What is his soul like, inside that narrow but deep skull? After all, King Peter I of Portugal married a corpse as his queen
Some shamans still use them as keys to the realm of the spirits…you are closed, like an envelope sent out to a parallel universe
Smell of self-indulgence. He stands on the top of the totem pole, the paint still wet
Wood wax aroma fell, like a feather, deep into the bottom of your lungs
* The keel-billed toucan (Ramphastos sulfuratus), also known as sulfur-breasted toucan or rainbow-billed toucan, is a colorful Latin American member of the toucan family. It is the national bird of Belize. The species is found in tropical jungles from southern Mexico to Colombia. It is an omnivorous forest bird that feeds on fruits, seeds, insects, invertebrates, lizards, snakes, and small birds and their eggs.
Higher classification: Ramphastos
Scientific name: Ramphastos sulfuratus
Family: Toucan
Order: Piciformes
[1]Rome, From Mount Aventine is an 1835 painting by J M W Turner, based on drawings made by him in the city in 1828. It shows a view of the city of Rome from the Aventine Hill.. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836, where it was described by the Morning Post as “one of those amazing pictures by which Mr Turner.
Yin Xiaoyuan(Yin Xiaoyuán, “殷晓媛” in in Chinese) is an avant-garde, crossover epic poet as well as a trans-genre & multilingual writer, founder of Encyclopedic Poetry School (est.2007) , initiator of hermaphroditic writing movement and chief drafter of Declaration of Hermaphroditic Writing. She is the editor and visual designer of ”Encyclopedic Poetry School AI Papercube ” (10th anniversary special edition), ” 12th Anniversary Poetry ╳ Photography ╳ Manuscripts Album ” and ” 2020 Yearbook: Poetry ╳ Photography “, ” 2020 Deluxe Version: Poetry ╳ Photography ╳ Manuscripts Album ”, and of “2020 ‘Hymn to Poetry’: Online International Poetry Festival CD Album ”. She is the director and visual designer for the “12th Anniversary Poetry ╳ Tea Deluxe Gift Set” e “12th Anniversary Commemorative Medallions”. She is also the director of the “Encyclopedic Poetry School Creative Writing & Integrated Art Workshop”, members of which include poets, writers, dramatists, musicians and visual/installation/photography/calligraphy artists.
Image for Jacobin pigeon courtesy of featured creature com website
Image for keel-billed toucan courtesy of Pixabay.
