A sex shop opens in my city With breast bands and penis prostheses. The manager, who calls himself “non-binary”, says he knows how needed such products are: “Just a moment ago, someone cried tears of the ‘gender riot’. Finally the person felt good about himself.”
Meanwhile, chunks of Boeings and growing vaccines are falling into German refrigerators. The world is a complex device whose evidence I misplace. Sometimes I get tired of thinking about all those buttons and levers. I prefer to live and be allowed to live, with or without a penis prosthesis. When it rains I stay inside and when the sun rises I go out. Sometimes I go cycling in Westhawk.
Ring the bell in a house with a picture on the facade: Honey for Sale – Honey for saleTurns out the beekeeper is a retired carpenter. He says his wife enrolled him in a course about bees years ago. It would grow into a fully consumed passion. He wanted to do her a favor and treated her in a lace-making workshop. Here, I think, is the secret to a good marriage.
I ask the woman how she knows in what order all those reels should be touched. It wouldn’t look weird if you asked, How does that work, falling stone or sweat gushing out of the sweat glands? Her answer remains vague, but the fruit of weeks of work hangs on the walls here. I accept that some things are difficult to explain.
Beekeepers say summer bees only live for a month, but queens can repel them for five years. In the garden there are iron cabinets with an industrial look. I say I liked the old straw baskets better. He says you had to kill the bees there to get to their honey. Not everything romantic looks romantic.
I think about my mom and how she told me long ago that wasps can attack as they please. On the other hand, a bee loses its sting, so one bite may cost it its life. Death as a prize for daring to stand up for you: I remember as a child I thought this was unfair to the bee. Since then, the bees have been sympathetic to me. For wasps, I feel the kind of aversion I also feel for the salt marshes that tear apart urban areas on my quadrant.
The beekeeper says that the hiss of a bee is like music in his ears. In his garden is a pond with stone frogs and a heron. There is even a bathroom with statues of saints. This is sometimes called disdain: Deep Flanders. I see a staff and miter and feel like Martin Helen. This isn’t a really bad feeling, but it isn’t a very sexy feeling either.
Get home with royal jelly and two packets of honey.
In the evening, I dive into the wonderful world of beekeeping. Four hundred bees have to toil day and night for one kilogram of honey throughout their lives. Research shows that male honey bees inject toxins during mating, which blind the queen and prevent her from escaping.
Edible honey dating back three thousand years was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. I wonder who dared to taste it.
