Tha Dawn of the Dinosaurs 2

The love of the hamster-toothed squirrels for each other is daring, bold, and almost fearless. In Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies, Rainer speaks of women in love:

"But when you feel longing, sing of women in love,

for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing

of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost)

who would love so much more purely than those who were gratified. (Stanza 2)"

In the notes and letters pertaining to this text, Rilke reveals that he is not speaking of the spiritual love of Saint Teresa or others. He is speaking of the physical, difficult erotic love of Italian courtesans and others. In Martin Luther King's "Strength to Love," I don't think Martin Luther King is strictly speaking of the Platonic Love between blacks and whites. He is speaking of a kind of erotic love also. Don't get the wrong idea of erotic love here either. It is a love of minds, and the interplay between minds can be very erotic.

To return to the movie, the 2 squirrel lovers are in a bubble. In their chase, they fall off a cliff and coast in the air, longing for each other's touch and for the acorn. They look just like each other. They are twins in one sense of the word. Curiously enough, they are not seeking sexual gratification. Shelley had a line, "Whoever loved and knew not/ love's sad satiety." Sex can often be a disappointment. The end is always somewhat disappointing. So the squirrels dare to dare, but it is unclear whether their love is actually consummated.

Rilke continues:

"...But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back

into herself, as if there were not enough strength

to create them a second time. Have you imagined

Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl

deserted by her beloved might be inspired

by that fierce example of soaring, objectless love

and might say to herself, " Perhaps I can be like her"?" (Stephen Mitchell translation)

I wonder when it is that nature consummates herself. Is it during the Spring when April comes and the showers and sunshine bring much needed relief from the winter. It seems to me that our culture has become much more like nature than a culture. We accept our nature almost unquestioningly.

In Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the female is almost brutal in showing the weaknesses of the male. The male's front body becomes stuck on something and his bare skin is revealed and he is ashamed. This is a disguised circumcision motif by way of what is close and near. I believe I can call this metonymy.