the wild nature of thought
captured in a handful of leaves
the stern eyes scrutinise the words
until they burn and become nothing
the monkey philosopher scorns the living
as they cannot seem to escape their daily rituals
Maybe I am seeing philosophers in all the animals I photograph. The little vervet monkey turned into Rodin's The Thinker the more I looked. My mind began forming these elaborate philosophical discussions, this monkey and I, back and forth in intellectual debates which would have made Socrates ashamed of himself. We contemplated the nature of reality, which was a banana. The eventual answer shocked me, but what could you expect from a world in which the meaning of life is 42?
The monkey turned into a Platonic figure, for whom the ultimate answer was a yellow fruit. I instantiated the figure of the student, trying to understand how we got to this chaotic point in which the world revolved around a potassium-rich phallic-shaped fruit. Maybe Freud was right and everything was sex-related. And maybe Lacan was onto something with his lack and phallus-related ideas. But would only confirm this monkey philosopher's position and I could not have it. Why start with the yellow phallus, why end with it? But the monkey philosopher would not have it as his world revolved around it, it was the beginning and the end, alpha and omega, yin and yang and all the other related ideas.
Philosophical mockery (or monkeying around) aside, I found these little vervet monkeys running around on a farm. And like most of my other posts, I contemplated the "domesticated wild animals" which roam throughout city spaces. When you drive through the city, you rarely come across wild animals. Especially bigger ones. The jokes is still sometimes believed, but lions do not walk through the South African major cities. Maybe some of the smaller rural ones, but if a lion somehow manages to either walk in the middle of the road in Cape Town, Johannesburg, or Pretoria, I would be the first one there to see the chaos that would unfold.
But occasionally, you see monkeys, obviously loads of birds, and now and other smaller animals. And this always prompts me to think about this strange situation in which animals are technically still wild, they are not domesticated, but in some sense they are? I don't know, it is a strange situation.
In any case, these are some photographs I took of my little "philosopher" friends. I hope that you enjoy them and the strange musings that always follow these encounters.
Before I could leave, the little monkey philosopher still tried to convince me of the pure form of the yellow fruit, the phallus and the true form of everything. When you think about it, he began trying his luck as he tried to convince me to just take a bite from his wisdom. But I could not see his point, I could not understand the world through the viewpoint of a fruit. The Platonic ideals conform to our human standards, the idea world filled with perfect chairs and beds and ideas. But the little philosopher monkey, the idea world was full of yellow phalluses, fruits, that one damn fruit. And he tried to convince me of this fact. He sounded all the more, like Freud, like Lacan. I wish I could put them in dialogue. Oh, the wonders of Lacan, Freud, and the Monkey philosopher. Think about the titles of their joint adventures; Interpretations of the Yellow Phallus; Beyond the Banana Principle; Studies on Hysteria-Induced Dreams: A Yellow Phallus; and so on.
Yet the little monkey remained, stoic in nature, looking at me like I was the deranged one. With this little conversation in my head, the poor monkey fled the scene before I introduced it to Thomas Aquinas.
In any case, I hope that you enjoyed this post. If you read my musings, I hope that they brought a smile to you. These little monkeys are so beautiful, from a distance though. As I heard, they can be quite the pest, eating almost all of one's fruits if you try to grow some in your garden. Life is chaotic sometimes and monkeys do not like to share. Such a shame. But I also saw some rehabilitation of their natural environment is becoming more prominent, which is a good thing. I hope that they can do more of this.
For now, happy photographing, and keep well.
All of the writings are my own, albeit strange interpretations of canonical figures through the eyes of my monkey philosopher. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron 300mm zoom lens.
