Now fear this

Brontophobia is the fear of thunderstorms, although it sounds like the trepidation caused by a large dinosaur. Phonemophobia is the fear of thinking or being alone with one's thoughts. Amaxophobia is the fear of riding in cars (with or without boys) and venustraphobia is the fear of beautiful women.

My fear is ingesting something that is going to kill me. I'm not sure whether this is toxiphobia (fear of being poisoned), pharmacophobia (fear of drugs), pnigophobia (fear of choking/smothering), or a fear yet unclassified. However, every time someone thrusts a spoon at me and tells me to try this great new dish made with spices only found in the mountains of Peru or it it necessary for me to take a new pill for some ailment, I quiver in my boots and calculate how much time it should take for allergic symptoms to surface and how close I am to the nearest medical facility. Although I have never suffered from an allergic reaction, I fret at the possibility of suffering anaphylactic shock, swelling up, and ending my days on this planet.

Please understand: I have a great passion for food and respect for drugs -- the kinds I have previously ingested and know are safe, of course. It's those potentially fatal new foods and pharmaceutical timebombs that worry me.

Thanks to the Dedsigned Thinking phobia list.

13 July 2004, 22:07

Killer daddy

We call him "killer daddy". Twice the father mute swan has heaved his great white weight on top of a wayward goose, pummeling it with walls of feathers until weak, then holding its head under water with a vice-grip beak. And soon (but not soon enough) the goose is just a lump of battered and slightly-bloodied plumage, floating in the murk of discarded pop cans, plastic bags, and other stirred-up lake matter that has washed inward.

Killer daddy (KD) is worried that his adolescent cygnets won't get enough to eat. When a tourist starts tossing stale bread chunks into the water, KD rounds up mother and the five patchy-plumed teens and finds the most strategic place to catch the flying food, elbowing out the ducks and making rude gestures to the geese as he floats to the forefront. KD is King Cob.

In a few months the kids will have grown enough feathers to fly. By the winter, if food is scarce, KD will even fight his own children to survive. They think that they can kick the old man's ass. But KD has a lot of fight left in him.

By May, he will have turfed all of the kids out of the house.

11 July 2004, 12:07

Unwound

Hands across my back, pressing into skin. Muscles shrink below the surface, daring fingers to find them: the small knotted bits of rope. But within minutes they are located, plucked apart. Found, untangled, unwound. With sweeping arcs, the strands are flattened, unraveled into ribbons that curve around bone, smooth over shoulders, wrap around wrists.

08 July 2004, 19:07

Undrowned

Five days away from the office and things feel as though they have lifted; thoughts that had been drowned have been surfacing from the murk, from cloudy consciousness. The old Asian man standing on his half-hearted porch, dressed like a cowboy. The colour of untanned feet plunged into cold lake water. The fierce father swan (cob) with his beak clamped on the neck of a meddlesome goose, mercilessly slamming it into the water until limp. These are poems and fictions that have been unable to swim themselves out of my head.

06 July 2004, 18:07