Now if you like writing maybe you'll remember Ken Kesey. Maybe you won't. Anyway, I was working at UC Santa Cruz in the 1980s and we had a writers workshop which he came to. Anyhow. in one of his readings he used the line "Shakng like a dog shitting peach pits" and I about fell on the floor laughing.* We had a dog my then girlfriend and I, a long time before that. back when we were harvesting filberts in Oregon. And that poor canine never did get the connection between chewing up and swallowing filbert nuts whole, which seemed kind of satisfying to her, and the horrible consequences to her anal sphincter a a day or so later on. Now, I loved that dog and I would have done anything to spare her the pain and indignity which she was suffering but it was not possible at that point to intervene in any positive way but half-chewed filbert shells are a lot like shrapnel. Based on her expression when she passed them, they felt like shrapnel too.
But I don't like you to leave thinking bad of Ken Kesey. He is also responsible for a very important general truth. He also said that "one of the more powerful forces in the world is the presumption of good will". I think I'll let that one go so you can think about it.
yrs,
rubato