ON THE TOTALITY OF ERROR

I just found out from farmer T that monkeys do in fact eat rice from the growing stalks, which is why the local farmers' organization (though with some internal dissent) put up the electrified rice stalag that now peripherizes the entire formerly scenic rice growing area here on the mountainside to which photographers formerly pilgrimed from all over the country to photograph the unique beauty of tradition in harmony with nature that is now all fenced in and thereby utterly violated, hence is no more-- all for a few monkey mouthfuls of rice. Nobody asked my opinion, of course.

I myself, who live up here, have never seen a single monkey eating rice (they appear to live almost exclusively on my pumpkins and tomatoes, not to mention my onions), which lack of direct observation does not make the monkey-as-rice-gourmet assertion untrue, but at the very least it indicates a deficiency of direness to the situation. Nevertheless, the farmers have gone ahead with the scenic violation, much in the same way Kyoto has been ravaged with improvements. Some errors are bigger than others.

~~~~~~~~~